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BS: I Read it in the Newspaper

12 Apr 04 - 03:47 PM (#1160083)
Subject: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Some articles don't need an entire thread of their own, so I started this as one as a place to collect small pieces like this one. This might be considered the virtual version of clipping an article and leaving it for someone to read, just to think about.

The following is a short article that needs some thought. It isn't the most important piece in the paper, but it suggests a lot of "what if" possibilities that are pretty scary in the context given. I looked at several possible older threads as a place to put this, but they were closed, or it just plain didn't fit.

This may or may not generate comments, but mostly this is one of those things that needs to be thought about. How on earth did it happen, was it malicious, accidental? and look at all of the possible outcomes.

SRS

12 Apr 04 - 03:54 PM (#1160093)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Little Hawk

Well, perhaps we should engage in nation-wide Easter Egg Hunts (by the adult population). Could turn up all kinds of significant results...perhaps even hidden WMD's.

12 Apr 04 - 04:12 PM (#1160117)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Rapparee

Someone dropped a stolen handgun in the bookdrop of the public library in American Falls, ID recently. We, on the other hand, had a bottle of Bud Light in ours.

12 Apr 04 - 04:15 PM (#1160119)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Hands up, anyone who has had a newspaper story about something they were fully involved with, which actually had the facts straight?

(Sorry for the thread creep -- although it suits the title!)

We now return to your regularly scheduled thread...

A

12 Apr 04 - 04:40 PM (#1160150)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Chief Chaos

Okay first I'm going to let the military side of me rant:

"It's not a clip! Its a magazine! For goodness sake if you're going to do a story about hand guns lets get the terminology right!"

Okay, now that the anal retentive side of me has said what it had to say,

Sounds like another Columbine event was in the offing. I hope they weren't touched before the police got there so that maybe some fingerprints can be found.

12 Apr 04 - 04:51 PM (#1160163)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Not only was one touched, it was dropped and it discharged!

SRS

12 Apr 04 - 10:13 PM (#1160364)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Ebbie

An Easter Egg Hunt account was in my local paper several years back. Early Saturday morning a dozen volunteers hid a couple ohundred brightly colored eggs on a grassy sward (love saying that) on the island across the way. They then went home to clean up, coming back that afternoon to host the hunt. Families with their excited youngsters in tow showed up for the grand event. There were cameras, reporters showed up; it was the first time anyone had thought of using the meadow with its low bushes. It was a beautiful day.

I think fewer than a half dozen eggs were found, but there were LOTS of bright bits of shell all over the place. Along with stuffed-full ravens sitting around in the trees.

15 Apr 04 - 01:53 PM (#1162550)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Civil liberties gone amuck? Or is California just more whacko that usual?

Thursday, April 15, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/169174_molester15.html

Serial child molester is set free

the rest of this story is online

15 Apr 04 - 02:01 PM (#1162552)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Oh, dear gawd. Shoulda fed him to the sharks while they had the chance...so he could get a sense of how it felt.

A

15 Apr 04 - 02:02 PM (#1162554)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Chief Chaos

Okay...

I understand that you have the right to confront your accuser but I would have thought that by now there would be precedent that in the case of a victim comiting suicide (more than likely because of the trauma he suffered) that the state would be considered the accuser.

Of course in some third world nations not only would the suspect be killed without a trial (and probably a rather ingeniously painful death at that) so would the accuser for being tainted.

15 Apr 04 - 04:27 PM (#1162654)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Yeah--I didn't post this because there is an easy answer, but rather because it is an article that is very troubling, and where a really vile human being is able to take advantage of "the system."

The trouble we as a society regularly encounter is that often after something like this, a bereaved family member with hyper-emotional ammo pushes through a law that is thinly-veiled retribution. Aimed at this one particular individual and put in place to deal with "anyone else who might somehow fit some part of that scenario," the law of unintended consequences comes into play. It means that because these laws are poorly crafted and tie the hands of judges regarding things like "three strikes," a lot of people who have minor infractions end up with life sentences without parole. So the judges who made this idiotic decision have done an injustice to their colleagues in the field, to say nothing of the victims of this worm they released.

SRS

15 Apr 04 - 06:23 PM (#1162730)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Rapparee

The accuser wasn't the kid, but Society as a whole -- "California v. xxxxx" or "US v. Bush" or whatever.

Then again, California...Society..... Ya gotta wonder sometimes. I just hope that in a more enlightened state than California he can get precisely what's coming to him. Heh heh heh.

(I'm considered liberal by some and conservative by others, but I'm plumb facist about this sort of thing.)

16 Apr 04 - 01:06 AM (#1162862)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: SueB

Didya hear the one about the Air Marshall who left his gun in the airplane lavatory? Speaking of reading things in the newspaper...

16 Apr 04 - 01:10 AM (#1162867)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: LadyJean

I'm not really good at making links, but if you go to www.pghcitypaper.com, you can read my welcome to the NRA, who are having their convention here this weekend. They made it their cover story, which is nice, because I don't think they'll pay me for it.

16 Apr 04 - 01:20 AM (#1162868)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: freda underhill

very clever, ladyJean, well said. How can they ever respond to that one?

freda

16 Apr 04 - 01:39 AM (#1162878)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: LadyJean

WOW! I MADE A LINK!!!!!!!

16 Apr 04 - 08:24 AM (#1163073)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Wow -- you wrote an article on the NRA which was really good! Nice job.

A

16 Apr 04 - 10:45 AM (#1163199)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Good job on the link and the essay!

18 Apr 04 - 04:04 PM (#1164589)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's an interesting one.

Considering the adjustments to this court were made during the Regan years, I'd sure like to know a lot more about it. Look at the kind of cases they hear. What can we learn about the outcomes?

The whole article is here: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Judges%20Lifetime%20Pay

Judges on little-known court paid for life

caseload numbers are meaningless because his judges must resolve "complex, high stakes litigation" that usually is settled without a trial.

The claims court has special expertise in disputes between contractors and the government, cases brought by taxpayers seeking refunds and plaintiffs complaining the government illegally seized their property. It has sole jurisdiction in lawsuits filed by unsuccessful bidders seeking government contracts.

http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/

18 Apr 04 - 04:05 PM (#1164590)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

oops. Reagan years (not to be confused with his chief of staff Regan).

22 Apr 04 - 02:26 PM (#1168227)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Well, I didn't read this one in an online newspaper, this information came via a link in a discussion group I belong to.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

Introduction

Biking

here is more about my motorcycle

Roentgens

This is a really interesting site. A view of a pretty scary place by a brave young woman. Many pages, lots of large photos.

SRS

22 Apr 04 - 02:33 PM (#1168232)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

It was posted on another thread here somewhere a few weeks ago, It is a real doozy of a phototour. Ya gotta wonder what Daddy's connections are to support her in such a free-wheeling lifestyle!

A

22 Apr 04 - 03:01 PM (#1168258)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I am not surprised it already appeared at Mudcat--we're a cutting edge group! I didn't think to do a search on the term "Chernobyl."

SRS

22 Apr 04 - 05:58 PM (#1168392)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Mudlark

Speaking of Chernobyl, I saw on Link TV the other night a fascinating documentary about a small group of villagers on Chernobyl's doorstep who refused to move. They are mostly old people now, living in small cabins around a big spring, from which they draw water daily. The voice-over moderator was the one youngish person left, a son who stayed to help his aging parents. They plant and eat their potatoes and turnips, collect chanterelles from the forest... All the old people (who down vodka by the waterglass) look like old people everywhere in Eastern Europe, tough people used to, and bowed by, a harsh climate, old men in caps, old women in babushkas. It showed these old guys felling trees in the forest, dragging them to the spring, then hand-hewing logs to box in a spring-fed laundry washing area for the women...incredibly hard work. No one had two heads or complained of health issues, which sort of surprised me.

I really like LinkTV, where this sort of programming is common. (And sorry for the thread creep...should be under "Things I saw on TV"....)

23 Apr 04 - 12:19 AM (#1168611)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Mudlark, your contribution is great! I started this thread because there are stories out there that are just too interesting to read and set aside, yet I don't want to start a new thread for each. I like to think about them a while, and see what others think on the subjects. Your remarks are in line with what the woman on the Chernobyl thread spoke about-- those folks who were unwilling to leave are remarkable.

Critical thinking is something that once you learn how you can't turn it off. So many stories present you with what the writer thinks and no more. But there are occasionally stories out there written in such a way as to let the gaps be visible, and the warts show. They give you room to draw your own conclusions, or see the faulty arguments. Those are the ones that attract my attention. I'm glad they jump out at you also.

SRS

25 Apr 04 - 01:12 PM (#1170538)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's an interesting story. And I love the "bottom line"--Einstein encouraged this woman to become a librarian. Yes!

From the Seattle P.I.

Diary details Einstein's last years

PRINCETON, N.J. -- In the last years of Albert Einstein's life, he amused himself by telling jokes to his parrot, and avoided visitors by feigning illness, according to a newly discovered diary written by the woman known around Princeton as his last girlfriend.

While Einstein also talked about the travails of his continuing work in physics, most of Johanna Fantova's diary recalls his views on world politics and his personal life.

The writings are "an unvarnished portrait of Einstein struggling bravely with the manifold inconveniences of sickness and old age," Freeman Dyson, a mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, told The New York Times in Saturday's editions.

The 62-page diary, written in German, was discovered in February in Fantova's personnel files at Princeton University's Firestone Library, where she had worked as a curator. The manuscript is the subject of an article to be published next month in The Princeton University Library Journal.

According to the article, the new manuscript is the only one kept by someone close to Einstein in the final years of his life.

"There is surprisingly little about physics in the diary," Donald Skemer, Firestone Library's curator of manuscripts, told The Times of Trenton.

Fantova wrote that she recorded her time with the renowned physicist to "cast some additional light on our understanding of Einstein, not on the great man who became a legend in his lifetime, not on Einstein the renowned scientist, but on Einstein the humanitarian."

Fantova was 22 years younger than Einstein. Although the two spent considerable time together starting in the 1940s, her journal only records their relationship from October 1953 until his death in April 1955 at age 76. She died in 1981 at age 80.

Princeton already had a collection of the poems, letters and photos Einstein sent to Fantova, who sold them after his death to Gillett G. Griffin, a retired curator at Princeton's Art Museum. He gave those documents to the library.

Griffin, invited many times to Einstein's home for dinner, said Fantova was a fixture there.

"Reading what she left gives me an immediate connection with my own experience and gives everyone the immediacy of knowing Einstein himself," Griffin said.

The diary recounts Einstein speaking about the politics of the day and portrays him as critical of speeches of Adlai Stevenson, the nuclear arms race and the anti-communist attack on the scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer by Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

"This political persecution of his associate was a source of bitter disillusionment," Fantova wrote.

Besides his politics, Fantova wrote of Einstein's popularity and how he tried to write back to strangers, some of whom tried to convert him to Christianity. He said, "All the maniacs in the world write to me," she wrote.

The diary also recounts how, on his 75th birthday, Einstein received a parrot as gift. After deciding the bird was depressed, Einstein tried alter its mood by telling bad jokes.

At times, Einstein would pretend to be sick in bed so he would not have to pose with visitors who wanted photographs. Einstein still enjoyed himself even when real illness did take hold.

"Einstein's health began to fail, but he continued to indulge in what remained his favorite of all pastimes, sailing. Seldom did I see him so gay and in so light a mood as in this strangely primitive little boat," Fantova wrote.

Einstein also wrote Fantova poems, some of which are in the diary.

Einstein, with his second wife Elsa, had arrived in Princeton in 1933 at the newly formed Institute for Advanced Study. Elsa died three years later.

Fantova first met Einstein in 1929 in Berlin. She arrived in the United States alone in 1939 and, at Einstein's urging, attended library school at the University of North Carolina.

25 Apr 04 - 03:50 PM (#1170576)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Mudlark

A great piece, thanks SRS. And since TV input is OK, did anybody else see the C-Span weekend Book Channel's coverage of the UCLA Book Fair, particularly, the forum on myths in American culture. Really got me to thinking. All cultures have myths, but it seems ours are fueled by corporations, promoting unncessary consumerism (as addressed by James Campos, The Fat Myth), and those that build and maintain political clout (the Myth of Fear).

25 Apr 04 - 05:11 PM (#1170660)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I always enjoy C-SPANs book talk programs when I remember to turn them on. Lately I haven't exactly been getting my money's worth out of the Dish-TV I had installed a few months ago. But these kinds of programs are what I was looking for (okay, okay, I also wanted some of the old movies and the great mystery programs--tonight I've set it up to record Boy on a Dolphin).

Sorry about the small print above--I was trying to compress it some. I think maybe I need to look into formatting the space between paragraphs (or find writers who can do better than treat every sentence as if it is a paragraph!)

SRS

29 Apr 04 - 12:08 AM (#1173755)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This one certainly describes me. I have paper clutter on my kitchen counter, my dining room table AND my office. Sheesh! Full story http://www.heraldnet.com/homeandgarden/story.cfm?file=04042218491258.cfm

From chaos to order, with a little help

30 Apr 04 - 11:17 AM (#1175006)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

That Chernobyl link has changed. Now you can find it at http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html.

10 May 04 - 09:32 PM (#1182691)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's an interesting one. The woman can't write in anything but one-sentence "paragraphs," so I've lumped it together to save space. See the rest at the web site:

Cabbie Goes Extra Miles from the Everett Herald.

Cabbie goes extra miles

10 May 04 - 09:44 PM (#1182697)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Wow!! What a ride! :P>)

A

12 May 04 - 04:31 PM (#1184137)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Ada's ready with a song
Her music has made all the difference in countless lives

EVERETT - Ada Haug is Everett's Julie Andrews. Her life is just like the movies - no matter where she is, no one ever seems surprised when she breaks into song. There was the time at a foot care clinic when Haug, 87, ran into an old friend and the two started singing over pedicures. Soon, others joined in, and the whole place was full of songbird seniors with soaking feet.

Then there was the time Haug led a tin-can drive to earn money for a new wheelchair van for seniors. She rallied the community, the seniors at a Bethany Northwest Home got their van and Haug wrote a song about the whole experience.

Then there was the time last month at an Everett City Council meeting when Mayor Ray Stephanson proclaimed April 30 Ada Haug Day in the city to honor her for 40 years of community service. After saying a little something at the meeting, Haug stepped into the marble foyer, and before long was singing a Norwegian wedding song.

The rest is here.

SRS

13 May 04 - 02:18 PM (#1184943)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's an interesting one. Dillinger paper stolen years ago turns up on a web auction:

Indiana Seeks to Reclaim Dillinger Document

May 13, 2004 11:14 AM EDT

All things considered, "[S]chagrin" is a pretty good name for the "owner" of this document!

SRS

14 May 04 - 12:43 AM (#1185360)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Mudlark

SRS...loved the Ada Haug story! Gee, when I forget myself and burst into song while gassing up the truck, or strolling down the supermarket aisle everybody looks at me like I'm crazy. (Moi???)

14 May 04 - 12:50 AM (#1185365)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Cluin

Next thing, Dillinger's pickled prodigious pecker will show up on E-Bay after disappearing from J. Edgar Hoover's desk drawer back in `68.

14 May 04 - 07:17 AM (#1185518)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Mudlark:

Forget yourself?? They should be so lucky!! Anyone says anything tell 'em there is no charge for those who mind their manners!!

A

15 May 04 - 02:08 AM (#1186025)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Mudlark

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Amos!

This thread makes me wish I read more print media for ease of copying. I heard a fascinating discussion on NPR while driving around doing chores yesterday about studies done on height through the ages. Seems like there is a definite correlation between height and physical well being (enough to eat, adequate health care, reasonable quality of life). Also seems that average US height has been losing out to Europeans for some time now. We peaked after WWII, now the average height in Holland, for instance, is substantially higher than that of the US. We are 25th I think, among major populations in infant death.

These findings are quite at variance with the image of US as Empire.

15 May 04 - 01:23 PM (#1186277)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Mudlark, if you know what program you were listening to, you can find a transcript or a recording of it online.

When my parents were alive they used to regularly mail me big manila envelopes stuffed with old magazines of local Washington State interest (The Mountaineer, for example) and lots of clippings. Various subjects, whatever they were interested in or they thought would interest me. When my father died I opened one file cabinet drawer and found the growing stack he had for me for the next mailing.

I make it a habit to print interesting stories or clip them from the paper and leave them on the dining room table for the kids to look at. Sometimes we read them out loud, if it is particularly good that way. Articles get clipped or printed because they illustrate somethine that is a concern that I want us to think about, and sometimes they discuss topics that are of interest to the kids (and I want them to know I was paying attention!)

SRS

17 May 04 - 12:15 AM (#1187032)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Book Opened Orchid-growing To The World

May 15, 2004 07:16 AM EDT

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Before there was an Orchid Thief, there was Rebecca T. Northen.

Northen, whose 1950 book "Home Orchid Growing" is still the bible for growers -- amateur and professional alike -- did for orchids what Julia Child did for French cooking, said one orchid lover. Her greenhouse still contained hundreds of orchids when she died April 30 at age 93 in Des Moines, where she lived with her daughter.

"She demystified this thing that was previously the purview of the rich doctors and the wealthy," said Bill Carley, who picked up Northen's book when he was a kid and got hooked. Now a member of the Northwest Orchid Society, he's still growing them 40 years later.

And so are millions of others around the country, inspired by the woman who made orchid growing accessible to anyone with a little sun and some patience. "She's the reason we have orchids in Trader Joe's," said Northen's daughter, Betty Lyons. "Truly, she was an orchid grower's orchid grower," said Andy Easton, vice president of Kerry's Bromeliads in Homestead, Fla., one of the largest growers in the world. Kerry's produces more than 4 million plants a year, he said, "but if there's any one book I still go to on a regular basis, that's Rebecca Northen's 'Home Orchid Growing.' "

Northen discovered orchids, the hothouse hotties of the flower world, in the coldest of places: Laramie, Wyo.

Born in Detroit in 1910, Rebecca Tyson had hoped to become a doctor like her father. She studied biology at Radcliff College and received her master's degree from Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts. Just after graduating, however, she heard about a summer botany camp in Wyoming, still considered the "Wild West" in those days.

She went for the adventure. Instead, love bloomed. She married her professor, Henry T. Northen, in 1937 and the two put down roots in Laramie, where they raised three children.

One day, the professor came home with a flask of tiny orchid seedlings, enough to start hundreds of plants. Northen fell under their spell immediately, and hard.

"There was something magical about them that captivated her," said her grandson Trent Northen of Arizona, who got his own start growing orchids from doing chores in his "Grandbecca's" greenhouse when she later lived in California.

Those first seedlings rapidly took over every surface in the house, including the bathtubs. Soon thereafter, the Northens built their first greenhouse. To support her proliferating hobby, and pay the heating bill, Northen sold Cattleyas, or corsage orchids, by the prom-load.

find the rest of the story here.

17 May 04 - 02:09 PM (#1187350)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

From the Everett Herald:

Women's project offers a comfortable setting to swim
By Katherine Schiffner, Herald Writer

EVERETT -- Nadaa Aliat glances up at the YMCA pool's glass entryway before easing into the chilly shallow end. A long white curtain covers the door and the window beside it. No one can peek inside. Time to swim. This is the only place Alait and most of the two dozen other women in the pool can swim laps, learn new strokes and soak in the hot tub. For religious and modesty reasons, they won't appear in swimsuits in front of men. This swim time, twice a month, is just for women and children.

"Because we are Muslim, we can't show the body to other people," Aliat said. "If this program were gone, we couldn't do anything." Aliat, 30, who moved to Everett from Iraq 10 years ago, wears a head scarf and long black cloak in public. She has come to the Sunday swims for a year now. "Before, we didn't know how to swim, but now we're swimming and enjoying it," Aliat said. "Last time, my daughter was able to float without anybody helping. The kids have learned so fast."

The women-only swim was started by Therese Quinn, leader of Snohomish County's Woman to Woman project, which aims to bring together women from different cultures. Woman to Woman, which also offers cooking classes, discussion groups, sewing circles and roller-skating nights, added the swim time at the suggestion of several Muslim high school girls. The informal gatherings, "give us the opportunity to learn from each other," Quinn said. "One of the women involved in the program had this notion that people from the Middle East were not like us," Quinn said. "After she got to know some of the women from the Middle East, and their children played together, she realized she was wrong."

The swim times are open to all women and young children. Sisters Gerri Johnson and Barb Heckathorn of Marysville say they feel more comfortable doing water aerobics there. "It gives us an opportunity to get out and get moving without showing our rolls to men," Johnson said with a smile.

Women-only swim

The Woman to Woman Project hosts women's swims 9:30-11:30 a.m. on the second and fourth Sundays of every month. Women, girls and young boys swim in privacy at the Everett Family YMCA, 2720 Rockefeller Ave. Suggested donation: $1.

20 May 04 - 12:17 AM (#1189240)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

There is a photo with this story.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Homeward, healed
By Victor Balta, Herald Writer

SEATTLE - The scene couldn't have been more different. Eight-year-old Tae-Wau Ryu was near a ticket counter at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport throwing a baseball in the air, dishing out smiles for pictures, joking and laughing. Seven months ago, he wouldn't speak. Lost, confused and tired from a long flight, he only shook his head no, regardless of the question. "The poor kid just sat on the floor, hugged his photo album and cried for about four days," said David Cash of Lynnwood, Tae-Wau's host father.

Tae-Wau was one of three South Korean boys brought to Snohomish County by Healing the Children, a nonprofit group. The boys suffer from microtia, a condition in which the ear, usually the right one, never fully develops. Monday, the boys went home, each sporting a significantly improved ear on the right side of his head. Tae-Wau was still unhappy. "Not good," he said about his new ear, although it didn't seem to dampen his spirits.

Dr. Ron Krueger, a Healing the Children board member who did the surgery, doesn't take Tae-Wau's reaction personally. He can understand that after 26 office visits and four surgical procedures, Tae-Wau might have expected more. "It's imperfect. It doesn't look exactly like the other side, but these kids can walk through public and not be scrutinized," Krueger said. "The sad part, for me, is that I don't get to see the parents' reaction. I think his parents are going to be ecstatic." The operation, though cosmetic, is valuable in Tae-Wau's home country, where people with physical disabilities are often shunned, even by their own families. At a glance, Tae-Wau's ear appears normal, but a closer look shows that his upper ear is not quite released from the side of his head. Still, most people don't notice any deformity and are surprised to learn about the surgery.

Since he arrived, David and Cheryl Cash and Tae-Wau have shared memories that will last all of their lifetimes. His English improved tremendously, along with his confidence. He abruptly decided several months ago that "Peter" would be his name in America. He quickly made friends at Oak Heights Elementary School in Lynnwood, where he enrolled six weeks ago and had a "birthday" cake in class Friday. (His birthday isn't until August.)

His love for fishing also came to light as he spent hours scouring through rods and tackle at G.I. Joe's or Wal-Mart stores, and more time on the area's lakes. And he developed the true taste of the Pacific Northwest. "He's been one of Starbucks' best customers," Cash said. "They're going to see a little dip in their income and say, 'Oh, that's when Tae-Wau went back to Korea.'" After sucking down his last grande chocolate chip frappuccino on Monday, Tae-Wau gave his final hugs and headed for the departure gate with an escort and the two other boys.

His host parents stood side by side, their arms pulling each other close, as Tae-Wau turned to give them one last smile and waved goodbye.

20 May 04 - 02:27 AM (#1189311)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

MAn, that is a good news tale. Thanks!

A

20 May 04 - 12:18 PM (#1189776)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Uncle_DaveO

Stilly River SAge (somewhere up in there) said, in part:

the law of unintended consequences comes into play. It means that because these laws are poorly crafted and tie the hands of judges regarding things like "three strikes,"

There is in the law a maxim that "Hard cases make bad law, and bad law makes hard cases."

That is, to make a rule of law (whether case law or statutory) as a result of uncertain or aggravated cases makes law that is uncertain or draconian. As a result of such bad law, other cases down the line get prosecuted, tried, or punished badly.

Dave Oesterreich

21 May 04 - 03:23 PM (#1190973)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This one is very important, and could actually be its own thread. A search brings this up in many papers; the link I'm using may require a free membership.

HEALTH STUDY SAYS WORMS MAY HELP BOWEL DISORDERS

(05-21-2004) - Having intestinal worms actually may be a good thing, say scientists studying treatments for irritable bowel disorders. University of Iowa researchers have been using pig whipworms to treat Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, having patients ingest parasitic worm eggs in a glass of Gatorade. Raymond Fiedler, 65, of Clinton, a study participant, said he wasn't squeamish about drinking them down. "What you don't see can't hurt you," he said.

Dr. Joel Weinstock, lead researcher, said the theory is that the deworming of people in industrialized countries may be responsible for the increased incidence of disorders such as Crohn's and colitis. Both are painful, chronic inflammatory bowel disorders that can cause diarrhea, cramping and numerous complications. The worms, which are thin as a hair and can grow to half an inch long in the patient's intestine, may provide chemicals which suppress certain immune-system responses to antigens and keep the digestive tract healthy. "We assume that good hygiene is great, but maybe we don't want it," Weinstock said. "Being very, very clean ... we could be failing to get exposed to the healthy ones in our attempts to avoid the bad ones." He said the incidence of Crohn's and colitis in the United States was once 1-in-5000. Today, that ratio is about 1-250. "It's increasing and becoming a major health problem," Weinstock said.

The study, funded by the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America and the California-based Broad Foundation, examined about 120 people who suffer from irritable bowel disease. Some were given a drink with 2,500 worm eggs, while others were given a placebo. Weinstock said it didn't take much arm-twisting to persuade patients to ingest the worm eggs, because many were taking 25 pills or more a day for their condition. Some drugs raise their risk of cancer, he said. "If you came to me and I said you could take something that was safe with no side-effects every two to three weeks, what would you do?" Weinstock said. "The eggs are microscopic, so you can't see them, you can't taste them, nothing comes crawling out of you," he said. "It's not that icky when you're ill."

Weinstock said patients in the study showed significant improvement. Of 54 patients with ulcerative colitis, 24 were given a placebo and 30 drank the worm eggs. After three months, 13 of those given the egg drink improved. Only four of those given the placebo showed improvement. Twenty-nine patients with Crohn's disease swallowed the eggs. After three months, 82 percent of them were in remission. After six months, that number had risen to 91 percent. Fiedler, a retired middle school teacher, said he is now symptom free. "I feel fine - I feel great," he said.

While Fiedler wasn't officially told whether he received the placebo or the worm drink, a videotape of a colonoscopy, done about a year after the study began, showed the worms in his intestine. "From what I've seen in the videotapes and photographs, they just attach themselves to the intestine and gobble away," Fiedler said. Weinstock presented the study's finding this week at a Digestive Disease Week conference in New Orleans. Telephone messages left Thursday for other experts in gastroenterology were not immediately returned.

Weinstock said the pig whipworms were used because they're safe and live only a short time in humans, and cannot be transmitted to another person. By comparison, human whipworms can live in a person for up to two years, he said. Weinstock said no one before has studied the positive aspects of worms, which have always been considered to be negative. "I suspect, and this is total speculation, that it could be we want people to have worms - that the positive effects of worms would be good," Weinstock said. The research could lead to the development of drugs from chemicals produced by the worms, he said, adding that such drugs - and maybe even the worms themselves - "may be important not only for treating diseases but for prevention as well."

Meanwhile, Fiedler continues to drink the worm egg concoction. "They're training me now to mix them myself, so I can keep them in my refrigerator here, so I don't have to travel to Iowa City as often," he said.

22 May 04 - 12:45 PM (#1191534)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Mudlark

This is another item from Link TV, often the best thing on the box...

Program notes: The Hole in the Wall...(watching these kids find and experiment with these computers is a total feel-good experience. Given the current administration and the tenor of most of the news, this made me feel great!)

" A revolution in information technology is redefining poverty, as how much you know is becoming just as important
as how much you own. "The Hole in the Wall" examines one possible solution to the growing technological gap
between rich and poor -- the so-called 'digital divide' -- that threatens to consign millions to an "information
underclass." When Indian researcher Sugata Mitra embedded a high-speed computer in a wall separating his
firm's New Delhi headquarters from an adjacent slum, he discovered that slum children quickly taught
themselves how to surf the net, read the news, and download games and music. Mitra then replicated the
experiment in other locations. Each time the results were similar: within hours, and without instruction, the
children began browsing the Internet.

Can children -- given only access and opportunity -- really teach themselves the rudiments of computer literacy with no instruction? "The Hole in the Wall" experiment, and the documentary film that chronicles it, show the answer to be a "Yes!" Mitra estimates that, given access to one hundred thousand computers, one hundred million Indian children could teach themselves computer literacy within five years. The film concludes by noting that the spread of information technology is changing societies around the world, and the implications of Mitra's experiment are profound -- particularly for poor people."

What a GREAT idea!!

22 May 04 - 12:57 PM (#1191539)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Wow, Nancy, that one is a pure-dee positive beat!!

A

23 May 04 - 06:14 PM (#1192247)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST

Glad I live in the UK

31 May 04 - 09:23 PM (#1198053)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Lots of American cultural baggage goes with this story, and it is a classic definition of the term "meal ticket."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2601550

May 31, 2004, 5:34PM

Last widow of a Civil War veteran dies at 97

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Alberta Martin, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, died on Memorial Day, ending an unlikely ascent from sharecropper's daughter to the belle of 21st century Confederate history buffs who paraded her across the South. She was 97. Martin died at a nursing home in Enterprise of complications from a heart attack she suffered May 7, said her caretaker, Dr. Kenneth Chancey. She died nearly 140 years after the Civil War ended.

Her May-December marriage in the 1920s to Civil War veteran William Jasper Martin and her longevity made her a celebrated final link to the old Confederacy. After living in obscurity and poverty for most of her life, in her final years the Sons of Confederate Veterans took her to conventions and rallies, often with a small Confederate battle flag waving in her hand and her clothes the colors of the rebel banner.

"I don't see nothing wrong with the flag flying," she said frequently. Chancey said she loved the attention. "It's like being matriarch of a large family," he said. "She was a link to the past," Chancey said Monday. "People would get emotional, holding her hand, crying and thinking about their family that suffered greatly in the past."

Wayne Flynt, a Southern history expert at Auburn University, said the historical distinctiveness of the South, which is so tied to the Civil War, has been disappearing, but Martin provided people with one last chance to see that history in real life. "She became a symbol like the Confederate battle flag," he said.

The last widow of a Union veteran from the Civil War, Gertrude Janeway, died in January 2003 at her home in Tennessee. She was 93 and had married veteran John Janeway when she was 18.

In 1997, Martin and Daisy Anderson, whose husband was a slave who ran away and joined the Union Army, were recognized at a ceremony at Gettysburg, Pa. Anderson, who lived in Denver, died in 1998 at age 97. Janeway wasn't invited to the Gettysburg event because, at the time, no one outside her family knew her whereabouts.

Alberta Stewart Martin was not from the "Gone With the Wind" South of white-columned mansions and hoop skirts. She was born Alberta Stewart to sharecroppers on Dec. 4, 1906, in Danley's Crossroads, a tiny settlement built around a sawmill 70 miles south of Montgomery. Her mother died when she was 11. At 18, she met a cab driver named Howard Farrow, and they had a son before Farrow died in a car accident in 1926. Stewart, her father and her son moved to Opp. Just up the road lived William Jasper Martin, a widower born in Georgia in 1845 who had a $50-a-month Confederate veteran's pension. The 81-year-old man struck up a few conversations with the 21-year-old neighbor and a marriage of convenience was born. "I had this little boy and I needed some help to raise him," Alberta Martin recalled in a 1998 interview. They were married on Dec. 10, 1927, and 10 months later had a son, William.

She said her husband never talked much about the war, except the harsh times at Petersburg, Va. "He'd say it was rough, how the trenches were full of water. They were so hungry in Virginia that during the time they were fighting, they had to grab food as they went along. They came across a potato patch and made up some mashed potatoes," she said. Asked if she loved her husband, Martin said: "That's a hard question to answer. I cared enough about him to live with him. You know the difference between a young man and an old man." William Jasper Martin died on July 8, 1931. Two months later, Alberta Martin married her late husband's grandson, Charlie Martin. He died in 1983.

She became the focus of a dustup over the depiction of her and her late Confederate husband in the 1998 book "Confederates in the Attic." Among other things, the book by Tony Horwitz described William Jasper Martin as a deserter. A group that defends Southern heritage disagreed, contending there were at least two William Martins who served in Company K of the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment and that Horwitz got the wrong one. Horwitz said his research was carefully checked and the book was accurate. The state government considered Martin's record clean enough to award him a Confederate pension in 1921 and to give Alberta Martin Confederate widow's benefits in 1996.

Martin's older son, Harold Farrow of North Little Rock, Ark., died last June. Her younger son, Willie Martin, lives in Elba. Alberta Martin is to be interred at New Ebenezer Baptist Church six miles west of Elba, in an 1860s-style ceremony following her funeral June 12.

10 Jun 04 - 10:57 PM (#1204814)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Finally, an Old Dog That Can Learn New Tricks

By JAMES GORMAN, Published: June 11, 2004

Reports from owners notwithstanding, scientists have yet to discover a dog that can talk. But German researchers say they have found one that listens and learns like a human child. In a report being published today in the journal Science, the researchers say a 9-year-old border collie named Rico was able to learn the name of a new object in one try, by a process of elimination. Told to fetch an unfamiliar object with a name he had not heard before, Rico picked out the novel item from a group of familiar ones.

Even more important, Rico proved in other tests four weeks later that he remembered what he had learned, said Dr. Julia Fischer, an author of the report who is a senior research fellow in the evolution of communication at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. She said that Rico was displaying a kind of learning by inference that is called fast mapping. It was thought to be a language-learning ability specific to humans, but Rico's ability suggests it may be more widespread.

Rico was not picked at random for the study. His abilities were known to television audiences in Germany long before the scientists started working with him. In fact, said Dr. Fischer, it was Rico's performance retrieving a variety of objects on a popular game show, "Wetten, Dass?" (roughly "Want to Bet?"), that brought him to her attention. The owners say the dog knows the names of 200 objects. The scientists did not test this claim but said anecdotal evidence supported it.

The report is unlikely to surprise owners of border collies. The breed is known for its intelligence and intensity. Warren Mick, a border collie owner and trainer in upstate New York who is president of the Northeast Border Collie Association, said, "I've had dogs that could pick up something with one experience." He also said he had no doubt the dogs learned specific words.

In a commentary accompanying the Science article, Dr. Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale, wrote that the proper scientific controls were used in the experiment to avoid the possibility of cues from the owner other than the command. Such hidden cues have invalidated other impressive achievements of animals, most famously those of a horse known as Clever Hans who was said to have done arithmetic but was actually responding to unconscious cues from his owners. Dr. Bloom added that without further experiment, it was unclear that Rico's performance was related to the way children learn words. "It is too early to give up on the view that babies learn words and dogs do not," he concluded.

Dr. Fischer said the conclusions in the report were limited to Rico and could not be extrapolated to other border collies, or dogs in general, until more research was done. Rico might be a special case among dogs, she said, adding, "Maybe he's Albert Einstein."

This came from the New York Times

11 Jun 04 - 06:18 AM (#1204967)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST

Not sure if anyone else pointed this out, as I just skimmed the thread, but I read recently that the chernobyl photo bike ride is a hoax.

hoax

11 Jun 04 - 11:06 AM (#1205176)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JennyO

Oh dear. Goes to show you can't believe everything you read. I was totally sucked in by that one!

11 Jun 04 - 12:07 PM (#1205220)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Yeah I was disappointed to read that angle on it. But it didn't make a lot of sense for a single girl to be living that richly.

As for that dog, now, it's an interesting question where the limit of this vocabulary is. You suppose they can learn verbs as well as nouns? I am remembering that wonderful fictional story about the signing gorilla named Amy who goes into the jungles as an interpreter on a scientific expedition.

A

11 Jun 04 - 04:48 PM (#1205382)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

It was a Twilight Zone sort of story, and I hadn't really questioned it regarding it being an actual trip (someone had to take the photos, and they couldn't all have been by her). Here's a bit of the thread from that link:

I started this thread as a place to post interesting stories--I don't think there's a particular theme, unless it is one of "eclectic reading habits." Some of these are just head-scratchers. Others are little stories that are kind of sweet or odd, and some are there just as think pieces, like the "no comment" photo they used to run on the back inside page of Ms magazine years ago. Thanks for giving us "the rest of the story," (though I never was a Paul Harvey fan).

SRS

13 Jun 04 - 12:55 PM (#1206285)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/04/06/13/loc_salmon001.cfm

Return of the king
Traditions of ceremony are passed down to a new generation

By Diana Hefley, Herald Writer

TULALIP - Standing side by side, young and elderly tribal members blended their voices together to welcome the first salmon of the season. They sang to bless the fishermen, to honor visiting tribes and those who have passed along tribal traditions, and they sang to greet Haik Saib Yo Bouch - Big Chief King Salmon in the Lushootseed language. Every year, the Tulalip Tribes celebrate the return of the first king salmon with a ceremony.

On Saturday, hundreds gathered inside the tribal longhouse to hear how the first salmon of the season must be revered. "If we greet him and treat him with the respect he deserves, he provides for us all through the year," said Glen Gobin, who led the ceremony. Women and girls garbed in bright shawls danced around a circle of drummers. A dozen fishermen and women were blessed with a feather dipped in water. Soon a young boy ran into the smoky longhouse, announcing the arrival of the Big Chief.

The drummers and dancers walked to the water's edge, where a canoe carried the treasured salmon. Joe Gobin carved this year's canoe. The tribes' master carver, Jerry Jones, taught Gobin the tradition. Jones died last fall following a traffic accident. "Our teachings have come down through the years," Glen Gobin said. "There are those who have stepped forward to keep us together as one."

The gathering is an opportunity for young tribal members to understand more about their culture, said tribal member Judy Gobin. "We learn the ways of our ancestors. I think that's the greatest thing about this," she said.

The ceremony proceeded as the Big Chief was placed on a bed of ferns and cedar boughs and carefully carried back to the longhouse. Tribal members ate the fish and later returned its bones to the water. Tradition says the Big Chief will return to the Salmon People and report back to the others about how he was treated. More salmon will return if the tribe has shown him enough respect.

"If only we could work on the price of fish," Gobin joked during the ceremony.

13 Jun 04 - 01:26 PM (#1206295)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Mudlark

Thanks again, SRS, for continuing this thread. My local Sunday paper did not arrive this morning--the only one I take--and I've amused myself much more reading back through all these posts. I don't know about 200 words, but somehow my corgis know whether I'm going into my office, to email, mudcat or whatever, or pass by that door and continue on outside. Obviously, the 2nd alternative is far more to their liking but they preceed me by several feet thru whatever door I'm planning on choosing. They wont always quit barking, however, even when I ask them very nicely.

13 Jun 04 - 01:31 PM (#1206296)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's another one that is just plain disturbing: http://start.earthlink.net/newsarticle?cat=6&aid=D834NKI81_story. This woman is one sick puppy. I'm not going to bother to post the article so it might go away fairly soon. It's called "Virginia Death Row Woman Says Sentence Unfair." Personally I don't like the death penalty, but this sounds like the kind of person it was meant for.

SRS

13 Jun 04 - 02:52 PM (#1206331)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Looks like the tip of an iceberg, to me, Mag...no telling what is in the depths behind that crazy claim. Obviously she's not very good at seeing how events link together -- she even acknowledges that she "never thought of the consequences", and she can't see why plotting the murder and paying for it to be done is more heinous than being a gun for hire...I agree she seems too dumb to live, but that might be reason under law to spare her! :>) Hmm--is that a new area of jurisprudence? A breakthough? Stupidity as a defense? Wow....

A

16 Jun 04 - 11:34 AM (#1208638)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Web Inventor Finally Earns a Profit

June 16, 2004 07:11 AM EDT

HELSINKI, Finland - Tim Berners-Lee, who received a $1.2 million cash prize Tuesday for creating the World Wide Web, says he would never have succeeded if he had charged money for his inventions. "If I had tried to demand fees ... there would be no World Wide Web," Berners-Lee, 49, said at a ceremony for winning the first Millennium Technology Prize. "There would be lots of small webs." The prize committee agreed, citing the importance of Berners-Lee's decision never to commercialize or patent his contributions to the Internet technologies he had developed, and recognizing his revolutionary contribution to humanity's ability to communicate.

Berners-Lee, who is originally from Britain and was knighted last December, has mostly avoided both the fame and the fortune won by many of his Internet colleagues. Despite his prize, he remained modest about his achievements. "I was just taking lots of things that already existed and added a little little bit," said Berners-Lee, who now runs the standard-setting World Wide Web Consortium from an office at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Building the Web, I didn't do it all myself," he said. "The really exciting thing about it is that it was done by lots and lots of people, connected with this tremendous spirit."

Berners-Lee indeed took concepts that were well known to engineers since the 1960s, but it was he who saw the value of marrying them. Pekka Tarjanne, chairman of the prize committee, said "no one doubts who the father of the World Wide Web is, except Berners-Lee himself." Finish President Tarja Halonen presented the biennial award, subsidized by the government. The cash prize is among the largest of its kind, and Berners-Lee is the first recipient. The prize committee outlined the award to be given for "an outstanding innovation that directly promotes people's quality of life, is based on humane values and encourages sustainable economic development."

"Isn't this like a definition of the World Wide Web?" Tarjanne asked.

Berners-Lee first proposed the Web in 1989 while developing ways to control computers remotely at CERN, the European nuclear research lab near Geneva. He never got the project formally approved, but his boss suggested he quietly tinker with it anyway. He fleshed out the core communication protocols needed for transmitting Web pages: the HTTP, or hypertext transfer protocol, and the so-called markup language used to create them, HTML. By Christmas Day 1990, he finished the first browser, called simply "WorldWideWeb." Although his inventions have undergone rapid changes since then, the underlying technology is precisely the same.

His recent project - which experts say is potentially as revolutionary as the World Wide Web itself - is called the Semantic Web. The project is an attempt to standardize how information is stored on the Internet and to organize automatically the jungle of data found today on the Net into a "web" of concepts. By attaching meaning to data behind the scenes, computers can do a better job of searching for information. "It is an exciting new development that we're making," he said.

In his acceptance speech, Berners-Lee focused on technology as an evolving process that was just in the beginning. "All sorts of things, too long for me to list here, are still out there waiting to be done. ... There are so many new things to make, limited only by our imagination. And I think it's important for anybody who's going through school or college wondering what to do, to remember that now," he said.

16 Jun 04 - 12:38 PM (#1208692)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Sir Tim strikes me as a thoroughly good person.

Good on him!

A

17 Jun 04 - 12:26 PM (#1209224)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Posted on Thu, Jun. 17, 2004

Frenzy over foul ball hit close to home

By Bud Kennedy (Fort Worth) Star-Telegram Staff Writer

I know how Nick O'Brien feels. Some guy ripped me off at a game 33 years ago. I've never forgotten. I'll admit that this was no plain old foul ball -- not like the one 4-year-old Nick lost Sunday in Arlington, when a former youth minister plowed over him for the grab. Matt Starr of Sachse has apologized for the now-infamous Showdown in Section 22.

No, when I got robbed, I got robbed big-time. I lost a basketball. A grown man grabbed it from under my feet after I caught it in a halftime giveaway at a pro game. I use the word pro loosely, but back then the Texas Chaparrals were the only pros we had, even if they played with a red-white-and-blue basketball that looked more like a beach ball to the curious few watching in what is now the Fort Worth Convention Center. Today, the Chaparrals are the San Antonio Spurs, and that basketball would be worth about $3,000.

The last time I saw it, some man in a camel-brown topcoat was running away with it down the arena concourse, charging the lane harder than the Chaparrals' Rich Jones or Ron Boone had all night. For a few fleeting moments, I was the proud owner of one of three ABA basketballs thrown to the crowd by the Chaparrals, struggling in a failed attempt to draw Fort Worth fans to a few token home games for Dallas' first pro basketball team. Unlike Nick O'Brien, I actually caught the ball. But I stashed it under my seat. It was my first pro basketball game. I didn't know that you're supposed to cover a loose ball. When the second half started, I heard a rustling noise behind me. When I looked over my shoulder, all I saw was the man and the back of that brown topcoat -- and a red flash of the basketball.

Now that I look back, the odds of catching a basketball that night weren't all that bad. The Chaparrals only drew about 2,000 fans to games in Fort Worth, as few as 200 some nights. I don't remember anybody sitting around me being upset that I lost my basketball. Then again, I don't remember anybody sitting around me. Come to think of it, that man in the brown topcoat might have been some Chaparrals employee making a steal for future reuse.

I went home and back to playing with my favorite toy of all: a manual typewriter. Not that I would have been any good at basketball. Even back then, I could never leap any higher than the top pantry shelf.

As a victim of unrestrained fan greed, Nick O'Brien has come out much better. The Plano boy is getting autographed bats, baseballs and gifts from all over the country. He was in New York on Wednesday morning, grinning shyly on ABC's Good Morning America as Charlie Gibson gave his family a New York Mets bag and tickets to a Mets game. Gibson said the boy was "practically steamrolled by a bully." Then Gibson showed the now-famous TV clip of Starr smirking as Rangers broadcaster Tom Grieve said, "Yeah, you got the ball, buddy. Nice going. You took it away from a little kid. ... You know, there's a jerk in every park, and there is the biggest jerk in this park."

The aggressive fan was identified as a 28-year-old Sachse landscaper and former youth minister at the Sachse Assembly of God Church. Friends are praying that reporters will learn more about his church mission work, the newspaper said. Until he offered an apology Wednesday, the fan himself had not been found. His only explanation had been the one he gave Rangers broadcasters Sunday: "I just caught the foul ball."

When Starr fell into their laps, shoving Nick O'Brien aside to catch the foul ball, Nick's mother Edie O'Brien began swatting the intruder with a lineup card that she had been using as a hand fan. On GMA, she remembered the man's first words to her: "Don't hit me again." When she told him he had just pushed a 4-year-old boy, he only shrugged and said sarcastically, "Oh, well."

The Dallas Morning News credited a Fort Worth man, Mike Hall, with starting the chant of "Give him the ball!" Even a woman with Starr seemed to be pleading for him to give Nick the ball, Edie O'Brien said on ABC. "He didn't care," she said.

The famous foul ball inspired days of headlines. The Tucson Citizen played up the religious aspect: "4-year-old gets windfall after ex-youth minister knocks him aside." Other newspapers have called it the "Foul Ball Foul-Up" and christened Nick the "Foul Ball Boy."

Starr's defenders also came forth Wednesday -- if not in public, at least on the KXAS/Channel 5 message board at www.nbc5i.com. Anonymous writers were saying that he only caught a foul ball and fell accidentally, and that he should not be expected to give Nick the ball.

I just want to know whether he owns a brown topcoat.

18 Jun 04 - 12:44 AM (#1209652)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

First I saw the cartoon by David Horsey for June 18, 2004 and wondered what it was about. So I looked it up and found this. I've trimmed it for the sake of not taking up too much Mudcat space. It's interesting but depressing. Sounds like this guy is a real huckster and is getting away with it.

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Gambling industry bankrolls Eyman
Out-of-state casino dollars pour into I-892 campaign
(Seattle P.I.)

Led by casino operators based in Nevada and Canada, the gambling industry in just two and a half months has poured nearly $300,000 into an initiative effort to legalize electronic slot machines in Washington's non-tribal casinos. Tim Eyman, the prolific, for-profit initiative promoter, is sponsoring Initiative 892 as well as Initiative 864, a property tax-cutting measure, but it is the former that has become his cash cow. The gambling industry has given so generously to I-892 that Eyman is paying himself $3,100 a week -- a total of $27,900 in the first nine weeks -- to run the campaign.

A leader of an opposition campaign, backed by casino-operating Indian tribes, suggested yesterday that Eyman might be diverting donations for the tax-cutting initiative to help cover expenses of I-892. The gambling initiative likewise would reduce property taxes, by whatever amount of tax revenue the electronic slots produce.

Eyman yesterday flatly denied mixing money between the two initiatives. "Both campaigns are kept separate and all expenses are kept separate," Eyman said in an e-mail to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "Every campaign is different and the mix of expenses is always different. That's the way it's always been." However, his campaign finance reports through the end of May show that his I-864 committee has spent more than $147,000 on postage, mailing permits and printing, but his campaign committee for I-892 has spent only $8,400 on those items. His past tax-cutting initiative campaigns typically have each spent $80,000 or more for such expenses.

Rollin Fatland, who is running No on I-892, a campaign mostly financed so far by the Muckleshoot Tribe, said of Eyman's two initiatives: "Both are petition-driven campaigns. Why would one have (high) printing (costs) and the other not? Why would one have postage and the other not? It doesn't compute."

Fatland, a consultant to the Muckleshoot Tribe, which has a casino on its reservation, said: "There is something very suspicious about how he is funding these two campaigns. If I were some of his supporters (of Initiative 864), I would be looking for an explanation here."

Critics of I-892 are betting that tax-opposing voters who form Eyman's political base are also opponents of expanded gambling.

I-892 would allow non-tribal gambling licensees -- bowling alleys, bars, taverns and mini-casinos -- to operate as many electronic slot machines as Indian tribes are authorized to have, currently more than 14,000. It would impose a 35 percent tax on gambling profits and use the proceeds to lower the state property tax.

I-864 would lower most local property tax levies by 25 percent. But while the gambling industry has infused I-892 with quick money, contributions to Voters Want More Choices, Eyman's campaign committee for I-864, have come in more slowly and in smaller amounts, a total of $218,650 in five months. To reach the November ballot, each initiative must obtain at least 197,734 valid signatures by July 2.

Eyman's principal focus appears to be on I-892, by far his most personally remunerative campaign ever. He has spent $133,945 on paid signature gatherers for I-892 but only $40,000 for paid signatures for I-864.

[snip]

And a new anti-I-892 drive, the Campaign for Tribal Self-Reliance, has been launched with $96,131 contributed by the Nisqually Tribe's Red Wind Casino and $500 from the Washington Indian Gaming Association. The campaign co-chairmen are Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe and of the Washington Indian Gaming Association, and Brian Cladoosby, chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribe.

But those two efforts combined haven't matched the money pouring into Just Treat Us the Same, Eyman's campaign committee for I-892. Of the $300,441 given to I-892 as of May 31, at least $292,000, and possibly more, has come from non-tribal casino operators, gambling licensees and contributors associated with the gambling industry who would benefit from expanded gambling in this state.

[snip]

22 Jun 04 - 05:35 PM (#1212422)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Health & Lifestyle News - June 22, 2004

Here's a distorted "News" report

Estrogen Pills May Raise Alzheimer's Risk

June 22, 2004 03:00 PM EDT

CHICAGO - Estrogen pills appear to slightly increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia in postmenopausal women, a study found, echoing recent findings involving estrogen-progestin supplements. The findings contradict the long-held belief that ~~estrogen~~ (SRS note: horse estrogen--Pregnant Mare Urine) pills can help keep older women's minds sharp. The results came from a government study called the Women's Health Initiative and were published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

The research involved nearly 3,000 women, ages 65 to 79, who had had hysterectomies and had taken daily estrogen-only pills, sold by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals as Premarin, for an average of about five years. Dementia was diagnosed in 28 women who took estrogen, compared with 19 taking dummy pills. Those results were not statistically significant because the numbers were so small, but the trend was troubling, said co-researcher Stephen Rapp, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at Wake Forest University.

"Translated to a population of 10,000 older women taking estrogen alone, there would be an additional 12 cases of dementia per year," said lead author Dr. Sally Shumaker of Wake Forest University. In addition, 76 women on ~~estrogen~~ horse estrogen (Pregnant Mare Urine) developed mild bouts of forgetfulness, compared with 58 women in the placebo group. Pooling those results with the dementia group, the researchers found estrogen users faced a 38 percent increased risk of developing dementia or forgetfulness, and those results were statistically significant.

"No matter which outcome we're looking at, there is no evidence of benefit," Rapp said. The pills offer "no protection against dementia, and in fact the likelihood increases on hormone therapy." The research "succeeded in resolving the important issue that hormone therapy should not be given to women older than 65 years to prevent or delay onset of dementia, or with any expectation for meaningfully improving cognitive function," said Dr. Lon Schneider of the University of Southern California.

Whether different results would be found in younger women or with lower estrogen doses is unknown. SRS note: Now this really chaps my hide: they do this study using horse urine, and make no note that bioidentical estrogen is available and the results might be vastly different. I'd like to see someone study that! What this tells me is that taking horse hormones isn't good for human women!

Dr. Gary Stiles, Wyeth's chief medical officer, called the results disappointing and said Wyeth is continuing to develop new products for treating menopause symptoms, which can include hot flashes and vaginal dryness. Estrogen-only pills have been linked to uterine cancer. Because of that, most women who take hormones at menopause have used combined estrogen-progestin pills. But use of both types has dropped steeply in the past two years as the WHI results have trickled out. Worldwide sales of Wyeth's estrogen and progestin pills fell from $2.1 billion in 2001 to $1.27 billion last year. Most doctors now advise women to take the lowest possible dose for the shortest possible time.

The initial WHI results, announced in 2002, found that Wyeth's estrogen-progestin pills, sold as Prempro (SRS note: a synthetic hormone), increased older women's risk of breast cancer, strokes and heart attacks.

The WHI study was government-funded. The analysis by Shumaker, Rapp and colleagues was funded by Wyeth and Wake Forest. Shumaker has served as a consultant for Wyeth.

23 Jun 04 - 12:29 PM (#1212965)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Read this one today online. It has been a long time coming. Would that Bush and Ashcroft try to do something USEFUL while they're in office. Instead of sneaking outrageous penalties for "indecency" in broadcasting into miltary funding bills, why don't they do something useful like look at the knee-jerk mandatory-sentencing legislation that has totally run amok in the last 20 years.

photo cutline: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy gestures during a news conference on Wednesday, June 23, 2004 in Washington. Kennedy said that society should re-examine how it spends money and makes choices about who goes to prison, how long they stay and what happens when they get out. Kennedy accepted the first copy of a report from the American Bar Association that determined that many get-tough approaches to crime don't work and some, such as mandatory minimum sentences for small-time drug offenders, are unfair and should be abolished. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

ABA: End Mandatory Minimum Prison Terms
June 23, 2004 10:34 AM EDT

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said Wednesday that society should re-examine how it spends money and makes choices about who goes to prison, how long they stay and what happens when they get out. He accepted the first copy of a report from the American Bar Association, which found that many get-tough approaches to crime don't work and some, such as mandatory minimum sentences for small-time drug offenders, are unfair and should be abolished.

Laws requiring mandatory minimum prison terms leave little room to consider differences among crimes and criminals, an ABA commission studying problems in the criminal justice system found. More people are behind bars for longer terms, but it is unclear whether the country is safer as a result, the ABA said. Long prison terms should be reserved for criminals who pose the greatest danger to society and who commit the most serious crimes, the report said. States and the federal government should find alternatives to prison terms such as drug treatment for many less serious crimes. "The costs of the American experiment in mass incarceration have been high," the report said. It said states and the federal government spent $9 billion on jails and prisons in 1982 and $49 billion in 1999, an increase of more than 400 percent.

Kennedy noted that while prison populations are rising, schools cannot afford sports and music programs for students. "Society ought to ask itself how it's allocating its resources," he said.

The report, nearly a year in the making, follows up on blunt criticism of the criminal justice system from Kennedy, a moderate conservative placed on the court by President Reagan. Kennedy asked the nation's largest lawyers' group to look at what he called unfair and even immoral practices throughout the criminal justice system. "The phrase `tough on crime' should not be a substitute for moral reflection," Kennedy said.

The ABA conducted a lengthy study and recommended changes in sentencing laws and in other areas. In the case of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, state legislatures and Congress would have to pass new legislation to repeal the existing laws. The ABA, the nation's largest lawyers' group with more than 400,000 members, will vote in August on whether to adopt the recommendations as official positions of the organization. The ABA's policies are not law, but are influential. "For more than 20 years, we have gotten tougher on crime," said ABA President Dennis Archer. "Now we need to get smarter." The ABA report also urged governors and the president to pardon more deserving prisoners, and recommended stronger efforts to reduce racial disparities in sentencing and in the prison population.

Based on current trends, a black male born in 2001 has a one in three chance of being imprisoned during his lifetime, compared with a one in six chance for a Latino male and one in 17 for a white male, the report noted. The report said that the likelihood that someone living in the United States will go to prison during his or her lifetime more than tripled to 6.6 percent between 1974 and 2001. An end to mandatory minimum prison terms is among the report's most specific recommendations, and probably one of the hardest to achieve. Mandatory minimum sentences have proliferated over the past two decades, and are often politically popular. They often respond to a specific new threat or phenomenon, such as the spread of crack cocaine in the 1980s.

In 1986, Congress required certain long federal prison terms for possession of crack that were longer than sentences for the powder form of the drug. For example, possession of just five grams of crack yields a mandatory prison term of at least five years.

23 Jun 04 - 12:35 PM (#1212967)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Interesting idea. Mandatory minimums assume a lot of certainty about what happened.

A

23 Jun 04 - 08:17 PM (#1213247)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Mandatory minimums give the judge no opportunity to BE a judge, to make a measured decision regarding the case at hand. They need to get rid of all of those "three strikes" laws also.

SRS

09 Jul 04 - 01:38 PM (#1222419)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Kitten found swimming 3 miles at sea

July 9, 2004 10:24 AM EDT

CLEARWATER, Fla., Jul 09, 2004 -- A boatload of friends gathering scallops on Florida's west coast said a 9-inch-long kitten was found desperately paddling along three miles from shore. Those in the boat picked him up Saturday and he has been adopted. But no one knows how he got there, The St. Petersburg Times reported Friday.

When the apricot-colored kitten was spotted, the boat, traveling at 35 mph swerved around and picked it up. The kitten spent the rest of the day near Maggie Rogers, director of finances at the Clearwater, Fla., Marine Aquarium. After the others completed the day of scalloping, he was taken home, checked by a veterinarian and adopted by Rogers' sister-in-law, who named it Nemo, after the movie, "Finding Nemo."

The question of how the kitten got there remains. Some suggest he might have fallen off another boat. Another idea was he was an unwanted pet thrown overboard to die and still another was that he was being used as shark bait. Fishing guides said they had never heard of anyone doing that. "My opinion is somebody that sick should be put on a hook himself," said Wade Osborne, of Afishiando Guide Services and a cat owner.

09 Jul 04 - 02:48 PM (#1222467)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Three miles??? He must have been dropped or thrown from a boat. Talk about one lucky little cat.

A

12 Jul 04 - 01:52 PM (#1224010)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Officials smell a clue
Posted on Mon, Jul. 12, 2004
Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A strong odor led airline officials to what they believe is the 40 pounds of halibut a traveler reported missing from his checked bags two weeks ago. Brenee Davis, a general manager for Continental Airlines in Anchorage, said the company's baggage handlers discovered "a ton of rotting fish" under a luggage conveyor belt recently at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. There's no way to be certain, but she suspects it was the halibut that Ray Bolanos reported missing from a fish cooler he checked on a flight June 24 from Anchorage to Seattle. The fish smelled terrible and was thrown away immediately. "We've gone through a few cans of Lysol," Davis said.

She said there is a new baggage belt system in the room, which has been in use for only a few weeks. Her theory is that Bolanos' cooler wasn't properly secured and came open on the conveyor belt.

Bolanos is not sure he buys that explanation. When his fish cooler came off the luggage carousel in Seattle, he said he found a rope he had tied around the chest inside and his 40 individually wrapped one-pound chunks of halibut gone. Reached on his cell phone Saturday in Kenmore, Wash., Bolanos told the Anchorage Daily News he had already heard from a Continental official about the rotten fish. "She was trying to say that maybe the new conveyor chewed off my rope," Bolanos said. "It's not something that was chewed off. It was a clear cut." He said he made arrangements to send the rope to the woman so she could investigate further.

He also passed along the name of another passenger who flew round trip to Anchorage from Seattle on Continental around the same time he did. That woman, Marian Maxwell, said about 20 pounds of halibut, a box of .38-caliber bullets and some fishing tackle vanished from her checked bags. Maxwell also believes her bags were pilfered. She said her two fish boxes came out last on the carousel, with their lids open and the nylon cords that had been tied around them sitting on top.

Officials at Continental's headquarters in Houston, Texas, could not be reached for comment over the weekend because their office was closed. In Anchorage, Continental shares a baggage room with Frontier Flying Service, and Davis said usually five to 10 handlers are working in the area at a time.

Davis said when the smell first arose in the days after Bolanos' flight employees thought it was related to construction at the airport. Then it got worse. "We started to get this huge smell like sewer," she said. "There was mass migration down there to figure out what the smell was." Davis wasn't sure how many pieces of fish had been found. "We're still finding it," she said. "We've got a long bag belt system." Several airport officials confirmed that rotten fish had been found, though none were directly involved in the discovery.

15 Jul 04 - 11:31 AM (#1226154)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Published: Thursday, July 15, 2004

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/04/07/15/loc_lawsuit001.cfm

Man jailed by mistake sues county
A Marysville man was forced to change his name after it was used for years by a criminal.

A criminal stole Christopher Ryman's name. Then the people who maintain law and order in Snohomish County took his peace of mind. The Marysville man this week headed to court to try to win back some of what he lost. Ryman, 35, on Monday filed a lawsuit against Snohomish County alleging that he was unlawfully imprisoned for two days in June 2002.

It's a case of mistaken identity that never should have happened, maintain Ryman and his attorney, Brian Phillips of Everett. "You can't even imagine what this has done to me and my family," Ryman said. "I have no confidence in Snohomish County whatsoever." The lawsuit seeks damages for negligence, claiming that a sheriff's deputy and corrections officers at the county jail in Everett ignored evidence that a crook for years had been using Ryman's identity as an alias. The truck driver and father of six was arrested when a computer check during a routine traffic stop turned up arrest warrants issued in his name.

Ryman wound up behind bars even though he was carrying a letter from an Eastern Washington prosecutor explaining that his name was being used as an alias by another man with a history of drug and traffic offenses. Ryman obtained the letter after close calls elsewhere in 1997 and 2001. In each case, he was detained for a couple of hours but was released after police determined he wasn't the person sought on the warrant. In his letter, the prosecutor suggested that Ryman "carry this letter with you for the purpose of identification to advise law enforcement that your name is indeed being used as a stolen alias," Phillips said in court papers.

Ryman had the letter in his wallet, but the Snohomish County deputy who placed Ryman under arrest refused to look at the letter, according to court papers. Jail officials did read the letter, but told Ryman they didn't have authority to release him, Phillips said. He was set free the next day after being moved to a jail in King County, where officials checked his fingerprints and confirmed that he wasn't the man sought on the warrants.

Ryman said he lost a $20-an-hour trucking job because of the arrest. He also lost his faith in law enforcement. Ryman last year went to court and convinced a judge to legally change his first name, which enabled him to get a new Social Security number. He no longer is known by the identity that was connected to his arrests. He asked that his former name not be printed in this story. The man who took his name is a stranger, and he wants nothing to do with the legal mess that man created, Ryman said.

"That's what is scary. I don't know how this individual got my information," Ryman said. "He's worked under my name. He's committed crimes under my name." This week's lawsuit comes after the county did not take action on a $70,000 claim for damages Ryman filed earlier this year. County officials have discussed settling the case, but no agreement has been struck, deputy prosecutor Michael Held said. "I think the spirit of working toward a resolution exists," he said.

Held said he was unaware of any changes in policy or procedure governing arrests in the county, but added that "the wisdom of such changes are being explored."

Susan Neely, who oversees criminal justice matters for County Executive Aaron Reardon, said county officials are aware that steps to prevent similar mistakes need to be taken, but said she couldn't discuss details.

Ryman was pleased to hear that changes may be coming. All he initially wanted was for the sheriff's office to pay the impound fees on his pickup truck. "All they had to do was give me my $369. They didn't even need to say they were sorry," he said. Sheriff's spokeswoman Jan Jorgensen declined to discuss the case because the lawsuit is pending.

15 Jul 04 - 11:37 AM (#1226157)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Woman sues doctor who inseminated her with wrong sperm

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Laura Howard was hoping her trip to a fertility specialist would make her dream of a child with the man she loves come true. But as she left the office, the doctor suddenly ran out to the lobby and called her back.

There was a grave mistake. Instead of being inseminated with the sperm of her fiance, she received a vial of semen from another man.

(COURT TV WEBSITE)

~S~

15 Jul 04 - 02:54 PM (#1226300)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I saw some of a story about that this morning on Good Morning America.

15 Jul 04 - 04:37 PM (#1226404)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Great quote:

"Stupidity is the only infinitely renewable resource"

~S~

16 Jul 04 - 09:17 AM (#1226889)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Bagpuss

'Drowned' toddler brought back to life

Gerard Seenan
Thursday July 15, 2004
The Guardian

The parents of a two-year-old boy who was resuscitated more than seven hours after he fell into a garden pond yesterday spoke of their joy at his remarkable recovery.
Doctors at Heartlands hospital, Birmingham, thought they had little chance of reviving Joe Towey after he was brought to casualty with no heartbeat. But for seven hours they massaged the toddler's heart and managed to bring Joe back to life. He has sustained no long-term damage from the accident.

The toddler's parents, Michael Towey and Jennifer Nock, were at Joe's bedside as doctors worked on him.

Ms Nock noticed something was wrong on Boxing Day when she called Joe and received no response. She went to look for him and discovered him lying in a pond at the bottom of the garden.

In the hospital, doctors noticed his body temperature had plummeted and a faint hope grew. Nick Makwana, who led the recovery team, said: "His temperature was only 26 degrees, when it should be 36.5. We knew that if he had been cooled very quickly there was a chance."

When the body cools rapidly the brain and other organs can go longer without oxygen and glucose.

Joe spent five weeks in hospital, but is now back home and fully recovered.

16 Jul 04 - 02:15 PM (#1227079)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

That's that Mammalian dive reflex for you! But that resuscitation certainly took a longer time than one usually hears about. He's one very lucky little boy. I just looked up some drowning statistics. Scary and fast, especially down here where the water is so warm this time of year (Texas).

SRS

16 Jul 04 - 04:04 PM (#1227151)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: saulgoldie

From a piece on NPR's Morning Edition:

Moose draws on a dirty tunnel wall in Leeds, England.
Credit: Alex Coley © Symbollix 2003

July 15, 2004 -- A British street artist known as Moose creates graffiti by cleaning dirt from sidewalks and tunnels -- sometimes for money when the images are used as advertising. But some authorities call it vandalism.

Moose, whose real name is Paul Curtis, tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that he got the idea when he saw that people had written their names with their fingers on dirty tunnel walls in his hometown of Leeds. Moose does some freehand drawing, but also uses the grid from wall tiles to create perfect shapes and letters.

The tools are simple: A shoe brush, water and elbow grease, he says.

British authorities aren't sure what to make of the artist who is creating graffiti by cleaning the grime of urban life. The Leeds City Council has been considering what to do with Moose. "I'm waiting for the kind of Monty Python court case where exhibit A is a pot of cleaning fluid and exhibit B is a pair of my old socks," he jokes.

Link: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3379017

18 Jul 04 - 03:14 AM (#1228043)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Obscenity Charge Vs. Texas Woman Dropped

July 18, 2004 01:16 AM EDT

CLEBURNE, Texas - An obscenity charge has been dropped against a woman who received nationwide attention when she was arrested for selling two sex toys to undercover police officers posing as a couple. A judge dismissed the case against Joanne Webb, Johnson County Attorney Bill Moore said Friday in a statement. He said he asked the judge for the dismissal to prevent wasting county resources, but didn't say when the dismissal occurred. No one answered the phone at Moore's office Saturday morning.

Webb, a former fifth-grade teacher, started selling erotic toys and other adult products last year. The Passion Parties Inc. consultant hosts what she calls Tupperware-type parties for suburban housewives who feel more comfortable buying marital aids in a private home than at an adult bookstore or on the Internet. Webb was arrested Nov. 13, about a month after the undercover officers approached her at her husband's business in Burleson, about 10 miles south of Fort Worth, and bought two products. Had she been convicted of violating Texas' obscenity law, she could have been sentenced to a year in jail.

Webb's attorney, BeAnn Sisemore, said she and her client are pleased with the dismissal. "We knew that it was a possibility, but we weren't contacted," she told the Cleburne Times-Review for its Sunday edition. According to the state's obscenity code, an obscene device is a simulated sexual organ or an item designed to stimulate the genitals. Adult stores get around the law by posting signs that say "sold only as novelties."

Moore said a pending federal lawsuit filed by Sisemore would determine the constitutionality of the obscenity statute Webb was accused of violating.

20 Jul 04 - 04:04 PM (#1230110)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Another Texas story:

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/9196663.htm

Posted on Tue, Jul. 20, 2004

Lost tortoise gets a quick lift home

By Shirley Jinkins, Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Olive the traveling tortoise is home, thanks to a kindhearted driver who spied her crossing Curt Lane in southwest Arlington. Olive's family, Paul and Frances Venable and their children, posted signs in the neighborhood and talked to the Star-Telegram last week in their quest to find their pet of 13 years. "She has a little bit of eye irritation, probably from walking through tall grass, but other than that she seems just fine," Frances Venable said Monday.

The rare desert tortoise escaped through a breach in the Venables' fence on July 8. Grant Morris spotted Olive about 5:30 p.m. Sunday as he was returning home from a game of disc golf at Veterans Park.

"He said it was really huge," reported Morris' mother-in-law, Sudhe Mahajan, who is visiting from Delhi, India. "He saw the sign and then the turtle, and then it hit him, 'Oh my God, that's the turtle!' "

Morris hustled the roaming reptile into his car and called the Venables, and Olive was home before dark.

"Olive ate some flowers this morning and drank some water," Venable said Monday. "She went right into her burrow and seems happy to be home."

23 Jul 04 - 10:44 AM (#1232211)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Leaping to conclusions, one can presume that this guy isn't so subtle a murderer as Scott Peterson or O.J. Simpson. . . with this guy's last name, you'd think he'd be more careful. And murder, of course, is the logical answer for any "underachiever." What an odd story.

Missing Jogger's Husband Hospitalized
July 23, 2004 08:07 AM EDT

SALT LAKE CITY - Around the time Mark Hacking called police to report that his pregnant wife never returned from her morning jog, he was at a furniture store buying a new mattress, according to news reports.

Hacking, 28, has not appeared publicly since Monday, the day he said his 27-year-old wife, Lori, vanished. Family members say he has since been hospitalized for stress. The Deseret News and television station KSTU reported Thursday that police found Hacking at a hotel about a half-mile from the couple's apartment early Tuesday. The station said he was running around naked outside the motel and was hospitalized. Police said only that they were called to a disturbance involving Hacking and that the matter was turned over to medical personnel. Detective Dwayne Baird said police considered Hacking a person of interest in the case but not a suspect, and that he had been interviewed as recently as Wednesday.

Lori Hacking was five weeks pregnant when she disappeared just days before the couple was to move to North Carolina, where Mark Hacking said he was going to attend medical school. But he had lied to his wife and family - he never graduated from college, nor was he accepted to any medical school, authorities said Thursday.

Meanwhile, The Salt Lake Tribune and KSL TV reported that Monday morning, in the minutes before he called police to report his wife missing, Mark Hacking was buying a new mattress. The owners of a Salt Lake furniture store told the Tribune that Hacking came in about 9:45 a.m. Lisa Downs, the wife of store owner Chad Downs, said the credit-card purchase went through at 10:23 a.m.. Police have said Hacking called them and reported his wife missing at 10:49 a.m.

Friends told the Tribune that he had called them about 10 a.m. about his wife's disappearance and said he had twice run his wife's usual jogging route, three miles each way.

Police removed a number of items from the couple's apartment Monday. They would not say what they have taken from the apartment, but television news footage showed paper bags, boxes and a box spring being removed. Police impounded a large trash bin from behind the apartment complex.

Mark Hacking's family and in-laws said they were stunned to learn Wednesday that he had not graduated from college or been accepted at a medical school, as he had claimed. Thelma Soares, Lori Hacking's mother, said that she was certain her daughter had not known about the discrepancies. "Up to the time when I spoke with her last, she was deceived also," she told KUTV-TV.

Douglas Hacking said even though his son is incapacitated by grief, they spoke of the deception Wednesday night at the hospital. "He has two older brothers who are high achievers, a physician and the other is an electrical engineer," he said. "He felt under some pressure to excel as well.

02 Aug 04 - 09:05 AM (#1238861)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

That last one has become a national story and is still playing it self out--to no happy ending, apparently.

Here is one that is also troubling, for different reasons. It busts some myths, but at the same time, concurs that these events do happen.

Survey paints different portrait of online abuser
August 2, 2004 04:50 AM EDT

HONOLULU -- Contrary to popular view, child molesters who look for their victims online typically aren't after young children to abduct and rape. These adults flatter teenagers, most of them girls ages 13 to 15, who willingly meet them and usually agree to sex, according to a national survey, the first of its type. It was reported Sunday at the American Psychological Association meeting.

Media reports have emphasized kidnappings of very young children lured through Internet contacts, "but that very seldom happens," says psychologist Kimberly Mitchell of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. The survey of 375 law enforcement agencies, partially financed by the U.S. Department of Justice, focused on 129 arrests of suspected molesters who "met" victims online. The cases accurately reflect the estimated 500 such arrests a year, says Mitchell, who analyzed findings with co-authors Janis Wolak and David Finkelhor.

Among myths challenged by the survey:

Molesters pretend to be peers. Only 5% of the suspects did.

They move quickly. Most messaged online with future victims for more than a month; four out of five had phone conversations.

They don't mention wanting sex. Only one out of five hid their desire before meeting, though many professed love and courted the children.

When teenagers do meet the adults, sex or oral sex almost always occurs, but only 16% of the children are coerced, police investigators say. Although molesters favor girls, about a quarter of the arrests were for abusing teen boys. These boys may be struggling with feelings of being gay and searching for support online, Mitchell says.

"Our prevention strategy needs to change," she says. Parents have been warned to monitor kids' Internet use; filtering software can protect teens too, but many know how to bypass the programs.

Parents should be open about discussing sexual topics and make it clear that sex with an adult is a crime, Mitchell says. Depressed or otherwise troubled children are most likely to form close online ties, studies show, and they might be particularly vulnerable to molesters, she says.

Molesters capitalize on teens' yearning for acceptance, adds San Jose, Calif., psychologist David Marcus: "Being understood is a powerful aphrodisiac."

02 Aug 04 - 11:04 AM (#1238928)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JennyO

This little article was in the Sydney Morning Herald today. I always knew that glass of wine was doing me good, what with the antioxidants and things, and this is even better!

Pass the bottle, I need a little think.

August 2, 2004

It is news guaranteed to raise a cheer among those who enjoy a glass or two: drinking half a bottle of wine a day can make your brain work better, especially if you are a woman.

Research to be published today by academics at University College, London, has found that people who even drink only one glass of wine a week have significantly sharper thought processes than teetotallers. The benefits of alcohol can be detected when a person drinks up to four or five bottles of wine per week.

In the research, part of a study set up in 1967 to monitor the long-term health of British public servants, required more than 6000 people to sit psychometric tests. Questions ranged from verbal and mathematical reasoning problems to tests of short-term memory. The public servants' performance was then matched against their drinking.

The study in the American Journal of Epidemiology took into account all alcohol consumption and was not specific to wine. But the results showed those having just one glass of wine a week did much better in the tests than more abstemious drinkers.

The benefits were most marked among women and showed no sign of flattening out with increasing consumption.

The researchers say women might benefit more than men because of the different way they metabolise alcohol.

02 Aug 04 - 11:22 PM (#1239354)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Jenny, that's great. I'm glad to see when others post articles here--I didn't intend this to be my own personal reading room, but a place to stick interesting articles that don't necessarily require their own thread.

I just wish that glass of wine in the evening didn't add so many calories--I've stopped having a glass each evening because I have been trying to take off a few pounds. The trick seems to be to have the wine at dinner, not later by itself. Your article is more appealing than this next one, though when you get past the "yuck" factor it has great news for folks with severe infections:

Maggots Make Medical Comeback
August 2, 2004 02:16 PM EDT

WASHINGTON - Think of these wriggly little creatures not as, well, gross, but as miniature surgeons: Maggots are making a medical comeback, cleaning out wounds that just won't heal. Wound-care clinics around the country are giving maggots a try on some of their sickest patients after high-tech treatments fail.

It's a therapy quietly championed since the early 1990s by a California physician who's earned the nickname Dr. Maggot. But Dr. Ronald Sherman's maggots are getting more attention since, in January, they became the first live animals to win Food and Drug Administration approval - as a medical device to clean out wounds.

A medical device? They remove the dead tissue that impedes healing "mechanically," FDA determined. It's called chewing. But maggots do more than that, says Sherman, who raises the tiny, wormlike fly larvae in a laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. His research shows that in the mere two to three days they live in a wound, maggots also produce substances that kill bacteria and stimulate growth of healthy tissue.

Still, "it takes work to convince people" - including hospital administrators - that "maggots do work very well," said Dr. Robert Kirsner, who directs the University of Miami Cedars Wound Center. "They'll probably be easier to use now that they're FDA-approved, and we'll talk about it more and think about it more," Kirsner said. He estimates he uses maggots in about one in 50 patients where conventional therapy alone isn't enough.

This has been quite a year for wormlike critters. In June, FDA also gave its seal of approval to leeches, those bloodsuckers that help plastic surgeons save severed body parts by removing pooled blood and restoring circulation. And in the spring, University of Iowa researchers reported early evidence that drinking whipworm eggs, which causes a temporary, harmless infection, might soothe inflammatory bowel disease by diverting the overactive immune reaction that causes it. There's a little more yuck factor with maggots. Most people know of them from TV crime dramas, where infestations of bodies help determine time of death.

Actually, maggots' medicinal qualities have long been known. Civil War surgeons noted that soldiers whose wounds harbored maggots seemed to fare better. In the 1930s, a Johns Hopkins University surgeon's research sparked routine maggot therapy, until antibiotics came along a decade later. Today, despite precise surgical techniques to cut out dying tissue, artificial skin and other high-tech treatments, hard-to-heal wounds remain a huge problem. Diabetic foot ulcers alone strike about 600,000 people annually and lead to thousands of amputations.

It's not unusual to spend two years and $30,000 treating one, says Dr. David G. Armstrong, a Chicago specialist who first tried maggot therapy in frustration about seven years ago and says he's now used it on several hundred patients. Drop maggots into the wound and cover with a special mesh to keep them in place. Two to three days later, after the maggots have eaten their fill, lift them off and dispose. Wound size determines how many maggots, and how many cycles of therapy, are needed. It typically costs a few hundred dollars, says Armstrong, of the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science.

One of Sherman's studies found 80 percent of maggot-treated wounds had all the dead tissue removed, compared with 48 percent of wounds surgically debrided. Armstrong is about to publish research that suggests maggot-treated patients also spend fewer days on antibiotics.

Patients say it's not that hard to accept. Pamela Mitchell of Akron, Ohio, begged to try maggots when surgeons wanted to amputate her left foot, where infection in an inch deep, 2-inch-wide diabetic ulcer had penetrated the bone. It took 10 cycles of larvae, but she healed completely.

How did they feel? On day 2, when the maggots were fat, "I could feel them moving, because they were ready to come out," she recalls. But, "if you're faced with amputation or the maggots, I think most people would try the maggots."

02 Aug 04 - 11:40 PM (#1239358)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JennyO

SRS - yes, I had actually seen something about the maggot therapy on TV a while ago, and although the idea of it sort of grosses you out, it does sound like it works. I hope I never need it, I must say.

Actually, I have a collection of newspaper articles in a folder that I have collected from time to time - they go back years, long before I had a computer. Quite often it's the creative and amusing headings that attract me. I wonder if any of them are still online anywhere? Must spend some time browsing....

Jenny (looking forward to my healthy glass of wine tonight)

03 Aug 04 - 12:43 AM (#1239382)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

What do ya know. I am impressed!! Shows you you should be careful what you categorize and how, doesn't it??

A

10 Aug 04 - 09:19 AM (#1243997)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This story is one that is so depressing that it needs an examination for many reasons. On the surface as a cautionary tale about anger management and a sense of proportion, but from a societal viewpoint, as an examination of mental health. Who raised this guy and his partners in crime, how, and what did he learn in prison? This man was caught trespassing. He and the three youths he hired got worked to such a frenzy that they would not only bludgeon, but render un-identifiable, these people over their impound of a video game.

Here is the whole story

4 Officers Fired Over Custody Allegation

Four Probation Officers Fired for Allegedly Letting Murder Suspect Slip Through the Cracks (AP)

Authorities say the source of the dispute was an Xbox video game system and clothes owned by Victorino. Belanger's grandparents, from Maine, own a Florida winter home that was supposed to be vacant this summer, but police said Victorino and other squatters used it in July as a party spot. Joe Abshire, Belanger's brother-in-law, said Erin had talked to him recently about heading to the vacant house to go swimming one day and finding about six people living there. The squatters were kicked out, but they left behind the Xbox and clothes. Belanger took the items back to the three-bedroom rental home she shared with friends.

The Sun

16 Aug 04 - 10:16 AM (#1248635)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Dogone!

Washington Man Jumps Off Ferry to Rescue Dog
August 16, 2004 06:11 AM EDT

BREMERTON, Wash. - When Jeff Fisher noticed his dog had gone overboard, he wasn't sure if the ferry would stop to retrieve Ruben. So the Bremerton man jumped off the ferry into Puget Sound's chilly waters to save his beloved Labrador-blue heeler mix. "He's as much a part of our family as our baby will be," Fisher said as he dried himself off after being pulled out of the water Friday evening. He and his wife are expecting their first child.

It all started when the ferry Hyak had engine trouble and stopped on the way from Seattle to Bremerton. Fisher and Ruben got out of their car to see what was going on and while Fisher was talking to some other dog owners, Ruben disappeared. "A guy said, 'Your dog just jumped overboard!'" Fisher told The (Bremerton) Sun.

Ruben apparently went overboard as the ferry was starting up again. Fisher said he ran to the back of the boat, saw someone point to a dog in the water, then grabbed a life buoy, jumped in and started swimming. Once in the water, he could no longer see Ruben. "It was really hard to see in those big waves," he said Saturday in an interview with KIRO Television.

The ferry stopped, backed up and sent out a life boat to rescue both Fisher and Ruben. "I was expecting to be in trouble ... but they totally understood that I had to get my dog," he said.

Fisher said the ferry crew were "nothing but nice the whole time," although they advised him to keep his dog on a leash next time. "We obviously do not encourage people to jump into the water from the ferry," said Patricia Patterson, spokeswoman for Washington State Ferries. "But I understand the reaction. If it were my dog, I likely would have done the same thing." Fisher didn't need to jump, though. Ferry crew members are trained to stop to rescue any pet that goes overboard.

Samantha Fisher said she was "freaked out" when she saw her husband in the water. "I didn't want to lose a husband and a dog five weeks before I had a baby," she said. "But it didn't surprise me that he jumped. He's been a lifeguard for a long time, and he loves dogs."

18 Aug 04 - 07:53 PM (#1250909)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Many of the Nigerian children could stand to be rescued as well.

Children abandoned in Nigeria restart their lives in Texas
August 18, 2004 04:46 PM EDT

Houston, Texas (dpa) - Seven children who returned to the United States after being left to fend for themselves in Nigeria by their adoptive mother are restarting their lives in foster care, reports said Wednesday. The three boys and four girls ranging in age from 8 to 16 were discovered August 4 living in squalor in an orphanage by Warren Beemer, a youth pastor from a San Antonio church who was in Nigeria on a tour of his church's missions. The children returned to Houston on Friday.

Beemer said he was shocked to discover the children whom he recognized as American when he heard one of the girls speaking English. "She said in a very strong, spirited way, 'Houston', when I asked where she was from," Beemer said on CNN Wednesday. "She told us all her brothers and sisters were there and led us to a dark room where they just sat there along a wall looking at us." The children told Beemer that their mother, who adopted the two sets of siblings in 1996 and 2001, had taken them to Nigeria in October and enrolled them in a school.

A relative of their mother's fiance lives in Nigeria, Estella Olguin, a child protective services official in Harris County Texas told the Houston Chronicle. But he apparently deserted them, and the children were sent to the orphanage after their tuition money stopped. The children's mother returned to Houston about a month after taking them to the western African country. The Chronicle reported that the woman, who has not been charged with any crime, went to Iraq as a civilian food-service worker in April, but is now back in Texas. She had been approved for the adoptions after passing an evaluation conducted by a nonprofit child welfare agency in Houston, Olguin said.

Beemer told CNN that the children said their mother consistently used support money she received for the children to buy things for herself and had taken them to Nigeria because she didn't want them any more. The woman recieved monthly payments of 512 dollars per child, according to the Chronicle. The amount was based on their status as minority siblings wishing to stay together, which made them a special needs case considered hard to adopt.

Houston child protective services cut off the payments in March when the service learned the children were not living with her. The children told Beemer they had informed numerous people in Nigeria that they had been abandoned by their adoptive mother, but they had begun to believe they would never get home to Houston. Beemer quizzed them about their lives in Texas. He said they talked enthusiastically about Houston's professional sports teams. Then, Beemer said, they put their hands over their hearts and sang the American national anthem.

"I promised them they would be going home," Beemer told the Chronicle Tuesday. "I said, 'Guys, in no uncertain terms, you will be going home.'" Olguin said child protective services officials were trying to get medical and psychological care for the children and enroll them in school. Three of the children were treated for malaria after returning to Houston.

27 Aug 04 - 11:41 AM (#1258252)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Published: Friday, August 27, 2004

Doctors transplant jawbone grown on man's back
Stem cells may have played part in pioneering operation

By Emma Ross, Associated Press

LONDON - A German who had his lower jaw cut out because of cancer has enjoyed his first meal in nine years - a bratwurst sandwich - after surgeons grew a new jaw bone in his back muscle and transplanted it into his mouth in what experts call an "ambitious" experiment. According to this week's issue of The Lancet medical journal, the German doctors used a mesh cage, a growth chemical and the patient's own bone marrow, containing stem cells, to create a new jaw bone that fit exactly into the gap left by the cancer surgery.

Tests have not been done to verify whether the bone was created by blank-slate stem cells, and it is too early to tell whether the jaw will function normally in the long term. But the operation is the first published report of a whole bone being engineered and incubated inside a patient's body, and then transplanted.

Stem cells are the master cells of the body that go on to become every tissue in the body. They are a hot area of research, with scientists trying to find ways to prompt them to make desired tissues, and perhaps organs. But while researchers debate whether the technique resulted in a scientific advance involving stem cells, the operation has achieved its purpose and changed a life, said Stan Gronthos, a stem cell expert at the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science in Adelaide, Australia. "A patient who had previously lost his mandible (lower jaw) through the result of a destructive tumor can now sit down and chew his first solid meals in nine years ... resulting in an improved quality of life," said Gronthos, who was not connected with the experiment.

The operation was done by Dr. Patrick Warnke, a reconstructive facial surgeon at the University of Kiel in Germany. The patient, a 56-year-old man, had his lower jaw and half his tongue cut out almost a decade ago after getting mouth cancer. Since then, he had only been able to slurp soft food or soup from a spoon. Artificial jaws made from plastic or other materials are not used because they pose too much of a risk of infection. Warnke and his group began by creating a virtual jaw on a computer after making a three-dimensional scan of the patient's mouth. The information was used to create a thin titanium micro-mesh cage. Several cow-derived pure bone mineral blocks the size of sugar cubes were then put inside the structure, along with a human growth factor that builds bone and a large squirt of blood extracted from the man's bone marrow, which contains stem cells.

The surgeons then implanted the mesh cage and its contents into the muscle below the patient's right shoulder blade. He was given no drugs other than antibiotics to prevent infection from the surgery. The implant was left in for seven weeks, when scans showed new bone formation. It was removed about eight weeks ago, along with some surrounding muscle and blood vessels, put in the man's mouth and connected to the blood vessels in his neck. Scans showed new bone continued to form after the transplant.

Four weeks after the operation, the man ate a German sausage sandwich, his first solid meal in nine years. He has reported no pain or any other difficulties associated with the transplant, Warnke said, adding that he hopes to be able to remove the mesh and implant teeth in the new jaw about a year from now.

01 Sep 04 - 06:00 AM (#1261438)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

The Australian: Safe space protest ends in eviction [September 01,
2004]

Safe space protest ends in eviction
Brendan O'Keefe
September 01, 2004

THREE Wollongong University students campaigning for a safer space for gays on campus have described as "overkill" an operation by 10 armed riot police to eject them from a room they had occupied for 47 hours.

The students, the remainder of an original group of 16 who entered a booked function room on Thursday and locked it down hours later, were evicted on Saturday afternoon.

Spokeswoman Annaliese Constable told the HES that about 20 officers, including armed riot squad police, members of the police rescue squad and regular police officers either burst into the Belmore Room or were on hand outside to arrest the three.

Ms Constable and two others, Daniel Brown and Dominika Grossy, were charged with trespass.

A university spokesman said the eviction was a "hygiene issue".

"If it was a hygiene issue, why didn't they send up a bar of soap?" Ms Constable said.

The students, from the Allsorts gay and lesbian group, had been campaigning for "a couple of years" with letters to and meetings with the university for a safe space on campus.

Once inside the Belmore room, the students declared it their space.

Their present room is off-campus and is not patrolled by university security. It is prone to flooding and rainwater runs down internal walls near powerpoints.

Earlier this year, a female student was trapped in the queer space by a man who blocked the door with his bike and threatened to "burn the woman to death" for being a lesbian, Allsorts said in a statement.

The students want the university to move them on to campus and to provide security patrols and better health and safety standards.

Mr Brown, queer delegate on the Students Representative Council, said of the raid: "It was total overkill. We had 10 armed riot police with helmets and shields burst into the room. I was totally and utterly speechless and shocked.

"The fact that a peaceful student protest was burst into by 10 riot police ... we were leaning against the door and getting smashed against it. The police were totally high on adrenalin and quite aggressive."

Mr Brown said he was frisked twice and that Ms Constable and Ms Grossy were frisked at Wollongong police station.

Acting vice-president (administration) Chris Grange was unable to comment in detail because charges were pending.

In a statement, however, he said students "should follow the proper procedure of raising their concerns through the SRC [to bring] the relevant issues forward to university management".

The occupation was the culmination of Sexuality Week activities at the university, during which, Ms Constable said, Allsorts banners were stolen, torn down and stomped into the dirt and a petition was stolen and defaced with messages such as "die fags".

Allsorts will tomorrow present vice-chancellor Gerard Sutton with its award to Wollongong as the "most homophobic university in Australia".

23 Sep 04 - 10:42 PM (#1279556)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

The story as it appears here was at an Earthlink news site that isn't a stable URL. I found a similar story here. But the one below is pretty interesting, and not that long, so I posted all of it.

MIT Works to Power Computers With Spinach
September 23, 2004

BOSTON - "Eat your spinach," Mom used to say. "It will make your muscles grow, power your laptop and recharge your cell phone... "

OK. So nobody's Mom said those last two things.

But researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have used spinach to harness a plant's ability to convert sunlight into energy for the first time, creating a device that may one day power laptops, mobile phones and more. Photosynthesis, the process by which plants use light beams for energy rather than eating food like animals, has been known to scientists for decades.

But attempts to combine the organic with the electronic had always failed: Isolate the photosynthetic proteins that capture the energy from sunlight, and they die. Inject the water and salt needed to keep the proteins alive, and the electronic equipment is destroyed. That was until Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering, discovered that protein building blocks called detergent peptides could be manipulated to keep the proteins alive up to three weeks while in contact with electronics.

"Stabilizing the protein is crucial," said Zhang, who collaborated with researchers from MIT, the University of Tennessee and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, including electrical engineers, nanotechnology experts and biologists. "Detergent peptide turned out to be a wonderful material to keep proteins intact." The scientists, whose findings were first reported by in NanoLetters, a publication of the American Chemical Society, then created a "spinach sandwich."

Why spinach?

In reality, any number of plants could have been used. But the researchers chose spinach because "it is cheap and is easily available from the grocery store," Zhang said. The spinach was ground up and purified to isolate a protein deep within the spinach cells. A top layer of glass was coated underneath with a conductive material and a thin layer of gold to aid the chemical reaction. In the middle, the spinach-peptide mixture sits on a soft, organic semiconductor that prevents electrical shorts and protects the protein complexes from a bottom layer of metal.

By shining laser light on the "sandwich," researchers were able to generate a tiny current. While one device by itself can't generate much energy, billions of them together could produce enough electricity to power a device. "It's like a penny," Zhang said. "One penny is not much use, but 1 billion pennies is a lot of money."

Practical applications are still a decade or so away, but the advantages include the technology's lightweight qualities, portability and environmental friendliness. "There is no waste," Zhang said. The researchers suggest the technology could be used as a backup energy supply for battery-powered portable devices. "We have crossed the first hurdle of successfully integrating a photosynthetic protein molecular complex with a solid-state electronic device," said Marc Baldo, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

25 Sep 04 - 11:54 PM (#1281162)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

An article from Scientific American.com.

Ancient Long-Necked Reptile Was Stealthy Suction Feeder

Scientists have unearthed the fossil of an ancient aquatic reptile that sported a neck almost twice as long as its meter-long body. The 1.7-meter-long neck appears to have been too rigid to twist around in search of prey, however, so its function was at first uncertain. "This animal was one of those things that comes along and says 'wait a minute, you don't know as much as you thought you did'" about what long necks are good for, says Michael LaBarbera of the University of Chicago, one of the authors of a paper detailing the find published today in Science.

The Guanling limestone formation in China, where the new specimen was found, was deposited on the ocean floor about 230 million years ago in the Triassic period, when dinosaurs were becoming prevalent on land. The fossil belongs to the carnivorous species Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, which scientists first described only last year. It is a protorosaur, a group of reptiles that includes Tanystropheus, whose ludicrously long neck has stimulated debate since its discovery in the 1850s. Unlike Tanystropheus, however, Dinocephalosaurus had flipper-shaped limbs, indicating a largely aquatic lifestyle.

The authors suggest that the long, thin neck enabled Dinocephalosaurus to sneak up on prey in murky water without revealing its full size. In addition, the 25 neck vertebrae bore ribs running along the spine. Straightening the spine and extending the ribs could have rapidly increased the volume of the neck, sucking in both prey and water. Some modern fish rapidly expand their mouths to accomplish a similar "suction feeding." --Don Monroe

26 Sep 04 - 02:58 AM (#1281224)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Mudlark

Dinocephalosauras sounds suspiciously like what's been hiding in Loch Ness...

26 Sep 04 - 03:20 AM (#1281233)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Yes, it does! Have any tourists been sucked off of the surface of the lake lately?

26 Sep 04 - 03:42 AM (#1281237)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

I wonder if it's related to the Snufflufugus that lives in Sesame Street?

26 Sep 04 - 09:26 AM (#1281357)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Naw--everyone knows Snuffy has a long NOSE, not a long neck! (You could make a stronger case for Big Bird.)

26 Sep 04 - 09:41 AM (#1281368)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Big Bird's Grandparents lived in Loch Ness?

26 Sep 04 - 10:48 AM (#1281427)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Bill Berkowitz
Working For Change
03.10.04

Salvation Army discriminates

One of nation's largest charities sued by employees for religious discrimination

All is not well with one of the nation's largest charities.

Eighteen current and former employees of the Salvation Army's social services arm have filed suit against the organization, accusing it of "imposing a religious veil over secular, publicly financed activities like caring for foster children and counseling young people with AIDS," the New York Times reported in late February. "I was harassed to the point where eventually I resigned," said Margaret Geissman, a former human resources manager who told the Times that her superior asked for the religions and sexual orientations of her staff. "As a Christian, I deeply resent the use of discriminatory employment practices in the name of Christianity."

The employees, "including senior administrators and caseworkers that are Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and nonreligious," filed their lawsuit in United States District Court in Manhattan. They're being represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union and by Martin Garbus, a well-known First Amendment lawyer. At a press conference announcing the suit, Garbus pointed out that it strikes at the heart of the president's faith-based initiative and the separation of church and state. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, added that "It's critical at this stage of the game to put a stop to proselytizing with government money."

According to Reuters, the Salvation Army Greater New York Division receives $89 million a year in taxpayer money, mostly from the state, New York City and Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island. Anne Lown, a plaintiff and an associate director of the Army's children's services agency in New York, said that the charity employs nearly 900 people and provides services for more than 2,000 children.

The Salvation Army is no stranger to controversy revolving around issues related Bush's faith-based initiative. Six months after the initiative's unveiling in late January 2001, it was revealed that top-level administration officials had been conducting secret meetings with the Salvation Army to enlist its political and financial support for the then-flagging project. According to the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, the meetings, which included Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist, and Don Eberly, the then Deputy Director of the newly opened White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, had been going on for several months.

An internal Salvation Army document indicated that in exchange for its support, "which included plans for an Army-sponsored $100,000 public relations campaign," the charity would receive assurances that any bill passed by Congress would contain a provision allowing religious charities to sidestep state and local anti-discrimination measures barring discriminatory hiring practices on the basis of sexual orientation.

After the Washington Post's story broke, the administration moved into denial mode, the Salvation Army backtracked, and congressional opponents of the initiative were furious. Salvation ArmyGate was one reason Bush's faith-based initiative languished legislatively on Capitol Hill for more than three years.

In retrospect, it appears that the Salvation Army didn't need any special exemption to discriminate against its employees. According to the New York Times, the plaintiffs are charging the Salvation Army's New York division of coercing them into "sign[ing] forms revealing the churches they had attended over the past 10 years, name their ministers and agree to the Army's mission 'to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'" Some litigants claimed they were let go "after years of working in secular jobs when they objected to signing the forms. "Others," the Times reported, "said the new religious focus violated the social workers' ethics code and could have chilling effect on their work... for example, preventing them from giving condoms to people infected with H.I.V. or forbidding abortion counseling."

Responding to the suit, the Salvation Army said in a statement that it was "reviewing the issues outlined in the complaint and look[ing] forward to responding openly about our work and our employment practices as they relate to The Salvation Army's Mission." The organization pointed out that its "policies and procedures were entirely consistent" with laws governing the employment practices of religious institutions. "In the past," the New York Times reported, "local Salvation Army officials said that the forms had long been in use around the country and that their policies were permitted under terms of contracts with New York City and New York State. No employees are forced to uphold church beliefs unless they are in a position of ministry, they have said."

According to Family News in Focus, an online news service of Dr. James Dobson's Christian-based organization, Focus on the Family, in September, the Salvation Army "began... to require that employees acknowledge and support the religious mission of the Army -- which is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Employees in the social services and child-welfare programs are also required to identify their church affiliation, going back a decade."

That date runs parallel to the issuance of a position paper on a concept called "religious hiring rights" by the administration. In "Protecting the Civil Rights and Religious Liberty of Faith-Based Organizations: Why Religious Hiring Rights Must Be Preserved," Team Bush argued that religious organizations receiving government grants retained the right to hire anyone they pleased, based on whatever criteria is in concert with their organization's religious mission.

Several pieces of legislation with "religious hiring rights" provisions were under consideration by Congress last year including "The School Readiness Act of 2003," H.R. 2210, which allows religious organizations receiving government funds for providing Head Start services to discriminate in their hiring practices, and the $4 billion Workforce Reinvestment and Adult Education Act, which passed the House on a 220-204 vote.

In early February, a few days after the Bush White House issued a "Statement of Administration Policy" calling on the House to defeat any amendments to the Community Services Block Grants Act, H.R. 3030, requiring faith-based agencies receiving federal funding to comply with federal civil rights standards, and threatening a veto of any bill amended to prohibit discrimination by faith-based agencies funded by American taxpayers, the House defeated three Democratic-sponsored provisions.

Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, indicated that he thought the employee suit was an attempt to ratchet up the fight against federal dollars going to faith-based groups. "There is a caveat written into the law that an organization that is religious cannot lose its religious identity if it accepts federal funding," Cromartie told Family News in Focus.

However, as Arthur Eisenberg, legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, pointed out: "For years, The Salvation Army has run these programs very successfully without injecting religion into the workplace. Religion is irrelevant to the success of these programs and it should remain so."

For more please see the Bill Berkowitz archive.

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His Working ForChange column Conservative Watch documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.

According to Reuters, the Salvation Army Greater New York Division receives $89 million a year in taxpayer money.

(c) 2004 Working Assets Online. All rights reserved

11 Nov 04 - 11:10 AM (#1323336)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This UPI story was linked to from my Internet Provider's front page:

Pregnant baboon bumped to later flight

November 11, 2004 09:32 AM EST

When I read the headline I thought there was going to be some sort of "all species treated equal" story about heavy Americans forcing airlines to use more fuel to get the planes up in the air. i.e., perhaps they would start by bumping fat animals and then move up to bumping heavy people.

11 Nov 04 - 11:36 AM (#1323351)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Paco Rabanne

99

11 Nov 04 - 11:36 AM (#1323352)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Paco Rabanne

100 I thank you. ted - 1
leadfingers -0

11 Nov 04 - 11:51 AM (#1323363)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Such a valuable contribution to our ongoing discussion of topical news stories, super ted. Here's a story just for you:

Counting All the Time

Link

And here's a bonus, an article on "Overriding Obsession: Thought Control" from the BBC online.

12 Nov 04 - 10:32 PM (#1325244)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's one that might impact a few 'catters:

AOL Tells Customers to Find New Carrier

November 12, 2004 10:45 AM EST

DULLES, Va. - America Online, which earlier this year stopped signing up new broadband customers, is telling existing broadband subscribers in nine Southern states that they must find a new broadband carrier by Jan. 17.

Those customers who do not switch to a new broadband carrier by that date will have their accounts revert to AOL's traditional dialup service, said AOL spokeswoman Anne Bentley.

The company has been e-mailing its customers in those nine states that they can switch to high-speed broadband service offered by BellSouth Corp. for a special promotional rate.

Most of AOL's 23 million subscribers receive standard dialup service for $24 a month. The company will not disclose how many customers still receive the $54 monthly broadband service, which Bentley acknowledged is relatively expensive compared to other broadband pricing packages now available to consumers.

Bentley said she expects AOL will phase out existing broadband customers in the rest of the country in a similar manner over the next year.

The affected states are Florida, Kentucky, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

America Online is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

18 Nov 04 - 12:27 PM (#1331190)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here is an interestingly whimsical photo, of a protest in Seattle over not reducing the budget to deal with street trees.

SRS

18 Nov 04 - 12:36 PM (#1331199)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Still going through the P.I. photos. The photo credit says "A deer chews on a rope that became tangled in its antlers as it wanders a backyard in Petersburg, Alaska. (AP Photo/ Petersburg Pilot, Klas Stolpe) (November 17, 2004)"

26 Nov 04 - 09:22 AM (#1339653)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Apology as schools get porn emails - National - www.smh.com.au

Apology as schools get porn emails
By Les Kennedy
November 26, 2004

When principals at five NSW primary schools received confidential emails from police seeking to identify three girls at risk, the images they unlocked showed the girls in explicit poses and an unidentified man having sexual intercourse with one of the girls.

The Child Protection and Sex Crimes Squad sent photographs of the girls, aged between 4 and 8, to 1800 principals on Wednesday. The photos were meant to be only head shots.

By 11.30am yesterday five principals had complained to police that they had received full pornographic images of the girls.

"I can only imagine that they would have been horrified by them," the head of the State Crime Command, which incorporates the squad, Assistant Commissioner Graeme Morgan, said in a public apology to the principals and any other school heads who saw the full images.

The bungle was attributed to a combination of human error and older computer systems at some schools that were incompatible with police computer software.

Mr Morgan said the officer involved in the bungle was unlikely to be disciplined, although an inquiry was being conducted and measures were being taken to prevent it happening again. He said the photos were not related to any arrests made under Operation Auxin, the nationwide swoop on internet child pornography users. Mr Morgan said 80 per cent of principals had received the photos without problem and police had asked that the files be deleted.

The decision to seek help from principals followed police consultations with Education Department lawyers after a 30-year-old man was arrested in Cessnock last week with the photos. The man, who will appear in Cessnock Court on December 15 charged with possessing child pornography, allegedly told police he received the photos as internet spam from an associate whom police have yet to locate. Mr Morgan said there was nothing to indicate the girls were from NSW or Australia, but Cessnock police had asked the child protection squad to help locate them.

Meanwhile, Warren John Daines, 50, who was to have been sentenced yesterday as the first of 47 NSW men charged under Operation Auxin with possessing internet child pornography, has had his case adjourned to February 18. Daines, a company director of Quakers Hill, pleaded guilty in Blacktown Court last month to possessing child pornography.

26 Nov 04 - 10:08 AM (#1339700)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Aid threatened as US fights war crimes court - World - www.smh.com.au

Aid threatened as US fights war crimes court
By Colum Lynch in New York
November 27, 2004

The Republican-controlled US Congress has stepped up its campaign to curtail the power of the International Criminal Court by threatening to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to governments that refuse to sign immunity accords that shield US personnel from being surrendered to the tribunal.

The move marks an escalation in US efforts to ensure that the first world criminal court can never judge US citizens for crimes committed overseas.

More than two years ago Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, which cut millions of dollars in military assistance to many countries that would not sign the Article 98 agreements, as they are known, that undertake not to transfer to the court US nationals accused of war crimes.

A provision inserted into a $US338 billion ($425 billion) government spending bill for next year would bar the transfer of assistance money from the $US2.5 billon economic support fund to a government "that is a party" to the criminal court but "has not entered into an agreement with the United States" to bar legal proceedings against US personnel. Legislators are to vote on the budget on December 8.

Congress's action may affect US development programs designed to promote peace, combat drug trafficking, and promote democracy and economic reforms in poor countries.

The legislation includes a national security waiver that would allow President George Bush to exempt members of NATO and other key allies, including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, South Korea, New Zealand or Taiwan. The waiver was added after the State Department raised concern the cuts could undermine programs that advance US foreign policy.

The criminal court was established by treaty in 1998 to prosecute perpetrators of the most serious crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The treaty has been signed by 139 countries and ratified by 97.

The Clinton administration signed the treaty in December 2000, but the Bush Administration renounced it in May 2001. It says it fears that an international prosecutor might conduct frivolous investigations and trials against US officials, troops and foreign nationals sent overseas on behalf of the US.

"This is a body based in The Hague where unaccountable judges and prosecutors could pull our troops, our diplomats up for trial," Mr Bush said in his first re-election campaign debate with Senator John Kerry.

Washington's important European allies, including Britain, France and Germany, have opposed the US move on the grounds that it undermines the treaty.

The court's advocates say the tribunal was created to hold future despots in the ranks of Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and Idi Amin accountable for mass killings.

The Washington Post

26 Nov 04 - 10:11 AM (#1339702)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Robin Hood duo aims to sink Coke, return profits
By Paul Marinko in London
November 27, 2004

An anti-capitalist former stockbroker and the son of Sir James Goldsmith have launched an audacious attempt to halve the value of shares in The Coca-Cola Co, the worldwide Coke parent based in Florida.

Radical activist Max Keiser has joined forces with the editor of The Ecologist magazine, Zak Goldsmith, to launch a hedge fund that will donate the profits from short-selling Coke's shares to the "victims of Coke's business model in places like India and Colombia".

The idea is that, as a boycott spreads, the money in the fund will increase as shares in the company drop.

Mr Keiser, founder of activist website karmabanque.com, believes the stunt will reduce Coca-Cola shares from their current value of $US41 to $US22. The campaign says it will "commit to as much money as it takes to take down Coke", but Mr Keiser refused to say whether the son of the late billionaire had invested any money of his own in the project. He said Mr Goldsmith's role in the campaign was to promote it in his magazine. Mr Goldsmith was unavailable for comment.

Mr Keiser said the hedge fund already had "several hundred thousand dollars" in it despite not yet being listed, and he was approaching several big banking figures, including George Soros, to increase the value.

The high-risk strategy would see the hedge fund borrow shares in Coke from a broker and sell them at less than their market value, gambling on them dropping in value thanks to the boycott. It would then buy them back at less than it sold them for and pocket the difference before handing them back to the broker. But if the value of the stock goes up, the hedge fund will lose money.

Any profit made would be ploughed into supporting communities around the world which investors felt had suffered at the hands of Coca-Cola.

As Coca-Cola is one of the world's largest corporations, valued at about $US95 billion, the attempt is unlikely to succeed. But Mr Keiser remained optimistic. "There's a general anti-American feeling out there which is growing all over the world," he said. "People now associate Coke's brand with the American brand and they are rejecting it across the globe. The company has never been more vulnerable."

No one at Coca-Cola was available to comment due to the Thanksgiving holiday.

Previous boycotts of major companies have had mixed results. Success stories include Barclays Bank deciding to pull out of apartheid South Africa in 1986 after a campaign halved the bank's share of student accounts. Greenpeace managed to slash Shell's pump sales with a boycott over plans to dump the Brent Spar oil platform in the Atlantic.

But the Baby Milk Action Group's boycott of Nestle has failed to damage the company in nearly 25 years. Likewise, it was not the Burma Campaign's boycott attempts of British American Tobacco that forced the cigarette company out of the country but pressure from the Blair Government.

The Guardian

28 Nov 04 - 03:44 PM (#1341329)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here are a couple of interesting articles to do with privacy and protecting yourself from identity theft. After reading these, and feeling virtuous for not carrying my social security card, I had a thought and went through my wallet. No less than four other cards used my SSN as my ID. So I've removed them and will request that each of these accounts give me a unique account number not tied to my SSN.

Too many carry Social Security cards

NEW YORK, NY, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- An American Express study found U.S. consumers have a lot to learn about how to protect themselves against identity theft.

While 77 percent of those who participated said they take precautions to secure their personal financial information, but nearly half still make the mistake of carrying their Social Security numbers in their wallet, American Express officials said in a statement.

Experts warn that Social Security numbers are the ultimate prize for criminals.

One consumer had a $32,000 truck, a pricey apartment and a cell phone charged in her name without even having her wallet stolen -- a thief stole her personal information from a real estate application and racked up $50,000 in debt.

(follow the link for the rest)

Safeguard your Social Security number

Protect yourself from identity theft by keeping a tight rein on your Social Security number. Only a few organizations have the right to demand it. Here's how to fend off the rest.

"I think it's spooky. Everybody has that one number, and everything about you is tied to it," worries Jim Edwards, program director at WJNO in West Palm Beach, Fla.

"Put it in a computer and poof -- here's your bank account, your phone number, where you work."

The key to all that private information? Your Social Security number.

Edwards was way ahead of most people. Back in the early '80s, he refused to give his Social Security number when he enrolled at Miami Dade Community College. The school wanted to use it as a student identification number, but Edwards held his ground and the school gave him a different number -- all zeros, as he recalls.

Today, schools, phone companies, utilities, health clubs, insurance companies, video stores -- just about everybody wants your Social Security number. Some of the more prevalent uses are to get your credit rating and determine whether you pay your bills, and to keep track of you through name and address changes.

[snip]

Who has the right to ask for your digits?

While any business can ask for your Social Security number, there are very few entities that can actually demand it -- motor vehicle departments, tax departments and welfare departments, for example. Also, SSNs are required for transactions involving taxes, so that means banks, brokerages, employers, and the like also have a legitimate need for your SSN.

Most other businesses have no legal right to demand your number.

"There is no law prohibiting a business from asking for your Social Security number, but people don't know they can say no," says Carolyn Cheezum of the Social Security Administration.

(follow the link for the rest)

SRS

28 Nov 04 - 08:00 PM (#1341523)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Porn Prohibitionists Miss Point
By Regina Lynn
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65831,00.html

All week I've been thinking about the recent "porn is heroin" hearing, which concluded that porn bypasses the cognitive speechmaking part of the brain, turns men into rapists and -- my favorite -- releases damaging "erototoxins" into the bloodstream.

The stated point of the hearing was to determine whether Congress should fund studies about the effects of pornography addiction on families and communities, and whether it should launch a public health campaign to warn people of the dangers of online porn.

If it's going to spend money in this arena at all, I'd rather Congress fund studies about the effects of pornography in general, including its effect on the economy, on technological innovation, on sexual function and dysfunction, and so on. Even the anti-porn panelists who testified before Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) admitted the dearth of such studies.

I would hate to see anyone confuse "addiction to porn" with "existence of porn" and pursue a study about addiction without establishing a base line for normal use. Porn did not become a billion-dollar industry on addiction alone.

Porn addiction -- which I define as an overwhelming compulsion to watch porn, such that viewing porn becomes your top priority, taking precedence over work and family -- is certainly a cause for concern and possibly intervention.

Yet like any addiction, when the substance in question is relatively harmless to most people, as porn seems to be, criminalizing that substance backfires. Porn, like alcohol, is an indulgence that I suspect the vast majority of people enjoy in moderation, in small doses or not at all.

And porn, like alcohol, is meant to be a treat for adults. In fact, everyone I've spoken within the adult industry also supports the separation of children and adult content -- that's why it's called adult content.

The panel's concern that the internet makes pornography much more available to children than it was in the good ol' days of the printing press is a valid one. I have no objection to increasing our efforts to educate adults in how they can keep pornography away from children, or to developing better content filters, age-validation tactics and other yet-to-be-invented technologies that would make it almost impossible for kids to find porn online.

If nothing else, just think of the pool of brilliant problem-solvers we'll create, and the security experts that will arise out of a generation of Sneakers.

As a whole, however, the witnesses in this particular hearing fail to inspire my confidence. While some of their concerns make sense -- I mean, really, who could argue that addiction is healthy or that young children should view sexual imagery? -- some of their examples expose the shaky foundation beneath their case.

To wit: Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover claims that porn "causes masturbation."

What's so bad about masturbation? We're born sexual beings -- even infants masturbate, long before they can say "free porn," much less Google it. Given the other challenges we're facing, from the war in Iraq to the 30 percent of American children living in poverty, autoeroticism is hardly high on the list of threats to families or society. I'd hate to have to replace it with macramé just because a handful of people can't stand the thought that I might be taking longer showers than they deem necessary.

And it wouldn't hurt certain people to let go of their obsessive guilt and add this simple pleasure to their daily routine.

Dr. Mary Anne Layden states that "the myth that women are sexually aroused by engaging in behaviors that are actually sexually pleasuring to men is a particularly narcissistic invention of the pornography industry."

What? I'm plenty aroused by fellatio and other "behaviors" that are "pleasuring to men." That's why I'm fun in bed, even though I may inadvertently be proving her point, as my delight in such activities is a result of the healing power of cybersex. (Cybersex did more to help me overcome childhood sexual trauma than two years of therapy. But that's another column.)

And then Dr. Judith Reisman says that police always find pornography when searching the homes of rapists and pedophiles, and suggests that porn consumption leads to crime.

I'm more inclined to believe that poverty, disenfranchisement, desperation, racism, child abuse, ignorance and gang mentality contribute more to serious crimes than pornography does. I also suspect that almost everyone, especially males, keeps a stash of adult content somewhere. I have a small cache myself. But of course most of us aren't subject to police searches, and therefore our collections remain private.

It seems to me that if Congress were to fund an in-depth, scientifically valid, nonpartisan study on porn's role in society, we could lay this question to rest. Then the porn prohibitionists would have to stop inventing scare tactics to support their agenda. They'll either be proven right, which they won't be, or they'll be exposed for the meddling, big-government proponents they are.

Now, where can I get those erototoxins?

See you next Friday,

Regina Lynn

29 Nov 04 - 01:29 PM (#1342266)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

She has the right idea!

29 Nov 04 - 06:11 PM (#1342503)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Every home in which a pedophile has been found has been likewise found to contain food and bathroom fixtures. This proves beyond all reasonable doubt that eating and defecating lead inexorpabl;y to child abuse.

A

29 Nov 04 - 11:54 PM (#1342822)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This is only scratching the surface, Amos. Those homes also have doors, windows, a roof, furniture, and frequently, a television and radio. To cherry-pick evidence the way described in the article is to force your evidence to fit your hypothesis, without checking out the field first and seeing what all of the commonalities are.

SRS

30 Nov 04 - 12:05 AM (#1342834)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Okay, maybe it is that windows cause pedophilia, huh? That woukld give Bill Gates a lot to answer for, wouldn't it? Huh? Huh?

I know that seems clownish but there are people out there whose logical capacity is actually on that order.

A

16 Dec 04 - 10:36 AM (#1358731)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

The Herald - Everett, Wash. - www.HeraldNet.com
Published: Thursday, December 16, 2004

Horrific crash kills 1; heroism saves 4 lives
Vehicle crosses I-5 median near Smokey Point

link
By Diana Hefley and Katherine Schiffner
Herald Writers

SMOKEY POINT - A woman was killed and seven other people were injured in a fiery crash that closed northbound I-5 for more than three hours on Wednesday. Crews clean up after Wednesday's fatal crash on northbound I-5 near Smokey Point. The freeway was closed for more than three hours, and traffic backed up to Everett. Police and firefighters called it one of the worst crashes they had ever seen. It snarled traffic well into the evening.

"It looked like a house fire in the middle of the freeway," said Nathan Trauernicht, spokesman for the Marysville Fire Department. The crash brought out heroes such as a truck driver who police credited with saving the lives of four people at the scene.

The three-vehicle wreck happened about 1:30 p.m. just south of 172nd Street NE when a Ford Explorer southbound on I-5 near Smokey Point crossed the grass median into the northbound lanes, colliding with a Chevrolet Suburban, Toyota Tundra and a Mercedes Benz sport utility vehicle in the far right lane, Washington State Patrol Trooper Lance Ramsay said.

The Toyota and Ford Explorer caught fire after the crash, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. A woman inside the Suburban was killed, the State Patrol said. Firefighters had to use the Jaws of Life to free two other people from the Suburban. They were airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with life-threatening injuries, Trauernicht said.

Martha Holschen, 47, of Bothell, the Suburban driver, was still being evaluated at Harborview late Wednesday and her condition was not known, a nursing supervisor said. Holschen's passengers, Keegan Holschen, 9, and Jake Holschen, 12, were in stable condition at Providence Everett Medical Center's Colby campus, a nursing supervisor said. Another passenger in Holschen's vehicle was not identified. The driver of the Ford Explorer, Juliann Odom, 22, of Bellevue was in satisfactory condition Wednesday night at Harborview, the nursing supervisor said.

Police and firefighters saluted bystanders who stopped to help prevent other deaths. Trucker Jim Swett realized the Suburban had to be moved before it caught fire, too, killing the people trapped inside. "It was hot, hot. It feels like I have a sunburn," Swett said. "We were afraid the gas tank would blow." The Suburban was so close to the burning pickup and Explorer that the heat melted a window and taillights. Swett, 68, and others hooked up a towing strap to his semitruck and dragged the Suburban away from the flames.

Swett "saved four lives," Ramsay said.

Bystanders also broke out a window to rescue a woman inside one of the burning vehicles, and used a crowbar to break open a door to rescue two children inside the Suburban, said Swett, who was on his way home to Sedro-Woolley. Two redheaded girls in the Suburban reminded him of his grandson, who died in a car crash about four years ago, he said. "It brought back a lot of memories. My grandson was a redhead, too," Swett said. "It was great to be able to help."

Swett said he wasn't the only one who came to the rescue. "It was a bunch of good, hard-working people who made the effort," he said. "It makes you feel good that there are people out there to help."

The northbound lanes of the freeway were shut down from 88th Street SE in Marysville to Smokey Point for more than three hours. Traffic was backed up for miles into Everett during the afternoon commute. "We were stuck in it forever," said Amy James, 24, of Everett.

James and a friend were driving from Marysville to Smokey Point. The trip normally takes 10 minutes, but on Wednesday it lasted two hours. Two lanes of I-5 north reopened about three hours after the accident. It could be weeks before troopers know what caused the crash, Ramsay said.

16 Dec 04 - 06:42 PM (#1359156)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Thanks, SRS -- it restores me faith in humanity (but not in SUVs!!)

A

17 Dec 04 - 10:34 AM (#1359729)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's a little bit more about that. They haven't been able to speak to the driver of the Explorer yet, due to her injuries.

Published: Friday, December 17, 2004
link
Many helped, hero says
For truck driver Jim Swett, saving four people in a destroyed Suburban brought back memories of his late grandson.

By Yoshiaki Nohara, Herald Writer

Children could be heard crying from inside the wreckage. Flames were licking the mangled cars. Plumes of acrid smoke filled the air. Amid that chaos along I-5 near Smokey Point on Wednesday afternoon, about a dozen strangers came together to save four lives. "It wasn't just me. It was everybody," said Jim Swett, 68, a truck driver from Sedro-Woolley. The rescue was personal for Swett. He pried open a door on the destroyed Chevrolet Suburban. In the back seat were two children. Both had red hair.

"We knew we did everything we could do to help those people," says Jim Swett, 68, who was one of the first to help at Wednesday's fatal accident on I-5. Swett said his mind instantly went to the memory of his grandson Brandon, who died in a rollover accident four years ago in Whidbey Island. The 15-year-old boy had red hair, too. He stood 6 feet, 1 inch. He was a bundle of energy. His death left a hole in Swett's family. He would have given anything to be there to save him.

On Wednesday, the Sedro-Woolley man helped scoop the crying children from the Suburban. But Swett insisted Thursday that he wasn't the only hero. An off-duty firefighter hooked a towing rope to the Suburban. Others brought blankets and coats to warm the injured pulled from the four-vehicle wreck.

'Get me out of here!'

Swett was heading north on I-5 toward home. It was around 1 p.m. and he'd just delivered flowers and plants to a Woodinville nursery. Near the Smokey Point exit ramp, Swett saw a few cars engulfed in flames and smoke. Immediately, he pulled into the center lane and put on his hazard lights. Swett, who wore a blue T-shirt and sweat pants, grabbed a crowbar and a fire extinguisher, and jumped out of the truck. With a few men, Swett rushed to a burning car. He smashed the window with the crowbar, and they got a wounded woman out of the driver's seat. "She was screaming, 'Get me out of here!'" Swett recalled.

Then, they rushed to the crumpled Chevrolet Suburban with five people trapped inside. A woman in the passenger's seat was dead. He heard two children crying in the back seat. Swett used the crowbar to pry open the door to help the children. He doesn't remember whether they were boys or girls - (it was two boys, 9 and 12) - but their red hair caught his eyes. Swett took one of them in his arms, memories of his grandson rushing through his mind. By the time he and others rescued both boys, flames from another car threatened to spread to the Suburban. There were still two people trapped alive in the wreck. "We were so afraid the gas tank would blow," he said.

An off-duty firefighter at the scene helped Swett tie a rope to the Suburban and to Swett's truck, to pull the wreck away from the flames. Other people emerged from their stopped cars. Swett figures there were at least a dozen, some carrying blankets, others carrying coats. They wrapped the victims up, protecting them from the cold and shock. "None of us were thinking of us," Swett said.

Firefighters and paramedics arrived and took over, bringing hope and relief to the onlookers. "We knew we did everything we could do to help those people," he said.

Calm in a crisis

Swett drove back to Sedro-Woolley around 5:30 p.m. He and his wife, Jean, live on Brandon Lane, a private road named after their grandson. Soon, family, friends and TV news reporters made their way to his door to hear his story. Jean Swett said that in their 48 years of marriage her husband always has been someone who can stay calm in a crisis, identify what needs to be done, and do it. "It doesn't surprise me he did what he did," she said. Her husband was so focused at the accident scene that he didn't realize his arms had been burned by the heat from the fires until his took a bath in the evening.

Swett couldn't be there for Brandon four years ago. But he was there - along with a dozen others - for the Holschen family, when they needed help.

17 Dec 04 - 11:17 AM (#1359758)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Nick

Club Bans Oxygen Cylinder Woman

By Pat Hurst, PA

A pensioner who needs an oxygen cylinder to breathe has been banned from her local Royal British Legion because she has been declared a fire hazard.

Gillian Western, 66, has been told her life-saving cylinder is too dangerous because she is a smoker and it could explode if flames mix with the oxygen.

Mrs Western, who lives round the corner from the club, is now house-bound after the branch in Heswall, on the Wirral, told her not to come back.

Wheelchair-user Mrs Western, suffers from chronic bronchial asthma and must take the oxygen with her at all times.

She said: "I have been a member for more than 25 years and have been going in there with the cylinder for two years.

"I think they are just being petty.

"They rang my carer and said, 'By the way we don't want Gill coming in with her oxygen cylinder.' They said it was too dangerous.

"It's not very nice considering I was on the committee."

Mrs Western used to be pushed to the club by her carer to meet friends and watch Liverpool football games on TV.

She has tried going to a local pub but said does not enjoy it and the ban has left her virtually house-bound.

"I like it there, it is nice and cosy and all my friends go in there," she added.

Jeff Harrison, county field officer for the Royal British Legion in Cheshire said it was the committee's decision on how they run the club.

He added, "Mrs Western, I understand needs to use oxygen. There is a health and safety difficulty because of smoking. Therefore they have asked her to keep out. It's as simple as that."

The club could not be contacted through telephone calls today.

17 Dec 04 - 02:57 PM (#1359898)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: kindaloupehackenweez

Dear Abbey. Dear Abbey
My feet are too long, My hairs falling out and my rights are all wrong..John Prine

17 Dec 04 - 04:15 PM (#1359944)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Maybe this story will get enough attention that they ban smoking in the club--then she wouldn't be at risk of exploding. Might serve them right!

SRS

18 Dec 04 - 03:08 PM (#1360580)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: kindaloupehackenweez

I am hoping that i am not out of line here by just putting in lyrics of a song that this thread reminds me of.. I do not mean to be rude or disrespectful of the thread or of the people (and and all) of mudcat. I have over stepped my bounds in a couple of threads which has caused myself great embrassment and shame for which i dont ever want to feel again.. For i am new i dont know ya all nor you me. I just jumped in. Like i did in the deep end of the swimming pool in grade school..Thank God for life guards. Anyway to explain as to why and what i do here is because this threads name. John Prine said on one of his albums that when he was in Italy someone brought him a newspaper. The only one in that place, That was in english, which inspired him to write the song "Dear Abby" Which i played for many years. Until (here's the 3rd and 4th line to the previous 1st 2 lines from last week)

My friends they all tell me there no friends at all,

Wont you write me a letter, wont you give me a call,

signed bewildered...(To be contiued???You decide>>)

But in the name of "Fair Game" The town i live has two weekly papers one on wednesday and the other saturday. And i just pulled it out of the box while getting back from doing laundry. Heres a headliner,
From the "Park Rapids Enterprise" Sat. Dec, 18 2004.

          "County board deems EIS unnecessary" along with
          "Film will document impact of ATV's"
          "City authorizes study for airport businesses"
          "Midwest and Norway have similar Christmas traditions"
Huh no head liners concerning Meth Bust. Finally. For furture interest if any in the paper just do the www.park rapids enterprise.com thing and you'll be checking it out first hand.

   Once again i apoligize for last weeks "Head up my ass moments" and conducting myself in undignafide of Mudcat stature. I love this place and dont want to be exsiled. I;m sorry for i do know better.
and there is no excuse. I know my place know and hope to get to know more of ya all in the up comming weeks that im off from work. For work is all i have up till i was introduced to mudcat..Its nice to have a place to go when you get off work or when i get up in the morning> Heck its hard to stay away..I just hope i didnt blow it..
Damit I know i phucked up. I was wrong, I am wrong alot, I havent the wizdom nor the wit i thought i did.. all i can do is make amends and ask for forgiveness....And give you my word not to step out of line again..I have a hard time believing any of you cats can be more disapointed in me than i am of myself..I could of stayed away;(Maybe)
but that wouldnt be right. I did wrong and must if possible make it write. I'll have time these next two weeks to get to know more of ya.,Thats if anyone still wants to get to know me for i dont blame them either. I was a jerk off, I',m better now. Thank you for your time and space....Later..Peace..Love ya's Dont know ya's but love ya's anyway.

22 Dec 04 - 11:12 AM (#1363197)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's a story with a bit of a self-interest link: I used to work at Ellis Island as an interpreter with the Park Service, and I met Tom (subject of this article) there. I helped him get this latest printing of the book off the ground, because after 9-11 he was in a hard spot as far as finding a printer. I'm putting the whole thing here because the paper's archive is free for only two weeks, then you have to pay to read it so a link alone won't work.
The temporary link

Worldly flavors of Ellis Island book will whet your appetite
Author pays tribute to past with immigrants' recipes, stories
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
By Sonia Andresson-Nolasco, [Jersey] Journal staff writer

Today, it is unlikely that someone wouldn't know how to eat a banana. But in the early 1900s, when so many newcomers to the Americas set foot on Ellis Island for the first time, the pale yellow fruit, like so many other foods, was an enigma.

"We didn't even know how to eat a banana," said Tom Bernardin, reciting the phrase he often heard uttered by immigrants who had passed through Ellis Island.

Bernardin, 56, the author of the "Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook," and a former Ellis Island interpreter, met many of these immigrants in the mid-1980s while presenting a slide lecture he developed, "Ellis Island - The Golden Door," at senior citizen centers and nursing homes.

Most of the immigrants he met, then in their 80s, had come through Ellis Island in the early 1900s.

"(The book gives) people a sense of importance of family, memory, tradition, hope, and respect for their past and admiration for these people," said Bernardin, who has done a lot more cooking since publishing the book. One of his favorite recipes is a Polish honey cake.

Though some immigrants cooked with olive oil, and others with curry or soy sauce, noting the different ingredients used isn't the only aim of Bernardin's book. With 272 pages of recipes and family stories of people from 30 different countries, the book also illustrates the comfort and connection that food provides and demonstrates how food can make connections to the past.

"If you draw a circle to show what we all have in common, we all needed to eat. I wanted to use food to tell the Ellis Island story," he said.

It's the scents and flavors of the foods, passed down from generation to generation, that resurrect a person, place and time. As the new year approaches, Bernardin's book offers a simple way to summon the past.

The book's plain cover, showing the back of a modestly dressed woman with a child over her shoulder - an image Bernardin found in his lithograph collections of immigrant images - also tells a million stories.

"It jumped out at me. It's sentimental, sweet, and you can't see her face, so it can be anyone," he said.

Bernardin never imagined himself working at Ellis Island, even though he had long collected Statue of Liberty memorabilia, until one day a friend suggested he apply for a job there.

"Much has changed," he said. "The 35 original buildings were very dramatic, and had an almost haunted quality. You would arrive there and wander around. But some of the ghosts have been swept away to accommodate the people."

It wasn't until the curators for the National Park Service at Ellis Island began gathering artifacts to reopen the Ellis Island museum following its restoration that Bernardin realized something was missing.

And that something was food.

Inspired by the conversations he had with seniors citizens about food at Ellis Island, Bernardin put notices in newspapers and sent out press releases, starting a national recipe search asking people to send him family recipes. As the letters poured in, Bernardin received more than just recipes. People sent all sorts of family stories, which he felt compelled to include in his book.

And though his family didn't come to America by the way of Ellis Island, he includes two of his own family recipes: cretons, a pork recipe often used on Boston baked beans, and stuffing for pumpkin or turkey.

Bernardin is originally from Lawrence, Mass., where his father, a French-Canadian immigrant, settled after meeting his mother, an Irish-German American, at a wedding at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.

For the last 33 years Bernardin has made New York City his home, and has no plans to leave the city he finds "addictive."

Also addictive was the full control he had over his book; something he managed to do by remaining self-published. Even though he has not been able to sell his book at mainstream bookstores, Bernardin has sold more than 73,000 copies.

In addition to recipes, the book has immigrant portraits ranging from Italian and Russian to Swedish and Hungarian faces. Also, there are 24 entries by immigrants about food in a chapter called "Immigrant Food Memories."

He also includes a section called, "Tips on Preserving a Family Recipe." The tips include taking notes or tape-recording discussions with family members about recipes, and videotaping the process of preparing food. There is also a model family tree and information on how to trace your family roots, plus a number of resources to begin the search.

It took Bernardin several years to complete the cookbook and another 13 years to promote it while giving his lectures, which he still offers. The book has been featured on a number of television programs, including the History Channel's Modern Marvels and on QVC and the Food Network.

"(People said) 'You're book inspired me to save my family recipes,'" said Bernardin, emphasizing how much this meant to him. "I didn't even know what I was doing."

Today, Bernardin works as an independent, licensed New York City tour guide, and gives private tours of Ellis Island and other New York City landmarks.

But launching himself as a licensed tour guide didn't come easy. Bernardin obtained his license shortly before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and was forced to cancel a number of scheduled tours because of the disaster.

Like many sectors of New York's tourism industry at the time, Bernardin's business suffered, particularly since two of his main attractions - Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty - were closed to the public. Ellis Island did not open for three months after the attacks and the Statue of Liberty was closed until this past summer.

Though Bernardin was unemployed following the attacks, he managed to get by with help from the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and other charitable organizations - for which he reserves a special note of thanks in his book.

As a way of giving something back, last Christmas Bernardin organized a food drive for St. Frances Xavier Church in New York City, and wound up helping more than 1,000 families. He has also made it a tradition to grow out his white beard and then, wearing a Santa costume, he visits bars in New York City to recruit people to help him with his drives.

This year, he's doing a toy drive to service the Bailey House - which helps HIV-positive families.

"This is my opportunity to give back," he said. "I dress up and run around and speak to bar managers to start these drives."

For more information about the Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook, visit http://www.ellisislandcookbook.com/. To contact Tom Bernardin, call (212) 229-0202 or e-mail Ellisbook@aol.com.

24 Dec 04 - 12:30 AM (#1364660)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Police dog goes down taking nazi off the streets
By Les Kennedy
December 24, 2004

Titan ... 18 months of service before being killed.

White supremacist Luke Curtis thought he was unstoppable - until he met Police Dog 33, a German shepherd known to his handler as Titan.

Curtis had told his girlfriend he would chop up two men with an axe to show her what he was really like. He then took an axe and threatened her father.

Early on Thursday he stepped out of his home in Barbara Boulevard, Seven Hills with a carving knife in each hand ranting neo-Nazi slogans.

The police had him surrounded and were prepared to do anything to bring him down without using bullets.

As the 23-year-old apprentice boilermaker approached the police line that had been placed around the house seven hours earlier, officers shot him with an electric charge from a dart gun. He kept coming and kept ranting.

Police shot him three times with a "bean bag" shot-gun.

But Curtis kept coming, and broke through the police line, still holding the knives.

Senior Constable Sean McDowell then set Titan on his heels. The three-year-old attack dog had served 18 months on the force and was a pet to Constable McDowell's two young children when kennelled at his home.

Titan chased Curtis for about 50 metres before biting into his left arm and forcing him to drop one of the knives. But Curtis plunged the other blade three times into Titan's chest.

By then police had caught up and managed to wrestle Curtis onto the road as he struggled and screamed. But the damage had been done. Titan was dying.

The police account of the siege and Titan's role in capturing Curtis were revealed in a statement of facts read by Magistrate Jennifer Betts when Curtis appeared in Blacktown Court on Thursday charged with nine offences including abduction and aggravated cruelty to an animal.

The Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney, said that Titan's body would be sent to a taxidermist for preservation then put on display at the NSW Police Academy.

He also announced the creation of a Titan Memorial Award, which would be presented each year to the best handler and dog for outstanding police work.

Ms Betts said she was alarmed at Curtis's neo-Nazi ravings and that the offence had happened while on parole for assaulting police and carrying a knife in a public place.

"Certainly the welfare and protection of the community is paramount," she said in refusing bail and ordering Curtis to reappear in Penrith Local Court on January 14.

24 Dec 04 - 02:00 AM (#1364684)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

What a nasty piece of work he is!

Robin, your attention is required at the Mudcat Tavern. Nurse Ratched has been called for several times. Can you locate her for us, do you think? :)

SRS

24 Dec 04 - 06:11 AM (#1364750)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Since I don't know who she really is....

27 Dec 04 - 01:57 AM (#1364860)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This was a little "card of thanks" published on the obituary page in the Everett Herald yesterday:

Darrington is a tight-knit little town that didn't used to accept outsiders easily (there are stories of violent encounters). With the reengineered highway and better maintenance they're not trapped in their little mountain town each winter, but they're still good at looking out for each other. A friend of mine works as a home-health worker up there, spending a few hours a day looking out for a neighbor. I can easily imagine she or someone like her performing the necessary tasks outlined in the thank-you card.

SRS

20 Jan 05 - 11:03 AM (#1383229)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Ouch!

Woman Gives Birth to Giant Baby
January 20, 2005 7:57 AM EST

SAO PAULO, Brazil - A woman in northeastern Brazil has given birth to what one doctor called a "giant baby," a boy weighing 16.7 pounds.

Francisca Ramos dos Santos, 38, gave birth to the healthy boy named Ademilton on Tuesday at a hospital in Salvador, 900 miles northeast of Sao Paulo. He was the largest baby born at the Albert Sabin Maternity Hospital in its 12-year history, the hospital said.

"Obviously the baby was born by Caesarean section," hospital director Rita Leal said. "Both mother and baby are doing just fine."

Ademilton "could truly be considered a giant baby, for he was born weighing what a six-month-old-baby normally weighs," pediatrician Luiz Sena Azul told the Correio da Bahia newspaper.

Santos has four other children - ages 9, 12, 14, and 15 - who were born weighing between 7.7 pounds and 11 pounds.

"She knew Ademilton would be a big baby, but not this big" Leal said. "She, her husband and the hospital staff were caught by surprise."

The average weight for newborns in Brazil is 7.7 pounds for boys and 6.6 pounds for girls.

20 Jan 05 - 12:29 PM (#1383306)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

16 POUNDS!? Jaysus!! Global warming, ya think?

A

20 Jan 05 - 01:47 PM (#1383403)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Bert

This inflation is hitting EVERYWHERE!

24 Jan 05 - 10:03 PM (#1387757)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Posted on Mon, Jan. 24, 2005
Panting to hear more about this one:

Attacker left pants behind, police say

By Aman Batheja, [Fort Worth] Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH - An elderly man was beaten and robbed in his south Fort Worth apartment over the weekend by a woman who left an unusual calling card.

Herman Green, 72, answered a knock at his door Saturday afternoon to find a woman he had never met. She asked him if he had any cigarettes. When Green said no, the woman grabbed Green's cane and beat him with it, according to a police report.

The woman then searched Green's pockets until she found his wallet and took it, the report states.

Before leaving the scene, the woman removed her blue jeans and left them on the floor, according to the report. The woman was wearing additional clothing underneath the jeans, the report states.

Police are investigating the incident, described as an aggravated robbery, robbery Detective Mike Baggott said.

Baggott said he was not ready to explain why the woman left behind her pants but surmised that she might have worn more than one pair because of cold weather.

"Why she would take one pair off is of course not clear," Baggott said.

Anyone with information about the robbery can call Crime Stoppers

24 Jan 05 - 11:29 PM (#1387804)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Obviously she had something mixed up in her genes...

25 Jan 05 - 06:31 PM (#1388529)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Maybe took them off cause she thought she might have got blood on them from beating the guy?

27 Jan 05 - 09:14 AM (#1390137)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Amos

Thieves prefer coffee to cars

German detectives are hunting thieves who broke into a car showroom and stole only the coffee machine.

Dozens of brand new Citroen cars were parked in the showroom in Bonn and the keys were on the wall.

But the thieves ignored all the new motors, and instead unplugged and made off with the coffee machine.

Bonn police spokesman Robert Scholten said: "The coffee machine was a pretty good one but not worth as much as a new car.

"Staff only discovered the theft when they went to make a drink in the kitchen and realised the machine was missing."

The showroom which was owned by the Citroen main dealer in Bonn is on the main street. Police so far have no clues as to the identity of the culprits.

28 Jan 05 - 02:06 AM (#1390969)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

While they were investigating this crime, somebody broke into the Police Station and stole the toilet. The Police have nothing to go on...

28 Jan 05 - 02:14 AM (#1390971)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Porn star hawks cellphone 'moan tones'

28.01.05
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10008401

NEW YORK - This is one cellphone you might not want to set to "High & Vibrate."

Porn star Jenna Jameson is now hawking her "moan tones."

For $2.50 ($NZ3.52) fans of the ubiquitous porno queen can choose from a variety of moans, grunts and lurid sexual noises all recorded by the blond bombshell.

If that's not enough, Jameson will talk dirty to you when your phones rings, in English or Spanish.

Jameson, who recently wrote a best-selling memoir, has launched the venture with Wicked Wireless, a mobile music and entertainment company.

Also available are colour pictures of the porn star posing naked that can be displayed on your phone for $2.99.

"Rock stars make music tones, porn stars make moan tones," said Dennis Adamo, head of Wicked Wireless. "We thought it would be an interesting novel approach of introducing new content to the mobile users."

Jameson's charms are already being downloaded in Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, and in a couple of weeks will be available from Mexico to Uruguay.

Latin American users can download a moan or a picture for $1.00 each, while US customers will pay $2.50 for a moan and $2.99 for a wallpaper once the service is launched.

Some people were shocked, but others said they wanted more from the product.

"If you can get her to say my name then I would buy it. I need that kind of personal attention," said Martin Gibson.

US users will have to wait to get Jameson on their phones as no mobile carriers in the United States have expressed any interest in carrying the service.

- REUTERS

28 Jan 05 - 02:20 AM (#1390975)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Police introduce stick icon to curb paedophilia
28.01.05
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10008370

Children will be able to instantly report suspected paedophiles prowling the internet in an initiative announced by Australian Federal Police.

Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty launched the Virtual Global Task Force website as part of a worldwide crackdown on online child abuse.

The system allows children visiting such sites as internet chatrooms and email websites to report suspect messages to authorities by clicking on an icon - a stick figure with an eye.

http://www.afp.gov.au/afp/page/media/2005/mr050127vgtwebsitelaunch.pdf

28 Jan 05 - 08:48 AM (#1391172)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/27/jailed_for_using_a_n.html

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Jailed for using a nonstandard browser

A Londonder made a tsnuami-relief donation using lynx -- a text-based
browser used by the blind, Unix-users and others -- on Sun's Solaris
operating system. The site-operator decided that this "unusual" event in
the system log indicated a hack-attempt, and the police broke down the
donor's door and arrested him. From a mailing list:

    For donating to a Tsunami appeal using Lynx on Solaris 10. BT
[British Telecom] who run the donation management system misread an
access log and saw hmm thats a non standard browser not identifying it's
type and it's doing strange things. Trace that IP. Arrest that hacker.

    Armed police, a van, a police cell and national news later the
police have gone in SWAT styley and arrested someone having their lunch.

    Out on bail till next week and preparing to make a lot of very bad
PR for BT and the Police....

    So just goes to show if you use anything other than Firefox or IE
and you rely on someone else to interogate access logs or IDS logs you
too could be sitting in a paper suit in a cell :(

28 Jan 05 - 02:58 PM (#1391573)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This one has a complex set of issues attached. And the end of it--new shoes and coats for poor children. It's cold down here now, and they used the money for necessities. Too bad drug dealers aren't altruistic, or they'd see the charm of this outcome.

Dallas Kids Find Pile of Cash, Spend It
January 28, 2005

DALLAS - A convenience store owner in one of Dallas' poorest neighborhoods was amazed when she started seeing children from the elementary school across the street buying candy and chips with $100 bills. "One boy came in here with a $100 bill and asked for change," Charlene Williams said of an incident on Saturday. When she told the boy he needed to be careful with his "mama's money," he told her: "This ain't my mama's money. This is my money." It turned out that a youngster had apparently found tens of thousands of dollars in suspected drug money and was handing it out to others.

Soon, though, some men came looking for the money, spreading fear through the South Dallas neighborhood. Over the past few days, parents have told police that men had come to their doors, threatening their children and demanding their money back. The elementary school was so rife with rumors and threats of a drive-by shooting that it was locked down for an hour on Wednesday, and about 200 of the 600 children stayed home the next day.

On Thursday night, a man was arrested and accused of abducting and beating a 12-year-old boy who had some of the money. The boy was later returned home. Before he was jailed on $5 million bail, the suspect, 23-year-old Sylvespa Adams, told KDFW-TV that he never threatened anyone and that the money had been stolen from him. He disputed it was drug money, as police suspect. "I'm not no kidnapper," he said. "I work."

The boy's mother told The Dallas Morning News that her son had spent part of the money and given away the rest. She said she assured Adams that she would pay him back in installments. "I don't know what else to do," she told the newspaper, speaking on condition of anonymity. "These people already know where I stay."

In another incident, Erie Roy told the newspaper that she was watching television with her 12-year-old son Tuesday when two men stormed through her open front door with two of the boy's friends. She said one of the men kept his hand in his pocket as if he had a gun, and one of the boys was crying. Roy said one of the men threatened her son by telling him: "I don't have no problem with killing you. I want my money right now."

"These are drug dealers. If they come back - I'm afraid," she said, sobbing. "I know they're going to hurt me. What am I supposed to do?"

Roy said that her youngest son was offered money by neighborhood kids Sunday but did not take any.

Lt. Jan Easterling, a police spokeswoman, said Thursday that detectives believe the youngsters may have found anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000. On Friday, investigators said were still trying to determine who found the money, where and exactly how much. There were no additional suspects, and none of the children had been charged with a crime. "Definitely people are saying they're afraid," Easterling said. "They're afraid for their kids."

At the Joseph J. Rhoads Learning Center, teachers became suspicious after seeing one boy passing out money at school Monday. And Williams, the store owner, said she also noticed children with new shoes and coats. "All you have to do is see the ones with the new stuff on them and you know," she said.

Security remained tight at the school Friday, though the number of students absent was down to about 100. "They feel a little better now that this alleged suspect turned himself in," district spokeswoman Sandra Guerrero said.

29 Jan 05 - 07:57 AM (#1392165)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Cluin

It's a good thing they watched it to the end just to be sure.

SEX MOVIE MIX-UP SHOCKS COUPLE

A devout Baptist couple who bought a Doris Day DVD from a supermarket were shocked to find a sex film instead. Alan and Anne Leigh-Browne, from Wellington, Somerset, had been expecting to enjoy The Pajama Game.

Instead they were confronted by Italian sex film - Tettone che Passione, which translates "Breasts, What a Passion" .

"Some topless young women appeared and started talking in Italian... it's not what you expect from a Doris Day film," Mr Leigh-Browne said.

Retired doctor Mr Leigh-Brown, 67, said he picked up the film, which was sealed in plastic wrapping, for £2.99 from the bargain bin of a Safeway supermarket in Taunton.

No 'plot'

The couple, regular attendees at their local Baptist church, settled down with a cup of tea to watch the 1957 musical which has a U (universal) certificate.

"It was a pretty raunchy, explicit film, it certainly pulled no punches," Mr Leigh-Browne said.

"My wife and I were very shocked but we watched it until the end because we couldn't believe what we were seeing.

"The film became progressively more graphic, there was no plot to it, it was just sex."

Alan and his wife Anne, 60, a retired teacher, complained to Safeway the next day and all copies of The Pajama Game were removed from the store.

29 Jan 05 - 10:14 AM (#1392228)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Yeah -- what if it had turned out to have Doris Day in it, three-quarters of the way through?

A

29 Jan 05 - 02:33 PM (#1392460)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I expected the punchline to be that all copies of The Pajama Game sold out immediately. :)

01 Feb 05 - 01:59 AM (#1395310)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I'll state here that I oppose the death penalty, but don't see it going away any time soon. What is so bizarre about the really short loop in this argument is highlighted below. The guy admits the horrible murder of multiple women, he's on death row, and he's depressed. Only a bureaucrat could decide that a suicidal death row inmate out of appeals is unsuited to be put to death because he wants to die. Go figure.

Conn. Again Delays Serial Killer Execution
January 31, 2005

HARTFORD, Conn. - The state postponed plans Monday to execute a serial killer after he agreed to have his mental competency examined, delaying for at least a month what would be New England's first execution in 45 years. The execution was first scheduled for Wednesday and was postponed three times last week as new court challenges emerged. It was set for 9 p.m. Monday before being put off again.

Michael Ross, a 45-year-old Cornell University graduate, has confessed to eight murders in Connecticut and New York in the early 1980s. He said last year that he wanted to die to end the pain for the families of his victims. But the attorney hired by Ross to expedite his execution now says new evidence raises questions about his competency to "volunteer" to be executed.

"On Friday, new information was revealed to me that made me question Mr. Ross' competency," attorney T. R. Paulding said in a motion. "The last 48 hours have reinforced my belief that the execution of Michael Ross should be delayed to determine whether he is competent. New and significant evidence has come to light that I simply cannot ignore." He said Ross' decision to drop his appeals remains unchanged, but he "recognizes that serious questions have been raised" about his competence and he wants a more thorough evaluation.

Prosecutors said they would try to obtain a new death warrant as soon as possible and fight to prove Ross' competency in court. It is unknown when those issues will be resolved; a new death warrant would set Ross' execution date for no earlier than March, although lawyers say it could be months before all the legal hurdles are cleared. "I long for the day when we can say that we've forgotten about Michael Ross, and I want everyone to remember that we should never forget his victims," Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said. "It is my hope that sometime in the not-so-distant future we will finally be able to give their families a sense of justice."

Ross was about an hour from execution Saturday morning when Paulding announced he had requested a postponement of the lethal injection. The decision came after U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny accused Paulding of not adequately investigating new evidence in the case. Paulding said he is persuaded of the need to explore a phenomenon known as "death row syndrome." [in other words, he's suicidal. He's on death row with a death wish--can't have the state participate in suicide!] Public defenders have argued that years of harsh conditions on death row have in effect coerced Ross to drop his appeals.

04 Feb 05 - 08:46 PM (#1399586)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

She's Australian and mentally ill - yet immigration locked her up
By Andra Jackson
February 5, 2005

Mystery woman ... Cornelia Rau
Photo: Supplied

She has spent the past 10 months in immigration detention, her identity a mystery.

But a mentally ill woman, Cornelia Rau, has lived in Australia since she was one, and since last March her distressed family had thought she was dead.

The 39-year-old, who suffers from schizophrenia and is a permanent resident of Australia, was last seen in March after she escaped from the psychiatric unit of Manly Hospital.

A Qantas flight attendant until 2000, Cornelia Rau has been officially listed as missing by NSW police since August. But despite a national appeal for information in November, no trace of her was found.

Until two days ago, when her parents found out that their daughter was still alive but in Baxter detention centre in South Australia, a centre for refugees denied asylum.

Ms Rau's sister, Chris Rau, a Sydney journalist, read a Herald article last Monday about a mystery German-speaking woman held at Baxter, known only as "Anna". She called police, who had Baxter authorities fax a photograph which confirmed "Anna" was her missing sister.

"We're just relieved that she is alive," Ms Rau said.

Her parents, who planned to wait until their daughter was in a more stable condition before they went to visit her, were finding it hard to come to terms with how Cornelia, born in Germany but an Australian resident since she was 18-months-old, could be held in immigration detention, Ms Rau said.

They were also bewildered why the department could not establish her identity when police had her details.

"To put it kindly, there was obviously a woeful gap in co-ordination between the police and the Department of Immigration, especially when you consider how many dozens of languages Australian residents speak," she said. "My mum in particular lay awake at night imagining all sorts of far-fetched scenarios."

Ms Rau was first taken into detention in April. She had been staying near an Aboriginal camp at Coen, in far north Queensland. The Aborigines became concerned that she was sick and took her to Cairns police station.

Senator Kerry Nettle, of the Greens, last night called for an inquiry into "this staggering case of mismanagement and abuse".

The Opposition's immigration spokesman, Laurie Ferguson, accused Immigration Department officials and Queensland police of ineptitude.

"How a mentally ill female Australian resident ends up in solitary confinement in the Baxter detention centre is mind boggling. Most Australians would find this situation totally reprehensible," he said.

"Suddenly its dangerous to speak a second language in Australia."

During her three months in Baxter, Ms Rau was kept in an isolation cell for a week and then in a high-security unit locked in a room on her own for 18 hours a day, said a refugee advocate, Pamela Curr.

Detainees noticed her strange behaviour and distress and asked refugee advocates to help.

Queensland police said she was found in Coen, north of Cairns around April. They said she gave false names which they checked against databases.

"When these checks and other inquiries failed to positively identify the woman, police formed the opinion she may be a suspected non-citizen because of statements she made and the language she was speaking," a Queensland police spokesman said.

"She was transported to Cairns and handed over to immigration officials after efforts to identify her failed."

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some Aussies are very afraid that this will be used as a reason for an "Australia Card" with national compulsory fingerprint records.

It could even have been engineered as a justification.

I wonder how many other people have been spirited away by the State if they happened to mutter in another language.

04 Feb 05 - 08:52 PM (#1399590)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Adopt a Sniper' fund-raiser (article & rebuttal)

'Adopt a Sniper' fund-raiser shot down
Marquette University says 'no' to Republican students' plan
Thursday, February 3, 2005 Posted: 5:10 PM EST (2210 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/03/life.sniper.reut/index.html

CHICAGO (Reuters) -- A Catholic university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin has blocked an attempt by Republican students to raise money for a group called "Adopt a Sniper" that raises money for U.S. sharp-shooters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The students were selling bracelets bearing the motto "1 Shot 1 Kill No Remorse I Decide".

"Clearly the rhetoric of that organization raised some questions and we had some strong objections as a Jesuit university," Marquette University school spokeswoman Brigid O'Brien said Thursday.

The students, representing a group called College Republicans, originally got permission to set up a table at the student union to raise money for U.S. troops in Iraq.

But they chose to promote a group called Adopt a Sniper, which says on its Web site it supports snipers deployed by the United States armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The group says it "helps real snipers get the real gear they need to help keep us safe."

The brainchild of a Texas police SWAT officer Adopt a Sniper (www.adoptasniper.org) has raised thousands of dollars in cash and gear to supplement the kit of sharp shooters in U.S. combat platoons.

Among products sold on the site is a $15 coin with the imprinted phrase "Assistance From A Distance."

Copyright 2005 Reuters.

-------------- Rebuttal Article:

MU Administration Suppresses CR ''Support Our Troops'' Table
http://www.murepublicans.com/modules.php?
name=News&file=article&sid=167

For Immediate Release
Contact: Brandon Henak, Chair, 414-243-9558

Once again the Marquette University Administration has taken its ultra-liberal inclinations to the extreme, violating its own commitment to academic freedom and ideological diversity. Yesterday afternoon, a University official abruptly suspended an approved "Support our Troops" table the College Republicans at Marquette University (CRs) set up to benefit Adopt a Sniper, a 501c(3) organization helping our troops in the Middle East. Today, the University Administration issued a memo canceling the table for the rest of the week.

Students were volunteering at an Office of Student Development (OSD)-approved "Support Our Troops" table in the Alumni Memorial Union this afternoon, selling Adopt a Sniper trinkets modeled after the Lance Armstrong "Livestrong" bands. During a transition between volunteers, OSD staff canceled the table, confiscating the signs and supplies.

Today, OSD Dean Mark McCarthy issued a memorandum stating "this fundraising activity does not comport to the University's mission." He said the Adopt a Sniper program was "clearly provocative" and ran contrary to Catholic values.

CRs chairman Brandon Henak decried the Administration's suppression tactics. "Our group saw this table as an opportunity for our fellow students to support our troops by making peace possible through victory," Henak said. "This program directly benefits the men on the front lines, who use this material to eliminate terrorists and protect the lives of other American troops and innocent Iraqi civilians."

"It is an absolute shame that this Administration is so blinded by its liberal bent that they refuse to recognize that the success of our servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan is crucial to building a safe, free, and ultimately more peaceful world," Henak said. He pointed out that the Catholic Church has long upheld the tenets of Just War Theory as a legitimate way for governments to achieve long-term peace through military action.

Henak also noted the proud American foreign policy tradition of "Peace through Strength," stretching from Teddy Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

He concluded by saying, "If Marquette is serious about its Catholic values, perhaps they can start by ending the scandal of granting University honors to pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage politicians and dissident theologians who directly perpetuate heresies to our student body."

Adopt a Sniper, the group chosen by CRs as the beneficiary of their efforts, has garnered press coverage from Fox News, Reuters, The New York Times, and Stars and Stripes for its innovative program. Donations taken at the CR table are sent to the foundation, which is run by US-based law enforcement and retired military. These officers buy highly-specialized sniper equipment, including unique body armor, flashlights, and tactical gear that military procurement does not always provide. For more information, please visit:
http://americansnipers.org/faq.html.

04 Feb 05 - 10:43 PM (#1399663)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Holy-oh-moses-oh-jesus-h-christ, as my mom used to occasionally say. That must be one heckuva liberal college to shut down that action, eh?

SRS

05 Feb 05 - 08:16 AM (#1399842)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,foolestroupe - "I come fru da window!"

Re: Mystery woman ... Cornelia Rau

She was mishandled by 3 separate Govt Depts - the Mental Health Dept assessed her (previously diagnosed as Schizophrenic) as having a few minor problems but perfectly sane - Immigration (because she was speaking only German) contacted several countries to try to identify her (so she was classified as a 'non-citizen'!!!!!) - and she was placed in solitary in Baxter - where she was locked up for 20 out of 24 hours - when let out, she would sit on the ground and eat dirt and mumble in German.... nobody checked with the Police Depts Missing Persons List... a family friend heard about this woman with strange behaviour and checked her out and was surprised...

Makes you wonder just how many other insane Australian 'non-citizens' have been deported.....

07 Feb 05 - 12:31 PM (#1401648)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,heric

Boy, 4, drives mom's car to video store and back

07 Feb 05 - 05:18 PM (#1401907)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Hmm, I posted a correction which seems to have been purged...

"when let out, she would sit on the ground and eat dirt and mumble in German"

should read
"when let out, she would tear off her clothes and run around naked, sit on the ground and eat dirt and mumble in German"

07 Feb 05 - 06:19 PM (#1401949)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

That is markedly more dramatic!

07 Feb 05 - 09:30 PM (#1402117)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JennyO

A 4-year-old boy drove his mother's car to a video store a quarter-mile from their apartment in this town about 15 miles north of Grand Rapids.........................................It was the third time in six weeks that a west Michigan child was caught driving a vehicle.

*sings* baby you can drive my car...

08 Feb 05 - 04:23 PM (#1402903)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

These stories always contain such pathos, as with the grown women, Iranian conjoined twins who wanted to be separated a couple of years ago.

Rare Surgery Set for Peruvian Baby
February 08, 2005

Peruvian doctor Luis Rubio play with baby Milagros Cerron, nine-month-old, in a public hospital in Lima, Peru on Friday, Feb. 4, 2005. MARTIN MEJIA

LIMA, Peru - Milagros Cerron smiles, babbles and fidgets in the arms of her mother like any healthy 9-month-old, but she is no ordinary baby. Milagros was born with her legs fused in a tight coating of skin - giving her the appearance of a mermaid. "When I saw her for the first time, I felt pain," said Milagros' mother, 19-year-old Sara Arauco. "In that moment I thought, 'What will she do with her life? Was God going to take her away or not? Was she was going to live or not?'"

A team of Peruvian doctors believe Milagros is the perfect candidate for surgery to separate her legs - something that has never been tried before in Peru. They plan to attempt the operation Feb. 24 and hope that after a few years of treatment, Milagros will be able to live a normal life. "Our dream is for Milagros to be able to run, walk and play like every normal child," said Dr. Luis Rubio, the leader of the medical team.

Milagros, who looks months younger than her actual age, was born with a rare congenital defect known as sirenomelia, or "mermaid syndrome." The condition occurs in one out of every 70,000 births and there are only three known cases of children with the affliction alive in the world today. The deformity is almost always fatal within days of delivery due to serious defects to vital organs. But Milagros - whose name means "miracles" in Spanish - has survived. Although most of Milagros' organs, including her heart and lungs, are in perfect condition, she was born with serious internal defects, including a deformed left kidney and a very small right one located very low in her body. In addition, her digestive and urinary tracts and her genitals share a single tube.

Sirenomelia is usually fatal because of complications associated with abnormal kidney and bladder development and function. Milagros' doctors have managed to stave off kidney and bladder infections, allowing her to continue to gain weight and grow, Rubio said. His medical team has been studying the case of Tiffany Yorks, a 16-year-old American girl born with sirenomelia whose legs were successfully separated when she was a baby. Rubio said Yorks' surgeon, Mutaz Habal, has provided invaluable advice to the Peruvian doctors.

"There is not a great amount of experience with this in the world," Rubio said. "It is also unique in our country." The operation will be performed by a group of physicians, including trauma surgeons, plastic surgeons, cardiovascular surgeons, neurologists, gynecologists and a pediatrician, he said.

During a recent hospital checkup, Arauco and Milagros' father, Ricardo Cerron, 24, watched with tenderness as their child was placed on a hospital bed and instinctively made her way toward them. First, she sat, leaning on her two hands, struggling to maintain balance. Then she twisted around and fell to her side. Lying face down, she slowly pulled herself with her arms across the length of the mattress until she reached them.

"The truth is when I saw my baby when she was born I was filled with desperation," Cerron recalled. Cerron, an electrical technician, was unemployed when his wife gave birth to Milagros in a hospital in Peru's Andes. He left Arauco at their home in the mountain region of Chupaca to recover from childbirth and brought the baby by bus 125 miles west, to Lima to seek help. Milagros was admitted to one of Lima's public hospitals, where the operation will take place.

"Right now the child has extraordinary psychomotor development," Rubio said. "She has a marvelous relation with her environment, with her parents. She babbles words and has her own personality." To prepare Milagros for the surgery, silicone bags will be gradually inserted between her ankles and knees to slowly separate the two fused legs and stretch her skin to close over the incisions at the end of the surgery. The operation is expected to last about five hours, Rubio said, and will begin with disentangling the internal network of arteries and veins that surround her fused legs.

Milagros will require additional operations in the next 10-15 years to properly rotate her feet forward and reconstruct her genitals and urinary tract. "I have great faith that my daughter will come out OK and be well," Arauco said, "that she will stay with me, that she will be like a normal child."

09 Feb 05 - 12:08 AM (#1403356)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

America's Sexiest Plumber

Last Update: 1/19/2005 11:44:31 AM
By BRYAN ROURKE - The Providence Journal

"Every little girl imagines herself in a pageant, Miss America kind of thing," Lori Sardinha-Costa said. "This is not quite the pageant I envisioned as a child, but that's okay. I'm fine with it."

More than 250 plumbers from around the country entered the contest, which was judged by a panel of people from American Standard and the Plumbing Heating Cooling Contractors National Association. Personality, professionalism and, of course, appearance were the criteria.

From all the entrants, the vast majority of whom were men, 13 finalists were chosen for the 2005 America's Sexiest Plumber calendar. (One month features two brothers.) Sardinha-Costa was selected the overall winner, receiving a trip for two to next month's Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla.

Sardinha-Costa's picture appears in the calendar for the month of July. "I say that's because it's the hottest month," she said.

Sardinha-Costa, who lives in Fall River, Mass., has worked for the family business, M. Sardinha & Son Plumbing, for several years, the last two as a plumber.

"I just decided to get my apprentice license and basically get out there and get my hands dirty," she said. "My dad is reaching retirement age and so I need to secure my future."

The business has six plumbers, Sardinha-Costa the only woman. She's unusual in a male-dominated industry, not just for her gender, but her appearance.

"I still like to wear lipstick and do my hair," she said.

Since winning the contest, Sardinha & Son Plumbing has reportedly received lots of calls requesting not simply a plumber, but specifically Sardinha-Costa.

"My uncle came into the office from a call," Sardinha-Costa said. "He said 'We wanted the blonde. What are you doing here?' They were a little disappointed when they saw Angelo."

Others have called not to schedule plumbing service from Sardinha-Costa, but a social visit.

"An older gentleman said he wanted me to come to his house and have lunch with him," Sardinha-Costa said. "He said it was his dying wish. Let him dream."

Sardinha-Costa is married; she has been for 10 years.

"It's bragging rights for my husband," Sardinha-Costa said. "He's married to America's sexiest plumber."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)

09 Feb 05 - 12:15 AM (#1403359)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Beer Truck Crashes into Garage

Last Update: 2/8/2005 8:19:10 PM
Posted By: Matt Molloy

A Sayre man got a delivery he wasn't expecting Tuesday night when a Coors Light beer truck crashed into his garage.

Edward Namet came home to find his garage in ruins and an unattended beer truck to blame.

Witnesses say the driver stepped out of the truck to make a delivery. When he returned the truck was rolling down the street and smashed right into Namet's garage.

"I had this car, this brand new car in there and took it out this afternoon, so they are very fortunate that they didn't hit the car too," said Namet.

There is still no word on why the truck started rolling in the first place.

The accident is under investigation.

09 Feb 05 - 01:07 AM (#1403384)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Cluin

'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'

(edited)
A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job--including in the sex industry--or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime.

09 Feb 05 - 06:41 AM (#1403540)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,foolestroupe - "I come fru da window!"

"AN INTENSE CYBER affair between a Jordanian man and woman turned ugly hen the couple met and turned out to be already married -- to each other."

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21118

09 Feb 05 - 06:50 AM (#1403544)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,foolestroupe - "I come fru da window!"

Rau is only an extreme example - our prisons are full of mentally ill people
February 9, 2005

Services to support people with psychoses have been shamefully neglected, writes Allan Fels.

Over the past few days the tragic story of Cornelia Rau has unfolded to an increasingly incredulous public. How is it that for the past 10 months she has been held in prison and in a detention centre when her mental distress was so apparent to her fellow detainees and the Aboriginal people who discovered her?

Has the mental health system let her and her family down?

This case is of particular interest for me. Eight years ago my daughter Isabella, now 33, was diagnosed with schizophrenia after many years of bizarre behaviour. Not only has her illness had a major impact on her life, but it has also affected those who love her.

While she is a charming, intelligent, loving daughter and medication generally relieves her psychotic symptoms, she still has difficulties distinguishing reality and requires support with everyday living.

If Isabella had not been well treated medically and closely cared for, her life could have taken a similarly disastrous turn to that of Rau - who is now, at last, receiving psychiatric care at Glenside Hospital in Adelaide.

One of the most concerning aspects of Rau's situation is that she was clearly severely unwell, distressed and in need of care, yet was allowed to drift into the no-man's-land of an immigration detention centre - where she might still be languishing indefinitely but for the efforts of asylum-seeker support groups.

This is but one particularly flagrant example of how people affected by schizophrenia and other mental illnesses are neglected and allowed to drift into homelessness, neglect and, in many cases, prison or some other inappropriate institution.

While mental health services have been deinstitutionalised over recent years, there are disturbing signs that people affected by mental illness are effectively being "re-institutionalised" in prisons. In NSW - where the prison population has increased by 50 per cent in the past 10 years - 46 per cent of inmates at reception have a mental disorder and the prevalence of psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia is 30 times greater than the norm.

People sometimes ask if deinstitutionalisation has gone too far. The truth is that it hasn't been given the chance to go anywhere. While the old psychiatric institutions have rightly been closed, community-based services have never been given sufficient resources to provide an adequate replacement - leaving the prison system (and in this case, the detention system) to act as a sump.

It is necessary to state the obvious: that adequate funding from federal and state governments is needed urgently to enable mental health services to provide treatment and care when it is needed - not long after, when a crisis develops and the person and their family have endured so much unnecessary distress.

We know that 1 per cent of Australians - 200,000 people - will experience schizophrenia and three quarters of those will develop it between the ages of 16 and 25. It is a treatable illness and the earlier it is treated the better.

With proper diagnosis and treatment, people with schizophrenia are no more likely to be violent than people being treated for any other illness such as cancer or heart disease.

Expert opinion is that people are born with a vulnerability to develop the illness which can be easily triggered by stress, injury or drug use. People do not develop schizophrenia because they are "weak-willed", nor because they have poor parenting.

Schizophrenia is a costly illness: in 2001 it cost $1.85 billion. More than a third of these costs were borne by people with the illness and their family carers. Many costs were a consequence of the illness going untreated.

It is clear that with the closing of the large psychiatric institutions governments grossly underestimated the number and range of community services that would be needed to provide humane and effective care.

Treatment should include access to good medications and psychological treatments, improved community-based supported accommodation, rehabilitation and recreation programs, help for families and other carers and an end to stigma.

This last point is critical. Stigma associated with schizophrenia means that people affected are thought to be less worthy than others and are treated less well as a result.

At the individual level it means that finding somewhere to live, study, work and play is made more difficult. At a government level it means mental health services are not funded equitably - mental health receives 8 per cent of the health budget, yet is responsible for 25 per cent of the illness burden.

Rau did not choose to be ill and this situation could have been averted by earlier diagnosis and effective treatment. For all our sakes we need to demand more from our governments.

Professor Allan Fels, AO, is dean of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government and an associate of SANE Australia, the national mental health charity. http://www.sane.org

09 Feb 05 - 07:04 AM (#1403548)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,foolestroupe - "I come fru da window!"

PS.
Professor Fells used to be the previous head of the ACCC. I remember seeing a TV doco that mentioned that he had a family member with a problem.

09 Feb 05 - 02:32 PM (#1403667)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST

Numerous non-flying arboreal vertebrates use controlled descent (either parachuting or gliding sensu stricto) to avoid predation or to locate resources, and directional control during a jump or fall is thought to be an important stage in the evolution of flight. Here we show that workers of the neotropical ant Cephalotes atratus L. (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) use directed aerial descent to return to their home tree trunk with >80% success during a fall. Videotaped falls reveal that C. atratus workers descend abdomen-first through steep glide trajectories at relatively high velocities; a field experiment shows that falling ants use visual cues to locate tree trunks before they hit the forest floor. Smaller workers of C. atratus, and smaller species of Cephalotes more generally, regain contact with their associated tree trunk over shorter vertical distances than do larger workers. Surveys of common arboreal ants suggest that directed descent occurs in most species of the tribe Cephalotini and arboreal Pseudomyrmecinae, but not in arboreal ponerimorphs or Dolichoderinae. This is the first study to document the mechanics and ecological relevance of this form of locomotion in the Earth's most diverse lineage, the insects.

11 Feb 05 - 07:23 PM (#1406524)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Oregon Man Arrested for E-Mail Suicide Pact
February 11, 2005
Grants Pass, Ore.

link

A man used an Internet chat room to try to set up a mass suicide on Valentine's Day involving more than two dozen women across the United States and Canada, authorities said. Gerald Krein, 26, was arrested Wednesday at his mother's mobile home in Klamath Falls and faces charges of solicitation to commit murder, sheriff's deputies said. Investigators are subpoenaing chat room records to try to contact people who may have planned to take part in the suicide.

Detectives learned of the plan from a woman in Canada who said she saw the message in a Yahoo chat room that had the words "Suicide Ideology" in the title. The woman, who was not identified by authorities, told detectives she was going to take part in the suicide but had second thoughts when another chat room participant said she would do it and talked about killing her two children before taking her own life, said Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger.

"Our primary goal is to try to locate where these endangered children might be," Evinger said. "We need to investigate where these other computers are. Hopefully we can intervene if anyone still has the notion to follow through with this." The chat room participants planned to log in on Valentine's Day and commit suicide while keeping in touch over the Internet, Evinger said. The chat room is no longer active.

Krein was looking for women and children to join in the suicide, said sheriff's Capt. Chris Montenaro. Investigators believe the total number, including Krein, was 32, Montenaro said. Deputies seized Krein's computer and a Web cam, and the suspect was being held without bail. Krein had moved to Klamath Falls from the Sacramento, Calif., area about a year ago to take care of his ailing father, Evinger said. Neighbors told the Herald and News newspaper that Krein was a burly man who favored tie-dyed T-shirts and looked "like a mountain man."

District Attorney Ed Caleb said he is taking the solicitations seriously. "There is always a chance this is a joke, but our position is in this world, any time a person makes these kinds of overt actions, they need to be looked into," Caleb said. A grand jury will convene on Monday to determine if Krein will face additional charges, Caleb said.

13 Feb 05 - 08:41 PM (#1408690)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

'Everybody knew who she was except Immigration' - National - www.smh.com.au

'Everybody knew who she was except Immigration'
By Russell Skelton
February 13, 2005
The Sun-Herald

Cornelia Rau, the Australian woman who immigration authorities could not identity for 10 months, was well known to Federal Police, Foreign Affairs and Trade officials, two state police forces and leading hospitals in Queensland and NSW.

Ms Rau was once taken to hospital by police after she was found unconscious in her underwear on Bondi Beach.

Documents passed on to the South Australian Government say Ms Rau, a diagnosed schizophrenic, had accumulated files in a wide range of state and federal agencies as her illness and psychotic episodes over six years and in various parts of Australia and Europe required their constant involvement.

Since 1998 she has regularly appeared on the missing persons list in Australia and overseas. Her disappearance from Sydney Airport in 1999 after returning from Europe led to Federal Police attempts to try to find her.

She accumulated a file at the Foreign Affairs Department in 2002 after she applied for a false passport and had brushes with the law in Italy where she was treated at a Rome psychiatric hospital.

NSW police picked her up at least three times, including the time she was discovered at Bondi and taken to St Vincent's Hospital.

A senior South Australian Government official said: "Amazingly, everybody including authorities in Monaco knew who Cornelia Rau was except the Immigration Department. The real question is how could Immigration have not known who she was for 10 months?"

There was serious bungling inside the Baxter immigration detention centre over Ms Rau's diagnosis and treatment, exacerbated by the deep-seated culture of denial on the part of the immigration officials in handling detainees suffering from acute psychotic and personality disorders caused by prolonged periods of detention.

Inquiries show that Baxter resident psychologist Adam Micallef had ordered an urgent psychiatric assessment of Ms Rau just weeks after she arrived and well before detainees and visitors expressed alarm about her erratic and bizarre behaviour.

But the request, made to South Australia's mental health authorities at the Glenside psychiatric hospital in Adelaide - where Ms Rau is currently being treated - in early November, was suddenly withdrawn a week later. "We were told that an assessment was no longer required," a source in the South Australian Government said.

"When you look back on it now, it seems very odd that the request was withdrawn when we now know from the detainees that her behaviour was deteriorating."

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has insisted that Ms Rau, who was mistakenly detained in Baxter for four months, exhibited no signs of psychotic behaviour that would have alerted officials to her true mental state.

But it is understood that Mr Micallef, who was employed by Global Solutions Limited (GSL), the private company contracted to operate Baxter by the Immigration Department, was apparently so alarmed by Ms Rau's behaviour, which included violent verbal outbursts, a refusal to be locked up at night, undressing, and bouts of uncontrollable sobbing, that he called for an outside assessment to determine whether she should be committed to Glenside.

Although Baxter authorities withdrew the request, Mr Micallef renewed it again in early January shortly before he quit Baxter and the employ of GSL. Last week Mr Micallef declined to comment on the Rau case or the circumstances surrounding his sudden departure from Baxter, which led to a breakdown in communications between state authorities wanting to examine Ms Rau and Baxter officials. The wrangling over access continued for almost two weeks. Ms Rau was eventually transferred to Glenside on February 5.

"Under the terms of my employment contract at Baxter I am prevented from speaking to the media," Mr Micallef said.

State health officials said Mr Micallef's departure caused unnecessary delays in moving her to Glenside. "We were happy to co-operate and provide a psychiatric assessment, but we could not locate anybody at Baxter to make arrangements with, valuable days were wasted, nobody was returning calls," an official said.

South Australia's Mental Health Services chief, Jonathan Phillips, last week blasted Baxter and immigration authorities, saying that he had been unable to obtain access to Ms Rau and had offered to conduct any psychiatric assessment of her himself if necessary.

Dr Phillips said he was extremely concerned Ms Rau had been diagnosed by Immigration doctors as having had a personality disorder rather than a mental illness. "I was not happy to accept that, given what we knew about her level of disturbance," he said.

On December 20, when giving evidence in a case involving psychiatric care for a detainee, Mr Micallef told the Federal Court he believed a conflict of interest existed between GSL-employed psychologists and the detainees they were hired to care for.

He told the court that detainees did not know if their files were made available to GSL or the Department of Immigration and he acknowledged under cross-examination that that was a problem.

GSL has ignored repeated requests over the past 12 months to set up a health advisory panel to monitor health needs of 256 detainees held at Baxter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is starting to become a Saga like "Alice's Resturant" or "The Boxer"....

25 Feb 05 - 11:07 PM (#1421214)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Arrrrggghhhh. . . Good for Keri.

Lesbian's Picture in Tux Cut From Yearbook
February 25, 2005

GREEN COVE SPRINGS, Fla. - County school officials are backing a principal's decision to bar a picture of a lesbian student dressed in a tuxedo from the high school yearbook. Sam Ward, principal of Fleming Island High School, said he pulled the senior class picture because Kelli Davis was wearing boy's clothes. His decision was debated Thursday at a Clay County school board meeting that drew 200 people, but the board took no action, and Superintendent David Owens said the decision will stand.

Most of the 24 people who spoke at the meeting supported Kelli Davis. "This is not to be treated as a gay rights issue," said her mother, Cindi Davis. "Rather it's a human rights issue." Others applauded Ward's decision, including Karen Gordon, who said, "When uniformity is compromised, then authority no longer holds."

Officials at the northeastern Florida school have said the picture was pulled from the yearbook because Davis did not follow the rules on dress. School board attorney Bruce Bickner said there is no written dress code for senior pictures, but principals have the authority to set standards.

The student editor of the yearbook, Keri Sewell, was fired after refusing her adviser's order to take the picture out.

26 Feb 05 - 11:39 AM (#1421512)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Third woman sues Koko the gorilla's caretakers over alleged breast-baring request

ASSOCIATED PRESS

4:20 a.m. February 26, 2005

WOODSIDE – A third woman has filed a lawsuit claiming a caretaker for Koko, the world-famous sign-language-speaking gorilla, pressured her to expose her breasts as a way to bond with the animal.

Iris Rivera, 39, sued the Gorilla Foundation this week in San Mateo County Superior Court, saying the foundation's president, Francine Patterson, repeatedly told her to expose her breasts.

Rivera, an administrative assistant at the foundation until she quit last month, claims Patterson told her last year that Koko was signing that "she wants to see your nipples."

Two other former employees of the foundation, Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller, filed similar claims last week.

But while Alperin and Keller refused to expose themselves to Koko, Rivera acquiesced, the lawsuit states.

"She took it as a disagreeable duty of her employment," said Rivera's lawyer, Michael Adams.

An attorney for the foundation said the lawsuits had "no merit."

Rivera's lawsuit alleges sexual and disability discrimination, invasion of privacy and Labor Code violations and seeks unspecified damages.

The Gorilla Foundation was founded in 1976 to promote the preservation and study of gorillas. It's best known for Koko, a 300-pound simian who has mastered a vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs

Someone should let Big Mick know...

26 Feb 05 - 02:09 PM (#1421628)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Spam controls imperil e-mail reliability

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP INTERNET WRITER
link
NEW YORK -- Sometimes the only way to know whether an e-mail got through is to call. Just ask Ashley Friedlein, who runs E-consultancy Ltd. in London. He never heard back from a correspondent in the United States, a subscriber of Verizon Online. So he phoned and learned his e-mail was never received. "I wouldn't have known anything about it had I not called to check" he said. Blame the mishap on increasingly aggressive spam controls employed by Verizon and other e-mail operators. As spammers identify new tricks for sneaking their junk past software sentinels, service providers' technical parries could put even more legitimate mail at risk.

Spam and spam-fighting have "in some cases eroded the reliability of the mail system," said Eric Allman, chief technology officer of leading e-mail software vendor Sendmail Inc. "Now a lot of mail gets filtered out." A typical user might lose anywhere from a legitimate message every few months to as many as five a week, estimates Richi Jennings of Ferris Research. A lot of spam simply ends up in junk folders that recipients never check. But sometimes service providers reject such messages outright, meaning recipients have no control even if they turn spam filters off. In such cases, senders don't always get non-delivery error messages, even though Internet standards encourage them.

Most of the recent complaints have been directed at Verizon. Though the company denies it has changed its policies, leaked excerpts from an internal memo that circulated late last year talked of new techniques that might disrupt legitimate e-mail. Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson confirmed the memo's existence but said it contained inaccuracies and had been retracted. Henson denied assertions that Verizon had blocked entire countries in Europe based on their Internet addresses, and she said decisions to block certain service providers were limited to a few in Asia that were sending nothing but spam. She insisted Verizon's anti-spam controls were standard industry practices.

Still, complaints continue. Joseph Gaila, a Lithuanian now retired in Ellicott City, Md., says he and his wife missed several Christmas greetings from relatives abroad. He said he used to get one or two messages a day from Lithuania but suddenly received none for weeks.

Fabio Turone, a science journalist in Milan, Italy, says he tried unsuccessfully from at least three different accounts to e-mail a Verizon customer in Kingston, N.Y. Finally the pair created a Yahoo message group to communicate.

Five Verizon customers have jointly filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging Verizon breached its contract by failing to provide a dependable e-mail service. A Philadelphia-area law firm is seeking arbitration, arguing that it lost potential clients. "When you go to work every day, you expect e-mails to you will be gotten to you on a regular basis," said Michael Boni, a Philadelphia attorney who filed both cases.

Henson, who had no comment on the litigation, acknowledged that legitimate mail could get lost or delayed, but said customers were demanding action, because as much as 80 percent to 90 percent of all incoming e-mail is now junk. "If we didn't block we would have so much volume that our platform couldn't even handle that," she said. "Instead of just a small number of customers not (getting legitimate mail), virtually everyone would not be getting mail." Verizon offers a completely unfiltered e-mail account upon request but few have opted for it, Henson said.

Although Verizon has been getting the recent attention, it is hardly alone in misclassifying legitimate messages as spam. In the industry, such mail are known as "false positives." E-mail lists and newsletters sent in bulk are often misclassified.

There's no good way to tell which service providers are better at handling legitimate messages because they all tend to be secretive about their specific techniques and change them regularly to keep spammers off guard.

Nonetheless, some service providers are becoming more aware of the risks. "On a percentage basis, generally it's not a huge issue," said Kevin Doerr, product unit manager for Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail service. "Of course, for most human beings, one false positive is one too many." In response, Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. say they now have mechanisms for quickly refining filters should users start reporting mail in spam folders as "not junk."

E-mail providers are more willing to let legitimate senders prove their worth and get themselves on "always accept" white lists, said Stephen Currie, director of e-mail products at EarthLink Inc. "Before, it was all, `Let's identify the bad,'" he said. Microsoft, Yahoo and America Online Inc. also have been working on ways to authenticate e-mail senders - to identify legitimate senders and bless their messages before spam filters kick in.

But even as service providers get smarter, so have spammers. They have new software that automatically routes junk messages through a real user's Internet service provider so spam traffic gets mixed with legitimate mail. "We're going to start seeing more stories of desperate ISPs blocking all mail from Comcast, Verizon, Cox and Road Runner," warned John Levine, co-author of "Fighting Spam for Dummies."

Bruce Gingery, a security consultant in Cheyenne, Wyo., says users should simply get used to losing mail. "Even though people are relying more and more on e-mail, e-mail was never designed as a guaranteed delivery medium," Gingery said.

Service providers, he said, are only required to make a "best effort" - a term left open to wide interpretation among mail providers.

26 Feb 05 - 02:20 PM (#1421637)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Little Hawk

Ha! Ha! Ha!

So Koko "wants to see her nipples", eh? Men want to see EVERY woman's nipples, don't they? That doesn't mean we GET to! Koko should realize this, and so should her keepers. The woman was right to complain about it.

26 Feb 05 - 04:13 PM (#1421725)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Don't be judgemental, LH -- Koko has her own ideas of what bonding should consist of.

Come to think of it, so do I!! :D

A

26 Feb 05 - 11:49 PM (#1422020)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

And I bet that bonding has to do with looking at nipples, eh?

10 Mar 05 - 12:39 AM (#1431232)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Michael Jackson's False Front?

(She hits the nail on the head in the sentence I italicized to call it to readers' attention.)

By Tina Brown
Washington Post Thursday, March 10, 2005; Page C01

The strange thing about the Michael Jackson trial is that the supporting actors are more interesting than the star. The weirdness of the King of Pop is so overexposed that no new revelation can shock. Either Jackson is a complete lunatic who slept with young boys and didn't fondle them or he's a complete lunatic who slept with young boys and did.

Better to fixate instead on pass-through characters, like the French-born cooks at Neverland featured in Martin Bashir's "Primetime Live" report "Michael Jackson's Secret World." Who but Michael Jackson would ever hire these two? The wife looks like a war criminal in a blond fright wig. And how about Bashir himself? Why on earth did Jackson and the Princess of Wales both choose to open up their entire lives to this brooding, charm-free figure? He looks about as well-intentioned as the interrogator you meet when you are rendered by the U.S. military -- and seems to wreak the same havoc on his subjects' lives. His fawning letters to Jackson -- "Neverland is an extraordinary, a breathtaking, a stupendous, an exhilarating and amazing place. I can't put together words to describe Neverland" -- are classics of the genre. They're even more journalistically embarrassing than some of the gems I've written myself to elusive interview subjects over the years.

When the young accuser took the stand on Wednesday, one hoped for the start of some moral clarity on the unrelenting awfulness of the cast of characters. But in his first appearance, the kid's testimony was all about being a participant in Jackson's media charade for Martin Bashir.

It makes real crime junkies hanker for the exotic of the normal. That's why the arrest in the BTK case hit with such creepy, compelling force. The suspected serial killer next door, the head of the church council who police said waited in the dark with the phones lines cut -- it returned the world of deviance to the old reality format in which seemingly ordinary people nurture diabolical double lives.

One thought to consider about Jackson himself is whether he is much less weird than meets the eye. Could it be that, like Saddam Hussein's WMD bluff, the whole freak show is a stunt that's gotten out of hand? The thought struck me during Bashir's original 2003 documentary for Britain's ITV, the one that got Jackson indicted. In the low, appalled voice one reserves for especially heinous horrors, Bashir asks, "Is it true that your father used to say you had a fat nose?" Jackson theatrically averts his head at the ghastliness of this memory and then says with a half-weeping snicker: "Yeah . . . You want to die. You want to die. . . . God. It's hard."

You could argue, I guess, that the Fat Nose memory is the Rosebud in Jackson's life, inducing him to internalize self-loathing racial stereotypes to the point that he ended up bleaching his skin, straightening his hair like Morticia in "The Addams Family," and hiding the offending proboscis beneath a surgical mask even after its many surgeries had turned it into a pencil point. But what if Jackson is, in reality, having some sly fun with Bashir and by extension all celebrity journalists hellbent on getting the answers to such piffling questions?What if the whole persona is a scam under the heading of The Emperor's New Nose? After all, Jackson has shown plenty of business smarts in his time. The fey Peter Pan who tells Bashir his favorite pastimes are climbing trees and having water balloon fights was still canny enough to buy the Beatles' lucrative song catalogue.

An interview with Jackson's ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley by Chris Heath in Rolling Stone in April 2003 would support the "secretly sane" theory. "I was always saying [to Jackson] people wouldn't think I was so crazy if they saw who the hell you really are," Presley told Heath. "That you sit around, and you drink and you curse and you're [expletive] funny and you have a bad mouth, and you don't have that high voice all the time. I don't know why you think that works for you, because it doesn't anymore."

Ms. Presley, to be sure, has a reason to portray Jackson as less bizarre than people assume. Marrying someone most people regard as an extraterrestrial freak didn't do a whole lot for her image. ("Ok. Hello," she expounds. "I was delusionary. " I got some romantic idea in my head that I could save him and save the world.") But it might add some genuine dramatic tension if Jackson turned out to be pop music's version of Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, the Mafia boss who fooled the justice system for years by shuffling around the streets of Greenwich Village mumbling to himself in his bedroom slippers and bathrobe. If this were true, of course, it would also mean Jackson is just a plain old garden-variety ped, albeit one who instead of hanging around public playgrounds built his own at Neverland.

Harder to figure out is the behavior of the alleged victim's mother, who handed over her sick kid to sleep in the bedroom of a previously accused child molester. Perhaps scientists will discover that celebrity is a virus that can infect the psyche's immune system as pervasively as HIV takes over the body's. It infected everyone in the Jackson case from the accuser's family to the defendant himself. Jackson started out a little strange, to be sure, but he lost his boundaries altogether only because he got the absolute permission that superstars enjoy to indulge the outer limits of narcissism.

It's hard to know if Jackson will one day be seen as a repellent relic of celebrity culture, or another Oscar Wilde or Vivaldi, an artist persecuted for something or other we can't recall. Even the people who are absolutely sure he's guilty don't want to stop listening on their iPods to "Thriller" and "Billie Jean." That's a question neither conviction nor acquittal can answer yet -- whether Jackson will be remembered for the shame or for the art.

15 Mar 05 - 12:16 PM (#1435366)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I read the hometown newspaper every day, and of course I turn to the obituaries. There have been some real interesting ones lately, and on a sad note, one of the very interesting ones was for an old friend of mine. I hadn't seen him for a long time, but in reading what he's been up to since the 1980s, he continued being a funny, generous, and outgoing man. I won't post his obit here, however.

Some of them go on and on, and clearly they didn't have any editorial help in sorting them out. Then there are the pithy ones--(this is a nice example).

I read one this morning that, if you had to distill it down to a few words, says it all:

For myself, I'd of course like to have the family include some of my more interesting jobs and passtimes and interests, but if they could only write one thing, this would be it--"she loved her kids."

Is anyone else an obit reader, and do you have any memorable ones? (And just think--if it's really good, it can become a song, like Tom Lehrer did with "Alma")

SRS

16 Mar 05 - 11:00 PM (#1436608)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Is anyone really surprised at this outcome?

Ex-Caregiver Charged With Murdering Girl
March 16, 2005

MIAMI - A woman who was supposed to be taking care of Rilya Wilson was charged Wednesday with murdering the 4-year-old, three years after the foster child's disappearance scandalized Florida's child-protection agency. Geralyn Graham was also charged with kidnapping and aggravated child abuse. No body has been found, prosecutors said. "Our grand jury has heard the facts and determined that Rilya's disappearance was the result of an act of violence and has indicted the child's former caretaker," State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said.

Graham allegedly confessed while jailed on unrelated fraud charges and investigators later found corroborating evidence, said Fernandez Rundle, who declined to give specifics. "She basically broke down and told someone in the jail details about Rilya Wilson, including how she killed her," the prosecutor said.

Graham's attorney, Brian L. Tannebaum, said: "That's completely not true. That's based on a jailhouse snitch. ... They have no other evidence." Rilya's story became known three years ago when it was discovered that she was not living at the home she shared with Graham and another woman, Pamela Graham, who was Rilya's legal guardian. The Grahams claimed a state social worker had taken the child in early 2001 for medical testing and never returned with the girl, who was 4 when she was last seen.

The girl's disappearance had gone unnoticed by the Florida Department of Children & Families for months. The scandal led to a major shakeup at the agency, as well as a search for the girl.

Prosecutors refused to give details on how they determined to charge Geralyn Graham, and the indictment doesn't mention any evidence. The indictment did allege, however, that Rilya was either suffocated or beaten to death sometime in December 2000. Tannenbaum said, "This is a woman who they charged with kidnapping without any evidence that she took the child anywhere and now they've charged her with the murder of a child they have not located."

Graham is in jail on unrelated fraud charges and could have a court appearance as early as Thursday on the new charges, said state attorney spokesman Ed Griffith. The fallout of Rilya's disappearance was immediate. A blue-ribbon panel appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush to investigate Rilya's disappearance found massive problems at DCF, including the failure to check the background of caregivers and low pay for child protection workers.

DCF Secretary Kathleen Kearney resigned in September 2002 and seven of 14 regional administrators with the agency were replaced. The Legislature passed a law making it a felony for welfare workers to falsify documents relating to anyone in state care.

Geralyn Graham was arrested shortly after the disappearance on unrelated charges and was convicted of using a friend's Social Security number to buy a sport utility vehicle. She got three years in jail, where she remains. Pamela Graham pleaded guilty to accepting welfare payments for Rilya after the girl left her care and received two years' probation.

But no charges were filed for Rilya's disappearance until August when Geralyn Graham was accused of aggravated child abuse, for locking Rilya in a cage and other alleged mistreatment. She was also charged with kidnapping for removing Rilya from Pamela Graham's custody. Pamela Graham, who was cooperating with authorities, was charged with child abuse.

Rilya was born Sept. 29, 1996, to a homeless cocaine addict. The girl's name was an acronym for "Remember I love you always." She was taken into state custody when she was less than 2 months old.

In April 2000, when she was 3, Rilya was placed in the custody of Pamela Graham. The Grahams have falsely called themselves sisters, but Pamela Graham told co-workers that Geralyn was her wife. Geralyn Graham told The Miami Herald in August that she and Pamela had been in a "loving" but non-sexual relationship for 10 years. DCF later acknowledged that its background check had failed to discover that Geralyn Graham had a long criminal history for fraud and had been diagnosed as psychotic six months before Rilya moved in.

17 Mar 05 - 09:02 AM (#1436841)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=3086274

Israel Gay Pride Parade Upsets Clergy

Posted: March 16, 2005 at 11:01 a.m.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- A coalition of evangelical Christians from the United States, U.S. rabbis and local ultra-Orthodox Jews vowed Wednesday to try to prevent an international gay pride parade from being held in Jerusalem this summer, but the mayor of the holy city said he has no way of stopping it.

California pastor Leo Giovinetti, said hosting the 10-day WorldPride 2005 event could bring divine retribution upon Jerusalem, citing the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorra as a precedent. Ultra-Orthodox lawmaker Nissim Zeev hinted at more earthly troubles in store.

"If they think they can party here in this city and carry out this provocation without hindrance, I think the police will be kept busy dealing with demonstrations," he told a news conference. "With demonstrations we never know how they end up, we know how they begin. Residents here are enraged. Everything should be done to stop this (event) and not cause people to break the law."

Israeli gays have held small marches in Jerusalem in the past that have passed relatively peacefully, with a few shouted insults from onlookers and minor acts of vandalism.

This time the plan is for a major international happening, comprising parties, a gay film festival and workshops and culminating in the WorldPride parade, street fair and rally. The event, held every five years, attracted tens of thousands of participants when it was held in Rome in 2000.

Giovinetti, from San Diego, has a nationwide radio ministry in the United States which he says reaches millions of listeners -- and he is seeking a million signatures for a petition against the August festival, which he said is offensive to the values of religious people and debases the sanctity of Jerusalem.

"We did not come here because we hate homosexuals," he said. "But when they said, 'I'm coming to your house and I'm going to spit on your mother, what are you going to do about it?' In order to be a good son I'm going to say, 'Mom, that's not right and I'm going to fight it."'

The petition, drafted by Giovinetti, quotes the biblical book of Isaiah, (3:8-9) as a warning against profaning the holy city: "Judah and Jerusalem will lie in ruins because they speak out against the Lord and refuse to obey him. They have offended his glorious presence among them ...They sin openly like the people of Sodom."

Organizers of the festival, under the theme "Love Without Borders," say they want to promote coexistence.

"The holiness of Jerusalem does not come from manipulating religion to keep people away," said Hagai El-Ad, the director of Open House, the Jerusalem group that has organized local gay parades in the city. "Jerusalem's holiness comes from it being a city that can bring together all kinds of people," he said.

The decision to host the WorldPride Parade in Jerusalem was made by InterPride, the association that organizes gay parades around the world.

Giovinetti, the head of an evangelical congregation in San Diego, accused organizers of deliberately targeting holy places. "We are convinced that it is no accident that the last parade was held in Rome and that today Jerusalem is being targeted. Clearly the group's agenda is to create a provocation and thus offend religious sensibilities," he said.

A majority of Jerusalem's more than 600,000 residents are either Orthodox Jews, Palestinian Muslims or Christians, traditional communities that oppose homosexuality.The city's ultra-Orthodox Jewish mayor, Uri Lupolianski, said in a statement that while he opposes the parade, he has no legal way of stopping it, as authorization for public events is given by the police.

New York Rabbi Yehuda Levin, representing a group of U.S. Orthodox rabbis, the Rabbinical Alliance of America, said that with the help of the powerful conservative Christian lobby, the coalition plans to put pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and key Cabinet ministers.

"Whatever the police say about the festival, if those men don't want it to happen it won't happen," he said.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

18 Mar 05 - 12:16 PM (#1437729)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage

Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of this issue that should be between the couple involved and their doctors. The woman checked out 15 years ago and her husband is trying to honor her wishes. It's astonishing how he's managed to hang on (emotionally) for so long--clearly there were easier avenues he could have followed. And now the busy-bodies in the senate are heaping more difficulties on the pair, egged on by her delusional parents.

SRS

GOP Asks Brain-Damaged Woman to Testify
March 18, 2005

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans embroiled in the life-or-death legal battle over the severely brain-damaged Terri Schiavo invited the Florida woman to testify to Congress in a procedural move intended to keep her on life support.

The Senate Health Committee has requested that Terri and her husband Michael appear at an official committee hearing on March 28. A statement from the office of House Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., on Friday said the purpose of the hearing was to review health care policies and practices relevant to the care of non-ambulatory people.

Frist's statement noted that it is a federal crime to harm or obstruct a person called to testify before Congress, thus stopping any action that could threaten the health of the woman.

20 Mar 05 - 11:57 AM (#1438956)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage

Killings prompt duty-to-help bill
The state House passes a measure that would make it illegal to do nothing if you know someone is being injured by a crime.
(link)

OLYMPIA - Pushed by parents of three murder victims, lawmakers are pressing to make it a crime for people to do nothing when they know someone's life is in danger. They contend such a law might have prevented the killings of Rachel Rose Burkheimer of Marysville, Michael Schuerhoff of Bothell and Joey Levick of Burien. In each case, people saw the victims, alive but injured, and did nothing that might have saved them. "Every year we don't pass such a law we get another tragic example of why we need the law," said Dan Satterberg of the King County Prosecutor's Office, who helped craft the bill referred to as the "Joey Levick Act." It passed the House of Representatives 97-0 this week and awaits a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Under the proposed law, misdemeanor criminal charges could be filed against people who do not summon assistance if they know a crime has occurred and the victim is hurt or faces serious harm. It requires only that people attempt to get help, such as by calling 911. They would not be expected to jeopardize their own lives. "That's not too much to ask, given what's at stake," Satterberg said. A conviction would carry a 90-day jail sentence and $1,000 fine.

Pursuit of the law started following the 1994 death of Levick and gained urgency after the killing of Schuerhoff in January 1996. Burkheimer's slaying in 2002 further spotlighted the situation. Levick was badly beaten and left semiconscious in a drainage ditch near Highway 509 in Burien. He lay there for 16 hours, slowly drowning in shallow drainage waters, before dying. Several people knew where he was at the time.

Schuerhoff was pushed off a Bothell railroad trestle, down a hill and into a slough. At least five people knew of his whereabouts and did nothing. Levick's parents, Melva and Joe, and Schuerhoff's mother, Anita, have told and retold their stories. Rep. Al O'Brien, D-Mountlake Terrace, a retired police officer, remembers hearing them as a freshman lawmaker in 1997. "I was in tears," said O'Brien, the prime sponsor of the bill this year. "My son called me up and said, 'It looks like you're tired,' and I said, 'I was crying.' It was horrible to hear about the young man left in the ditch."

Denise Webber of Marysville, Burkheimer's mother, joined the other parents at legislative hearings this year. Webber testified twice, each time clutching a photograph of her 18-year-old daughter who was shot to death in 2002. "I hit some points in her story to remind them," Webber said of lawmakers. She's spoken about how her youngest daughter was beaten and kept captive for hours in an Everett garage before being taken to her death in the hills near Gold Bar. Eight young men were convicted of murder and other crimes in connection with her death. No charges were brought against Trissa Conner, who owned the Everett home and spoke with Burkheimer during her ordeal but did not seek police assistance. "Trissa Conner got off scot-free. People were just appalled by that," Webber said.

Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney Janice Ellis said Conner's lack of care was "criminal" and had a "clear impact" on Burkheimer's life. Previous legislation faltered amid concerns that law enforcement might apply it too broadly, even questioning inaction by innocent passersby. There also was concern that good Samaritans might face arrest or liability for getting involved. Revisions made this session limit the law to those who witness the crime and know that the victim suffered harm. "What this does is codify what we recognize as appropriate and desirable behavior," Ellis said. "It's hard to tell if people will be inspired to do the right thing because of potential criminal liability."

Vermont, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Massachusetts also have what's referred to as duty-to-rescue laws, according to House staff.

Webber said she's hopeful that attention focused on her daughter's case boosts the effort to make the legislation reality. "I just want it (the bill) passed, and I want more attention brought to it," she said. Should another setback occur, Anita Schuerhoff vowed to return next session. "We will not stop," she said. "There's a big history here. We're not going to give up."

20 Mar 05 - 12:07 PM (#1438961)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: gnu

Nfld. man given six months for DUI charges, blames liquor filled chocolates

Fri Mar 18, 1:15 PM ET Odd News - Canadian Press

ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. (CP) - A Newfoundland man convicted for driving under the influence blamed it all on liquor-filled chocolates.

Allen Bottomley, 67, of King's Cove, Nfld., told the judge he'd eaten too many of the sweets before being stopped by police last fall. The judge didn't bite and sentenced him to six months in jail.

Bottomley faced two charges of driving under the influence in separate incidents in September and November of last year.

RCMP said his blood alcohol level was approximately twice the legal limit when he was pulled over on both occasions.

Const. Tony Seaward said Bottomley also had three previous convictions for impaired driving resulting in the loss of his licence for eight years.

Seaward said it doesn't matter how the alcohol is consumed, it's still illegal to get behind the wheel while impaired.

21 Mar 05 - 10:50 AM (#1439688)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Gotta watch those rum balls!

Here's one that ties into a discussion on another thread (posting photos of flowers on a spring thread) but since it's kind of off that beaten path I'll stick it here instead. I've been planning to set up an account with Flickr. link

Flickr Photo Sharing Service Acquired by Yahoo

24 Mar 05 - 11:21 PM (#1443193)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This looks like the stuff of Urban Legend, but I found the article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Wendy's diner finds human finger in her chili
Maria Alicia Gaura, Dave Murphy, Chronicle Staff Writers

Thursday, March 24, 2005

An unlucky diner bit into a segment of a human finger while digging into a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose, Santa Clara County health officials confirmed Wednesday. The diner, who visited the restaurant Tuesday night, spit out the well- cooked digit, notified restaurant workers and became sick to her stomach, health officials said. The origin of the finger remains a mystery.

Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Martin Fenstersheib said he was called at home by San Jose police who went to Wendy's and immediately dispatched health inspectors to the restaurant. He said he ordered officers to transport the body part, wrapped in damp gauze, to the medical examiner's office.

The restaurant, at 1405 Monterey Road, was shut for a couple of hours while the batch of chili and stocks of chili ingredients were impounded. The restaurant was allowed to reopen and to cook another batch of chili using newly purchased ingredients. Wendy's officials said they are eager to find out how their food became contaminated.

"The entire investigation is with the county health department," said Steve Jay, Wendy's marketing director for Santa Clara County. "We're fully cooperating."

Jay said the chili came from a master distributor but declined to name the firm. He added that Wendy's has been doing business in the area for more than 25 years and never had a serious problem before.

Fenstersheib said he spoke to the anxious woman several times by phone and had the queasy experience of confirming to her that the object was indisputably human. The woman asked officials not to name or even describe her. "I had to confirm it to her that she had indeed put a piece of a human finger in her mouth," Fenstersheib said. "She kind of lost it." The woman was "emotionally distraught ... due to the unpleasant sensation of having this (object) in her mouth," Fenstersheib said

He said the finger had been cooked at a high enough temperature to kill any viruses, including hepatitis or HIV, and that it was very unlikely that she will suffer any health effects from her experience, aside from psychological trauma.

"The potential for health impacts are extremely low for her or anyone else who ate that chili," Fenstersheib said. He said, however, that he will recommend baseline viral testing for the woman, to allow for comparison should any food-borne illness emerge in the coming months. A similar strategy might be wise for others who ate the contaminated food, he said. "The risk is low, but nothing in medicine is 100 percent," Fenstersheib said.

County officials say they have no idea how many other people consumed the contaminated chili, which was cooked at about 2 p.m. Tuesday and was served to customers until the finger turned up at 7:20 p.m. Anyone who may have eaten the contaminated batch is encouraged to call county health officials at (408) 918-3400.

The finger was described by county Medical Examiner Dr. Joseph O'Hara as cooked but not decomposed. The digit was found in two pieces, a 1-inch fingertip complete with the skin whorls used in fingerprinting and a half-inch piece of fingernail. The digit appeared to have been torn off, possibly by manufacturing machinery, rather than cleanly cut. Considering the nail's slightly longer length and neat grooming, O'Hara speculated that it may have belonged to a woman, though "it's hard to tell."

Since all of the workers at the restaurant were found to be in possession "of all 10 of their fingers," health inspectors assume the finger likely entered the food chain as a result of the manufacturing process, according to county Environmental Resources Director Ben Gale. Health inspectors said the restaurant appeared to be generally clean and well-maintained, with only one minor violation having to do with a leaky vent.

Gale said it could take weeks to track each of the numerous ingredients to their places of manufacture, which will be in different states or possibly even different countries. Since the law requires that industrial accidents result in a stoppage of the assembly line and be reported to authorities, it may be possible to pinpoint the site of the original accident. In addition, authorities may be able to obtain a fingerprint and DNA from the finger to identify the person.

The restaurant was open Wednesday, and business was brisk despite the finger incident. Elizabeth Adcock, who visits that Wendy's frequently and was having a bowl of chili Wednesday at around 3 p.m., said she had heard television reports about the finger, but thought it might be an urban legend.

Another woman who was eating chili at the restaurant, San Jose State student Andria Mendoza, said she had overheard workers discussing a finger in Spanish, so she proceeded carefully. "I actually did check -- with my spoon," she said.

Customer Gary Grant of San Jose expressed disappointment that it was business-as-usual at the restaurant. "We come here all the time," Grant said. "We just ate here today, and nobody said a thing. There were no signs up."

"How can you trust somebody like that? You're still serving food. Which basically means you don't care."

Customer Fernando Anaya was in a lighter mood. "Where's the finger at?" he joked as he ordered a salad. Anaya said he worked at a cannery many years ago, so the incident with the finger doesn't shock him. He said he plans to keep eating at his local Wendy's. "I don't eat chili anymore,'' he said. "I used to, but the cholesterol is too high."

25 Mar 05 - 11:31 AM (#1443521)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Octopuses try to sneak away on two arms
UC researcher says octopods wrap other arms around selves, pretend to be bunch of algae

A UC Berkeley researcher has observed octopuses, known for using
camouflage to avoid predators, apparently trying to sneak away by
walking on two arms while pretending to be a bunch of algae. Two
kinds of octopus were seen to use different ways of walking along
the sea floor, researchers reported in today's issue of the journal
Science.

The movements were discovered by Christine Huffard of the University
of California, Berkeley, who was studying underwater video camera
tapes of the animals.

UC Berkeley professor Robert Full said Huffard was studying octopus
movement as part of a robotics project. He said the researchers use
examples from nature in designing robots. One project is to build a
soft robot.

Octopuses trying to avoid being eaten usually hold still to camouflage themselves. But by walking on two arms, these two types were able to
move quickly while using their other arms to disguise themselves.

Two individuals of O. marginatus from Indonesia wrapped six arms
around themselves, looking like a coconut on the sea floor. They then
used the two rear arms to move backward.

In Australia, O. aculeatus was seen raising two arms above its head
before lifting four more and moving backward on the two remaining
arms. The researchers described it as looking like "a clump of algae tiptoeing away." The researchers believe the octopuses were trying to flee from predators, though they cannot be sure.

The research was funded by the American Malacological Society and the National Science Foundation.

25 Mar 05 - 11:32 AM (#1443522)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

darn thing went before I could finish formatting it.

25 Mar 05 - 11:57 AM (#1443549)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

LOL!! TEEEriffic story, SRS!! Love it!! I have known some octopi in my diving career who should learn from this!

A

25 Mar 05 - 12:30 PM (#1443577)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Rapparee

Amos, when you were diving, did you see
anything like this?

25 Mar 05 - 04:03 PM (#1443769)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Nope!! They look like faggoty octopi to me. REAL octopi use all eight legs, none of this limp-wristed tiptoeing around! 'Course I never heard of flaming octopi before, except in Greek restaurants, but ya never know!

A

25 Mar 05 - 04:35 PM (#1443799)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

What are you talking about, Amos? This is a pas de deux deux deux deux. That's very difficult! I bet you trip over your feet with only two of them. If you had extra feet you'd probably wrap them around your head also. :)

SRS

27 Mar 05 - 11:47 AM (#1444855)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage

link
Fire crew honored for quick action
By Melody Mcdonald, Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH - When 2-year-old Matthew Alford fell out of a second-story window last year, his head injuries were so severe that doctors didn't think he would live.

The firefighters who had worked to save Matthew had been told that the toddler had been taken off life support and died.

"That was pretty upsetting," said firefighter Larry G. "Sonny" Tompkins, a paramedic who was on the truck that day. "I had to break it to all the guys."

One day several months ago, Matthew and his mother, Lisa, unexpectedly dropped by the fire station to thank Tompkins and the crew for helping save Matthew's life.

Tompkins wasn't there, but word traveled fast.

"They called me at home and said, 'You'll never believe who just walked in the door,' " Tompkins said. "When they told me who it was, I just fell out. I had to sit down."

The Alfords attribute Matthew's "miracle" recovery, in part, to the quick-thinking, skill and determination of Tompkins and the three other responding firefighters -- Wade Green, David Ramirez and Kaleb Kemp.

On Saturday night, these four men -- the C-shift crew of Engine 37 -- received double awards, for top emergency medical services and as Company of the Year. Tompkins also took home the top award as Firefighter of the Year.

Fighting back tears, Lisa Alford and her family stood next to the crew on stage and told the crowd that there is no other place she would rather be.

"These gentlemen here mean the world to me," she said. "They saved my son."

Moment of terror

On Feb. 28, 2004, Lisa and Eric Alford and their sons -- Matthew and 8-year-old Josh -- were helping friends move into a new house in the 5400 block of Chatsworth Lane.

Lisa Alford had taken her sons and her friend's two sons, ages 5 and 9, to the new house to await the first load of items.

The three older boys went upstairs to play and, a short time later, Matthew followed them up.

"Not even five minutes later, I heard Josh scream bloodcurdling screams," Alford said. "He said, 'Matthew fell!'

"I got to the base of the stairs and looked up and saw Josh's face, and I knew it was bad."

The boys had opened the window to let in cool air; Matthew had fallen out.

Frantic, Alford grabbed her cellphone off the counter, raced outside and dialed 911. Matthew wasn't moving, and his head had started to swell.

The C-shift crew of Engine 37 arrived within minutes. They immediately called for CareFlite's helicopter ambulance and began working on Matthew.

"I remember Sonny just sitting over him and working and working -- all of them working," Alford said. "And them barking orders, 'Get me this. Get me that. Get this. Get this.'

"The whole time, I just kept praying that God would not take him from me."

Alford's friend, Doreen Krebs, the new homeowner, arrived and asked whether Matthew was going to be OK.

"Sonny just looked at her and said, 'Just pray,' " Alford said.

Critical moments

Matthew was flown to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, where the surgeon told the family that his prognosis was bleak.

Matthew had shattered his forehead and severed the main artery that supplies blood to the brain.

After a three-hour surgery, the doctor was not optimistic.

"When he comes out, he said, 'It doesn't look good, and I don't think he will make it,' " Alford recalled.

Matthew surprised them all. He stayed in the pediatric intensive care unit for 29 days, until he was well enough to be moved to a transitional care unit.

On May 20, Matthew went home, and Alford began to wonder about the people who had worked so hard in those critical moments. For months, she had seen the firefighters' faces in her dreams.

"I had nightmares for a long time," she said. "I kept seeing the firemen's faces in my face saying, 'Ma'am, it's not good. It is not good.' "

One day, on her way home, she was forced to take a detour past the fire station in the 4700 block of Ray White Road.

She had no idea that the firefighters who had responded that day had been told that Matthew had died.

"I just walked in and said, 'I need to know if you guys were the ones who were working on February 28. I said my son fell from a 2-story window.' "

Alford said she instantly recognized Green.

"He just looked at me and said, 'Oh my God!' "

Tomkins wasn't there, so the others called his wife, Michelle.

"They said, 'Remember the little boy that fell in February?' " Alford recalled. " 'He is alive. He is running around the fire station.' "

The next week, Alford and her family returned to the fire station.

"Sonny just walked around and held him [Matthew]," Alford said. "He just kept saying, 'I can't believe this. I can't believe this.' "

'Miracle Boy'

Today, Matthew, now 3, is trying to catch up on lost months.

Before the accident, Matthew was advanced for his age -- able to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and count to 20 in Spanish.

He has had to relearn how to sit up and walk. He is in speech therapy to learn how to talk again.

"They will never say he is going to make a full recovery with an injury like this," Alford said. "But we have faith that he is going to do just fine."

The Alfords, who sometimes refer to Matthew as the "Miracle Boy," believe that God sent Tompkins and the C-shift crew of Engine 37 to the house that day.

After the ceremony Saturday night, Tompkins said he, too, felt a higher power had a hand in the rescue.

"Angels and God were with him," Tompkins said. "That is all I know."

29 Mar 05 - 10:38 AM (#1445844)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage

Ewwwww! The epitomy of the "dirty old man!"

Santa Ana, Calif.
87-year-old sentenced in sex-tourism case

An 87-year-old man convicted of attempting to travel to the Philippines to molest young girls was sentenced yesterday to 20 years in prison under a 2003 federal law aimed at fighting so-called sex tourism.

John W. Seljan was the first person to be convicted at trial of violating the Protect Act, which made it easier for U.S. authorities to prosecute people for overseas sex crimes, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Seljan in October 2003 at Los Angeles International Airport as he was about to board a flight to the Philippines. In his luggage, he had child pornography, sexual aids and nearly 100 pounds of chocolates and other candy. Authorities said he intended to have sex with two girls, ages 9 and 12.

29 Mar 05 - 10:48 AM (#1445853)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Amos

More to be censured than pitied, I suppose. It must be awful hard (so tospeak) on old men to turn aged, smelly, grumpy and ugly, appealing to no-one, while still driven by the primordial demands of protoplasm. A rough life, indeed.

A

29 Mar 05 - 10:59 AM (#1445867)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage

If he didn't have all of the candy and the porn, no one would have stopped him. It wasn't that he was going overseas for sex with consenting adult women that got him into trouble, he was going to prey on children. Makes you wonder what he's been doing the rest of his life?

SRS

31 Mar 05 - 10:45 AM (#1447928)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Just to show that even in San Diego we have a little imagination and a sense of humor:

Thief in San Diego Steals Bag of Poop From Woman Walking Dog

SAN DIEGO Mar 31, 2005 — The hunt is on for a turd burglar. Police in San Diego are searching for a gunman who swiped a bag of poop from a woman out walking her dog.

The woman told police that she was out walking her dog, Misty, on Monday night when a man in his 20s ran up behind her and grabbed the bag she was holding.

When the gunman discovered what was in it, he threw it down in disgust, pointed his gun at the 32-year-old woman and demanded money, San Diego police detective Gary Hassen said.

He then aimed his .22-caliber semiautomatic at Misty and pulled the trigger twice but the gun didn't fire, Hassen said.

The robber ran to a waiting small, silver car and fled the scene, police said.

31 Mar 05 - 10:48 AM (#1447932)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I heard that on the radio this morning. The woman was very lucky, all things considered. The story is a very scary kind of "funny."

SRS

01 Apr 05 - 01:40 AM (#1448634)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

link
A Woman's Risky Strategy to End Stalking
Indianapolis Woman Confronts, Chases Peeping Tom

March 31, 2005 -- For several months in 2003, a stalker made Hannah Arbuckle's life a nightmare.

One spring night, a strange man had come to the window of her newly purchased Indianapolis home with video camera in hand. She subsequently woke up countless other times to see him peering in her window.

Each time, he disappeared before the police arrived. "It's very frightening," Arbuckle said. "It happened weekly, multiple times in a week."

Arbuckle, then 28, finally came face to face with him one October evening and got him to stop — but only by doing something most security experts say is extremely dangerous.

She confronted him. "I just didn't want him to get away again," she told ABC News' Cynthia McFadden.

The stalker ran from her, but Arbuckle embarked on a wild chase after him. When police finally caught him, they found out he was a convicted rapist who had been out of prison for two years when he started stalking Arbuckle.

Robert Braun, 57, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of felony voyeurism. And even though he never physically harmed Arbuckle, because of his prior record and the photographs he took, he was given a 20-year sentence, with four years to be served behind bars, another two in home detention and probation for the remaining period.

Arbuckle now recognizes what she did was not safe. But she added: "Everything happens for a reason. And I'm safe, I'm here today, and he's caught."

She Had Enough

Arbuckle, the manager of a physical therapy clinic, says to this day, she has no idea why she chased him. But in her conversation with McFadden, it appears Braun had pushed the fiercely independent single woman too far.

When Braun started taking pictures from the windows, she made sure her blinds were closed.

But then he started taking pictures from a high window in her front door and from beneath the window shades. One night he was even seen sitting on her front porch.

"My biggest fear going through this is that I would wake up one night and he would be in my bedroom or in my house," Arbuckle said. She lived alone.

Arbuckle added that she did not think about running away. "I did not want to be pushed around," she said. "I definitely had enough."

Uncontrollable Situation

Arbuckle got her face-to-face confrontation with Braun when she surprised him on a Wednesday evening as she was walking out to her car.

He reacted, she told McFadden, by putting his hands in his pockets, turning around and walking away quickly. Arbuckle remembers thinking, "If he gets away this time, who knows what'll happen?"

So she chased him down the street, and yelled, "Stop running!" She says when he turned around she asked him, "Why are you looking in my windows?"

Arbuckle says he denied spying on her and said, "I don't know who you are, lady." But she was not willing to back off.

"I said 'You do — I've seen you.' The second I said that, his whole demeanor changed," Arbuckle remembers.

Braun ran to his truck and tried to drive away, but Arbuckle jumped in the back. He tore off, screeching through the streets, while Arbuckle called the police from her cell phone.

Arbuckle recounted what happened next: "He turned down a side street and slammed on the brakes and gets out of the truck, and he's reaching and grabbing at me and I'm kicking at him."

She says she was scared. "I realized I was in a situation where I was out of control."

Prelude to Worse?

The police soon found Arbuckle and arrested Braun. They also found what they call a "rape kit" in his car: duct tape, oil and a leather mask.

"This was not a high school prank," said Carl Brizzi, the county prosecutor in Indianapolis. "This was more than just peeping. He was working himself up. This was foreplay to commit a violent sex act."

When police searched Braun's home, they found dozens of photographs of Arbuckle taken over the course of 11 months, some taken five months before she first saw Braun at her window. In some pictures, Arbuckle is naked.

Arbuckle says she didn't realize the danger she had put herself in until after Braun had been arrested. "I had no idea," she said.

"She acted on instinct," Brizzi said. "She's an incredibly heroic woman, but she's also very, very lucky — and that's the one point about this — jumping into the back of the car was something Hannah had to do out of desperation and fear — certainly not something that we would encourage."

01 Apr 05 - 04:32 AM (#1448706)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

My hat's off to her. What a lady.

A

09 Apr 05 - 12:15 AM (#1455919)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

A good subtitle: Wendy's fingers woman in chili complaint. . .

Woman Claiming Finger in Chili Sues Often
link

LAS VEGAS - The woman who claims she bit into a human finger while eating chili at a Wendy's restaurant has a history of filing lawsuits - including a claim against another fast-food restaurant.

Anna Ayala, 39, who hired a San Jose, Calif., attorney to represent her in the Wendy's case, has been involved in at least half a dozen legal battles in the San Francisco Bay area, according to court records.

She brought a suit against an ex-boss in 1998 for sexual harassment and sued an auto dealership in 2000, alleging the wheel fell off her car. That suit was dismissed after Ayala fired her lawyer, who said she had threatened him.

The case against her former employer was settled in arbitration in June 2002, but it was not known whether she received any money.

Speaking through the front door of her Las Vegas home Friday, Ayala claimed police are out to get her and were unnecessarily rough as they executed a search warrant at her home on Wednesday.

"Lies, lies, lies, that's all I am hearing," she said. "They should look at Wendy's. What are they hiding? Why are we being victimized again and again?"

Ayala acknowledged, however, that her family received a settlement for their medical expenses about a year ago after reporting that her daughter, Genesis, got sick from food at an El Pollo Loco restaurant in Las Vegas. She declined to provide any further details.

San Jose police have joined the Las Vegas police fraud unit in the investigation into how a 1 1/2-inch-long fingertip ended up in Ayala's bowl of chili at the San Jose Wendy's on March 22. Ayala said Friday she had not yet filed a claim against Wendy's, and it was unclear whether she had filed suit against the franchise owner.

Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini would not comment on the investigation Friday.

The company, however, maintains that the finger did not enter the food chain in its ingredients. The employees at the San Jose store were found to have all their fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy's ingredients have reported any hand or finger injuries, the company said.

On Thursday, Wendy's offered a $50,000 reward to anyone providing verifiable information leading to the positive identification of the origin of the finger.

"It's very important to our company to find out the truth in this incident," Tom Mueller, Wendy's president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Investigators would not say what they were looking for in the search of Ayala's house. Ken Bono, a family friend who lives at the home, said officers searched freezers, a picnic cooler in the backyard and the belongings of an aunt who used to live at the house.

The Santa Clara County Coroner's Office used a partial fingerprint to attempt to find a match in an electronic database of missing people and those with criminal histories, but came up empty. DNA testing is still being conducted on the finger.

"The simple fact of the matter is that the finger came from somebody. Where's that person at?" said Sgt. Nick Muyo, a spokesman for the San Jose Police Department.

Bertini said Wendy's stores in the area have suffered from declining sales since the incident.

"Obviously the store has been down significantly," he said. "This has been an ordeal for all of us. Hopefully there will be a resolution soon."

12 Apr 05 - 05:52 PM (#1459433)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

NASHVILLE, Tenn. Apr 12, 2005 — A man was beaten to death after catching his wife's lover living in a closet in their home, police said Tuesday.

Rafael DeJesus Rocha-Perez, 35, was charged with homicide in the slaying of 44-year-old Jeffrey A. Freeman over the weekend.

"From time to time, you come across a case with very unique even bizarre circumstances," police spokesman Don Aaron said. "This one probably rates right up there with them."

Freeman's wife had allowed Rocha-Perez to live in a closet of the Freemans' four-bedroom for about a month without her husband's knowledge, police said. On Sunday, her husband heard Rocha-Perez snoring and discovered him, authorities said.

Freeman ordered his wife to get the man out of the house while he went for a walk, authorities said. Martha Freeman told authorities that when her husband returned, Rocha-Perez confronted him with a shotgun, forced him into a bathroom and bludgeoned him.

The Freemans were co-owners of a company that does background checks for apartment rental and job applicants.

Oh, irony!! I guess she didn't finish the basic staff training or something!

A

13 Apr 05 - 06:53 AM (#1459824)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Online Gamer Stabbed for Selling Cyber-Saber
Wed Mar 30,10:23 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Shanghai online game player stabbed to death a competitor who sold his cyber-sword, the China Daily said Wednesday, creating a dilemma in China where no law exists for the ownership of virtual weapons.

Qiu Chengwei, 41, stabbed competitor Zhu Caoyuan repeatedly in the chest after he was told Zhu had sold his "dragon saber," used in the popular online game, "Legend of Mir 3," the newspaper said a Shanghai court was told Tuesday.

"Legend of Mir 3" features heroes and villains, sorcerers and warriors, many of whom wield enormous swords.

Qiu and a friend jointly won their weapon last February, and lent it to Zhu who then sold it for 7,200 yuan (US$870), the newspaper said.

Qui went to the police to report the "theft" but was told the weapon was not real property protected by law.

"Zhu promised to hand over the cash but an angry Qui lost patience and attacked Zhu at his home, stabbing him in the left chest with great force and killing him," the court was told.

The newspaper did not specify the charge against Qiu but said he had given himself up to police and already pleaded guilty to "intentional injury."

No verdict has been announced.

More and more online gamers were seeking justice through the courts over stolen weapons and credits, the newspaper said.

"The armor and swords in games should be deemed as private property as players have to spend money and time for them," Wang Zongyu, an associate law professor at Beijing's Renmin University of China, was quoted as saying.

But other experts are calling for caution. "The 'assets' of one player could mean nothing to others as they are by nature just data created by game providers," a lawyer for a Shanghai-based Internet game company was quoted as saying.

13 Apr 05 - 09:19 AM (#1459921)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

COngrats to SRS for one-year survival of this entertaining thread.

A

13 Apr 05 - 11:48 AM (#1460060)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage

Thanks, Amos. I hadn't realized we'd passed an anniversary. This is for all intents and purposes a virtual scrap book (not a posession that someone could be murdered over!) It's clear by the regular set of posters that we are people who need a place to park those "clippings" of stories that are just too interesting to read and not share, though whatever makes them interesting certainly varies widely from day to day.

SRS

13 Apr 05 - 07:33 PM (#1460489)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

I decided that I was getting too many Aussie political ones such as those about Ms Rau - so they now have their own thread.

13 Apr 05 - 07:56 PM (#1460502)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Shanghaiceltic

Re the killing of one gamer by another, the saddest thing is that this person will almost certainly get the bullet. Few murderers ever get pardoned here and the end will be swift. Normally about one week after a death sentence is passed it is carried out.

13 Apr 05 - 08:09 PM (#1460510)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I remember a recent evening when my son was very sad--he'd miscalculated the exchange rate in an online game and had severely short-changed himself on "stuff" he sold that he'd worked hard to get. I was sorry to see it happen, but at the same time, it probably was a good lesson to pay attention to what he's doing in a world of work and finance, whether virtual or the here and now.

SRS

15 Apr 05 - 07:59 PM (#1462603)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's one for you music lovers--you MUST attach those hefty speakers if you are going to use them in your car. (This isn't a joke--a child died and the law is a good outcome, but as I read this I wondered what on earth this guy was doing with a 56 pound speaker in his automobile?)

Teens' efforts pay off with law
Gov. Gregoire signs the Courtney Amisson Act, requiring car speakers to be bolted down.

By Jerry Cornfield, Herald Writer

OLYMPIA - A Snohomish teenager's death in 2002 has resulted in a new law requiring stereo speakers to be securely mounted inside vehicles.

Gov. Christine Gregoire signed the Courtney Amisson Act on Thursday, saying she wanted to ensure that "out of this terrible tragedy comes some good."

"We can all hope and pray that it will prevent anyone else from having happen to them what happened to Courtney," Gregoire said

Courtney was a 15-year-old sophomore at Snohomish High School who died of injuries suffered when a 56-pound speaker struck her in the back of the head during a car accident.

The law requires all stereo system equipment to be securely attached to the vehicle. Violations are a secondary traffic infraction, meaning a ticket can only be issued if a driver is stopped for another reason.

"It's a bill that will save lives," said Carol Amisson, Courtney's mother. "It takes less than 10 bucks for bolts to secure the speaker."

Ron Amisson, Courtney's father, said, "As simple as it would seem, it's amazing that it would have to come to the point of a law being made that somebody would have to be told to do this."

The law also directs the state's Traffic Safety Commission to prepare and distribute educational materials on risks posed by unsecured items in cars and trucks. Carol Amisson said she would help in that effort, if asked.

"Hopefully, no other parent will suffer the pain" of such a loss, she said.

Several of Courtney's friends attended the signing of the law. They began pursuing the bill three months after her death.

In each of the last three years, the students found a lawmaker to introduce the bill. They and Carol Amisson have testified at hearings each year.

"I'm excited that it finally went through," said senior Missy Waldron, 17, who spoke at hearings in 2003.

Carol Amisson praised the support and the perseverance of her daughter's friends. "At times when I couldn't squeak out a word, they'd touch my hand and say, 'We're doing it for Courtney.'"

On Thursday, students remarked that it was not easy work and that it did not come quickly, but that it will make a difference. They said while most students know about Courtney's death, many are driving around with unsecured stereo speakers in the back windows of their cars.

"People don't really care. They don't think about it, they just want the speakers and the sound," senior Julia Baggenstos said.

Each year, about 300 Snohomish High seniors travel to Olympia to lobby lawmakers on legislation as part of a government class taught by Tuck Gionet, who attended Thursday's signing.

This is the first of their proposed legislation to be signed into law.

Shortly before Gregoire signed the bill, students, their parents and school leaders met with Reps. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, and John Lovick, D-Mill Creek.

"This is sort of a small thing for the rest of the people in the state, but it's a big thing for us," said Dunshee, prime sponsor of the bill this year. "We did this for Courtney."

The law takes effect in 90 days.

15 Apr 05 - 08:55 PM (#1462635)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Leadfingers

I read in the paper that El Ted is laid up with Chicken pox , which makes it easy to move on to - - -

15 Apr 05 - 08:55 PM (#1462636)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Leadfingers

The 200 th post ( again) !!!!

16 Apr 05 - 09:33 AM (#1462921)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Charley Noble

I was discussing this interesting story with a friend of mine:

"Woman Claiming Finger in Chili Sues Often"

and she claimed there's a follow-up story which alledged that the finger in question came from a hospital morgue.

Can anyone else provide a link to a follow-up story? Inquiring minds really need more facts if we're to cook up a credible ballad.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble, alive and well in NYC

16 Apr 05 - 09:44 AM (#1462927)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I read yesterday that Wendy's has put up a $50,000 reward, and today I see that it is now doubled to a $100,000 reward to try to get to the bottom of this. In their distribution chain they have discovered no person missing any limbs or digits. A morgue is probably a good guess, but I haven't seen it in print yet. Seattle P.I. story.

Personally, I think Wendy's is onto something. Think of it--two pieces of finger find their way into a vat of chili. What are the odds that BOTH PIECES would end up in one bowl? They're clearly detatched in the photo. I think Ayala overplayed her hand (so to speak. . . sorry about that!). This is an instance when a little might have worked, but more isn't believable.

SRS

16 Apr 05 - 10:29 AM (#1462945)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Amos

I liked one of the headlines on the reward story: "Who Gave Wendy's the Finger???"

A

16 Apr 05 - 06:17 PM (#1463199)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Very good odds of both pieces in one bowl if they were in one piece BEFORE she bit into it...

Errrrggggghhhhhh!!!

16 Apr 05 - 07:57 PM (#1463222)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

If you encountered something of that consistency in your bowl of soft beans and sauce, would you go ahead and bite down on it so hard that you bit through bone? Heck, I hate even encountering a little speck of bone that got into the ground meat, let along a big chunk.

SRS

17 Apr 05 - 05:01 AM (#1463367)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

This is the guy who had his licence revoked in the USA, then given a job in Aus...

http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12869909%255E310 2,00.html

Dr Death now pretending to be his brother

Hedley Thomas
16apr05

IN THE comfort of a grand home in Portland, Oregon, someone purporting to be the younger brother of the man dubbed Dr Death, Jayant Patel, has been giving telephone interviews to journalists.

He calls himself Jaydish. And he has a very high regard for Patel, whom he said had left for New York soon after being photographed by The Courier-Mail at the house.

"I know he had a brilliant career over here (in the US)," he said.

"He doesn't give a damn about Australia, probably. He has a lot of money and he just wants to travel around the world."

The man spoke of Patel's work in Australia he called it "the Third World" (just as Patel had described it while working at Bundaberg Base Hospital) and the heroism he understood his so-called brother had performed after the tilt train derailment.

But within minutes of the interviews being broadcast in Australia, along with footage of a man standing at the front door of the home in North West Blue Grass Place, nurses and medical staff in Bundaberg began telephoning each other.

They independently reached the same conclusion: that the man claiming to be the brother of Patel was Patel.

"They are certain of it," Queensland Nurses Union secretary Gay Hawksworth said yesterday. "It seems to me that we have questions over his mental state."

The union organised for footage from the US to be shown to the nurses who were adamant that it was Patel, not any fictitious brother.

One of the nurses told The Courier-Mail: "It was definitely him. Believe me, we have listened to that voice for two years."

Just when it seemed the scandal over the discredited and dangerous fraud given a $200,000-a-year job as Bundaberg Base Hospital's director of surgery could not get more surreal, Patel's behaviour has confirmed what nurses suspected: he is delusional.

"His behaviour is psychopathic," said a medical source at Bundaberg Hospital.

Even when being questioned by chief health officer Gerry FitzGerald about a trail of deaths and serious injuries arising from his surgery, Patel's self-confidence was bullet-proof.

"His view was that everything was wonderful and he was looking after patients and doing a wonderful job," Dr FitzGerald recalled.

Patient Doris Hillier, who was left with dreadful infections and open wounds for between four and six weeks after surgery by Patel, described him as "a barbaric animal who just liked to operate on people for his own self-glory".

Hospital insiders recounted yesterday how Patel boasted of having worked for "15 years as a trauma surgeon in New York and many years as a cardio-thoracic surgeon", even as he botched relatively simple operations in Bundaberg.

"He continually talked about how fabulous he was at the top of his voice. The secretaries loved him because he bought them gifts and told them how wonderful he was."

He also told staff he had come to Bundaberg as part of his religion. He made himself known to the local Jehovah's Witness group and told them he knew all about their religion, and to call him if there was ever a problem.

His zeal to operate was so great that even patients who had refused procedures were overruled. One man, according to a hospital insider, was emphatic he did not want a procedure but Patel began calling around family members until he found a distant relative who authorised the surgery.

"One lady was booked to go to Brisbane to have a procedure," one medical staffer said. "Dr Patel found out and talked her into having it here. She had cancer of the oesophagus. She had the surgery and died in intensive care.

"That's what he was like. If he found someone in the ward, he would walk in and want to operate."

18 Apr 05 - 05:31 AM (#1464128)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=630157

Tsunami carried bronze Buddha 1,000 kilometres across the ocean
By Jan McGirk, South-East Asia Correspondent

17 April 2005

A little bronze-eyed idol to the west of Kathmandu is causing quite a stir.

It's a Buddhist sage, and in mid-December the 5in figure was, like so many in rural Burma, placed in a little decorated kiosk, strapped to a crude bamboo raft and released on to the Irrawaddy river to drift to propitious sites and cast away evil. Down the delta it floated and then, a week or so later, the Boxing Day tsunami struck.

Eight days on, 1,000 kilometres away, fishermen in Tamil Nadu spotted the raft floating offshore, its foil decorations glinting in the sunlight. Nine men set off in a boat to investigate and brought back a crude bamboo raft, lashed together with plastic clothesline and studded with silver-foil flowers. Its only passenger was a tiny crosslegged metal figure sitting on a plate inside a wooden hut. Three vases, a candle, some coins and a maroon monk's robe with the word "Burma" stitched on the tag were stashed alongside it.

None of the villagers in Meyyurkuppam, a small Tamil fishing hamlet in southern India, could identify the foreign statue, but two Western aid workers suggested that it looked like a Buddha. Actually, it was a chubby Jalagupta figurine, held holy by Burmese Buddhists. Everything on board the raft was intact, and its arrival coincided with another extraordinary event in Meyyurkuppam - everyone in the village had survived the tsunami. Hence their insistence on pampering what local Hindus have called "Buddha-Swami" under their biggest banyan tree. Believers credit this floating statue with protecting all 980 inhabitants of Meyyurkuppam. The first post-tsunami cult was thereby created.

One New Age priest reportedly claimed that its power against evil kept a controversial nuclear reactor from leaking radiation along their coastline, sparing tsunami survivors a slow death from cancer. At least 30 technical personnel living close to the Kalpakkam reactor perished in the tsunami, yet the facility stayed intact. More than 16,000 Indians died or are still missing after the huge waves reshaped the Bay of Bengal. No lives were lost in Meyyurkuppam.

"It is a miracle," said Kuppurswamy, the village headman. "We keep a glass of water and a flower in front of the deity every day. We will worship him like we worship our own gods. Our village has accepted it as its own." Last week, as Buddhist images and relics in Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and southern China were ritually cleansed during the three-day Theravada New Year celebrations, the tiny Buddhist sage of Meyyurkuppam received ablutions, along with ceremonial offerings of rice sweetmeats. Fairy lights were strung around the new icon. "He will be kept here," said N Padavattan, a local boatman. "We are very happy with the arrival of this
god."

"This is part of a wondrous cycle," said Phra Vivek, a Bangkok monk. "Buddhism arrived in the river deltas of South-east Asia in the third century when the Indian emperor Ashoka sent missionaries to the Golden Land. Now the ocean has carried Buddhism back to its source."

K Gurumurthy, from the Indo-Myanmar chamber of commerce, was sent by the Burmese embassy in New Delhi in February to examine the metal figurine, which was at first rumoured to be a valuable bronze dating from the 17th century. He told reporters it had little intrinsic value, but was a commonplace modern statuette, floated in their scores downstream during the rainy season in the Irrawaddy delta. But never has one travelled so far across the sea, and in India and Burma this little statue is considered auspicious.

The villagers have now agreed to move their Buddha-Swami to a pagoda on high ground, because post-tsunami regulations prohibit any construction within 500 metres of the shoreline. Once the state government donates land for a new temple, the building, funded by the Burmese generals, will get under way. Meanwhile, the fishermen's families offer daily prayers to the new Buddha-Swami.

19 Apr 05 - 11:11 AM (#1465376)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's a story about the destruction of a cultural icon:

Caltech Student Gets Prison for SUV Arson

LOS ANGELES - A Caltech graduate student convicted of helping to firebomb scores of sport utility vehicles was sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison and ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution.

A federal judge Monday rejected William Jensen Cottrell's plea for leniency. "There's no way I'd ever be involved in anything like this again," Cottrell said. "I won't ever even jaywalk again."

However, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner said Cottrell had engaged in domestic terrorism and "we're very, very lucky" that no one was killed in the arson attacks. Cottrell, 24, was convicted in November of conspiracy to commit arson and seven counts of arson for an August 2003 vandalism spree that damaged and destroyed about 125 SUVs at dealerships and homes in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles.

Cottrell was acquitted of using a destructive device - Molotov cocktails - in a crime of violence. That was the most serious charge he faced and it carried a sentence of at least 30 years in prison.

At his trial, the prosecution had accused Cottrell of "arrogance" and a "towering superiority" toward people who did not share his environmental views. Cottrell had testified that SUV dealers were evil. The judge said he felt sorry for Cottrell, a doctoral candidate in the physics department at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, but he had only himself to blame.

"What a talent to have wasted," Klausner said.

Vandals used spray-paint to deface the vehicles with slogans such as "Fat, Lazy Americans," "polluter" and "ELF," for Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group. Prosecutors estimated the total damage at $2.3 million.

Defense lawyers argued that Cottrell had agreed with two friends to spray-paint vehicles, but was surprised when they began to hurl Molotov cocktails.

Federal prosecutors have identified former Caltech students Tyler Johnson and Michie Oe as "fugitive co-conspirators" in the case. It is believed that both have fled the country.

Cottrell was arrested in March 2004 after authorities tracked e-mails sent to the Los Angeles Times. The sender said he was involved in the SUV attacks and affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front.

20 Apr 05 - 09:16 AM (#1466252)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST

As the comic we get (not me mind you) in the UK known as the "Sun" put it - re Papal succession

Papa Ratzi

21 Apr 05 - 08:02 AM (#1466911)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Paisley seeks horseshoe to rein in ancient witches' curse

MARTIN WILLIAMS April 19 2005

THE lucky horseshoe is to some the stuff of irrational superstition and a wild imagination.

But some community leaders are convinced one such horseshoe could hold the key to restraining an ancient witches' curse which it is claimed has bedevilled a town with bad luck for more than three decades.

The horseshoe, which dates back to the seventeenth century, was unwittingly lost in the 1970s and some believe Paisley has been plagued by misfortune since.

Piero Pieraccini, treasurer of the Paisley Development Trust, blamed high rates of violent crime, hardship and natural disasters, including flooding in the town, on the loss of an iron horseshoe which marks the communal grave of six men and women, who were believed to be the devil's disciples.

The band were found guilty of witchcraft in 1697, hanged and publicly burned at the stake before their ashes were buried and the tomb sealed with the horse's stamp.

Without the horseshoe, it is said, the town cannot prevent witches rising from the dead leaving the town at the mercy of their evil spirits.

Now the trust has applied for a grant for almost Â£2500 from Renfrewshire Council to recast a brand new stainless steel horseshoe in the hope that it will bring good luck to Paisley.

Mr Pieraccini added: "We have had a hell of a time in Paisley since that horseshoe vanished. Nothing has gone right for the town.

"I believe it is because of the horseshoe and I definitely think it will make a huge difference if we repair it.

"The local legend predicting that the prosperity of the town will suffer if the horseshoe was moved from the witches' grave seems to have come true."

The witches were accused of placing a curse on 11-year-old Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran at Erskine.

Witnesses claimed they saw the weeping child floating through the air and regurgitate stones, coal, sticks and feathers after she was bewitched by the six. They were all found guilty at a trial in the town's Tolbooth and sentenced to death in front of hundreds of onlookers.

The trust wants to return the horseshoe in time for the 308th anniversary of the witches' death.

21 Apr 05 - 08:11 AM (#1466918)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

http://www.heraldsun.com/firstnews/37-598785.html

Yale Divinity Consultants Warned Air Force

By ROBERT WELLER : Associated Press Writer
Apr 20, 2005 : 10:42 pm ET

DENVER -- Consultants from Yale Divinity School told the Air Force Academy last summer that a Protestant chaplain had promoted Christianity with a fire-and-brimstone warning during cadet basic training.

The Yale report, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, was compiled after the visitors attended the training at the academy's request in July.

Academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker said Wednesday that commanders had taken the Yale report into consideration when they developed religious tolerance classes that are now mandatory for cadets and staff.

The classes were a response to complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.

"We're making strides out here. We recognize the problem," Whitaker said.

The academy, still emerging from a sexual assault scandal, had asked the Yale team to review how the school's chaplains serve cadets.

Kristen Leslie, a Yale professor of pastoral care who led the group, said the chaplain told 600 cadets "to go back to their tents and tell their fellow cadets that those who are not born again will burn in the fires of hell."

She said the fact that the people speaking to cadets were in positions of power "suggests the cadets were supposed to assume this was the party line."

In the religious tolerance classes, cadets and staff are told that teachers and commanders should not invite cadets to attend their churches. Whitaker said the academy is developing a follow-up program that will include firmer boundaries on permissible behavior.

22 Apr 05 - 10:40 AM (#1467982)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage

Since I have posted about this story before I'll continue it here. It doesn't need a thread of its own, even though this woman is into finger-picking.

Woman who found finger arrested
Police raid Vegas home of Wendy's diner who claimed bowl of chili was tainted
- Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer, Friday, April 22, 2005
link

Anna Ayala, the Las Vegas woman who claimed to have bitten into a severed finger at a San Jose Wendy's restaurant, was arrested Thursday night in connection with the case, San Jose police said.

San Jose police spokesman Enrique Garcia said Ayala, 39, was arrested, but he declined to provide further details. "We've arrested her in connection with the Wendy's investigation. She's currently in custody'' in Las Vegas, said Garcia late Thursday night.

Police did not say on what charges Ayala was arrested. A press conference is scheduled at the San Jose Police Department at 1 p.m. today to discuss details about the arrest, Garcia said. A Clark County Detention Center official said Ayala was booked Thursday night as a fugitive from San Jose.

Family friend Ken Bono said officers raided the home around 9 p.m. and caught Ayala alone as she was watching "Meet the Fockers" on video. "I had just left to get some soda at the store, and when I came back she was gone and there were cars from the (Las Vegas and San Jose) police," said Bono, 23, who lives with Ayala. "They said it for grand theft or something."

Bono said Ayala is innocent and eventually will be exonerated. He said she has been unfairly targeted by the police and Wendy's International Inc. "They don't got jack s -- . They got her for something she didn't do. It's just something Wendy's is trying to do to her," Bono said.

The arrest comes almost a month after Ayala visited the Wendy's restaurant in San Jose on Monterey Road, where she says she bit into a 1 1/2- inch fingertip as she ate a bowl of chili. Her March 22 report prompted several investigations -- including one by San Jose police and another by Wendy's, which concluded Thursday that the finger did not originate in its food preparations or ingredients. Wendy's officials declined comment Thursday night on Ayala's arrest, saying they had not been contacted by law enforcement.

After her reported discovery of the finger, Ayala said she had trouble eating and sleeping and was forced to take medicine to help settle her nerves. At one point, she recounted her horror at finding the finger on ABC-TV's "Good Morning America." On April 6, investigators served a search warrant on Ayala's Las Vegas home. Ayala, who has steadfastly maintained she did not plant the finger, accused police of harassment.

She initially filed a claim against Wendy's but withdrew it after the raid, saying the media and police scrutiny was causing her family "emotional distress."

"People can say what they want and destroy my family, but it's not true," Ayala said last week. "This is really ruining my kids and me and dragging my family through the mud. It's killing us."

Ayala has a history of filing unsuccessful legal claims against companies. Ayala claimed that she had received a $30,000 settlement from the El Pollo Loco restaurant chain after her 13-year-old daughter fell ill with food poisoning. But El Pollo Loco officials said Ayala had been paid nothing in response to her claim. In 2000, Ayala sued a San Jose car dealership and Goodyear Tire Corp., and in 1999 she filed a sexual harassment suit against La Oferta Review, a San Jose Spanish-language newspaper.

The finger case took another turn last week when authorities compared the Wendy's finger with the DNA of a woman whose fingertip was chewed off by a leopard in Nevada. Authorities, however, ruled out a match. The probe put to rest speculation that the finger might be that of Sandy Allman, 59, of Pahrump, Nev. Allman lost the tip of a finger Feb. 23 when a leopard kept on her rural property attacked her.

The case of the Wendy's finger has drawn media attention from around the world and, according to Wendy's officials, led to a sharp drop in sales. Last week, Wendy's doubled its reward to $100,000 for leads in finding the finger's original owner. On Thursday, Wendy's announced it would offer free Frosty shakes to all Bay Area customers this weekend as a show of goodwill and commitment in the wake of its investigation.

23 Apr 05 - 01:20 PM (#1468858)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

I guess this calls for an oral deposition:

CHICAGO - An appeals court said a man can press a claim for emotional distress after learning a former lover had used his sperm to have a baby. But he can't claim theft, the ruling said, because the sperm were hers to keep.

The ruling Wednesday by the Illinois Appellate Court sends Dr. Richard O. Phillips' distress case back to trial court.

Phillips accuses Dr. Sharon Irons of a "calculated, profound personal betrayal" after their affair six years ago, saying she secretly kept semen after they had oral sex, then used it to get pregnant.

He said he didn't find out about the child for nearly two years, when Irons filed a paternity lawsuit. DNA tests confirmed Phillips was the father, the court papers state.

Phillips was ordered to pay about $800 a month in child support, said Irons' attorney, Enrico Mirabelli.

Phillips sued Irons, claiming he has had trouble sleeping and eating and has been haunted by "feelings of being trapped in a nightmare," court papers state.

Irons responded that her alleged actions weren't "truly extreme and outrageous" and that Phillips' pain wasn't bad enough to merit a lawsuit. The circuit court agreed and dismissed Phillips' lawsuit in 2003.

But the higher court ruled that, if Phillips' story is true, Irons "deceitfully engaged in sexual acts, which no reasonable person would expect could result in pregnancy, to use plaintiff's sperm in an unorthodox, unanticipated manner yielding extreme consequences."

23 Apr 05 - 02:22 PM (#1468893)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I agree with the higher court. It's one thing to do that if she was desperate to have a child and didn't want a permanent partner, but she didn't have his consent, so if she was going to be sneaky about it to begin with, she shouldn't have sued for the child support. That's having her sperm and eating it, too.

Even though I started this thread, I have my hat, so I'll just leave by the back door.

25 Apr 05 - 02:11 PM (#1470315)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Nice day for a wet wedding
A Mill Creek couple take their vows underwater

By Bill Sheets, Herald Writer

WEST SEATTLE - Melanie Clark and Curt McNamee took the plunge Sunday.

The Mill Creek couple did so literally as well as figuratively, as they got married underwater in their scuba gear in a cove on Elliott Bay in West Seattle. McNamee, 54, has been diving since 1971, and Clark, 31, is a dive instructor. The two met at the Lighthouse dive shop in Lynnwood about three years ago. McNamee took one of Clark's classes, and the two began diving together. "It's through our mutual diving experiences that our bond was created," McNamee said.

The idea for the underwater wedding was McNamee's. "I'm the diving guru, but Curt felt this was the way to go," Clark said, adding she was all for the idea.

The bride wore a white lace dress and veil over her scuba gear, outfitted with lead fishing weights to keep them from floating upward, and she carried a bouquet of plastic flowers. The groom wore a T-shirt made to resemble a tuxedo and a black plastic top hat atop his diving hood.

The ceremony began on the rocky beach, and then the bride and groom, the pastor and about 20 diver friends slowly disappeared into about 15 feet of water, where the couple exchanged their vows. The ceremony was performed by John Burkholder of Monroe, a friend of McNamee's for 19 years. Burkholder had done some diving years ago, but had to be re-educated to do the ceremony, McNamee said.

Another diver taped the ceremony, and it was shown on three close-circuit TVs set up under a canopy onshore. The more than 50 in attendance - plus numerous passersby - watched with a mixture of laughter and curiosity. "It's different," said Clark's mother, Rosemary Patterson, who came from her home in Calgary, Alberta, for the wedding. "She lives diving; it's her love," she said of her daughter.

"It's fabulous," said bystander Carol Nicholson, whose mother lives across the street from the beach.

The water was murky, some of the divers said. The picture on two of the TVs was dark, but on a third the couple and others could be seen clearly. The couple used laminated flash cards to recite their vows, mouthing along with them the best they could through their scuba gear. When the card "I do" appeared on the TV screens, the crowd erupted into a cheer. The "rings" resembled large pipe nuts and were slipped on for symbolism's sake. The couple's real rings were worn underneath their diving gloves.

Then a sign was held in front of the underwater camera: "You May Kiss the Bride." The two pulled out their mouthpieces long enough to kiss. The wedding party then bobbed to the surface, and the couple emerged to another cheer. A boat picked them up and drove them on a "victory lap," then dropped them off on a nearby pier.

Their unusual hitching went off without a hitch, mostly. The officiant's wet suit wasn't properly weighted, so some in the wedding party had to hold him down to keep him from ascending.

"The visibility wasn't very good in the water," McNamee said, still dripping wet shortly after the ceremony. "But you know what, it's OK."

25 Apr 05 - 02:27 PM (#1470329)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This story kind of rambles (it's actually three stories lumped together). I have a friend who "fosters" cats for the humane society--it's darned hard work to take care of a lot of animals even when you know what you're doing.

'Cat Hoarder' Forced to Give Up 70 Felines
Shelter Takes in More Than 70 Felines Turned Over by Maine Man Who Officials Call 'Cat Hoarder'

BRUNSWICK, Maine Apr. 24, 2005 - An animal shelter has taken in more than 70 cats that were given up by their owner in what officials described as a case of "animal hoarding." Sharon Turner, director of the Coastal Humane Society, said the man who had the cats is a hoarder and that hoarding "is a bona fide mental illness" related to obsessive compulsive disorder.

An animal hoarder "is a person who amasses more animals than he/she can properly care for. Such individuals generally fail to recognize or refuse to acknowledge when the animals in their custody become victims of gross neglect," the Humane Society of the United States said on its Web site. Turner said the cats' owner had been working with the shelter over a couple of years to build up trust. Finally, she said, he recognized his financial limitations and "did absolutely the right thing" by giving the cats to the shelter.

The shelter's staff scrambled Wednesday to accommodate the frightened felines at the same time they were accepting 12 of 92 English springer spaniels and puppies seized last week from a kennel in Dover-Foxcroft.

Turner said the fuzzy cats were in unusually good condition given the circumstances. Some have wounds and burned paws from urine exposure, while others have upper respiratory illnesses that can affect the eyes. Other problems, she said, are a result of inbreeding.

In the Washington County town of Waite, animal control officers responding to a tip seized 12 dehydrated dogs Wednesday from a mobile home and found the bodies of 18 more. The dogs living at the homes were all huskies except for one bichon frise, said Jennifer Howell, an agent with the state Animal Welfare Program. "Most of them were really thin, and a few were emaciated," she said. "They had no food and no water and inadequate shelter."

The owner, whose name was not released, signed over control of the dogs to animal control officials, who took them to the Central Aroostook County Humane Society in Presque Isle.

25 Apr 05 - 06:10 PM (#1470536)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

Thanks Sage. Wendy's should now advertise that their chili is now Finger Free.

I was wondering if we should ask the Rabbi if sperm is kosher.

25 Apr 05 - 06:18 PM (#1470544)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

FInger-licking Good!

A

26 Apr 05 - 09:30 AM (#1471165)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Some guys just HAVE to live interesting lives:

Man Says He Kept Mom In Freezer To Collect Her Checks

He Was Afraid People Would Think He Killed Her

LA CROSSE, Wis. -- Wisconsin authorities said a man told them he kept his mother's body in a freezer for more than four years to collect her Social Security checks.
A woman's body was found encased in ice, in a sitting position.
Police said Philip Schuth told them his mother died of natural causes in 2000, but that he was afraid to notify police because he thought they wouldn't believe him.
Investigators found the freezer at the end of an all-night standoff at Schuth's home in the town of Campbell. A neighbor was shot during a dispute and SWAT teams responded.
Schuth surrendered without incident. Investigators found 15 to 20 homemade explosive devices and more than a dozen firearms.

26 Apr 05 - 10:36 AM (#1471217)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Amos, you beat me to this story, but I have a longer version, so I'll post it:

Schuth: Mother died in 2000
link

By Dan Springer / Lee Newspapers

LA CROSSE, Wis. — Philip Schuth said his mother died of natural causes in 2000, but he hid her body in a chest freezer because he was afraid of being charged with murder. He was particularly worried investigators would find her blood splattered on the wall of an upstairs hallway. It was from when a cat attacked her years before her death, he said. So he kept her death a secret for 41/2 years — painting over the blood and living off her Social Security checks, which were electronically deposited in a joint account. He also kept secret the "anti-personnel" bombs and a stash of guns in his basement, and set up booby traps in the house.

Those are some of the revelations made in a probable cause statement filed Monday in La Crosse County Court. According to the affidavit by Capt. Jeff Wolf of the sheriff's department, Schuth revealed his secrets to negotiators this weekend during a 14-hour standoff with police that began Friday evening. It began after Schuth reportedly struck a 10-year-old child and then shot the boy's father, who with his wife had driven to Schuth's home on French Island to confront him about the assault. The man, Randy Russell Jr., was treated for gunshot wounds to the right shoulder and released from Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center later that evening.

Schuth retreated into his home at 1330 Bainbridge St. and refused to come out. Investigators said that during the negotiations Schuth said he put his mother, Edith Schuth, in the freezer when she died Aug. 15, 2000. Schuth gave himself up Saturday morning, and officers searched the home.

Officers brought the freezer to the sheriff's department, where they took it apart. They chipped away enough of the roughly 300-pound block of ice to reveal an intact corpse in a sitting position. Police believe Edith Schuth was born 90 or 91 years ago. Officers also found 15 loaded handguns and homemade explosive devices Schuth said would be there, according to the affidavit.

The home had very little furniture and there was no running water, but Schuth had more than $10,000 in cash in the home and another $25,000 in a bank account, even though Schuth said he has not worked steadily in years, investigators said. Schuth said he calculated that without continuing income that money in the account would be depleted in about five years due to taxes, and he said he contemplated either killing himself or committing an armed robbery for which he would be immediately apprehended, said the affidavit.

At his first court appearance Monday, Schuth rocked gently in his courtroom chair and chatted with another inmate as he waited for the hearing to begin. At the hearing, Schuth said very little except to inform La Crosse County Circuit Judge Ramona Gonzalez that his name is pronounced "Schuf."

Gonzalez ordered Schuth held on a $100,000 cash bond after La Crosse County District Attorney Scott Horne said charges will not be filed until next week. Horne said he wants to wait until an autopsy is done to file charges.

When Schuth is next in court May 3, he could face a variety of charges including attempted homicide and two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment in connection with Friday's shooting. And, three counts of possession of improvised explosive devices, concealing a corpse and possession of a short-barreled shotgun, Horne said. Since the body was still frozen Monday, a forensic pathologist in Hastings, Minn., said the autopsy will have to be delayed until at least Thursday. While Horne said he does not believe Schuth killed his mother, the case is being treated as a homicide.

While Schuth was cooperative, he also warned negotiators that if officers entered his home with loaded guns it was going to be "high noon," according to the affidavit. He also told negotiators that he had more than 10, but less than 100 "anti-personnel devices" in the home, and when officers later searched the home they found two large shopping bags containing 15 to 20 explosive devices. The Dane County Bomb Squad examined the devices, Sunday discovering they were filled with explosive powder and metal objects including nails, heavy duty staples and other metal items, according to the affidavit. The squad detonated one to confirm the devices were functional.

26 Apr 05 - 11:19 AM (#1471242)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

She was a cold, hard woman, plainly. But I think his management of things has had a chilling effect on her freedom of speech.

A

26 Apr 05 - 11:32 AM (#1471257)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

That must have been some hum-dinger of a cat attack. I had a serious bite a few years ago, was nearly hospitalized from the infection, but it bled a bit, it didn't splatter.

26 Apr 05 - 12:11 PM (#1471306)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Reading a lot today. Here's a remarkable one (it probably deserves better company that the sperm donor and the finger-tip hoax).

Injured Colo. Skier Rescued a Week Later
April 26

DENVER - Charles Horton, a massage therapist and experienced outdoorsman, broke his leg April 17 on what was to have been a one-day ski trip. Eight days, later authorities found him cold, hungry - and very much alive.

Horton spent the time alone in the wilderness near Steamboat Springs, about 100 miles northwest of Denver, sleeping under snowcapped trees and in rudimentary shelters. On day No. 3, the experienced outdoorsman began using his elbows to drag himself across the frozen ground in an attempt to get to his car 3 miles away.

It wasn't until Sunday that longtime friend and landlord Johnny Walker returned from a vacation and found Horton's cat was unfed, his plants needed water and there was a slew of phone messages wondering why Horton had missed massage appointments.

"My heart just sank," Walker said. "It was going to be a horrible loss."

Walker called the Rio Blanco County Sheriff's Office. After a one-hour search, rescue workers found Horton early Monday morning on a snow-covered road used by the U.S. Forest Service not far from town.

Horton, 55, of Steamboat Springs, was dehydrated and suffering from minor frostbite and mild hypothermia. He was hospitalized in fair condition Tuesday, authorities said.

"His skills and knowledge, his gear and his will to live are what kept him alive," said Sgt. Anthony Mazzola of the Rio Blanco County Sheriff's Office. "This is stuff books are written about."

Horton hadn't told anyone when he expected to return, and almost everyone who knew him was out of town, his friend Mary O'Brien said.

"His co-workers were gone, I was gone, his girlfriend was gone. We were all missing the fact that he was missing," she said. "It was a mad mess."

O'Brien said Horton spent the first two nights under a tree, sleeping on boughs and building a fire to keep warm. Temperatures dipped into the 20s at midweek when a cold front moved through, but little snow fell, National Weather Service meteorologist Dave Nadler said.

On Tuesday, he decided to start toward his car. Crawling on his back, supporting himself with his elbows and dragging his broken leg behind, he covered about 200 yards in 10 hours, O'Brien said.

"He decided it was taking too much energy to move, so he decide he was staying put," she said.

Rescuers found him about two miles from their command center, barely able to speak. Searchers on snowmobiles would periodically stop, shut down their engines and blow whistles. On one stop, they heard Horton blowing his whistle in response.

"We all said that if anybody could (survive), it would be him," O'Brien said. "He had the personality and the skill. He's not the type that would panic."

26 Apr 05 - 05:55 PM (#1471725)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

With regard to the frigid mother, I'm reminded of this old limerick:

There was a young widow named Brice,
Who kept her dead husband on ice;
She said, "T'was hard when I lost him,
I'll never defrost him;
Cold comfort but cheap at the price."

Who knows, maybe we'll find an appropriate article any day now!

Amos- "oral deposition" smacks of "contempt of court." You should be ashamed to make such a suggestion...

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

29 Apr 05 - 12:56 PM (#1474348)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Men Who Claimed to Find Treasure Arrested
April 29, 2005

LAWRENCE, Mass. - Two men who made national headlines by claiming they found a buried treasure in the back yard of a home were charged Friday with stealing the collection of old currency from a house where they were working. Barry Billcliff, 27, of Manchester, N.H., and Timothy Crebase, 22, of Methuen, Mass., were charged with receiving stolen property, conspiracy and accessory after the fact, Methuen Police Lt. Kevin Martin said. The men were to be arraigned Friday.

Crebase told investigators the men found the money in the gutter of a barn they were hired to repair, according to the Eagle-Tribune newspaper of Lawrence. The men had made several appearances on national television this week, and police noticed details of the story changed with each appearance.

Police Chief Joseph E. Solomon told ABC's "Good Morning America" that authorities might never have suspected anything had the men not sought publicity. "Had they just put the money away or, you know, gone somewhere outside of the area and sold a little money at a time, I don't think anybody would have known or suspected anything," Solomon said. "Sometimes wanting to be famous is really the downfall of people."

The arrest interrupted the men's planned appearance Thursday night on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" because they were being booked by police around the time the show was airing. They were to have been interviewed from the yard where they claimed to have found the money while digging. The men said they found 1,800 bank notes and bills dating between 1899 and 1928 while digging in the yard of the house Crebase rents.

The materials had a face value of about $7,000. Domenic Mangano, owner of the Village Coin Shop in Plaistow, N.H., examined the find and said the currency was authentic. He gave varying estimates of its worth, ranging from $50,000 to $100,000.

The men's stories, though, attracted suspicion because of discrepancies. The depth of the buried crate, for example, ranged from 9 inches to 2 feet. The men also gave conflicting reasons for digging in Crebase's yard. They told one reporter they were preparing to plant a tree. In other reports, they said they were trying to remove a small tree or dig up the roots of a shrub that was damaging the home's foundation.

Billcliff insisted the discrepancies in the story of how the money happened found could be explained. "It's like watching a car accident," he told the newspaper. "Sometimes someone will say something and someone else will say something slightly different, but mostly it's the same."

Christine Tetlow of Manchester, N.H., who identified herself as a longtime friend of Billcliff, defended him and said the pair did not steal the money. "If you need money, he'll be the first person to step up and give it to you and never ask to get it back," she said.

29 Apr 05 - 03:33 PM (#1474479)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Maybe it's just because it's a Friday, but the headlines are really getting wierd. This is the as-is list of news stories that appears on my IP personal web page this afternoon:

    * Ga. Bride-To-Be's Family Announces Reward
    * L.A. on Edge After Freeway Shootings
    * Mother Charged in Stabbing Deaths of Kids
    * House GOP Plans Social Security Draft
    * Men Who Claimed to Find Treasure Arrested

Technology News

    * Spitzer Sues Intermix Over 'Spyware'
    * Verizon Pulling Plug on Free NYC Wi-Fi
    * Cinema Owners Seek to Curb Phone Rage
    * European Digital Library Is Proposed
    * Bahrain Site Registration Sparks Protests

Health and Lifestyle News

    * FDA OKs Lizard-Derived Shot for Diabetes
    * Girl Sticks Schoolmates With Used Needle
    * CDC Pushing New Mosquito Repellents
    * Study Links Middle Age Obesity to Dementia
    * Eli Lilly Halts Child Sepsis Study

Stabbings, kidnappings, phone rage, lizard shots, needle sticks, child sepsis? Whew!

29 Apr 05 - 04:30 PM (#1474521)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Under a kinder and gentler regime, SPring is the time when young men's hearts turn to thoughts of love.

Under the present one, they turn to thoughts of embezzlement and physical harm.

A

30 Apr 05 - 03:43 PM (#1475163)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Burke

Of course Stilly's 1st headline from 3:30 yesterday has some follow-up's

Missing Georgia bride-to-be found alive in New Mexico
"released by her captors and was able to contact authorities."

Bride-to-Be Admits Making Up Kidnap Story
Missing Georgia Bride-To-Be Found with Cold Feet

I hate to say it, but why was this woman's disappearance national news? If someone disappears 2 days before the wedding, don't you just figure on it being cold feet?

30 Apr 05 - 05:08 PM (#1475212)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Look at the advertising dollars that the news outlets pulled in electrifying the nation on the Lacie Peterson story.

Anything that has that kind of potential gets editors pounding their desks for story, man!!

A

01 May 05 - 12:25 AM (#1475461)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

From a recent edition of the RRUssian newpaper Pravda, a sort of National Enquirer :

Doctors from Russia's Ulyanovsk ask local authorities for help

The doctors in the Russian city of Ulyanovsk are raising the alarm. Not only they are paid peanuts for their work, they seem to be running the highest occupational risks in town. The patients have been beating up the doctors in Ulyanovsk's hospitals on a regular basis. The personnel of one of the hospital emergency rooms were the first to lose their patience. Three doctors and two nurses suffered abuse from the patients of that room over a short period of time. You just can not treat the patients because they are often under the influence and ready to insult you verbally or use their fists at first opportunity.

The doctors had to call on the deputies of the city parliament. They requested the deputies to take urgent measures so that armed guards might be constantly available on hospital premises. They also requested that an alarm system with an emergency button for calling the police should be installed. Deputies discussed the issues at a special meeting of the committee for health and social development of the Ulyanovsk parliament. However, the problem boils down to money which is too tight to mention. Monthly costs of an emergency button alarm system amount to 10,000 rubles. The city authorities say they have no such sum in their coffers. The deputies finally decided that the doctors would have to cover the costs of their security by paying with the money charged for paid medical services.

02 May 05 - 06:16 AM (#1476321)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Mary Jo

I am replying to this post:

From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 Apr 04 - 01:53 PM

Civil liberties gone amuck? Or is California just more whacko that usual?

Thursday, April 15, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/169174_molester15.html

      Serial child molester is set free

      By VANESSA HO, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

      In the spring of 1996, Blue Kartak was a baby-faced 16-year-old runaway in Seattle when he met a friendly man at a coffeehouse who promised to take him to Disneyland.
      The man turned out to be a serial child molester who drugged and raped Kartak in a motel room in California.

      His attacker, Edward Harvey Stokes, was convicted and given a life sentence for the crime. But last week, Stokes -- who's said he has attacked more than 200 victims -- walked out of a California jail as a free man and moved back to Washington state. The reason: A state appeals court ruled he never had a chance to confront his accuser -- Kartak -- who committed suicide before Stokes' trial.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Just for your information, I am the Aunt of Blue Kartak, the 16 year old who commited suicide. Blue was not 16 when he killed himself. He was in his twenties. He was married and had a son of his own.

There is more to this story than they tell you in the news. Like the fact that Blues dad, my older brother Pete, is also a pediphile, drug lord and general maniac. Having grown up with my brother, I had many reasons to take my own life, and I am afraid the molestation by this stranger had only a little to do with Blues suicide, mostly that it was the stick that broke the camels back. No more. The whole Kartak family is unhealthy and sick with denial, alcohalism, blame and lies. Poor Blue was a victim of his own family! I know what Pete did to me and my brother Kevin and am horrified at the thought of what he may have done to his own son!

I came across this thread while doing a search on my family members, all who do not communicate together any more because of a family history of alcohalism and denial that there was insest in the family. This is what happens when families do not face up to facts and instead blame everyone else outside the family for their families ills. This pediphile was not the only or sole cause to Blues untimely death, I can not stress that enough!!!!!

Sign me, the only one healthy and talking. Too bad my family cant shut me up...but they are the ones who are sick!! Please keep them in your prayers!!!!
Mary Jo

02 May 05 - 08:40 AM (#1476362)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

Mary Jo-

Thanks for having the courage to post the rest of the story. Good luck to you in your effort to escape the family you so graphically describe.

Charley Noble

02 May 05 - 08:44 AM (#1476365)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

I was also viewing today on the morning news the story of the "Killer Squirrels of Portland-West" who have been attacking joggers in packs. Where will it end?

I wonder if they bury the leftovers for subsequent snacks.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

02 May 05 - 10:54 AM (#1476445)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I'd forgotten about that story, but the outcome isn't surprising. My mom worked for Child Protective Services in Washington State, and from the stories she would tell, it was clear that it was an uphill battle to try to help families and family members in this kind of situation. The united front of a dysfunctional family is hard to get past--their word versus the word of who? an anonymous source, or a curious social worker?

This thread is meant to call attention to interesting stories, but if any of them need more discussion then they merit threads of their own, or at least categories more specific to the topic, so don't be discouraged by any brief discussion of the topic here. These articles are posted to be viewed along the lines of think pieces.

SRS

02 May 05 - 11:03 AM (#1476456)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I hope no one thinks I'm ducking the previous issue, but I logged on this morning to post this story:

Downtown D.C. Duck, Offspring Get New Home
photo (probably not a durable link)
ADELE STARR May 02, 2005

WASHINGTON - The hottest new tourist site in the nation's capital is no more. After a boffo four-week run, the Treasury duck has been moved from her prime nesting spot in the midst of heavy tourist traffic a block from the White House to a more peaceful setting along a quietly flowing stream.

The mallards in the classic children's book "Make Way for Ducklings" may have only needed the help of the Boston police department for their relocation, but their Washington relatives got assistance from several federal agencies. The Secret Service uniformed division provided security during the four weeks the mother mallard, given various nicknames from T-bill to Quacks Reform, was sitting on her eggs. A metal barricade was constructed and then expanded it as the tourist crowds wanting to get a look grew larger.

The ducklings all hatched on Saturday, and surprisingly there were 11, not nine. Biologists had missed two eggs when they made their initial count. The wildlife experts picked Sunday as moving day, believing the ducklings needed one day to get acclimated to their mother in the original nest.

The transfer had been mapped out like a military operation. Officials of the Treasury Department, where the expertise runs to money matters not wildlife, called for help from specialists from the National Park Service and the Agriculture Department. The mother mallard, who had gained fame from appearances on national television and in newspapers around the world, squawked only briefly as USDA biologists gently nabbed her and the 11 ducklings and placed them in cages for the 15-minute motorcade to Rock Creek Park.

Once at the park, the ducks were placed in a holding pen to get used to their new surroundings. There was some concern among the biologists that the mother duck could become so alarmed by the move that she might fly off, abandoning her offspring. However, those worries proved unfounded. After just a few seconds, the mother found an opening in the pen and waddled out, heading straight for the nearby creek.

Her ducklings scurried behind in a single line - all but Duckling No. 11, who had a little trouble getting going. It stumbled at first, landing on its back with its webbed feet waving in the air. But it quickly righted itself, only to trip again and then tumble down the muddy creek bank, plopping into the water. From there, all 11 ducklings formed a line paddling after their mother and set out to explore their new surroundings.

"We have a healthy duck population here and we are happy to take the new additions under our wings," said Laura Illige, chief ranger at Rock Creek Park.

Back on Pennsylvania Avenue, the metal barricades had already been dismantled and the former duck nesting place was once again just a mulch pile surrounding an elm tree.

05 May 05 - 08:13 PM (#1479060)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This newspaper printing plant, where Rusty lives, is about three blocks from my house. I pass his enclosure regularly. We'll miss him!

The end of the trail arrives for Rusty

By Barry Shlachter, Star-Telegram Staff Writer
link

Rusty, a Texas longhorn steer who long served as the Star-Telegram's mascot and won fame by competing against investment experts as a stock picker, is headed for the last roundup.

The gentle 20-year-old bovine, often the highlight of printing plant tours for thousands of schoolchildren every year, was examined at Texas A&M University in College Station last week. Veterinarians determined that eight lumps below his jaw are tumors, some nearly 4 inches wide.

"I would say multiple tumors is typically considered not treatable," said Dr. Wesley Bissett, an assistant professor at A&M's College of Veterinary Medicine.

The steer is expected to be returned to Fort Worth this afternoon and euthanized.

Rusty racked up a creditable record in choosing stocks each year by dropping cow pies on a numbered grid in a pen. Each square represented either a locally based company or a major local employer.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Rusty was more successful during bull markets. He realized a 62.9 percent gain in 1997, his first year of stock picking, against the experts' gain of 22.6 percent. Overall, Rusty won four out of eight years, although he's trailing in 2005.

"It's quite humbling when Rusty wins by putting the cow pies on certain squares -- and it's also revealing to those competing just how difficult it is to select individual equities, and succeed year after year after year," said Jerry Singleton, 65, president of Signal Securities.

Singleton, who competed against Rusty four years without losing, said North Texas financial professionals risked "ridicule and happy hour jibes" by signing up to go toe-to-hoof with the steer.

"Frankly, I've heard people say they dared not do it -- 'What if the bull beat me? How would I look?' " he said.

Rusty was highlighted on CNBC's Power Lunch stock market program, in BusinessWeek magazine, on National Public Radio's The Motley Fool Radio Show and on numerous regional TV and radio reports.

Stock picking wasn't the steer's only claim to fame.

At the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America 2000 World Expo, Rusty took first place for conformation, meaning his physical characteristics were that of a classic longhorn, said Larry Barker, an association official. Rusty's hide is speckled red with a white lineback.

"Rusty is a magnificent steer with a great set of horns, a true-to-type longhorn," Barker said. "He could have made it up the trail just like his ancestors did 125 years ago."

Despite horns measuring 62.5 inches from tip to tip, Rusty never damaged property or injured admirers, said Donnie Legrand, his handler. Neither curious children reaching out to pet him, dogs barking at his feet nor rides on escalators triggered a mean response.

The steer gracefully passed through 24-inch gates without mishap, slightly turning his head for clearance, he said.

By the end of this year's Stock Show where Rusty was a regular feature, Legrand began noticing the longhorn had lost weight. Alvarado veterinarian Clint Calvert discovered the lumps, and Rusty, by then 400 pounds below his normal weight of nearly 1,600 pounds, was taken to A&M for a biopsy.

That led to a diagnosis of terminal cancer on April 28, the day he turned 20, a ripe old age for a longhorn.

Rusty came from champion bloodstock. His grandsire, Texas Ranger JP, was one of the "greatest longhorn bulls of all time," Barker said. The steer's full name was FF Rusty. Pasture-bred, he was born in LaVeta, Colo., on April 28, 1985. The breeder was Red McCombs Ranches of Johnson City, owned by the San Antonio entrepreneur and owner of the Minnesota Vikings football team.

In 1995, the Star-Telegram made the winning bid on Rusty at a charity auction, and the good-natured steer was soon carrying out various public duties.

"I think Rusty has added a lot to our image and our brand in the community," said Wes Turner, the paper's president and publisher. "At any event with children, you'd see the pure joy in kids running up, calling his name. It was part of Fort Worth's 'culture and cowboys.' "

And just as the University of Texas at Austin replaces its mascot when a Bevo retires, "we have to find Rusty II," Turner said.

09 May 05 - 11:49 AM (#1480733)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

News photo puts a familiar face on compassion in a war zone
The wife of a Stryker Brigade officer is deeply moved by sight of a soldier helping an Iraqi child -- and more so when she recognizes him

photo link
story link

By MIKE BARBER, SEATTLE P-I

On Tuesday, as she does every night, Amy Bieger went to her computer to write an e-mail to her husband, Mark, in Iraq. Her eyes moistened when she logged on looking for news and saw a heart-wrenching photo of a U.S. soldier cradling the limp body of a 2-year-old girl wounded in a terrorist attack the day before. The helmeted soldier's face, unseen, is pressed reassuringly into the girl's. He clutches her close to his heart. Bieger could almost hear it beat faster as he ran to save the girl.

"I was just taking it in. It was emotional," she said from her home in DuPont.

Since the soldier's face couldn't be seen, the photo seemed to represent every soldier in Iraq. But Amy Bieger, the Army wife who knew from the lightning bolt insignia on the soldier's sleeve that it was her husband's Fort Lewis-based Stryker Brigade, wondered if she could learn more.

She double-clicked on the photo to magnify it.

"I saw the insignia, then rank, major. Near the girl's blanket you could see the last four letters on a name tag, 'e-g-e-r.' That sealed the deal. I knew it was Mark," she said. "The way he was cradling her, his body language, I knew that was him. That's what he always has done with our three children and any child in need. Heartbreak just went through me," she said.

The compassionate face beneath the helmet is that of Maj. Mark Bieger, 35, who writes home about the children he sees there, how he'd like to reach out to help them, how they remind him of his own children. A 14-year veteran and West Point graduate from Arizona, Mark Bieger is operations officer for Fort Lewis' 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment of the Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The unit left in October for a yearlong deployment in Iraq.

His battalion, nicknamed "Deuce Four," has felt more than its share of pain since then. "They have been through a lot and lost a lot of incredible guys, but that makes them want to fight harder to give these people peace," Amy Bieger said. Her husband hasn't had a chance to talk much about the little girl he was rushing to save or what happened Monday.

Nor, isolated and busy in Iraq, does he seem to comprehend the national attention his act of tenderness has drawn, she said. "To him the picture represents great sadness because they lost a little girl. He kept saying it was a sad day. I knew it tore him up and not to press him," she said.

Bieger has told his wife in e-mail only that he and others in Mosul responded to a suicide bomber whose car hit a Stryker vehicle while little kids were crowded around it. "He just says he didn't do anything that none of the other guys are doing."

Michael Yon, the freelancer who took the photograph for The Associated Press, told ABC News that Bieger "wanted to get the girl to American surgeons immediately. So Maj. Bieger wrapped the little girl up in the blanket. He was telling soldiers, 'We're moving out.' "

Bieger, whom the photographer saw rescue U.S. troops a week ago, tried to comfort the toddler as he cradled her, stopping every so often to talk to her, Yon said.

American surgeons could not save the girl or another child. The suicide bomber injured 15 people.

In a message on the Stryker Brigade News Web site at www.strykernews.com/, Yon said Stryker soldiers were angry because the terrorist easily could have waited a block or two and attacked only their patrol, leaving the children out of it. The soldiers returned to the neighborhood the next day to ask people what they could do to help and were warmly received, Yon said.

Stryker families who follow the site posted their own reactions:

A woman who signed herself "Stryker sister" said, "I couldn't stop crying. I went to the bathroom and cried and cried like a baby. Just thinking how our soldiers go through this everyday. This photo is imprinted in my mind, and the image is just always flashing b4 me. Thanks Amy Bieger for your soldier for giving love to this little girl in her final moments."

Another, Erin, said:

"I don't know if I have ever been that moved by any photograph, seeing that patch on our soldiers shoulder, knowing that my son wears that same patch, I wanted everyone to know that our soldiers are so much more than just that. The body language of that soldier is so intense -- for lack of a better word and I could feel the pain in that moment across the miles. I don't know how else to describe it, but if that were my child, my grandchild that he was holding, I don't think that I could ask for anything more."

As such national attention mounted Wednesday, Amy Bieger figured she'd better clue in the couple's three sons, ages 4, 9 and 10.

"I wanted them to see the picture and hear an explanation from me before they heard it from someone else," she said.

"It was hard for them to look at because they miss him so much. They weren't surprised. They said, 'Dad's helping everyone.' They look up to him so much."

13 May 05 - 03:01 PM (#1484344)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Interactive 'Clickers' Changing Classrooms
May 13, 2005

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Professor Ross Cheit put it to the students in his "Ethics and Public Policy" class at Brown University: Are you morally obliged to report cheating if you know about it? The room began to hum, but no one so much as raised a hand. Still, within 90 seconds, Cheit had roughly 150 student responses displayed on an overhead screen, plotted as a multicolored bar graph - 64 percent said yes, 35 percent, no. Several times each class, Cheit's students answer his questions using handheld wireless devices that resemble television remote controls.

The devices, which the students call "clickers," are being used on hundreds of college campuses and are even finding their way into grade schools. They alter classroom dynamics, engaging students in large, impersonal lecture halls with the power of mass feedback. "Clickers" ease fears of giving a wrong answer in front of peers, or of expressing unpopular opinions. "I use it to take their pulse," Cheit said. "I've often found in that setting, you find yourself thinking, 'Well, what are they thinking?'"

In hard science classes, the clickers - most of which allow several possible responses - are often used to gauge student comprehension of course material. Cheit tends to use them to solicit students' opinions.

The clickers are an effective tool for spurring conversation, for getting a feel for what other students think, said Megan Schmidt, a freshman from New York City. "It forces you to be active in the discussion because you are forced to make a decision right off the bat," said Jonathan Magaziner, a sophomore in Cheit's class. Cheit prepares most questions in advance but can add questions on the fly if need be. His setup processes student responses through infrared receivers that are connected to a laptop computer.

Clickers increased class participation and improved attendance after Stephen Bradforth, a professor at the University of Southern California, introduced them to an honors chemistry class there last fall, he said. Bradforth uses the clickers to get a sense of whether students are grasping the material and finds that they compel professors to think about their lesson plans differently. He says it's too early to say whether students who used the clickers are doing better on standardized tests.

Eric Mazur, a Harvard University physics professor and proponent of interactive teaching, says clickers aren't essential but they are more efficient and make participation easier for shy students. Many colleges already use technology that allows teachers and students to interact more easily outside the classroom. For example, professors can now post lecture notes, quizzes and reading lists online. Several companies market software, such as Blackboard and Web CT, that provide ready-made course Web pages and other course management tools.

Mazur envisions students someday using their laptops, cell phones or other Internet-ready devices for more interactivity than clickers offer. At least one company, Option Technologies Interactive, based in Orlando, Fla., markets software that allows any student with a handheld wireless device or laptop to log onto a Web site and answer questions, just as they would with a clicker.

For now, the clicker systems appear to be selling. Two companies that make the systems say each of their technologies are in use on more than 600 university campuses worldwide. Some textbook publishers are even writing questions designed to be answered by clicker, and packaging the devices with their books. Versions of clickers have been available since the 1980s, but in the past six years several more have entered the market and advances in technology have made them both cheaper and more sophisticated.

Most universities that use clickers require students to buy them, although at Brown they're loaned through the library. Made by companies including the Maryland-based GTCO CalComp, eInstruction Corp., of Denton, Texas, and Hyper Interactive Teaching Technology, of Fayetteville, Ark., the devices cost about $30. The clickers communicate with receivers by infrared or radio signals, which feed the results to the teacher's computer. Software allows the students' responses to be recorded, analyzed and graphed. While each company offers slightly different features, the systems typically allow instructors to display the class's results as a whole, or to record each student's individual response. The clickers themselves vary among companies but generally allow students to respond to multiple choice questions or key in a numeric answer.

The clickers can also be used to give quizzes that can be graded automatically and entered in a computerized gradebook, saving professors time. But several professors said they have avoided that so students will see the handheld devices as positive, rather than punitive.

At the college level, the devices originally took hold in science classes, but they are finding their way into the social sciences and humanities, where the anonymity they offer may be an advantage. Cheit said that's especially true when it comes to sensitive topics, such as affirmative action. "People that are against it will click," Cheit said, "But they might not raise their hand and say it."

13 May 05 - 05:03 PM (#1484448)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Wendy's Finger Lickin' Good Mystery Solved At Last!!!

I wonder who is going to collect the hundred grand reward?

Finger Traced to Woman Who Blamed Wendy's
May 13, 2005

SAN JOSE, Calif. - The finger that a woman said she found in a bowl of Wendy's chili came from an associate of her husband who lost the digit in an industrial accident, police said Friday.

"The jig is up. The puzzle pieces are beginning to fall into place, and the truth is being exposed," Police Chief Rob Davis said.

The man is from Nevada and lost a part of his finger in an accident last December, Davis said. His identity was traced through a tip made to Wendy's hot line, he said.

He said authorities "positively confirmed that this subject was in fact the source of the fingertip."

Anna Ayala, the woman who said she found the finger, was arrested last month at her suburban Las Vegas home and is charged with attempted grand larceny.

Ayala, 39, said she bit down on a 1 1/2 inch-long finger fragment while dining with her family in March at a San Jose Wendy's. But authorities had said they believed the story was a hoax.

Ayala's husband, Jaime Plascencia, was arrested earlier this month on a fugitive warrant at the couple's home to face charges unrelated to the Wendy's case. San Jose police had said he used his children's personal information in a fraudulent manner for personal gain.

Authorities are considering additional criminal charges against Ayala and her husband, Davis said.

"We are exploring all other options and avenues available to see that those involved in this charade will be investigated," Davis said.

The man who lost the finger, whose name was not released, had given the finger fragment to Plascencia, Davis said. Davis would not disclose details of the investigation but said the man was cooperating.

A phone call to Ayala's attorney on Friday was not immediately returned.

Wendy's has offered a $100,000 reward and has said it has lost millions in sales since Ayala made the claim. Dozens of employees at the company's Northern California franchises also have been laid off.

"There are victims in this case that have suffered greatly," Davis said.

The news initially aroused sympathy for Ayala, but suspicions grew as questions were raised about her story.

Wendy's had said no employees at the San Jose store had missing fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy's ingredients had reported any finger injuries. Authorities said there was no evidence the finger had been cooked, and also said Ayala had a history of filing claims against businesses.

As scrutiny mounted, Ayala withdrew a claim she had filed against the chain.

In addition to attempted grand larceny in the Wendy's case, his wife is charged with grand larceny in an unrelated matter.

Plascencia remains in jail in Nevada, but Davis said he would be extradited soon to San Jose. He was charged with identity theft, fraudulent use of official documents, failure to pay child support and child abandonment in the case involving his children.

Police received a number of tips about the possible source of the finger, including one about a rural Nevada woman whose finger tip was bitten off by a spotted leopard kept as a pet. Police also recently searched a ranch north of Guadalajara, Mexico, owned by a relative of Plascencia.

13 May 05 - 05:30 PM (#1484464)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

Well, good! I figured someone would provide a tip sooner or later. Be nice to have the man's name, just to see what it rhymes with.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

14 May 05 - 12:17 PM (#1484942)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage

Are you thinking about writing a song, Charlie?

15 May 05 - 12:01 PM (#1485398)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Looks like bits of the story are still falling into place. You may just get the name you're looking for, Charlie! And the term "tipster" takes on a whole new meaning in the context of this story. :)

Tailgate Blamed for Finger in Chili Claim
May 15, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - The finger that a woman claimed she found in a bowl of Wendy's chili was severed in the tailgate of a truck during a work accident, an employee of an asphalt company said. Pat Hogue, an estimator with a Las Vegas asphalt maintenance company, told the San Francisco Chronicle for a story in Sunday's editions that a man he was working with lost the tip of his finger on a job five months ago.

Both men were working with James Plascencia, the husband of Anna Ayala - the Las Vegas woman who claimed she found the finger in a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant in San Jose, Hogue told the paper. Authorities believe the injured man gave the finger to Plascencia. Ayala is accused of trying to shake down the fast-food giant with a bogus tainted-food claim.

"I saw it on the news. I didn't know the lady at first was married to that James guy until after he was arrested," Hogue said in a telephone interview from his home in North Las Vegas. Hogue and investigators have refused to identify the man with the severed finger, but police have said he's cooperating with authorities.

Ayala, 39, is in jail on suspicion of attempted grand theft. She claimed she bit into the finger on March 22 and filed a claim against the restaurant chain shortly afterward. The publicity resulted in a major loss of business for Wendy's. Ayala later withdrew her claim as she came under scrutiny and investigators found at least 13 cases in which she has filed claims in her name or her children's. Plascencia, 43, is being held in a Las Vegas jail on unrelated charges. He is awaiting extradition to California.

San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis said a tipster led investigators to the Nevada man with the missing finger. Investigators have refused to say how the finger was preserved or transported from Las Vegas to San Jose. Police said more arrests were possible.

18 May 05 - 03:27 PM (#1487454)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I don't know if there's a song in this, but here's the "rest of the story," as obnoxious Paul H used to say:

Mother: Wendy's Finger Used to Settle Debt
May 18, 2005

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A man who lost part of his finger in a workplace accident was the source of the fingertip used in an alleged scam against Wendy's restaurants, and gave it away to settle a debt, his mother said. "My son is the victim in this," Brenda Shouey said in an interview published in Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle. "I believe he got caught in something, and he didn't understand what was going on."

Anna Ayala, 39, was arrested April 21 at her Las Vegas home on suspicion of attempted grand theft for allegedly costing Wendy's millions of dollars in a plot to shake down the company by claiming she found the finger in a bowl of chili in a restaurant in San Jose. Ayala was to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon.

Shouey, of Worthington, Pa., said her son, Brian Paul Rossiter, 36, of Las Vegas, lost part of his finger in December in an accident at a paving company where he worked with James Plascencia, Ayala's husband. His hand got caught in a mechanical truck lift, she said. She said he gave it to Plascencia to settle a $50 debt.

San Jose police announced last week the finger was obtained from an associate of Plascencia, but they have refused to identify him because he is cooperating in the investigation. They did not immediately return a message Wednesday seeking comment on the newspaper's account. Shouey said her son had showed the severed finger to co-workers in a macho display of humor and was desperate for cash when he gave it away "to this character, James."

"My son is a happy-go-lucky guy. He thought it was cute to show" the severed finger, Shouey said. "It's like a man thing." Shouey declined to give details of how the finger was preserved or whether Rossiter knew why Plascencia allegedly wanted the finger. She said her son told her of his role only this week and is keeping a low profile after undergoing intense police questioning.

Plascencia was arrested earlier this month on unrelated charges of failing to pay child support in a previous relationship.

24 May 05 - 08:30 PM (#1492401)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Shanghaiceltic

Could be a good Teddy Bears Picnic.

If you go down to the woods today
Your sure of a big surprise
Cos all the bears that ever there was
Are into leather and ties.....

Hardcore teddy banned from Zurich bear parade
Tue May 24, 2005 10:22 AM BST
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ZURICH (Reuters) - A giant dominatrix teddy bear wearing a leather mask and brandishing hand-cuffs has been banned from sober Zurich's street display of man-sized model bears, the project's artistic director said on Tuesday.

While tourists pose for snaps next to a brightly-painted and benign array of models such as the "schoolteacher bear" and the "skier bear", "Baervers" -- a pun on the German for perverse -- has been deemed too steamy for the financial capital's streets.

"This bear is perverse, dominatrix and hardcore. We had to ban it because of the children," Beat Seeberger-Quin, the project's art director, told Reuters.

The offending bear, which sports bright red lipstick, a corset and thigh-length leather boots, stands atop a pedestal bearing the words "first class service".

Some 600 teddies, variously decorated by artists, stud the streets of Zurich and its airport in the "Teddy-Summer" project.

The controversial model had been allocated a place near Zurich's Paradeplatz, home to Switzerland's top banks such as Credit Suisse and UBS, before Seeberger-Quin spotted the final design and decided to ban it.

The dominatrix bear's creators now seek a private home for their sadomasochist teddy. At least "Baervers" will not face the same hazards as his publicly-displayed peers, some of which have been vandalised or even kidnapped.

"Two or three of the bears have been splashed with paint, and one bear -- a nice small bear wearing a little dress -- has been stolen," Seeberger-Quin said.

25 May 05 - 12:19 AM (#1492545)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage

A saucy bear named "Beaver" is a pretty good pun in English, also!

21 Jun 05 - 02:47 PM (#1506169)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Lions Rescue, Guard Beaten Ethiopian Girl
June 21, 2005

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.

The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa.

She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.

"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," Wondimu said.

"If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage," he said.

Tilahun Kassa, a local government official who corroborated Wondimu's version of the events, said one of the men had wanted to marry the girl against her wishes.

"Everyone thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people," Wondimu said.

Stuart Williams, a wildlife expert with the rural development ministry, said the girl may have survived because she was crying from the trauma of her attack.

"A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they didn't eat her," Williams said.

Ethiopia's lions, famous for their large black manes, are the country's national symbol and adorn statues and the local currency. Despite a recent crackdown, Hunters also kill the animals for their skins, which can fetch $1,000. Williams estimates that only 1,000 Ethiopian lions remain in the wild.

The girl, the youngest of four siblings, was "shocked and terrified" after her abduction and had to be treated for the cuts from her beatings, Wondimu said.

He said police had caught four of the abductors and three were still at large.

Kidnapping young girls has long been part of the marriage custom in Ethiopia. The United Nations estimates that more than 70 percent of marriages in Ethiopia are by abduction, practiced in rural areas where most of the country's 71 million people live.

21 Jun 05 - 04:50 PM (#1506250)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

That's a nice story. Probably these were female lions, assuming the story is true.

I wonder if the alledged abductors will try "lying" about this incident.

Cheerily,
Charles Ipcar
Returned Peace Corp Volunteer, Ethiopia 1965-68

30 Jun 05 - 08:33 AM (#1513227)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Whopper Mudcat caught

No, this isn't one of Bee Dubya Ell's tall stories. . .

Fish whopper: 646 pounds a freshwater record
Researchers cite Thai catch to stress extinction dangers

Thai fishermen netted a catfish as big as a grizzly bear, setting a world record for the largest freshwater fish ever found, according to researchers who studied the 646-pound Mekong giant catfish as part of a project to protect large freshwater fish.

"It's amazing to think that giants like this still swim in some of the world's rivers," project leader Zeb Hogan project leader said in a statement. "We've now confirmed now that this catfish is the current record holder, an astonishing find."

"I'm thrilled that we've set a new record, but we need to put this discovery in context: these giant fish are uniformly poorly studied and some are critically endangered," added Hogan, a fellow with the World Wildlife Fund, which is partnering with the National Geographic Society. "Some, like the Mekong giant catfish, face extinction."

'Largest fish species disappearing'
Hogan said his study of giant freshwater fish "is showing a clear and global pattern: the largest fish species are disappearing.

"The challenge is clear," he added, "we must find methods to protect these species and their habitats. By acting now, we can save animals like the Mekong giant catfish from extinction."

Hogan's project includes two-dozen other species, including the giant freshwater stingray, the dog-eating catfish, the dinosaur-like arapaima, and the Chinese paddlefish – "all of which remain contenders for the title of the world's largest fish," the researchers stated, pending the final results of their work.

"Long shots for the title include caviar-producing sturgeon, goliath Amazon catfish, giant lungfish, razor-toothed gars, massive cods, and Mongolian salmon," they added.

Didn't survive capture
The Mekong giant catfish was caught and eaten in a remote village in Thailand along the Mekong River, home to more species of giant fish than any other river in the world, the researchers said.

Local environmentalists and government officials had negotiated to release the fish so it could continue its spawning migration in the far north of Thailand, near the borders of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and China, but the adult male later died.

The researchers said the Mekong giant catfish is declining as a species due to habitat destruction and upstream dams.

The Mekong River Basin is home to more species of massive fish than any river on Earth, they added, and Mekong fish are the primary source of protein for the 73 million people that live along the river.

30 Jun 05 - 05:38 PM (#1513450)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Charley Noble

I wonder what the recipee was?

Charley Noble

08 Jul 05 - 09:47 AM (#1517982)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I agree with the tribal police chief: the complaints are entirely racial, and if people in Washington thought about it, they'd realize they've been lucky for years that the tribe didn't enforce strict laws on the highway. They are probably entitled to, should they choose to. Visit tribal lands in many other states and there are signs telling you you've entered the tribal domain. I think the Tulalip administration should do the same. (Tulalip isn't a tribal name, it represents an amalgam of tribes who reside on this reservation).

Let them get revenue from the speeders, and at the same time, that one act would lower the death rate on this dangerous stretch of road. I'd hazard a guess that speed is the single most significant factor in the many crashes that take place here.

SRS

Published: Friday, July 8, 2005

Use of Tulalip police on I-5 prompts complaints

By Diana Hefley and Scott North, Herald Writers

MARYSVILLE - An effort to crack down on speeders along a dangerous stretch of I-5 near Marysville has added fuel to a smoldering dispute between Tulalip tribal police and the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office. County officials and Sheriff Rick Bart said they received complaints about Tulalip police officers stopping cars along I-5 over the weekend. They've asked the county prosecutors and the state Attorney General's Office to study whether it was legal.

The tribal officers were part of a multiagency patrol on the freeway between Marysville and Smokey Point coordinated by the Washington State Patrol. That's where the state recently lowered the speed limit from 70 mph to 60 mph in an effort to reduce accidents. "The whole mission is to save lives, and we can't do it alone," State Patrol Capt. Jim Lever said.

Bart said Thursday that he didn't know tribal police were involved, and he was unprepared to answer questions when he began getting complaints.

Tulalip Police Chief Jay Goss said his officers were asked to participate and have the authority to make stops on the freeway where it runs through the reservation.

"I agree with the state's position to lower the speed limit," Goss said. "We participated as part of another law enforcement agency."

State Patrol troopers have focused on the freeway since July 1, when the new speed limit went into effect. In addition to tribal officers, they sought assistance from police in Everett and Monroe, as well as the sheriff's office. The effort was part of the Pro-Active Community Enforcement patrols that police have used throughout the county to crack down on drunken drivers, seat-belt violators and aggressive drivers.

The State Patrol has good relationships with the Tulalip tribal police and the sheriff's office, Lever said.

The patrols were primarily to warn drivers to slow down and observe the speed limit. Tribal officers did not participate once the focus shifted to writing tickets.

County officials early this week began fielding complaints about the tribal officers' participation. Some questioned their authority to make freeway stops.

County Councilman John Koster, whose council district includes the stretch of I-5 where the controversy was brewing, said he wished there would have been more communication.

"I had calls," he said. "I saw the Tulalip police with people stopped."

Koster said the people who contacted him asked whether tribal police could legally enforce traffic laws on the interstate.

"Apparently, the State Patrol didn't even notify the sheriff," Koster said.

Tulalip officers typically don't patrol the freeway, but they have authority to do so because the section from Fourth Street to 140th Street NW is on tribal trust land, Goss said.

That stretch of road is being scrutinized by the state Department of Transportation after a number of fatal crashes. Engineers are evaluating the use of cable barriers in the median. While accident data show the barriers work the majority of the time, an analysis by The Herald found that in a three-mile stretch the cables failed to stop cars crossing the median 20 percent of the time between 1999 and 2004.

Goss said his office took one complaint.

"The vast majority were complimentary" about the officers' efforts, he said.

Bart said five people complained to him. He said tribal officers can't stop people on the freeway without explicit permission from him, and that Goss should have asked first.

The sheriff said disputes about tribal police jurisdiction have been ongoing, and he has asked for direction from the county prosecutor's office and Attorney General's Office.

"Until these questions are answered, we're going to have problems," he said.

The prosecutor's office hasn't heard complaints from anyone who actually got a ticket from a tribal police officer, said Mark Roe, the county's chief criminal deputy prosecutor.

Roe said he phoned Goss when he heard some were asking questions. He said the two have long enjoyed a good working relationship.

"As with any situation, it all boils down to facts, what happened and what didn't," Roe said. "If they were asked to help tell people, 'Hey, you need to slow down or the next time you get a ticket,' I don't' see any problem with that."

Goss, however, believes there is more to the issue than questions about jurisdiction and unhappy speeders.

"I think people need to examine in their hearts why they are objecting," he said. "I think it's about race. They weren't complaining about the other officers."

11 Jul 05 - 10:14 AM (#1519908)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

From the Chicago Sun Times:

Newsweek: Rove gave Time reporter OK to testify
July 11, 2005

Top presidential adviser Karl Rove was the anonymous source who released a Time reporter from his promise of confidentiality, allowing the journalist to avoid jail, Newsweek says.

In a story published today, Newsweek reveals more details about the celebrated case stemming from the leak of an undercover CIA agent's name in 2003.

The publication of Valerie Plame's name by Chicago Sun-Times syndicated columnist Robert Novak set off an investigation because it's a crime to knowingly identify an undercover CIA official.

Prosecutors trying to find who leaked Plame's name wound up issuing a subpoena to Time reporter Matthew Cooper. He also was working on a story involving Plame in 2003 and wound up facing jail because he wouldn't reveal his secret source.

At the 11th hour last week, Cooper got permission to talk from his source -- identified by Newsweek as Rove.

The magazine said Rove's lawyer confirmed that he gave Cooper the OK to testify before a grand jury.

Newsweek quoted an e-mail from the reporter to his boss that showed Rove had discussed Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, with Cooper.

It was Wilson who went on a CIA-sponsored trip to Africa to learn about Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium there.

He subsequently criticized the Bush administration on the Iraq war, a move that critics think led the administration to leak his wife's name as punishment.

Newsweek says that while the e-mail shows that Rove talked to Cooper about the couple, the e-mail doesn't suggest that Rove revealed Plame's name or CIA status.

The Newsweek article quotes Cooper's e-mail as saying, "it was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip."

11 Jul 05 - 01:57 PM (#1520100)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

Today's story (the way I would have written it for FOX)

An LAPD officer was wounded in the shoulder when a father run amok began firing a pistol while holding his baby daughter. The mother screamed to police to let her husband cool off but cooler heads prevailed and a hail of police gunfire successfully ripped through the baby and killed the gunman.
The mother is taking this rather hard and is now screaming for yet another frivilous investigation. A spokesperson for the police department has reminded the public that they do not negotiate with terrorists. We are currently at a partial code orange.

13 Jul 05 - 01:01 AM (#1520988)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Don,

I read that and thought you were pulling a sick trick. Then I heard part of that story today. Geez. My apologies for thinking that you'd come up with a story so disturbing it couldn't possibly be true.

SRS

19 Jul 05 - 06:07 PM (#1524042)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

States Trying to Blunt Property Ruling
July 19, 2005

CHICAGO - Alarmed by the prospect of local governments seizing homes and turning the property over to developers, lawmakers in at least half the states are rushing to blunt last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding the power of eminent domain. In Texas and California, legislators have proposed constitutional amendments to bar government from taking private property for economic development. Politicians in Alabama, South Dakota and Virginia likewise hope to curtail government's ability to condemn land. Even in states like Illinois - one of at least eight that already forbid eminent domain for economic development unless the purpose is to eliminate blight - lawmakers are proposing to make it even tougher to use the procedure.

"People I've never heard from before came out of the woodwork and were just so agitated," said Illinois state Sen. Susan Garrett, a Democrat. "People feel that it's a threat to their personal property, and that has hit a chord."

The Institute for Justice, which represented homeowners in the Connecticut case that was decided by the Supreme Court, said at least 25 states are considering changes to eminent domain laws.

The Constitution says governments cannot take private property for public use without "just compensation." Governments have traditionally used their eminent domain authority to build roads, reservoirs and other public projects. But for decades, the court has been expanding the definition of public use, allowing cities to employ eminent domain to eliminate blight.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that New London, Conn., had the authority to take homes for a private development project. But in its ruling, the court noted that states are free to ban that practice - an invitation lawmakers are accepting in response to a flood of e-mails, phone calls and letters from anxious constituents. "The Supreme Court's decision told homeowners and business owners everywhere that there's now a big `Up for Grabs' sign on their front lawn," said Dana Berliner, an attorney with the Institute for Justice. "Before this, people just didn't realize that they could lose their home or their family's business because some other person would pay more taxes on the same land. People are unbelievably upset."

Don Borut, executive director of the National League of Cities, which backed New London in its appeal to the high court, said government's eminent domain power is important for revitalizing neighborhoods. He said any changes to state law should be done after careful reflection. "There's a rush to respond to the emotional impact. Our view is, step back, let's look at the issue in the broadest sense and if there are changes that are reflected upon, that's appropriate," he said.

In Alabama, Republican Gov. Bob Riley is drawing up a bill that would prohibit city and county governments from using eminent domain to take property for retail, office or residential development. It would still allow property to be taken for industrial development, such as new factories, and for roads and schools. In Connecticut, politicians want to slap a moratorium on the use of eminent domain by municipalities until the Legislature can act. One critic of the ruling has suggested local officials take over Supreme Court Justice David Souter's New Hampshire farmhouse and turn it into a hotel. Souter voted with the majority in the Connecticut case.

Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, South Carolina and Washington already forbid the taking of private property for economic development except to eliminate blight. Other states either expressly allow private property to be taken for private economic purposes or have not spoken clearly on the question.

Illinois state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, a Republican who is considering a run for governor, said the state's blight laws need to be more restrictive. "The statutory definition of blight in Illinois is broader than the Mississippi River at its mouth," he said. "They have taken everything from underdeveloped lakefront property to open green-grass farmfields as being defined as blighted."

Action also is taking place at the federal level, where a proposal would ban the use of federal funds for any project moving forward because of the Supreme Court decision. And the Institute for Justice said it will ask the Supreme Court to rehear the New London case, but acknowledged that the prospects of that happening are dim. "One of the things, I think, that is elemental to American freedom is the right to have and hold private property and not to interfere with that right," Rauschenberger said. "For Americans, it's like the boot on the door. You can't kick in the door and come in my house unless I invite you."

20 Jul 05 - 09:43 AM (#1524169)
Subject: RE: BS: I heard it on NPR
From: Donuel

While recently serving as a judge in Washington DC the current Supreme Court nominee Roberts upheld the arrest of a little girl who was placed in handcuffs and removed to jail in a windowless van for eating 4 french fries while on a subway train.

His comment was "No one is happy with this situation but the law is the law."

20 Jul 05 - 09:49 AM (#1524174)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

Rose, The actual and official LAPD response was
"We did not have a choice."

NOT "we do not negotiate with terrorists."

20 Jul 05 - 10:07 AM (#1524194)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Uncle_DaveO

SRS, somewhere back up there, told us:

It means that because these laws are poorly crafted and tie the hands of judges regarding things like "three strikes," a lot of people who have minor infractions end up with life sentences without parole. So the judges who made this idiotic decision have done an injustice to their colleagues in the field, to say nothing of the victims of this worm they released.

There is in the law a maxim that "Bad law makes hard cases, and hard cases make bad law."

Dave Oesterreich

24 Jul 05 - 12:18 PM (#1527057)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Hiker Survives Five Days in Lava Field
July 24, 2005

WAIMEA, Hawaii - A hiker lost for five days in a lava field near a volcano says he survived by drinking water he squeezed from moss in a mostly barren landscape. Gilbert Dewey Gaedcke III, 41, was rescued Friday afternoon after a teenager on a helicopter tour spotted him stumbling across the rocky lava, trying to attract attention with a mirror from his camera. Gaedcke had been missing since Sunday night, when he decided to take a hike across desolate lava fields near Hawaii Volcanoes National Park to get a closer look at an active volcano. The experienced hiker from Austin, Texas, said he saw no water, but there were pockets of jungle-like vegetation sprinkled throughout the old lava flow.

Gaedcke said he crawled beneath the vines and lick moisture off leaves. Then he found moss growing on trees, and was able to squeeze enough water from it to drink. "It was muddy, green, mossy water, but it worked," he said Saturday. "If I hadn't found that I'd be dead right now," he said.

Gaedcke said tour helicopters had flown overhead all week, but he was unable to attract attention because clouds blocked the sun. Then, late Friday afternoon, another one flew over. Aboard was 15-year-old Peter Frank, who spotted the odd glint in the late afternoon sunlight. "It was the only thing like that out there," said Frank, of Pasadena, Calif. "As we got closer we realized it was a man."

Gaedcke, dehydrated, but otherwise OK after surviving five days in the heat, was lost amid acres of blackened volcanic rock. "I wound up on some of the most vicious terrain I've ever seen," he said as he rested at a friend's home before flying home. "It's all gray rock - terrible stuff - then vegetation like an oasis, then more gray rock." Gaedcke's rented car had been found days earlier at the end of a road near an old lava flow bordering the east side of the 333,000-acre national park. Police had few leads to follow.

Fire crews and rangers from the park searched for days on foot and on horseback. Helicopters buzzed the area, but there was no sign of Gaedcke.

Then, Frank spotted what looked like a toy pinwheel glinting in the sunlight. His mother, Diann Kim, said her son asked Blue Hawaiian Helicopters pilot Cliff Muzzi to get a closer look. "As we got closer you could see the man flashing a mirror and waving a dark orange fabric," she said. "As he was coming down the path, clearly he couldn't move that well." Kim's daughter, Hannah, and a friend wrapped bottles of water in airsickness bags to drop to the distressed hiker. "It was so amazing," Kim said. "To see a person out there was like seeing a person on the face of the moon.

After returning his passengers to Hilo International Airport, Muzzi headed back to retrieve Gaedcke, then whisked him back to the airport about 17 miles to the northeast. Medical crews were waiting to take him to Hilo Medical Center.

Gaedcke said he saw the bright glow of the lava and then turned to go back to his car, but missed it as he walked in the dark. He hiked inland, expecting to intersect with the road, but by morning, he was lost. "My feet feel like I had a 30-day adventure," he said. "And if it weren't for my feet, I'd be dancing a jig right now."

06 Aug 05 - 03:15 PM (#1536543)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Monroe sex secrets
By MICHELLE CARUSO link (I don't think it is a durable link)

LOS ANGELES - In private tapes for her psychiatrist, screen goddess Marilyn Monroe never hinted she romanced JFK, but she bemoaned her lack of "courage" to break off an affair with his married brother Bobby, a bombshell report says.

**

Monroe also revealed a one-night-fling with actress Joan Crawford and her undying love for her ex Joe DiMaggio, but she griped about the "so-so" sex with former hubby playwright Arthur Miller, according to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

On the 43rd anniversary of Monroe's death, former L.A. County prosecutor John Miner gave the newspaper never-before-published transcripts of tape recordings the actress reportedly made for Dr. Ralph Greenson shortly before she died.

Greenson reportedly destroyed the actual tapes before his own death, but Miner says he took detailed notes when the psychiatrist played them for him during a probe of Monroe's drug-overdose death in 1962.

Miner, now 86, released the transcripts because he doesn't think the star of "Some Like It Hot" and "The Misfits" took her own life and he believes the therapy tapes prove she was happy and looking forward to the future, the newspaper said. Miner did not return phone calls yesterday.

Far from the desperate woman on the brink of self-destruction often portrayed in media accounts, the 36-year-old Monroe was upbeat, the transcripts show. She credited the shrink with curing her

sexual dysfunction and frankly discussed her husbands, lovers and friends, including DiMaggio, former President John F. Kennedy and Frank Sinatra.

In her own words (she sometimes referred to herself in the third-person), here's what Monroe had to say, according to the transcripts:

On JFK: "Marilyn Monroe is a soldier. Her commander in chief is the greatest and most powerful man in the world. The first duty of a soldier is to obey her commander. He says 'Do this.' You do this. . . . This man is going to change our country."
Despite years of rumors, and her breathy rendition of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at his Madison Square Garden bash, Monroe didn't confess to a fling.

On Robert F. Kennedy: "As you see, there is no room in my life for him. I guess I don't have the courage to face up to it and hurt him. I want someone else to tell him it's over. I tried to get the President to do it, but I couldn't reach him."
Some past accounts have claimed Monroe was madly in love with RFK and was badgering him with phone calls right up to the bitter end.

On a one-night fling with Crawford: "Next time I saw Crawford, she wanted another round. I told her straight out I didn't much enjoy doing it with a woman. After I turned her down, she became spiteful."

On baseball great DiMaggio: "Joe D. loves Marilyn Monroe and always will. I love him and I always will. But Joe could not stay married to Marilyn Monroe, the famous film star. Joe has an image in his stubborn Italian head of a traditional Italian wife. . . . Doctor, you know that's not me . . . . Anytime I need him, Joe is there. I couldn't have a better friend." The ex-Yankee slugger sent roses to Monroe's Westwood, Calif., grave for decades after she died.

On Sinatra: "What a wonderful friend he is to me. I love Frank and he loves me. It is not the marrying kind of love. It is better because marriage can't destroy it."

On Miller: "Marrying him was my mistake, not his. He couldn't give me the attention, warmth and affection I need. It's not in his nature. Arthur never credited me with much intelligence. . . . As bed partners we were so-so. He was not that much interested."

On how Dr. Greenson taught her to achieve orgasm: "You said there was an obstacle in my mind that prevented me from having an orgasm . . . . Bless you, doctor. By now I've had lots of orgasms. Not only one, but two and three with a man who takes his time."

Originally published on August 5, 2005

06 Aug 05 - 03:47 PM (#1536550)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Holy Moly!! My one true love has now spilled her guts tot he world. Dang!! I need to think about this...

A

06 Aug 05 - 11:38 PM (#1536682)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Another link and a lot more detail.

Marilyn from beyond the grave
Did Hollywood's greatest female star really take her own life? Newly released transcripts of her final messages to a psychiatrist will only fuel the conspiracy theories. David Usborne reports
Published: 06 August 2005

Some mysteries never die even if they are meant never to be resolved. The death of Marilyn Monroe, found naked with her face down on her bed in her Los Angeles home 43 years ago yesterday, is one of those: was it really suicide, or something different? Only Marilyn herself could clear this one up.

But no one gets to speak from the grave, not even the biggest of all big Hollywood stars. Except that Marilyn has - sort of. Listen and you might be surprised and not just by the tittle-tattle about her faked orgasms, her enemas or her love-hate respect for Laurence Olivier. She talks like a person possessed but about the future, not by thoughts of death. She wants to love more, to act Shakespeare. (It is her plan to play Juliet and have sexual intercourse on stage with Romeo.) She is also plotting to fire her housekeeper.

It may be, in fact, that the entire mythology surrounding an actress who for the 15-year span of her film-making career stopped the hearts of men the world over - from ordinary cinema-goers to, it is said, a sitting American president - may be about to be re-written all because of a transcript of a tape she allegedly made very shortly before her death. A tape she handed over to her psychiatrist.

Responsible for causing this sudden upheaval in Monroe lore is John Miner, a former Los Angeles prosecutor who for some time has been telling researchers of the tape and of the written transcript he apparently made of it. Some authors have included some references to the transcript's contents in their works. But never before has anyone taken it seriously enough to broadcast it fully to the public.

But that changed yesterday when The Los Angeles Times, apparently confident enough in the credibility of Mr Miner, splashed the story on its front page to coincide with the 43rd anniversary of her passing. The significance of the lengthy text seems unmistakable: that she was not thinking about death at the time. Implication: her death was either accidental or prompted by a third party.

Mr Miner was in the District Attorney's office in Los Angeles at the time of her death - she was just 36 - and participated in her autopsy. It was during the investigation that he interviewed the psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson, who revealed the existence of the tape, saying it was a gift from Ms Monroe just a few days before she died. He did not give the tapes to Mr Miner. He did allow him, however, to listen to them and take extensive notes - thence the transcripts that now come to light for all to read.

"There was no possible way this woman could have killed herself," Mr Miner argues. "She had very specific plans for her future. She knew exactly what she wanted to do. She was told by [acting coach] Lee Strasberg, maybe ill-advisedly, that she had Shakespeare in her and she was fascinated with the idea."

Arguments will break out over the reliability of Mr Miner, now 86, and, indeed, of the decision by The Los Angeles Times to run with his claims. His intention, it seems, is to persuade his successors in the DA's office once more to re-open the investigation into the actress's death. (Her body was found with a fatal overdose of the barbiturate Nembutal.) A brief stab at re-opening the affair was made in 1982. The DA's office said then that there remained "factual discrepancies" and "unanswered questions" in the case, but declined to open a criminal investigation.

Leave aside whether she killed herself, bungled her pill taking or was actually murdered. This text of personal musings (or, as she called them, " mental meanderings") on its own isn't going to put an end to the matter. But they do make a good read, especially if you are not already a Monroe fanatic. This reader didn't know she had been sleeping with Senator Robert Kennedy or that sex between her and Arthur Miller had been so lousy.

At the very end of the tape, she frets that Bobby Kennedy is in love with her and says she had thought about asking John F Kennedy, the President, to let him down gently. She decides against it, because "he is too important to ask". She goes on: "I think what happened to Bobby is that he has stopped having good sex with his wife for some time ... Well when he starts having sex with the body all men want, his Catholic morality has to find a way to justify cheating on his wife. So love becomes his excuse."

As ever, the currents of the actress's life were hardly smooth at the time. She had not long before been fired by the Fox studios, where she had been on contract to make Something's Got to Give. Fox had let her go for chronic lateness and drug dependency. And there was the hangover from two failed marriages, to Miller, the playwright, and to the baseball great, Joe DiMaggio. But if Ms Monroe was depressed at all, it apparently had nothing to do with her enduring ability to attract men. Though gravity was beginning to show, she was apparently still more or less satisfied with her extremely popular figure.

"I stood naked in front of my full-length mirrors for a long time yesterday. I was all made up with my hair done," she tells Dr Greenson. "What did I see? My breasts are a beginning to sag a bit. My waist isn't bad. My ass is what it should be, the bester there is. Legs, knees and ankles still shapely. And my feet are not too big. OK, Marilyn, you have it all there."

The purpose of making the tape appears to be to express gratitude to Dr Greenson, who died in 1979 and who has since been named by some biographers as a possible suspect in her death. She repeatedly credits him with helping her overcome neuroses, suggesting at one moment that she would love to become his daughter. (She expresses a similar fantasy over Clark Gable, recalling a dream where she is sitting on his knee.) Apparently, it was the doctor's success in giving her the ability to enjoy sex that she celebrates the most, however.

"What I told you is true when I first became your patient. I had never had an orgasm. I well remember you said an orgasm happens in the mind, not the genitals ..." The actress reminds the doctor of how he also instructed her on how best to stimulate herself. She recalled him telling her "when I did exactly what you told me to do I would have an orgasm ... What a difference a word makes. You said I would, not I could. Bless you Doctor. What you say is gospel to me.

"By now I've had lots of orgasms. Not only one, but two and three with a man who takes his time. I never cried so hard as I did after my first orgasm."

There are also passages that briefly dissect the failed marriages. Though she was Joe DiMaggio's wife for only nine months, in 1954, she makes clear her enduring affection for him. She admits, however, that she erred in marrying Miller. "Marrying him was my mistake, not his. He couldn't give me the attention, warmth and affection I need. It's not his nature. Arthur never credited me with much intelligence. He couldn't share his intellectual life with me. As bed partners, we were so-so. He was not that much interested; me faking with exceptional performances to get him more interested. You know I think his little Jewish father had more genuine affection for me than Arthur did."

Sex is part of what defined the public image of Monroe. No one will be much surprised that it weaves its way through so much of the transcript. Some may rock back, however, at the passages about sex with Joan Crawford.

"Oh yes, Crawford ... We went to Joan's bedroom ... Crawford had a gigantic orgasm and shrieked like a maniac ... Next time I saw Crawford she wanted another round. I told her straight out I didn't much enjoy doing it with a woman. After I turned her down, she became spiteful." Other items not to be forgotten: that while Monroe liked an occasional enema, Mae West depended on them. "She is given an enema every day and she has at least one orgasm a day ... Mae says her enemas and orgasms will keep her young until she is 100."

Slightly more serious in tone, though arguably no less startling, is Monroe's apparent determination to change gear professionally, and take on Shakespeare on film. Maybe this had to do with Monroe's belief that, after 30 films and one Golden Globe Award, for Some Like it Hot, the critics were still not taking her seriously. The plan, she says, is eventually to " produce and act in the Marilyn Monroe Shakespeare Film Festival". She says she will dedicate a whole year to studying Shakespearean acting with Lee Strasberg and then will go to Olivier for additional help that he once promised her.

Monroe and Olivier had been in the film The Prince and the Showgirl. Her feelings for him seem a bit mixed. "The Prince was real ... He was superficial - no, that's not the word - supercilious, arrogant, a snob, conceited. Maybe a little bit anti-Semitic in the sense of some of my best friends are Jews. But, damn him, a great, great actor. She recalls a party where Olivier regales the guests with the Bard for two straight hours. " I sat and cried with joy for being so privileged," she says.

What you read in the supermarket queue may be gripping but is rarely believable. The Monroe transcripts may seem to fall in that category. But it is not just The Los Angeles Times that takes them seriously. Parts of the text were also used by the British author Matthew Smith for his book Marilyn's Last Words: Her Secret Tapes and Mysterious Death. He remains convinced Mr Miner is credible. "I believe he is a man of integrity. I've looked at the contents of the tapes, of course, and, frankly, I would think it entirely impossible for John Miner to have invented what he put forward - absolutely impossible."

Similarly convinced is James Bacon, 91, a former columnist who saw Monroe shortly before she died. She was drinking vodka and champagne and popping pills. But Mr Bacon, who took part in a symposium last night in Los Angeles dedicated to exploring alternatives to the suicide theory, insisted: " She wasn't the least bit depressed. She was talking about going to Mexico. She had a Mexican boyfriend at the time. I forget his name. This was the first house she ever owned. She was going to buy some furniture. She was in very good spirits that day. Of course, the champagne and vodka helped."

You are the only person I have never lied to

Dear Doctor, you have given me everything. Because of you I can now feel what I never felt before ...

Isn't it true that the key to analysis is free association. Marilyn Monroe associates. You, my doctor, by understanding and interpretation of what goes on in my mind get to my unconscious, which makes it possible for you to treat my neuroses and for me to overcome them.

You are the only person in the world I have never told a lie to and never will ...

Oh yes, dreams. I know they are important. But you want me to free associate about the dream elements. I have the same blanking out. More resistance for you and Dr Freud to complain about.

I read his "Introductory Lectures", God, what a genius. He makes it so understandable. And he is so right. Didn't he say himself that Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky had a better understanding of psychology than all the scientists put together. Damn it, they do.

You told me to read Molly Bloom's mental meanderings (I can use words, can't I) to get a feeling for free association. It was when I did that I got my great idea.

As I read it something bothered me. Here is Joyce writing what a woman thinks to herself . Can he, does he really know her innermost thoughts. But after I read the whole book, I could better understand that Joyce is an artist who could penetrate the souls of people, male or female. It really doesn't matter that Joyce doesn't have ... or never felt a menstrual cramp. Wait a minute. As you must have guessed I am free associating and you are going to hear a lot of bad language. Because of my respect for you, I've never been able to say the words I'm really thinking when we are in session. But now I am going to say whatever I think, no matter what it is.

While reading Molly's blathering, the IDEA came to me. Get a tape recorder. Put a tape in. Turn it on. Say whatever you are thinking like I am doing now. It's really easy. I'm lying on my bed wearing only a brassiere. If I want to go to the refrig or the bathroom, push the stop button and begin again when I want to.

And I just free associate. No problem. You get the idea, don't you? Patient can't do it in Doctor's office. Patient is at home with tape recorder ...

Well, that's something for you to sleep on, Doctor.

Good Night.

10 Aug 05 - 12:23 AM (#1539095)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

How sad. The best of luck to her in getting through this.

Christopher Reeve's widow announces she has lung cancer
AP--Posted on Tue, Aug. 09, 2005

NEW YORK -- Dana Reeve, who spent nine years caring for her paralyzed husband, Christopher Reeve, until his death last year, announced Tuesday that she has lung cancer.

Reeve, 44, said she decided to disclose her illness following rumors about her health in the media.

"I have recently been diagnosed with lung cancer, and am currently undergoing treatment," Reeve said in a statement. "I have an excellent team of physicians, and we are optimistic about my prognosis."

"Now, more than ever, I feel Chris with me as I face this challenge," she said. "As always, I look to him as the ultimate example of defying the odds with strength, courage and hope in the face of life's adversities."

Reeve, who starred in the Superman films, was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident in 1995. He died Oct. 10, 2004.

Dana Reeve, an actress, was a constant companion and supporter of her husband during his long ordeal and his work for a cure for spinal cord injuries.

She is chairwoman of the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, which funds research on paralysis. To date, it has awarded $55 million in research grants and $7.5 million in quality of life grants.

15 Aug 05 - 10:39 AM (#1542214)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's a little something about life along the river that is my Mudcat namesake:
story link and photo link.

Festival attendance surges Life with the Stilly
Powwow packs in crowds at Stillaguamish Tribe's Festival of the River
By Bill Sheets, Herald Writer

Dancers are coming from all over the western United States. And some of the spectators are from other parts of the world. "I've never seen such a thing," said Vildan Islam of Anacortes, and a native of Turkey, of the 16th annual Festival of the River at River Meadows County Park east of Arlington on Sunday. Islam lived in New York for 17 years until moving to the Northwest recently. "For me it's very interesting," she said while watching the American Indian dancers at the festival's powwow.

An American Indian dancer performs during the traditional grand entrance of the dancers Sunday at the Stillaguamish Tribe's 16th annual Festival of the River at River Meadows County Park outside of Arlington. The Stillaguamish Tribe's event, which started as a way to promote education about the condition of the Stillaguamish River, has grown into a diverse, two-day event with live music, traditional dancing and drumming, a logging show and competition, storytellers, puppeteers, a birds-of-prey display, food and arts and crafts.

Final numbers weren't available Sunday, but attendance at the alcohol-free festival has reached an all-time high, organizers said. "This is bigger than we've ever had," said tribal member Mikki Swimmer, a powwow organizer. Another boost to the festival the past two years could be the absence of the Love Israel family's Garlic Festival, which was held nearby. The festival, last held two years ago, folded after bankruptcy forced the family to give up its land. "I think in the end it probably does have an effect," said Eddie Goodridge Jr., the tribe's executive director, adding that some attending the festival in the past went to both events in the same day.

At the Festival of the River, the live music packs 'em in and is probably the event's biggest draw, Goodridge said. But the powwow is catching up. "The attendance at the powwow's gone way up, it's a huge draw," Goodridge said. Some festival visitors said Sunday they enjoyed the variety at the event. But most said they were there to see the dancers, who dress in full regalia. "We're totally in awe," said Miki Durand of Mukilteo. She and her husband attended the festival for the first time after a friend told her about it.

"I like to see the Indian dancing and pretty costumes," said Louise Vienneau of Mount Vernon, also at the event for the first time. She brought a group of exchange students from Japan to the festival, she said.

About 200 American Indian dancers came in different types of regalia, all of it colorful. Some is a modernized style for "fancy dancing," as it's called, while other dress was from different traditions of the Plains, Southwest and Northwest coastal tribes, Swimmer said. Some of the young Stillaguamish dancers are learning the tribe's own traditional dances, which had nearly been lost, she said. "You get a chance to see some of the traditional native culture blended together with the modern way," said Gene Wiggins of Everett, who with his wife, Jessie, has attended the festival for several years. "The sense of community here, the closeness, I enjoy and appreciate (it)," he said.

15 Aug 05 - 03:49 PM (#1542435)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Well, duh. . . how do you suppose anyone can tell THIS is a scam? I'd think that anyone stupid enough to follow those directions should be arrested for being too idiotic to walk around free in public. . .

Con Artists Using Forged Arkansas Checks
August 15, 2005

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A check scam operation is sending job seekers forged checks from the state of Arkansas and asking them to wire the money overseas, state officials said Monday.

Some checks were successfully cashed, but state officials did not say how much money was involved. The checks are not honored when they reach Arkansas, and the state has not lost any money in the scam, state Treasurer Gus Wingfield said.

Reports of the forged checks have come in from 18 other states, officials said.

"These scam artists are using Arkansas' name to commit their crime," Attorney General Mike Beebe said. "Our state agencies will continue to investigate and trace these checks to put a stop to this activity."

The con artists are targeting job hunters posting resumes online. Job seekers are "hired" by a company calling itself Void Computers Inc., and are then asked to help the company cash checks worth $5,200 from Arkansas, which it says is one of its clients.

Checks were mailed from Turkey with instructions to cash the checks and wire the money to an address in Latvia, minus a 10 percent fee the consumer may keep. Applicants are urged to avoid banks, and instead go to a check-casher, liquor store or similar business.

No arrests were announced, but Beebe said his investigators have consulted with the U.S. Postal Inspectors Office and the FBI.

15 Aug 05 - 04:03 PM (#1542445)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

DUmber than a wagon-load of creek rocks, I reckon, to use my pasl Bobert's expression.

A

25 Aug 05 - 05:25 PM (#1549747)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Idle brain invites dementia
Researchers say daydreaming may cause changes that lead to the onset of Alzheimer's disease

link

Scientists have scanned the brains of young people when they are doing, well, nothing, and they found that a region active during this daydreaming state is the one hard-hit by the scourge of old age: Alzheimer's.

"We never expected to see this," said Randy L. Buckner, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Washington University in St. Louis. He said he suspects these activity patterns may, over decades of daily use, wear down the brain, sparking a chemical cascade that results in the disease's classic deposits and tangles that damage the brain.

The regions identified are active when people daydream or think to themselves, Buckner said. When these regions are damaged, an older person may not be able to access the thoughts to follow through on an action, or even make sense of a string of thoughts. The study appears this week in the Journal of Neuroscience.

The scientists used a variety of brain-scanning devices in more than 760 adults of all ages. Usually, scanning is done when volunteers carry out a particular mental task, such as remembering a list of words. This time, they were scanned without anything to do.

What emerged on the images was what Buckner and his colleagues call the brain's "default" state. The brain remains in this state when it's not concentrating on a task like reading or talking. It's the place where the mind wanders. This default region lines up perfectly with the regions that are initially damaged in Alzheimer's.

"It may be the normal cognitive function of the brain that leads to Alzheimer's later in life," Buckner said. He suspects the brain's metabolic activity slows over time in this region, making it vulnerable to mind-robbing symptoms.

The scientists say this finding could prove useful diagnostically - a way to identify the disease early, even before symptoms appear.

"You have to get to this pathology before it has its biggest effect," said William Klunk, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and a co-investigator in the current study. Klunk developed an imaging tool that tracks amyloid plaque deposited in the brains of living Alzheimer's patients.

The next step will be to see whether the sticky amyloid-filled plaques are dependent on the brain's metabolism. If so, there could be novel ways to attack the disease.

The latest thinking among Alzheimer's scientists is that the underpinnings of the disease may be decades in the making. About a decade ago, David Snowdon of the University of Kentucky Medical Center published what has become a classic study of health and aging. He followed 678 nuns, ranging in age from 75 to 107, and analyzed journal entries and essays written when they joined the order as young women. He identified an association between the writing and the risk for Alzheimer's far into the future. The richer the detail in the essays, the less likely the writers were to develop Alzheimer's.

Others have confirmed these findings, including a study by Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine researchers. They recently published a study using high school records from the 1940s to identify nearly 400 graduates. They tracked their health status through adulthood into old age. A higher IQ in high school reduced the risk of Alzheimer's by about half.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

25 Aug 05 - 07:47 PM (#1549834)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Use it or lose it!

27 Aug 05 - 05:32 PM (#1551072)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

You could say "use it or lose it" here also: these things are like snowmobiles, a real menace in the way they are operated by people who have no business charging around without some safety instruction first:

link

Watercraft worries climb
Inexperience often behind injuries, deaths on water

By Cathy Logg, Herald Writer

Peri-Lyn Johnson of Snohomish was driving her boat on Flowing Lake Aug. 13 when a boy flagged her down. The boy, 13, and a woman, both on Jet Ski-type watercraft, had collided. The boy was not injured, but the woman was facedown in the water. Johnson directed Snohomish High School students Josh Foust, 16, and Jon Richter, 15, to jump from her boat and rescue the unconscious woman. The boys and Johnson got her into the boat and rushed toward shore.

"She had an enormous gash over her eye," Johnson recalled. "Her shoulder was also dislocated." Johnson's husband, Mark, began administering first aid. The accident victim, Rebecca Oropeza, 48, of Lynnwood has been at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle since the accident. "Her life will never be the same," Johnson said. Oropeza was one of three Snohomish County residents seriously injured or killed in recent personal watercraft accidents.

Edward Ferguson, 45, of Everett died about 9:30 p.m. Aug. 14 when he struck an overhanging limb in darkness on the Snohomish River. His funeral was Aug. 19. And a 10-year-old Mukilteo girl lost her arm in an accident on Lake Goodwin.

According to state records, there about 26,000 personal watercraft licensed in the state in 2004, representing about 10 percent of all recreational boats. "That's just the ones that have registered," said Mark Kenny, coordinator of the state Parks and Recreation Commission's marine law enforcement unit. "Personal watercraft appeal to a wide number of people, not just young people who cowboy around," he added.

Considered the motorcycles of the waterways, personal watercraft are fast and fun, but too often are seen as water toys instead of motorized vessels that can cause serious injury and death. They're the only watercraft whose operators are required to be at least 14 years old in Washington state, but many underage youths, including two in the recent accidents, drive them anyway.

Between 1996 and 2002, all but two of those younger than 14 involved in boating accidents statewide were aboard personal watercraft, parks records say. During that period, the most common marine accident involved a personal watercraft or open motorboat shorter than 21 feet.

Authorities say that as state waters become more crowded with such watercraft, it's critical for their operators to know the vessels and their characteristics, as well as boating regulations, and to follow them.

Jet Skis and similar watercraft have grown in popularity because they are less expensive than conventional boats and are more versatile. While early models in the mid- to late-1980s were noisy and made for single riders, newer models are up to 12 feet long, can carry four people, have quieter engines and don't pollute. But they're technically a boat, and all state and federal boating regulations apply to them.

"Because people tend to view them as water toys and not as boats, they just go play with them and don't take the time to familiarize themselves with the machines and the characteristics," Snohomish County sheriff's Lt. Rodney Rochon said.

On Aug. 14, three middle school students were aboard a personal watercraft on Lake Goodwin near Lakewood, with a 13-year-old driving. A 10-year-old Mukilteo girl fell off, and her arm tangled in a rope used to pull skiers or inner tubes. The rope tightened and severed the girl's arm at the elbow. She is recovering and has subsequently been released from Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Her name has not been released under federal privacy laws.

In the Flowing Lake crash, Oropeza's niece, Angela Smith, was on duty at the north county emergency dispatch center when she learned that Oropeza had been injured. Smith heard the dispatch for an airlift helicopter. "It was really awful, knowing how a lot of these calls end," Smith said. "An airlift isn't a good thing." Oropeza suffered broken ribs, a broken back, a fractured skull, internal bleeding and several ruptured or lacerated organs. Originally listed in critical condition, she is now in satisfactory condition. She is unable to breathe on her own, family members said. She's sedated and confused, so her family doesn't know what she remembers of the accident. "This is so strange. You're just out there having fun, and boom," said her sister, Kathy Scott of Oroville.

"Personal watercraft are boats; they're very powerful and very fast," Rochon said. "Because of their handling characteristics, you can get into trouble very easily and very quickly."

Even officers aren't immune to accidents. About 10 years ago, Lake Stevens police Sgt. Ron Brooks was on patrol on a personal watercraft. Another boater who was traveling too fast struck Brooks' craft, cracking its hull and knocking him into the water, Chief Randy Celori said. Brooks suffered broken ribs and missed several months of work. Rochon said the woman in that accident had only had her watercraft for a couple of hours, hadn't bothered to read the instruction manual and thought she'd be fine because she'd ridden one before.

Some riders get into trouble while being playful or because they don't know the "rules of the road" on the water. Many personal watercraft riders like to get close to boats to use their wakes for jumping, Celori said. "That's very dangerous, especially when the water is heavily populated with other boats," he said. "On a warm summer day, you'll have in excess of maybe 100 vessels" on Lake Stevens.

People also are unaware of how fast personal watercraft can go and may not realize that not all life jackets are rated for 60 to 70 mph, Celori said. At high speeds, some life jackets can be torn off as boaters hit the water. Many riders also aren't aware they can lose control of a watercraft when the throttle is released. "You reduce throttle and power out of a problem. If you completely cut the power, you have no forward thrust and no steerage," Kenny said.

"Experience is a great teacher in this. All too often, we see these accidents are the result of inexperienced operators riding a personal watercraft and not recognizing this until it's too late." People who think they're experienced because they've handled other boats don't necessarily know how to operate a personal watercraft, Rochon said.

Similarly, they may have operated boats after dark but aren't safe operating personal watercraft at night. "We were investigating the case on Lake Goodwin, and it was dark, and we still saw personal watercraft heading across the lake," Rochon said.

Another problem is operating them in hazardous areas. In Ferguson's nighttime accident, Everett police initially thought he had struck a submerged object in the water, Lt. Ted Olafson said. "There's quite a number of logs and debris and things in the water and floating down the river," he said.

Steps are being taken to improve the safety of personal watercraft. In its last session, the state Legislature mandated boating safety education for those 20 and younger beginning Jan. 1, 2008.

"We're using the time between now and the implementation of that law as a kind of grace period, but when that law goes into effect, there's going to be no excuse. They will be cited," Rochon said. He added that marine officers hand out pamphlets, and regulations are posted, but people don't read them. "We have the regulations to prevent a lot of problems already in place," Rochon said. "It's just that people have to abide by them."

14 Sep 05 - 11:14 AM (#1563538)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Machias Elementary School students find a loaded handgun during recess
Friends earn high praise for their quick thinking

By Melissa Slager and Diana Hefley, Herald Writers
link

MACHIAS - A new playground at Machias Elementary School was swarming with children Monday morning, their first chance to try out the brightly colored new jungle gym. Grayson Pope, 8, was sick of waiting. So he turned instead to an old standby and one of his favorites - a big metal swing set. As he soared higher and higher, the third-grader glanced down and saw something surprising. He turned to a friend. "Hey! There's a gun in the wood chips. We should go tell a teacher."

School staff, parents and police officers are praising Grayson and schoolmate Khoa Nguyen, 9, a fourth-grader, for doing the right thing - leaving the loaded gun they found untouched and immediately telling their teacher. Police say the incident could have taken a turn for the worse if one of the boys had picked up the gun. The .32-caliber pistol doesn't have an external safety, and there was a bullet in the chamber.

"If he would have picked it up and treated it like a toy, it could have been awful," said Snohomish County Sheriff's Office spokesman Rich Niebusch. "The (boys) did the right thing and should be highly commended."

Each year, about 25 children are hospitalized due to unintentional gun injuries, according to Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle. Four to five children are killed in accidental shootings every year in Washington state.

Investigators don't know how the handgun ended up on the playground, Niebusch said. It doesn't appear that a student brought the gun to school. The sheriff's office didn't have any reports of shots fired in the area. Detectives are trying to track down the gun's owner using the serial number, Niebusch said. The person may be difficult to find unless the gun was purchased from a licensed dealer and is registered in a statewide database.

Both boys said they were "scared and nervous" about the discovery. "Why was it even there, and who did it?" Grayson asked.

Khoa wondered if someone from a nearby gun range "came over to play and dropped it." Either that, he said, "or it was a bad guy running and it slipped out of his pocket." Neither boy had seen a firearm up close before, but both have learned from their parents and in school assemblies and classes what to do if they came across a weapon. "They're really dangerous," Grayson said.

Francis and Alison Pope are proud of their son. "So many of these you're hearing, unfortunately, because someone got hurt," Francis Pope said. "It's kind of nice to know they're actually listening when you're talking to them."

Pope said their eldest son told him he probably would have picked the gun up, so it was a good lesson for him, too. "Grayson's my brother, and I'm proud of him," said Garrett, 11, a fifth grader at the school. The Popes took Grayson out to dinner, and the boy's soccer coach, a firefighter, gave him rolls of Lifesavers candies, telling him he had saved lives by his actions.

Khoa said his parents, Larry and Lynh Dicken, told him they were proud and let him have a sleepover that night. Principal Ginny Schilaty said custodians each morning scour the playground and adjacent fields for "stuff you don't want kids to see," such as beer bottles left by weekend revelers. Staff did not see the gun during their sweeps, she said.

The boys found the gun during the third- and fourth-grade recess at 10:15 a.m. More than 120 children were outside at the time. The recess came after two previous playtimes with about 200 younger students. The principal said she was grateful the new play equipment dominated students' attention, as well as brought out more adult supervisors than usual.

The school sent a letter about the incident home with students on Monday. When the principal on Monday led Grayson over to a sheriff's deputy to make a statement, she said the boy worried that he was in trouble. "No, honey," Schilaty told him. "You're a hero."

Keep your child safe

Parents are advised to take the following steps to protect their children from guns:

* Always lock up firearms when they are not being used. Don't assume your child will not find the gun.

* Always assume that any firearm is loaded.

* Use a locking device appropriate for the children living in your house. Do not depend on it as a sole safety measure.

* Never point a firearm at anyone, even in fun or as a joke.

* Teach your children that if they see a gun, they should not touch it and should immediately leave the area and tell an adult. Teach them that guns are not toys and that if a friend wants to show them a gun, they should immediately leave the area and tell an adult.

* Do not assume that other adults think the same way you do. Before letting your child play at someone's house, ask if there are firearms in the home and where they are.

Source: Safer Child

21 Sep 05 - 01:57 PM (#1567827)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Israeli couple fined for kissing in India
September 21, 2005 link

NEW DELHI --India may be the land of the Kamasutra, the famed ancient treatise on sex, but in the country's hinterlands, public displays of affection remain strictly taboo.

An Israeli couple discovered just how staid the small towns of India can be when they were fined 500 Indian rupees (U.S. $11) each for embracing and kissing after getting married in the Hindu holy town of Pushkar in northwestern India, the Asian Age newspaper reported Wednesday.

The Israeli Embassy in New Delhi confirmed the incident and identified the couple as Alon Orpaz and Tehila Salev, who decided to get married on a visit to India. The embassy did not provide any additional details.

The Asian Age said priests at Pushkar's Brahma temple were so incensed when the couple, married in a traditional Hindu ceremony, smooched as hymns were still being chanted that they filed a complaint with the police.

A court in Pushkar then charged the couple with indecency and ordered them to pay the fine or face 10 days in prison, the newspaper reported, adding that the couple decided to pay up.

"We will not tolerate any cultural pollution of this sort," the newspaper quoted a priest, Ladoo Ram Sharma, as saying.

Asian Age reported that the priests planned to ask the government to require tourists to be appropriately dressed when visiting the holy town and its temples

Pushkar, located on the banks of Pushkar Lake, is a popular Hindu pilgrimage spot. But it is also frequented by foreign tourists, who come for the town's annual cattle fair and camel races.

24 Sep 05 - 03:43 PM (#1569930)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This one is going to blow their on-time stats all to pieces:

Flight Leaves 43 Hours Behind Schedule
September 24, 2005

MINNEAPOLIS - A Northwest Airlines flight to Tokyo finally took off Saturday morning - 43 hours late. Mechanical problems and a lack of a crew had kept the Boeing 747-400 on the ground since its scheduled departure time of 3 p.m. Thursday.

The delay was not caused by the airline's mechanics' strike, which began Aug. 20, Northwest spokeswoman Jennifer Bagdade said. "Northwest experienced mechanical issues prior to the strike and we continue to experience them today. So this isn't new," she said. Passengers were kept on the plane for a total of nine hours over a 24-hour period, said airline spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch.

Bagdade said Northwest tried to rebook all the passengers on other flights, but many of those flights were full. When the plane finally left on the more than 12-hour-long flight, it carried about 100 fewer passengers than its original 365.

Northwest apologized to the passengers and will pay for two nights' worth of food and lodging and plans to give them $700 in travel certificates. "It's certainly an unfortunate delay," Ebenhoch said. "We regret the inconvenience; we apologize. We work hard to avoid this. It happens to other airlines as well."

24 Sep 05 - 05:00 PM (#1569951)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

http://www.rense.com/general67/voting.htm

Amazing Facts About
Voting In America
Watching Watchers.org
9-24-5

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

3. The vice-president of Diebold election systems and the vice president of aftermarket sales at ES&S are brothers.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of General Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.

14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

15. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it!

16. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

17. All-not some-but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

18. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.

19. Serious voting anomalies in Florida-again always favoring Bush-have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.

http://watchingthewatchers.org/index.php?p=318

29 Sep 05 - 11:41 AM (#1572134)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Missing man found driving dead deer in ambulance

Associated Press

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A man reported missing from a Florida hospital was found in North Carolina dressed like a doctor and driving a stolen ambulance with a dead deer wedged in the back, authorities said.

Leon Holliman Jr., 37, was reported missing from a River Region Human Services facility in Jacksonville last month.

The North Carolina State Highway Patrol found him driving the ambulance with the deer on Sunday.

"I don't know how the man got it up in there," said Sgt. Robert Pearson. "It was a six point buck."

It wasn't known where Holliman got the deer, which had been dead for some time, Pearson said.

Authorities tracked the stolen ambulance through three rural North Carolina counties and one county in southern Virginia before its tires were punctured and it wound up in a ditch, Pearson said.

Holliman was admitted to a North Carolina hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. Police said they would decide whether to charge Holliman after that evaluation is complete.

29 Sep 05 - 12:44 PM (#1572186)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Maybe he'd just read Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine. :)

05 Oct 05 - 03:16 PM (#1576664)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Witness: 'Intelligent Design' Used in Book
October 05, 2005

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Early drafts of a student biology text contained references to creationism before they were replaced with the term "intelligent design," a witness testified Wednesday in a landmark trial over a school system's use of the book.

Drafts of the textbook, Of Pandas and People, written in 1987 were revised after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June of that year that states could not require schools to balance evolution with creationism in the classroom, said Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University.

Forrest reviewed drafts of the textbook as a witness for eight families who are trying to have the intelligent design concept removed from the Dover Area School District's biology curriculum.

The families contend that teaching intelligent design effectively promotes the Bible's view of creation, violating the separation of church and state.

Intelligent design holds that life on Earth is so complex that it must have been the product of some higher force. Opponents of the concept say intelligent design is simply creationism stripped of overt religious references.

Forrest outlined a chart of how many times the term "creation" was mentioned in the early drafts versus how many times the term "design" was mentioned in the published edition.

"They are virtually synonymous," she said.

Under the policy approved by Dover's school board in October 2004, students must hear a brief statement about intelligent design before classes on evolution. The statement says Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps."

The trial began Sept. 26 and is expected to last as long as five weeks.

05 Oct 05 - 09:55 PM (#1576886)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

QUOTE
The statement says Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps."
UNQUOTE

as is the case in all Scientific Theories. Witness the progress of the wave/particle theory of light (electromagnetism), Quantum mechanics, etc.

The gaps are indeed 'part of the theories' - and are where the knowledge advances.

Only simple minded idiots NEED to have absolute explanations without gaps for everything in life. Unfortunately many Religious Followers need such absolute security called 'facts'.

Even more unfortunately, real life is open ended, not closed.

06 Oct 05 - 10:40 AM (#1577038)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Over-arching umbrellas are remarkably unstable in a breeze, let alone a high wind. Religion and science can coexist, but religions need to stop trying to co-opt science any more than they have already.

06 Oct 05 - 11:01 AM (#1577067)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

The "inexplicable gaps" are mostly places where the record of fossils is incomplete. This is not a cognitive flaw in the fundamental mechanism described by the theory, but an artifact of momentous historical waves of time, matter, and force.

A

06 Oct 05 - 03:10 PM (#1577334)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Q: how do you spell l-a-w-s-u-i-t?

US Forest Service whistleblower fired

Last Update: 10/06/2005
By: Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - A US Forest Service official who voiced concerns about alleged pesticide misuse in forests across the Southwest has been fired. Doug Parker worked as the pesticide coordinator and assistant director of forestry health for the agency's Southwestern region.

Parker has told The Associated Press that he was removed from his duties last week because his supervisor said he failed to follow instructions.

Parker filed a whistleblower complaint earlier this year. He alleged a systemic problem when it comes to proper pesticide use across several forests in New Mexico and Arizona. Parker accused some managers of not preparing environmental risk assessments.

The Forest Service has declined to comment about Parker's case because of pending civil and legal actions.

10 Oct 05 - 12:19 AM (#1579856)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Joe Offer

Robbery Suspect Caught

Auburn, California, Monday, October 3.
The Auburn Journal, Oct 5

A Newcastle man who led police on a brief chase was behind bars in Placer County Jail Tuesday morning.
Kevin Stovall, 25, reportedly broke into a 1992 Dodge Caravan in the Auburn Town Center parking lot Monday afternoon around 3 p.m. while the owner of the vehicle was at the Flour Garden Bakery, said an officer of the Auburn Police Department.
Beverly Pando (who'd rather not tell her age) and Joseph Offer, 50 (well, 57), of Auburn, noticed the man near Pando's vehicle and walked up to him.
"(Offer) confronted the suspect who tried to give him some kind of story that he was getting the keys out of his girlfriend's car," the officer said. "The suspect gets out of the car as the victim is dialing her cell phone to call the police and he grabs it and says he's not going to go back to prison."
Stovall then fled the area and "the chase was on" (they didn't say it, but Offer did the chasing, walking rather briskly until the guy got out of sight. Then the police flushed him out and tackled him).
He didn't get far and was apprehended by an Auburn police officer.
Stovall was booked on charges of suspicion of robbery, burglary, and resisting arrest. He remains in Placer County Jail on $50,000 bail.

Gee, it was the first time I've ever seen a crime in progress, and I stopped it. Kind of an interesting experience. In my Walter Mitty reveries, I've wondered if I could bluff a criminal into custody by telling him to put his hands up against the car and frisking him. The guy didn't buy the bluff, so I had to chase him to try to get my friend's phone back. That didn't work, either. The cops got the guy, but not the phone.

-Joe Offer-

10 Oct 05 - 12:53 AM (#1579860)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Good guy, Joe!

And now you see why this thread is so handy? You can post this kind of article and a few folks will read it and enjoy it, but you don't have to worry about starting a new thread and all of the goofy stuff that goes with it, because all comers are welcome.

So what happened to your friend's phone between when it was grabbed and when the police grabbed him? With a $50,000 bail it looks like they mean business about keeping him.

I remember watching the news on a local Texas channel quite a few years back when a young upstart of a news reporter, on the air, actually caught a burglar in the act in a mall parking lot during his remote news segment. He asked him a couple of questions, and as the guy turned to flee, the reporter did a "what the hell" kind of look, tossed the mic down, and tackled the guy. It was great television!

SRS

10 Oct 05 - 07:10 AM (#1579977)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Well done Joe. Of course, you may have been hurt. but what the hell, in those circumstances it seemed the right thing to do...

Out here, we regularly have stories of old pensioners beating up would be robbers muggers - thy just have to 'have a go' too.

10 Oct 05 - 07:26 AM (#1579987)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Yayyyyy, Joe. What an offer!!

A

10 Oct 05 - 11:37 AM (#1580152)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JennyO

Goodonya Joe. It's a pity there aren't more people in the world like you, who are ready to go the extra mile for their fellow human beings!

Jenny

13 Oct 05 - 06:44 PM (#1582683)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Woman Charged in Pregnant Neighbor Attack
October 13, 2005

PITTSBURGH - A woman clubbed her pregnant neighbor over the head with a baseball bat, drove her to the woods and cut her belly with a knife in an attempt to steal her baby, police say.

Police said Wednesday's attack on Valerie Oskin was stopped before her baby was taken after a teenager on an all-terrain vehicle came across the women. Oskin, 30, later underwent an emergency Caesarean section at a hospital. State police Thursday said she was in critical condition and her baby in stable condition. She was believed to have been in her third trimester of pregnancy, authorities said.

Peggy Jo Conner, 38, of Ford City, was arraigned Thursday on charges of attempted homicide and aggravated assault and was jailed without bail. Conner had told her live-in partner before the attack that she was pregnant, and investigators found baby-related items in her trailer, Armstrong County District Attorney Scott Andreassi said. "Clearly, she was expecting a child coming in shortly," Andreassi said. "There's nothing to indicate she was pregnant."

The assault began Wednesday morning, when Conner hit Oskin several times with a bat, Andreassi said. Conner then put Oskin and Oskin's 7-year-old son in her car, dropped the boy off at a family member's house and drove the pregnant woman about 15 miles to a secluded area about 50 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, Andreassi said.

There, Conner cut Oskin across her abdomen with a razor knife, authorities said. "She was sliced over an old (Caesarean) scar and severely bleeding," Trooper Jonathan Bayer said.

A 17-year-old boy on an ATV spotted Conner kneeling next to the pregnant woman on the ground, Bayer said. The boy rode home and told his father, who called authorities, who arrested Conner at the scene.

The pregnant woman "probably would have bled to death if this young boy had not discovered her when he did," Bayer said. A call to Conner's home went unanswered Thursday afternoon. State police said they did not know if she had a lawyer.

Last December, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, was strangled at her Missouri home, and her baby was cut from her womb. Prosecutors said Lisa Montgomery showed the baby off as her own before her arrest. She is awaiting trial.

16 Oct 05 - 05:59 AM (#1583983)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

[QUOTE]

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2005• THE WICHITA EAGLE 3B

WICKED WITCH'S DEATH CONFIRMED

BY KAREN SHIDELER
The Wichita Eagle

Ding, dong.
The witch is dead.
Or is she?

We all know that the Munchkin coroner declared the Wicked Witch of the East dead - not only merely dead but really most sincerely dead - in "The Wizard of Oz."

But the 1939 death had not been recorded as a Kansas fatality, as state law requires, until Friday.

The Shawnee County Commission appointed 90-year-old Meinhardt Raabe, the Munchkin coroner in the movie, as a spedal deputy coroner so he could sign the certificate and record it with the state. The certificate was accepted Friday in Topeka by State Registrar Lorne Phillips.

The certificate notes that death was by tornado trauma. And because the tornado picked up the house in Kansas, the death certificate gets signed here.

The reason for all this is so that the death certificate can be given to organizers of Wamego's first Oztoberfest celebration, this weekend. Phillips said his office wouldn't officially record the certificate.

Which leads to a question:

If the death certificate isn't officially recorded, can that wicked witch really be

Positively,

absolutely,

Undeniably

and reliably

DEAD?

[END QUOTE]

Comment: Probably the first sensible thing any member of Kansas State government has done in the past couple of years ... and they don't intend to finish the paperwork on it??????

John

16 Oct 05 - 10:17 AM (#1584099)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I heard something on the radio about the scheduling of this event. This must be a quick recovery gimmick after the theft of the Ruby Slippers. They went missing some weeks prior to this event.

Here's a bit from an article you'll find via Google News

No sign of ruby slippers stolen from museum

MEMORABILIA: The theft of the famous shoes from "The Wizard of Oz" draws attention to Judy Garland's birthplace.

03 Nov 05 - 03:59 PM (#1596695)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Mayor: Sever Thumbs of Graffiti Artists
November 03, 2005

RENO, Nev. - Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has suggested that those who deface freeways with graffiti should have their thumbs cut off on television. Goodman, appearing Wednesday on the "Nevada Newsmakers" television show, said, "In the old days in France, they had beheading of people who commit heinous crimes.

"You know, we have a beautiful highway landscaping redevelopment in our downtown. We have desert tortoises and beautiful paintings of flora and fauna. These punks come along and deface it.

"I'm saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb," the mayor added. "That may be the right thing to do." Goodman also suggested that whippings or canings should be brought back for children who get into trouble. "I also believe in a little bit of corporal punishment going back to the days of yore, where examples have to be shown," Goodman said.

"I'm dead serious," said Goodman, adding, "Some of these (children) don't learn. You have got to teach them a lesson, and this is coming from a criminal defense lawyer."

"They would get a trial first," he added.

Another panelist on the show, Howard Rosenberg, a state university system regent, responded by saying that cutting off the thumbs of taggers won't solve the problem and Goodman should "use his head for something other than a hat rack."

03 Nov 05 - 06:05 PM (#1596812)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Copernicus' Grave Found in Polish Church
Polish Archeologists Believe They've Found Grave of 16th-Century Astronomer Copernicus in a Church

WARSAW, Poland Nov 3, 2005 — Polish archeologists believe they have located the grave of 16th-century astronomer and solar-system proponent Nicolaus Copernicus in a Polish church, one of the scientists announced Thursday.

Copernicus, who died in 1543 at 70 after challenging the ancient belief that the sun revolved around the earth, was buried at the Roman Catholic cathedral in the city of Frombork, 180 miles north of the capital, Warsaw.

Jerzy Gassowski, head of an archaeology and anthropology institute in Pultusk, central Poland, said his four-member team found what appears to be the skull of the Polish astronomer and clergyman in August, after a one-year search of tombs under the church floor.

"We can be almost 100 percent sure this is Copernicus," Gassowski told The Associated Press by phone after making the announcement during a meeting of scientists.

Gassowski said police forensic experts used the skull to reconstruct a face that closely resembled the features including a broken nose and scar above the left eye on a Copernicus self-portrait. The experts also determined the skull belonged to a man who died at about age 70.

The grave was in bad condition and not all remains were found, Gassowski said, adding that his team will try to find relatives of Copernicus to do more accurate DNA identification.

03 Nov 05 - 07:55 PM (#1596880)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Bill D

op-ed in Washington Post Nov.3

( link

Why Jesus Is Welcome In the Public Square
Religiosity Isn't Just the Right's Territory

By Jennifer Moses

Thursday, November 3, 2005; Page A21

BATON ROUGE, La. -- It's not news that the Christian right often appears to want nothing other than to impose its values, religious and otherwise, on the rest of the nation. But liberals would be mistaken to assume that it's only people on the far right who rely on the word of God for everything from Sunday sermon topics to public policymaking. In towns like Baton Rouge, religion is so much a part of public life that most folks can't begin to fathom that there might be something less than healthy in the blend. Of course, the religion in question is always a fairly distinct brand of down-home Protestantism, but what the hell. If you don't like Jesus, that's your business.

Actually, for a Jewish girl, I'm on pretty good terms with him. Despite my initial discomfiture with living in a place where people routinely ask "Where do y'all go to church?" I don't mind, and even welcome, being on the receiving end of blessings, Christian or otherwise. Being told "Jesus loves you, baby," by my favorite postal clerk doesn't offend me. Nor do I mind the billboards dotting the interstate ("Looking for a Sign from God? Here it is!") or the inclination of most of my neighbors to talk about their personal quests in terms of divine will.

Given the human habit of unleashing violence in the name of God, perhaps I'm naive, but I tend to believe that the Christian religiosity that's the common currency of great swaths of our country generally does more good than harm, giving people a sense of purpose and community where they might not otherwise have either. But I'm talking mainly about what I call the "good" Jesus -- the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, the one who, through his people, clothes the naked and feeds the hungry. In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it's that Jesus who's been making the rounds, so much so that Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, came to Baton Rouge to praise the efforts of local churches. (Well he should, too, since the federal government has all but abandoned us to our own resources.) The local newspaper covered the visit in detail. What it failed to do was mention that there might be something suspect in having a White House office of faith-based anything.

Welcome to the Bible Belt, y'all -- or at least to my small and not particularly dogmatic corner of it. (If you want the real thing, you have to go farther north, to Shreveport or Monroe.) South Louisiana is famously laid-back, and while there are those who believe, for example, that Catholics are going to burn in hell because they worship the pope, most folks just want to get along. That said, part of getting along means accommodating local norms, maybe even trampling on the Constitution now and then, because, after all, what's the big deal if the fellows pray before the high school football game? It's not like anyone's making them, and, anyway, most of the kids, maybe even all of them, are Christian.

So prevalent is this last sentiment that even the Louisiana State University law school follows it, hanging an enormous Christmas wreath over its imposing neoclassical entrance every December -- to the annual protests of faculty who point out that while such a display may be constitutionally kosher, it's also, at the very least, obnoxious. But the religious sentiments don't come only from the right. In March, the Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, endorsed publicly sponsored prayer at Tangipahoa Parish School Board meetings. The black community, which is generally liberal, uniformly voted in favor of a state amendment banning anything that so much as hinted at the legalization of same-sex unions. It's not unusual for a preacher to start things off at political rallies, either. I attended one rally last year, where, on the steps of the state Capitol, people carrying signs that read "Leave No Millionaire Behind" and "When Clinton Lied, No One Died" bowed their heads in the name of Jesus. Not to mention that Christian ministry is a major part of what passes for rehabilitation in the state prisons.

If one common mistake liberals make is assuming that the great majority of Bible-thumping (or tapping) comes from the right, a second -- and to my mind, more important -- mistake is equating this style of religiosity with something as simple as narrow-minded ignorance. Rather, bringing God and his word as expressed in the Bible into the debate points to a profound lack of meaning and vision in our public discourse, and a searing pessimism that anyone, or any institution, in public life might put things right. It points, also, to disgust: disgust not only with our elected leaders but also with the cheapening of life around us, whether by blatant sexuality on television, soaring drug abuse, the acceptance of out-of-wedlock birth or the loss of the communal ties that once grounded us.

As far as I can tell, progressives and liberals of all stripes don't even begin to fathom the despair and confusion most ordinary Americans feel when they hear the latest violent rap song or see a billboard plastered with an image of a 16-year-old clad only in Calvin Klein underwear. The right wing of the Republican Party, on the other hand, has long understood that most Americans yearn for something nobler in our national life, but it doesn't care unless it can use frustration and despair to harvest rage, and rage to harvest votes.

What's the answer? I don't know, but it might help if our political leaders stopped spinning and, like the prophets of old, spoke the truth.

Jennifer Moses is a writer who grew up in McLean and has lived in Baton Rouge for 10 years.

03 Nov 05 - 10:59 PM (#1596984)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Good fer Jennifer.

She's moving her finger right toward the ole button -- the debasement of genuine purpose and the elevation of bread-and-circus mediocrity.The notion of elevating noptoriety and celebrity (the condition of being well-known for being well-known) to importance is a media trick that has eroded our mental and spiritual life for a fistful of advertising dollars. Smart of her to connect the dots like that.

As for old Nikolai Copernicus, that's a pretty good resting spot for a guy who blew the terra-centric cosmology right out the ole stained glass window. He shoulda given some tips to Galileo or had him move to Poland.

A

05 Nov 05 - 03:25 PM (#1598194)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Drive-through robber leaves empty-handed

FORT WORTH - The convenience of bank drive-throughs is appealing to more than just customers nowadays. Robbers like them, too. Police say a man drove into Summit Bank's drive-through at 3000 Altamesa Blvd. about 11:30 a.m. Friday and tried unsuccessfully to make a big withdrawal using a robbery note. It was the second such episode in Fort Worth in a little more than a week.

"Maybe it's a lazier breed of bank robber," quipped Fort Worth police robbery Detective J.E. Livesay. In Friday's robbery attempt, the driver of a Chevy Astro van passed the note, tucked inside a small black bag that looked like a shaving kit, through the teller's drawer.

Fill up the bag, the note demanded. Large bills only. Don't sound the alarm. Put the note back in the bag.

The teller who read the note had been on duty during a similar robbery attempt at the bank this year, Livesay said. "She saw the note and read it, and she immediately dropped to the floor and told all the employees they were being robbed again," he said.

Employees took cover and sounded the holdup alarm. The robber, growing impatient, honked his horn after about two minutes and spoke briefly with the bank's manager over the intercom. "She yelled at him, 'What do you want?'," Livesay said. "He said 'I want my deposit back' and she said, 'You don't have a deposit. You're not a customer. You're trying to rob us. Get out of here.'" The robber pulled forward, then stopped and backed up, narrowly missing another vehicle behind him, Livesay said. The robber then fled before officers arrived.

He is described as an unshaven white man in his 40s driving a light blue Chevy Astro minivan with Texas paper tags dated Nov. 21. He has short dark hair and was wearing a brown cap and sunglasses. Livesay said police are investigating whether the robbery attempt is related to an Oct. 27 holdup of the Bank of America at 116 E. Seminary Drive. In that robbery, a man driving a silver or gray 1990s-model pickup passed a note demanding cash, then fled with an undisclosed amount.

In August, Fort Worth police arrested a 39-year-old man suspected of robbing two banks and trying to rob three others using drive-through windows, including one at the Summit Bank. In those robberies, a man whom authorities nicknamed the "drive-through bandit" passed threatening notes to tellers. The robber did not display a weapon and drove different cars, police have said.

Cleo C. Moore, a convicted bank robber who had recently been released from a Fort Worth halfway house, is awaiting trial on federal bank robbery charges in those cases.

11 Nov 05 - 01:16 PM (#1602472)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Hmmm. I seem to be noticing these more, or are there just more robberies being reported?

Woman Robs Banks While on Her Cell Phone
November 11, 2005

WASHINGTON - These days it seems that some people just can't go anywhere or do anything without a cell phone in their ear. In northern Virginia the police say they're looking for a woman who's been holding up banks while chatting on her phone.

"This is the first time that I can recall where we've had a crime committed while the person was using a cell phone," Loudoun County sheriff's spokesman Kraig Troxell told The Washington Post in a story published Friday. "The question would be whether anyone is on the other end of the line or not."

Investigators believe the woman has hit four Wachovia bank branches in recent weeks in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties. In three of those bank jobs, she was talking on a cell phone, while showing the teller a box with a holdup note attached to it. In the most recent holdup, on Nov. 4, in Ashburn, the robber showed the teller a gun.

The woman is described as well-spoken, with a slight Hispanic accent. Investigators say they're not sure if she's actually talking to someone on the phone or just pretending. They also won't speculate on why she's chosen only Wachovia branches.

12 Nov 05 - 11:13 AM (#1603058)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Boater Rescued From Sharks Off Fla. Coast
November 12, 2005

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland - A man whose boat capsized in rough seas off the Florida coast treaded water for six hours, watching his friend die, while two boaters refused to pick him up apparently thinking he was an illegal immigrant from Haiti. Rogers Washington was eventually saved by two other boaters on Thursday who spotted him frantically waving his arms and shouting "I'm an American! I'm an American!"

"It would have been very easy not to have seen him," said David Pensky, 61, who saved Washington. "At first, I wasn't sure if he was a diver trying to make sure I didn't hit him." he told The (Annapolis) Capital, a Maryland newspaper. Pensky and Richard Holden, 63, noticed the fisherman, orange whistle to his lips, floating with the aid of a cooler lid and a small life vest shoved under his arm.

"They are the best men in the world," Washington said on Friday. "They are God's children." Washington said he capsized while on a fishing trip with Robert Lewis Moore, 62, also from Florida, after two large waves hit his 22-foot (7-meter) boat. The boat went down quickly, leaving the men clutching life vests.

Moore probably had a heart attack and died when a shark began circling them, Washington said. He tried resuscitating Moore, but it didn't work. He held onto his friend for about 45 minutes. "I had to let him go so I could try to survive," he said.

Washington floated alone in the choppy seas for about five more hours, the coastline visible in the distance. A hammerhead shark came within 5 feet (1.5 meters) of him. Two boats, a charter and a sailboat, passed within a couple hundred feet (60 meters). No one on those boats offered to help.

"They waved at me. I know they saw me," said Washington, who is black and believes the other boaters thought he was an illegal immigrant from Haiti. Moore's body was found Thursday by a fisherman.

13 Nov 05 - 12:45 AM (#1603500)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Man sentenced to 6 years for chipping Inca ruins during filming

LIMA, Peru - A camera crane operator shooting a commercial at the Machu Picchu Inca ruins whose equipment tipped and chipped a stone sundial there has been sentenced to six years in prison, officials said Friday. The local court in Urubamba, 338 miles southeast of the capital, Lima, said it had found Walter Leonidas Espinoza guilty on Nov. 3 of destruction and alteration of cultural goods. The charge carries a maximum penalty of eight years behind bars.

Antonio Terrazas, a lawyer acting as spokesman for Peru's Institute of Culture, said offenders are seldom charged and when they are prosecuted and found guilty, it normally results only in a fine or a few months in jail. Espinoza has appealed his sentence, authorities said.

The production company Espinoza worked for knocked a corner edge off the Intihuatana, or "hitching post for the sun," in 2000 while shooting the commercial for the Backus beer company.

The Intihuatana was used by Inca astronomers to predict solstices and was of great importance in Inca mythology and agriculture. It is considered to be the most important shrine in Machu Picchu, Peru's biggest tourist attraction, high in the jungle-covered Andes, about 310 miles southeast of the capital, Lima.

Officials with Backus, which faces a civil lawsuit along with the advertising firm that hired the production company, declined to comment Friday.

17 Nov 05 - 11:44 AM (#1607304)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Texas Town Adopts Corporate Name
Various links to stories about this.

November 17, 2005

DISH, Texas - Back in the 1950s, Hot Springs, N.M., was renamed Truth or Consequences, N.M., after a popular quiz show. During the dot-com boom of 2000, Halfway, Ore., agreed to become Half.com for a year. This week, Clark, Texas, morphed into DISH in exchange for a decade of free satellite television from the DISH Network for the town's 55 homes. Residents in Santa, Idaho, meanwhile, are weighing the pros and cons of changing to Secretsanta.com, Idaho. Across the nation, small communities are being courted by large corporations who say renaming a town provides a marketing buzz that can't be bought in television ads. Though some worry about corporate America's increasing influence in local government, many towns seem eager to accept.

In a deal unanimously approved Tuesday by the two-member town council, Clark agreed to become DISH permanently, effective immediately. It's part of an advertising campaign for Englewood, Colo.-based EchoStar Communications Corp., which operates the DISH Network satellite TV system. The company pegged the deal at about $4,500 per home in the rural patch of ranch land, which is about a half hour's drive north of Dallas-Fort Worth.

Beyond the lure of free TV service for the 125 residents, the renaming is a way for the town to attract businesses and residents, said Mayor Bill Merritt, who courted EchoStar to pick the town. "We really look at this as kind of a rebirth for our community," Merritt said. "We want everybody to come here."

The town was founded in June 2000 by L.E. Clark, who sharply criticized the renaming. "I don't especially like it," said Clark, who lost to Merritt in May's mayoral election. "I worked my butt off a little over a year getting it incorporated."

It was 1950 when Hot Springs, N.M., voted 1,294-295 to change its name to Truth or Consequences. Host Ralph Edwards, who died Wednesday at age 92, had promised to broadcast the popular radio show from the town that agreed to the change. In 2000, Halfway, Ore., become Half.com for a year in an agreement that put $100,000 in the town coffer and a new computer lab in the school. Though the name is back to Halfway, the town still has signs that read "Welcome to Half.com, the World's First Dot-com City." "It was a good experience," said Mayor Marvin Burgraff, who served as mayor after the decision had already been approved. "It was kind of fun. You look back on it and it's good thoughts."

In an age of pervasive advertising that many people try to ignore, such stunts are a good way to grab the public's attention, said Mark Hughes, chief executive of Buzzmarketing and the former Half.com executive who devised the Oregon deal. "Word of mouth is the most powerful form of communication and marketing out there," Hughes said in a telephone interview from Santa, Idaho, where he's leading the effort to rename that town Secretsanta.com, after a gift-exchange Web site. "No one's going to talk about the 3,000th Web site that launched this week," Hughes said. "What this does is give people a reason to talk."

Still, some offers of corporate interest have backfired. In 2003, residents of Biggs, Calif., overwhelmingly rejected a California Milk Processor Board proposal to rename the city of 1,800 Got Milk? in exchange for a milk museum and money for the school. "People's take on it was, 'This is just an advertising ploy by the milk board.' There was a certain segment of population that wanted to tar and feather the mayor for even suggesting it," city clerk Marlee Mattos said.

Gary Ruskin, of the nonprofit Commercial Alert, said towns should provide services such as trash collection and education, not "hawk television at its residents," he said. "The names of our civic places reflect our values and our aspirations," Ruskin said. "It's wrong to sever the link between civic names and civic virtue."

But Merritt, mayor of the town now called DISH, said work had already begun to change the town's dozen street signs. He doesn't see the new name ever going out of favor. "I can't see right now that people would want to change it," he said. "Clark will always be a part of our history, but this is our new identity."

17 Nov 05 - 12:53 PM (#1607359)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Cheap Laptops Are Planned for Kids
Cheap Laptop With Wireless Network Access and Hand-Crank to Provide Electricity Are Planned for Children
link

TUNIS, Tunisia - A cheap laptop boasting wireless network access and a hand-crank to provide electricity is expected to start shipping in February or March to help extend technology to school-aged children worldwide. The machines are to sell for $100, slightly less than its cost. The aim is to have governments or donors buy them and give full ownership to the children.

"These robust, versatile machines will enable children to become more active in their own learning," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters. Annan and more than 23,000 people from 176 countries were attending the three-day U.N. World Summit on the Information Society, in its second day Thursday.

Although discussions about persisting U.S. control over the Internet's addressing system have consumed much of summit, its original aim was to find ways to extend communications technologies to the world's poorest through projects like the $100 laptop. MIT Media Lab chairman Nicholas Negroponte, who unveiled the textbook-sized laptop on Wednesday, said he expects to sell 1 million of them to Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria.

Negroponte did not say who would build the machine, which will cost $110 to make, but at least five companies are considering bids to do so. He said a commercial version may be available at a higher price to subsidize machines provided to children. The laptop will run on an open-source operating system, such as Linux, which is generally cheaper than proprietary systems such as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, said Negroponte.

The devices will be lime green in color, with a yellow hand crank, to make them appealing to children and to fend off potential thieves people would know by the color that the laptop is meant for a kid. Also at the summit, Microsoft unveiled a new network of learning centers in Tunisia to train people to be teachers in technology. Jean-Phillippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, said the company would replicate the centers elsewhere as part of its outreach efforts.

Addressing delegates on Thursday, Pakistani diplomat Masood Khan said increasing access to communications can help improve relations between regions and religions. "Information is not just an economic tool," Kahn told delegates in the main hall. "We need its infinite power to combat the rising tide of prejudice and hatred."

Senegal's president, Abdoulaye Wade, said more time and effort was needed to help address the digital divide, but stressed that Africa in particular should do more for itself by providing education and jobs. "The computer specialists we train in Senegal, the English and the French come in and take them back to France and America," he told reporters. "We need to keep them with us."

The summit was engrossed in some controversy after Reporters Without Borders said its secretary-general, Robert Menard, was denied entry into the country after his flight landed at the airport in the capital. The Paris-based group, among the chief critics of Tunisia's stance on speech and human rights, said Tunisian police officers and other officials boarded the Air France flight that Menard was on and said he could not enter the country to attend the summit. Francine Lambert, a spokeswoman for the summit, said Menard was issued credentials but was held back because of outstanding criminal complaint against him by Tunisia.

17 Nov 05 - 03:09 PM (#1607460)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Ah! A new word!

Schadenfreude

November 17, 2005

Woodward Feels Heat – Times Runs Amok?

It's clear today that Bob Woodward's involvement in the CIA leak case – and his decision not to reveal that involvement for more than two years – is now, officially, the latest Big Journalism Scandal. Woodward's behavior is reminding some of another such scandal, the one involving former New York Times reporter Judith Miller: "There are a number of ingredients in this unsavory stew that weirdly echo the Judith Miller imbroglio," wrote Rem Rieder in The American Journalism Review.

When we came into work this morning, we couldn't help but wonder: How would the Times cover the story? Would there be hints of Schadenfreude in their coverage? (FYI: scha•den•freu•de: Noun. German. "Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.") Would the Times revel in the fact that the wrath of media critics is suddenly shifting elsewhere? Would the paper try to cast Woodward in the worst possible light – and in the process help people forget a little more quickly about their dear departed "Ms. Run Amok?"

long story, and one that I'll have to go read some more sources to see what it's all about. But interesting.

17 Nov 05 - 03:09 PM (#1607461)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Me again. . .

17 Nov 05 - 03:15 PM (#1607470)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Don Firth

Damn! A few weeks back I heard a word that was defined as "suddenly feeling guilty because of your schadenfreude," but I can't remember it now!

Anybody heard it?

Don Firth

17 Nov 05 - 03:16 PM (#1607471)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

The San Francisco Chronicle has covered it.

Ah! Details!

Woodward's disclosure could aid Libby
Reporter's testimony on Monday adds new wrinkle to CIA leak investigation

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Washington -- The revelation that the Washington Post's Bob Woodward may have been the first reporter to learn about CIA operative Valerie Wilson could provide a boost to the only person indicted in the leak case: Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Legal experts said Woodward had provided two pieces of new information that cast at least a shadow of doubt on the public case against Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who has been indicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

Woodward testified Monday that contrary to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's public statements, a senior government official -- not Libby -- had been the first Bush administration official to tell a reporter about Wilson and her role at the CIA. Woodward also said that Libby had never mentioned Wilson, also known as Valerie Plame, in conversations they had on June 23 and June 27, 2003, about the Iraq war, a time when the indictment alleges Libby was eagerly passing information about Wilson to reporters and colleagues.

While neither statement appears to factually change Fitzgerald's contention that Libby lied and impeded the leak investigation, the Libby legal team plans to use Woodward's testimony to try to show that Libby was not obsessed with unmasking Wilson and to raise questions about the prosecutor's full understanding of events. Until now, few outside of Libby's legal team have challenged the facts and chronology of Fitzgerald's case.

"I think it's a considerable boost to the defendant's case," said John Moustakas, a former federal prosecutor who has no role in the case. "It casts doubt about whether Fitzgerald knew everything as he charged someone with very serious offenses."

According to the statement Woodward released Tuesday, he did not appear to provide any testimony that goes specifically to the question of whether Libby is guilty of two counts of perjury, two counts of providing false statements and obstructing justice. The indictment outlines what many legal experts describe as a very strong case against Libby, because it shows the former Cheney aide learned about Wilson from at least four government sources, including the vice president -- and not a reporter, as he testified before the grand jury.

Randall Eliason, former head of the public corruption unit for the U.S. attorney's office in Washington D.C., said he doubted the Woodward account would have much effect on Libby's case and dismissed such theories as "defense spin."

"Libby was not charged with being the first to talk to a reporter, and that is not part of the indictment," he said. "Whether or not some other officials were talking to Woodward doesn't really tell us anything about the central issue in Libby's case: What was his state of mind and intent when he was talking to the FBI and testifying in the grand jury?"

Eliason added: "What this does suggest, though, is that the investigation is still very active. Hard to see how that is good news for (White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl) Rove or for anyone else in the prosecutor's crosshairs."

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Rove's legal team, said Rove was not the official who had talked to Woodward. Rove was referred to, but not by name, in Libby's indictment as having discussed Wilson's identity with reporters.

Since December 2003, Fitzgerald has been probing whether senior Bush administration officials illegally leaked classified information -- Wilson's identity as a CIA operative -- to reporters to discredit allegations made by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. Robert Novak revealed Valerie Wilson's identity in a July 14, 2003, column, eight days after her husband publicly accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war. Rove is still under investigation.

Libby's attorneys have asked whether Fitzgerald will correct his statement that Libby was the first administration official to leak information about Wilson to a reporter. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment. At a news conference Oct. 28, Fitzgerald specifically said that Libby was the "first official known" at that time to have provided such information to a reporter.

The White House declined to comment.

In October 2003, President Bush pledged cooperation with the investigation, and investigators requested and subpoenaed all records of contacts with reporters.

Chronicle news services contributed to this report.

17 Nov 05 - 03:34 PM (#1607478)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Actually a search for threads which include the word turns up the following:

The Forum Results (1 to 17 of 17)

0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: La France: Oui ou Non? - Jun 3 2005 8:10AM -   robomatic
Summary: Yeah, I've been dropping in on forums which are opposite polarity to this one and they've been saying "Vive La France!" as well, but I think it's mainly schadenfreude.
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: Anti-Depressants / Getting off of - Mar 31 2005 11:35PM -   harpgirl
Summary: If it were prosocial it would reflect empathy. You specifically need to develop some empathy. It is imperative that you study empathy and begin to attain some.
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: They sure breed them young - Mar 14 2005 11:43PM -   robomatic
Summary: ard mhaca: how do you say "Schadenfreude" in gaelic?
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: HRH Prince Charles is homosexual ! - Nov 10 2003 2:34AM -   alanabit
Summary: Royalty isn't really the issue Mike. I am a republican (in the UK sense of the word). I respect everyone's right to privacy in their private life whether it's pop stars, film stars, politicians or the man who serves me a pint in the pub.
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: German politician dies parachuting - Jun 7 2003 4:17PM -   alanabit
Summary: He always seemed something of an attention seeker to me. He was definitely a troubled man. However, if only for the sake of his family, any sense of Schadenfreude which I might have felt at his fall (whether you take that physically or metaphorically) has long since been put aside.
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: Famous exit lines - May 8 2003 2:42PM -   John 'Giok' MacKenzie
Summary: Touch of schadenfreude there Gareth. Remember what BH Calcutta [Failed] said in The Perishers. "It are wicked to mock the afflicted" Giok
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: The FLAGRANT Lady Mary - Sep 30 2002 3:08PM -   Gervase
Summary: Ah, the Lavender List - those of us who grew up in the Sixties always knew tht Marcia Forkbender was servicing "Our 'Arold", but it's nice to see it confirmed! Given that the major imperatives in life are food, shelter and reproduction, the shagging bit features fairly prominenty in the political process. Obviously life would be more serene if we could adopt the French sang froidabout mistresses and the like, but as cold-blooded Anglo-Saxons we just have to get our rocks off ...
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: Lyr Add: Melborn and Sydeny - Sep 23 2002 10:37PM -   John in Brisbane
Summary: I remember the song as if it was yesterday - but I realized this morning that I don't know the name of my Federal Member. I was asked a lot of years ago to participate in a recording project of Stephen Foster songs with PC references to 'darkie' etc removed. I refused - and for the same reasons I'll probably keep the original lyrics of this song intact.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: Corgi Missing, Where's Ozzie? Big 50th! - Jun 4 2002 1:04PM -   Peter K (Fionn)
Summary: I believe Kermit came and went all through the show (most of which I didn't see, because unbeknown to you N Americans the World Cup is underway). I did catch Tom Jones's glance of unease, but it was a fleeting thrill against the schadenfreude that swamped me when Parkinson met Rod Hull and Emu. The revelry has continued today on yet grander scale - some 5,000 gospel-singers under the direction of Pattie Boulaye, and several more thousand Chicken Shed kids have just gone down the Mall in a ...
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: Thatcher speaks no more - Mar 23 2002 3:42AM -   Lanfranc
Summary: I, too, was struck with a wave of schadenfreude when I heard the news. Dubya is as bad, if not worse, than Thatcher - reactionary, bellicose, ignorant, etc. Just because he can't string two coherent sentences together doesn't mean that he's not dangerous! Dubya is, frankly, bloody terrifying, as far as I'm concerned, and, thanks to Blur, we're supposed to be on his side.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: SONG CHALLENGE! Part 45 - Sep 5 2001 8:26AM -   Aidan Crossey
Summary: br> THE WRECK ON HIGHWAY 38 Who did you say it was, brother? When you heard the crash on the highway, Did you hear anyone pray? CHORUS I didn't hear nobody pray, dear brother I didn't hear nobody pray A shot, then the truck left the highway But I didn't hear nobody pray We thought we was clever in using The slug from my old twenty-two To fix up the lights on my pick-up But it was the worst thing we could do CHORUS<...
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: Archer jailed for perjury - Jul 19 2001 12:09PM -   Gervase
Summary: It's made my day! Who'd have thought that Schadenfreude could be quite such fun!!!!! For those who want to know more, click here.
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: USA - Socialist Utopia? - Apr 3 2001 10:14AM -   Wolfgang
Summary: Yes, Ed, 'damage joy' it is verbatim, meaning 'joy about another person's damage'. We even have a tongue-in cheek proverbial saying Schadenfreude ist die reinste Freude (damage joy is the purest joy). Wolfgang
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: USA - Socialist Utopia? - Apr 3 2001 9:32AM -   Wolfgang
Summary: Schadenfreude
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: BS: There's no word for it... - Jun 5 2000 12:58PM -   Grab
Summary: If a word in one language doesn't exist in another, it soon gets borrowed. English has loads of French words and phrases ("camoflage", "joie de vivre", "esprit de corps") which have come in wholesale. Equally, French has acquired "le weekend", "le football" and so on.
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: INFO REQ: New St. George/Richard Thompson - Sep 24 1997 11:31PM -   NonMember
Summary: Nope, Mr. Thompson isn't nasty, nor did I mean to imply it. I am reminded of the response of Samuel Johnson, English savant and compiler of the first modern English dictionary, when a woman asked him why he had erroneously defined the word "pastern" as "the knee of a horse" in his dictionary. "Ignorance, Madam; pure ignorance," was his reply.
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0.7742 - Thread - Message - RE: INFO REQ: New St. George/Richard Thompson - Sep 5 1997 4:39PM -   NonMember
Summary: Somehow, I think your "noose of joy" interpretation would wring a fine bittersweet grin or wry chuckle from Richard Thompson, given his affection for lyrics brimming with schadenfreude*. I for one certainly enjoyed it! *A wonderful German oxymoron, literally translated as "sad joy".
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17 Nov 05 - 04:38 PM (#1607530)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Well Amos, it was obviously a new word to ME! Of course I don't expect that it has never been used here before. Mudcatters are one articulate group! ;-)

But this is news! I went through botany classes learning that grasses rose after the dinosaurs disappeared, but clearly it is a fragile substance so fossil evidence would be difficult in forming.

Dinosaurs May Have Eaten Grass

November 17, 2005

WASHINGTON - Imagine dinosaur terrain - full of ferns and palms, right? Better add some grass to that picture. A new discovery debunks the theory that grasses didn't emerge until long after the dinosaurs died off. Fossilized dung tells the story: The most prominent plant-eating dinosaurs were digesting different varieties of grass between 65 million and 71 million years ago, researchers report Friday in the journal Science. The earliest grass fossils ever found were about 55 million years old - from the post-dinosaur era.

It's a big surprise for scientists, who had never really looked for evidence of grass in dino diets before. After all, grass fossils aside, those sauropods - the behemoths with the long necks and tails and small heads - didn't have the special kind of teeth needed to grind up abrasive blades. "Most people would not have fathomed that they would eat grasses," noted lead researcher Caroline Stromberg of the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Stromberg and a team of paleobotanists from India analyzed sauropod dung - the scientific term is coprolites - found in central India.

The coprolites contained microscopic particles of silica called phytoliths, which form inside plant cells in distinctive patterns that essentially act as a signature. Amid the expected plants were numerous phytoliths certain to have come from the grass family, report Stromberg and Vandana Prasad of India's Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany. They included relatives of rice and bamboo and forage-type grasses.

They didn't eat a lot of grass, the evidence shows. But grasses must have originated considerably earlier, well over 80 million years ago, for such a wide variety to have evolved and spread to the Indian subcontinent in time to be munched by sauropods, they concluded.

"These remarkable results will force reconsideration of many long-standing assumptions" about dinosaur ecology, wrote Dolores Piperno and Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in an accompanying review. Beyond the great curiosity about dinosaur life, the discovery has implications about the coevolution of this huge plant family - there are about 10,000 separate grass species - with other plant-eaters, Piperno explained.

Indeed, a mysterious early mammal that roamed among the dinosaurs had more suitable teeth for grazing, raising the possibility of an early adaptation, the researchers note.

26 Nov 05 - 11:10 AM (#1614125)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Lottery Winner Dead for Days Before Found
November 26, 2005

NEWPORT, Ky. - A woman who won a $65.4 million Powerball jackpot with her husband five years ago was found dead at her home overlooking the Ohio River. Police said she had been dead for days before anyone found her. Virginia Metcalf Merida's son found her dead Wednesday. Campbell County Police are awaiting autopsy results and toxicology results before announcing a cause of death. Investigators said there was no sign of forced entry at the 5,000-square-foot, custom-built geodesic dome house that Merida, 51, bought for $559,000 in 2000.

Her husband, Mack Wayne Metcalf, died in 2003 at age 45 while living in a replica of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate built in Corbin. His death followed multiple run-ins with the law in the days following the lottery win. When they won the jackpot, the couple refused dozens of interview requests but told lottery officials they were going separate ways to fulfill lifelong dreams. Merida was quitting her job making corrugated boxes and planned to buy a home. Metcalf, a forklift operator, wanted to start a new life in Australia.

The couple split the winnings of the $3 ticket bought at a Florence truck stop and opted to take a $34.1 million lump sum instead of annual installments. Merida took 40 percent, or $13.6 million, while Metcalf moved to Corbin with the remaining $20.5 million. Neighbors said Merida shunned attention successfully until last December, when a body was found in her home. Campbell County Deputy Coroner Al Garnick confirmed that a man died of a drug overdose at the home, but he couldn't recall the person's name. Official records were unavailable because of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Merida had used part of her winnings to buy a second home, but when she tried to evict the resident of the home, the renter sued her in Hamilton County (Ohio) Common Pleas Court. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday. Carol Terrell Lawson, who is still renting the home, said Thursday that she never met Merida in person and only learned of the death after reporters began calling her.

David Huff, who bought the Mount Vernon look-alike home from Metcalf's estate, said Metcalf died of multiple ailments complicated by alcoholism. "It was a classic case of a person who never had anything and didn't know how to handle it," Huff said. "I think things went from bad to worse when he got the money."

After winning the jackpot, Metcalf was first ordered to pay $31,000 in back child support. Court workers in Kenton County said at the time that he was behind in support payments for his daughter from his first marriage since 1986. A judge ordered him to establish an $800,000 trust fund to take care of his daughter's future needs.

A month after winning the lottery win, a Boone County judge issued a warrant for Metcalf's arrest after he failed to appear in court on a drunken driving charge. It turned out that Metcalf had crashed into several parked cars while driving drunk through a mall parking lot a month before he won the lottery.

Metcalf eventually served four days on the DUI conviction but not before he was fined for causing a bar brawl in Florence. He also sued to reclaim $500,000 that he allegedly gave to a woman while he was drunk. Court records were unavailable Thursday to determine the outcome of that case.

Metcalf saw the Corbin home he eventually bought and liked it so much that he made an offer. He asked the owner what it would take to buy the home, complete with all the furnishings, and then handed over the asking price, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported Saturday.

The lawyer, Robert Hammons, who still lives in Corbin, declined Thursday to say what he got for the home. The 4,000-square-foot residence estate is on 43 acres, with an outdoor pool and a metal building that would eventually house Metcalf's dozen classic cars. "It is really a bizarre story," Huff said. "Sad, when you think about it. He had a real hard life. I'm sure there are a lot of things that went wrong in his past that no one knows about."

15 Dec 05 - 03:18 PM (#1628143)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Jim Dixon

Hymenoplasty

From The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, December 15, 2005
U.S. women seek a second first time with hymen surgery

24 Dec 05 - 10:21 AM (#1634511)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Whoa, just read that hymen repair article. What a silly procedure to go through.

And now for something completely different:

Wis. Dog Frozen to Railroad Tracks Rescued
December 24, 2005

CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. - He's missing a lot of hair, but a Siberian husky has a new name and a new life, thanks to a construction worker and police officer who rescued him from a railroad track minutes before a train arrived.

Jeremy Majorowicz thought it was a little strange that the dog had been sitting on the track for an hour-and-a-half in the cold, and stranger still that he wouldn't accept a bite of muffin. "I have two dogs myself, so I didn't want to leave the dog if there was something wrong," Majorowicz said, so he called police.

Officer Tim Strand said the dog was "shivering unmercifully" when he arrived Monday and would not come to him, so he called animal control officer Al Heyde, who also couldn't get the dog to budge. "I lifted his tail and hind quarters, and saw he was literally frozen to the tracks," Strand said.

Strand pulled hard on the dog's tail and was able to release him, but the dog lost a lot of hair. "He gave a heck of a whelp," he said. Just 10 minutes later, a train came down the track.

"If the dog would have seen that train I'm afraid it would have been the end of the pupster," Strand said. The dog was taken to the Chippewa County Humane Association, where workers named him "Ice Train."

27 Dec 05 - 08:15 PM (#1635694)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Ebbie

LOL

Sage, that's the story I was going to post when I refreshed this thread. I read it online yesterday and it had me guffawing. I was on the phone with a long distance call at the time and my reaction merited some explaining.

Did you notice the typo in the fourth paragraph?

27 Dec 05 - 10:40 PM (#1635807)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

That's their typo, I just cut and pasted it. Perhaps there was a pup left on the track after this transaction?

27 Dec 05 - 11:49 PM (#1635830)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Ebbie

Heavens. I am aware that it is their typo.

28 Dec 05 - 12:03 AM (#1635833)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

So you didn't think I was typing each of these stories in by hand? We're so spoiled today--there have been lots of times in the past when I had to do just that.

:-D

28 Dec 05 - 12:24 AM (#1635840)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Ebbie

OK, den. :)

My guess is that someone phoned in a story and the person on the other end typed in what he/she thought the reporter said. It just struck me as very funny. That whelping - male - dog was mighty cold and confused.

A songwriter friend of mine wrote 'limpets' in a tidepools song; her transcriber printed it as 'lipids'. Would be funny if it weren't so durn stoopid.

28 Dec 05 - 09:10 AM (#1635953)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

One could easily dedicate an entire thread to the goofy typos found in published documents. These are not to be confused with whatever the mistakes are that GW Bush comes up with. Talk-Os? Misspokes? Brain Farts?

Maybe Jay Leno will receive a copy of the dog on the tracks story. It is the kind of mistake he relishes for his Headlines feature on Mondays.

28 Dec 05 - 09:44 AM (#1635973)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Mister Bush's production of brain farts is legendary both forquality and for volume. His handlers tremble every time he has an unscripted mouth-opening event. You gotta wonder whaty his brain is made of, to produce so many.

A

A

28 Dec 05 - 11:16 AM (#1636024)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Whoa! Adjust that aluminum foil helmet!

Restraining order against Letterman tossed
link

SANTA FE, N.M. - A state judge has lifted a restraining order granted to a Santa Fe woman who accused talk-show host David Letterman of using coded words to show that he wanted to marry her and train her as his co-host. Judge Daniel Sanchez on Tuesday granted a request by lawyers for Letterman, host of CBS' "Late Show," to quash the temporary restraining order that he earlier granted to Colleen Nestler.

She alleged in a request filed Dec. 15 that Letterman has forced her to go bankrupt and caused her "mental cruelty" and "sleep deprivation" since May 1994. Nestler requested that Letterman, who tapes his show in New York, stay at least 3 yards away and not "think of me, and release me from his mental harassment and hammering."

Lawyers for Letterman contended the order was without merit. "He is entitled to a protection of his legal rights and a protection of his reputation," Pat Rogers, an Albuquerque lawyer representing Letterman, told the judge Tuesday. The New Mexico court doesn't have jurisdiction over Letterman, who is a resident of Connecticut, Rogers said.

Nestler appeared in court without a lawyer and represented herself. Responding to a question from the judge, Nestler said she had no proof of the allegations she had made against Letterman. She also said that if Letterman or any of his representatives came near her, "I will break their legs" and establish proof of her allegations. Nestler said after the court hearing that "I have achieved my purpose. The public knows that this man cannot come near me." She also said that her comment about breaking legs "is not a threat."

"I appealed to the court for a restraining order to keep this man away from me, but now that's been denied me," she said. "He has access to me. He can actually come for me or send people. He has many accomplices. I know this sounds crazy. I was crazy to have listened to him in the beginning."

Nestler's application for a restraining order was accompanied by a six-page typed letter in which she said Letterman used code words, gestures and "eye expressions" to convey his desires for her. She wrote that she began sending Letterman "thoughts of love" after his show began in 1993, and that he responded in code words and gestures, asking her to come East. Nestler said Letterman asked her to be his wife during a televised "teaser" for his show by saying, "Marry me, Oprah." Her letter said Oprah was the first of many code names for her and that the coded vocabulary increased and changed with time.

28 Dec 05 - 12:30 PM (#1636072)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

Makes sense to me. I can't figure out why the judge wouldn't make permanent the restraining order. What's the world coming to?

Charley Noble, safe in Maine

28 Dec 05 - 12:39 PM (#1636084)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Easy for you to say, Charlie. Wait until some female talk-show host starts sending YOU code-words and eye-gestures. See how much sleep YOU get!!

A

And there's no doubt about it
It was a myth of fingerprints
I've seen them all, and man,
They're all the same....

28 Dec 05 - 12:50 PM (#1636092)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

In other news, the overly zealous are now decreeing that young women should be denied a preventative for cervical cancer, which targets the HPV virus, because the virus is sexually transmitted and they deserve what they get for not obeying the arbitrary moralistic meddling muddy-minded mandates of the not-very-bright.

Full story here.

I spit.

A

28 Dec 05 - 01:30 PM (#1636115)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Makes you wonder if any of them manage to keep their children alive until adulthood.

29 Dec 05 - 08:35 AM (#1636622)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

"Nestler's application for a restraining order was accompanied by a six-page typed letter in which she said Letterman used code words, gestures and "eye expressions" to convey his desires for..."

There's some vacancies on School boards coming up I hear.

02 Jan 06 - 08:11 AM (#1639513)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Too bad these jeans are only in a "punk" style!
link
Young, trendy Swedes think devilish jeans are heaven-sent
By Karl Ritter

January 1, 2006

STOCKHOLM -- A punk-rock style, trendy tight fit and affordable price have made Cheap Monday jeans a hot commodity among young Swedes, but what has people talking is the brand's ungodly logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead. The jeans' makers say it's more of a joke, but the logo's designer said there's a deeper message. "It is an active statement against Christianity," Bjorn Atldax said. "I'm not a Satanist myself but I have a great dislike for organized religion."

Atldax insists he has a purpose beyond selling denim: to make young people question Christianity, which he called a "force of evil" that had sparked wars throughout history. Such a remark might incite outrage or prompt retailers to drop the brand in more religious countries. But not in Sweden, a secular nation that cherishes its free speech and where churchgoing has been declining for decades.

Cheap Mondays are flying off the shelves at $50 a pair. The jeans have also been shipped throughout Europe and to Australia, and there are plans to introduce them to the United States and elsewhere. The jeans' makers say about 200,000 pairs have been sold since March 2004 -- and note they have received few complaints about the grinning skull and upside-down cross, a symbol often associated with satanic worship.

Even the country's largest church, the Lutheran Church of Sweden, reacts with a shrug. "I don't think it's much to be horrified about," said Bo Larsson, director of the church's Department of Education, Research and Culture. "It is abundantly clear that this designer wants to create public opinion against the Christian faith . . . but I believe that the way to deal with this is to start a discussion about what religion means."

Other Christians, however, are calling for a tougher stance against the jeans. "One cannot just keep quiet about this," said Rev. Karl-Erik Nylund, vicar of St. Mary Magdalene Church in Stockholm. "This is a deliberate provocation [against Christians], and I object to that." Nylund said Swedish companies don't treat Christianity with the same respect that they afford other religions. "No one wants to provoke Jews or Muslims, but it's totally OK to provoke Christians," he said.

Some buyers have ripped off the logo from the back of the pants or even returned the jeans once they realized what the symbol means. But such cases are very few, according to the brand's creator, Orjan Andersson, who said he doesn't take the logo too seriously. "I'm not interested in religion," he said. "I'm more interested in that the logo looks good."

Henrik Petersson, 26, said he picked up his first pair of Cheap Mondays a few months after they were launched because he liked their punk-rocker style and the logo caught his eye. "I think it's a cool thing. It stands out from the rest," he said. "I haven't really reflected over whether there is an underlying message."

Martin Sundberg, a 32-year-old co-owner of a clothing store in Stockholm's trendy SoFo district, said people shouldn't get upset over the jeans. "It's just supposed to be a bit of fun, some kind of anti-culture," he said.

The jeans are selling in Norway, Denmark, Britain, the Netherlands and France. Andersson, the brand's owner, hopes to tap the lucrative U.S. market soon and said he isn't worried the logo will hurt sales. "Surely, most people understand that we are not evil people," he said. "My mom doesn't think so, at least."

03 Jan 06 - 09:09 AM (#1640321)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This story caught my eye for a couple of reasons. I was contemplating moving to ABQ about the time the crash in this story happened, and I remember reading about the impassioned trial. But the clincher in this one comes down near the bottom of the story, with a bit of irony.

N.M. Man Loses Home in Holiday Tragedy
January 03, 2006

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Paul Cravens tries to remain positive after suffering tragic personal loss during the holidays not once in his life, but twice. A fire just three days after Christmas destroyed his home - 13 years after his wife and her three daughters were killed in a Christmas Eve car crash involving a drunk driver. "I concentrate on all the good times we had together and know that God has something better in store for us," Cravens said. Flames on Wednesday gutted his home in Tijeras, just east of Albuquerque.

On Christmas Eve 1992, Cravens and his family were traveling on Interstate 40 when a man who admitted drinking more than seven beers that day drove a pickup truck the wrong way and collided head-on with the family's vehicle. Cravens' wife, Melanie Cravens, and her daughters - Kandyce, 9, Erin, 8 and Kacee Woodard, 5 - were killed. Gordon House of Thoreau was convicted in 1995 of four counts of vehicular homicide and other charges and is serving a 22-year prison sentence.

Paul Cravens survived the crash but was injured and did not learn about his family's deaths until New Year's Day 1993, which would have been Melanie's 33rd birthday. The couple would have celebrated their third wedding anniversary three days later. "After the fourth, we almost take another breath and begin to live again," said Melanie's mother, Nadine Milford, who has become a leading crusader against drunken driving in New Mexico since the crash.

An electrical short in the ceiling sparked a blaze Wednesday at Cravens' home. He was outside working at about 9:30 p.m. when he saw smoke in the house. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and a ladder, but it was too late. "Pretty much everything is going to be a loss," he said. He was able to save the photos of his wife and the girls, along with notes for his master's thesis in electrical engineering, a laptop computer and a few other things.

Cravens said that while he was recovering from injuries he suffered in the car crash years earlier, thieves broke into the family's Albuquerque home and stole Christmas presents and clothes. He fears the same thing will happen this time, so he plans to stay in a trailer until he rebuilds on the same property.

Cravens said there are nights when he misses his wife and the girls, but the support of his family keeps him going. He was depressed for many years after the accident and said the holidays are particularly difficult. "You can spend a lot of time thinking and being depressed, but there's nothing you can do to change what happened," he said. "You just have to anticipate that something better is coming down the road."

03 Jan 06 - 08:31 PM (#1640776)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,Joe_F

From the Boston _Globe_, 29 August 1995 (I still don't know whether to believe it):

Alligator became a hunter of hunt dogs

Baying of hounds rang dinner bell

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Rufus Godwin learned the fate of his missing hunting dog Flojo when a 500-pound alligator coughed up the animal's electronic tracking collar.

In the animal, trappers found tags and collars of six more hounds.

For the past 20 years, hunting dogs have been disappearing in the Blackwater River State Forest.[...]

Godwin had set loose Flojo, a $5,000 Walker fox-hunting hound, in the forest about 45 miles northeast of Pensacola. The last he heard of her was her baying on the chase.

He was searching for her with her electronic collar tracking device when he caught a faint signal. Jamie Sauls, with Godwin, also got signals from the collar of a dog he had lost weeks earlier.

"When we walked up to this hole, just all of a sudden the boxes went to beeping out of sight. They just went wide open," Godwin said[...].

The 10-foot, 11-inch reptile was captured Aug. 15 by state-contracted alligator hunters.

Four men harpooned the beast, taped its mouth shut and wrestled it until they had the animal hogtied. During the struggle the alligator spit up Flojo's $125 tracking collar.

In the alligator's stomach, the trappers found a collection of dog collars. One was from a dog belonging to Aden Fleming that disappeared 14 years ago.

The alligator was estimated to be 50 years old.

--- Joe Fineman joe_f@verizon.net

||: "God wills it" gives the wrong kind of comfort to count as an explanation. :||

03 Jan 06 - 08:50 PM (#1640791)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I remember reading this some time ago. A search of Urban Legends at Snopes and About.com doesn't turn up even a mention.

06 Jan 06 - 01:15 PM (#1642874)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This is a continuation of a story that I read about over a year ago. I don't think I posted any of it here, but there is a troubling element in this investigation that few will have difficulty recognising.

Deadly I-5 crash results in a fine
A Bellevue woman receives a ticket, but is not criminally charged in a 2004 wreck near Marysville.

link

MARYSVILLE - More than a year after Juliann Odom crossed the median on I-5 near Marysville and slammed into a Chevrolet Suburban, killing a Bothell woman, police have cited her for second-degree negligent driving. Odom, 23, was issued a traffic ticket Dec. 8 in Cascade District Court in Arlington. The Bellevue woman paid the $538 fine a couple of weeks later.

No criminal charges have been filed against Odom in connection with the Dec. 15, 2004, crash that killed Megan Holschen, 18, and severely injured her mother and younger sister. Washington State Patrol investigators spent months piecing together the events of the fiery crash, compiling hundreds of pages of documents, pictures and diagrams. But detectives haven't been able to pinpoint why Odom lost control of her Ford Explorer. "Our opinion is operator error caused the crash. Why she lost control? That's a question I can't answer," said Sgt. Jerry Cooper with the State Patrol's major accident investigation team.

Odom has refused to speak with investigators.

Detectives believe Odom was southbound in the right lane when she drove onto the shoulder, veered left, crossed three lanes of traffic and plowed through the cable barrier. Odom's vehicle vaulted out of the median, taking two cable strands with it into the northbound lanes, according to court records. Her Ford Explorer landed on the Holschens' Suburban. Megan Holschen, who was riding in the passenger seat, was killed instantly.

Investigators have ruled out mechanical problems with Odom's vehicle, and also any road conditions that would have caused her to lose control. Detectives didn't find any evidence that Odom was intoxicated or under the influence of drugs, Cooper said. Investigators also concluded that Odom wasn't speeding excessively.

Detectives explored additional theories about why Odom veered into oncoming traffic, and have sought her medical records to try to make a determination. Odom has declined to provide those records because "they are private," her attorney, Nick Scarpelli, said Thursday.

Snohomish County prosecutors initiated a special closed-door hearing to ask a judge to release the medical documents. A judge agreed that some of the records could be made public, but Odom's attorney appealed the decision. The state Supreme Court is expected to review the appeal sometime this month. Investigators don't know what, if anything, they'll find in those records, but wanted them as another attempt to look at why Odom lost control, Cooper said.

"We want to close all doors. Questions were brought to us, and we needed to follow up on those," he said. Investigators will review the medical records if Odom is eventually forced to provide them. Criminal charges against her have not been ruled out.

"The issuance of a civil infraction doesn't preclude us from later filing criminal charges if we receive a referral and there is adequate evidence to support criminal charges," said Joan Cavagnaro, the county's chief criminal deputy prosecutor.

John Holschen said he and his family hope the state will continue pursuing the facts. "If there is more to it than meets the eye, and if this young lady needs help and the public needs protection from this behavior in the future," it's important to get answers, he said.

His wife and daughter, Jolie, continue to recover from their injuries and expect to undergo additional surgeries in the coming months. "It's proven to be a very long road," Holschen said.

Odom is remorseful about the crash, Scarpelli said. He declined to comment about her recovery, saying only that she was seriously injured in the accident.

The Seattle attorney said he doesn't know why Odom lost control of her vehicle, but pointed to the cable barriers. "Instead of being stopped by the cable barriers, she was allowed to go through," he said. "We contend that the cable barriers were defectively installed."

A Herald analysis last summer found that the barriers failed to stop cars in the median 20 percent of the time on the stretch of I-5 where the accident happened. A state report on the cable barriers is expected within a few weeks.

06 Jan 06 - 02:44 PM (#1642927)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Seems to me the privacy of thos emedical records, which is usually of little public relevance, has suddenly become a barrier to genuine justice. If she was driving while, for example, having a known history of petit mal seizures, or blackouts, her negligence was homicidal in the actual event.

A

06 Jan 06 - 09:36 PM (#1643180)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

It is clear she has something to hide.

I remember reading about this dramatic accident. The van was filled with all but two members of this large family. It was a heroic effort to save the rest of the lives because of a vehicle fire nearby. Passersby were able to hook up the van and pull it way from a burning vehicle or other children would have perished as well.

22 Jan 06 - 04:57 PM (#1653749)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Now here is something that Dubya could have the troops do that would actually be helpful--solve some of the piracy problems in the Indian Ocean. Leave soverign nations alone.

U.S. Navy Seizes Pirate Ship Off Somalia
January 22, 2006

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The U.S. Navy boarded an apparent pirate ship in the Indian Ocean and detained 26 men for questioning, the Navy said Sunday. The 16 Indians and 10 Somali men were aboard a traditional dhow that was chased and seized Saturday by the U.S. guided missile destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill, said Lt. Leslie Hull-Ryde of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain. The dhow stopped fleeing after the Churchill twice fired warning shots during the chase, which ended 54 miles off the coast of Somalia, the Navy said. U.S. sailors boarded the dhow and seized a cache of small arms.

The dhow's crew and passengers were being questioned Sunday aboard the Churchill to determine which were pirates and which were legitimate crew members, Hull-Ryde said. Sailors aboard the dhow told Navy investigators that pirates hijacked the vessel six days ago near Mogadishu and thereafter used it to stage pirate attacks on merchant ships.

The Churchill is part of a multinational task force patrolling the western Indian Ocean and Horn of Africa region to thwart terrorist activity and other lawlessness during the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The Navy said it captured the dhow in response to a report from the International Maritime Bureau in Kuala Lumpur on Friday that said pirates had fired on the MV Delta Ranger, a Bahamian-flagged bulk carrier that was passing some 200 miles off the central eastern coast of Somalia.

Hull-Ryde said the Navy was still investigating the incident and would discuss with international authorities what to do with the detained men. "The disposition of people and vessels involved in acts of piracy on the high seas are based on a variety of factors, including the offense, the flags of the vessels, the nationalities of the crew, and others," Hull-Ryde said in an e-mail.

Piracy is rampant off the coast of Somalia, which is torn by renewed clashes between militias fighting over control of the troubled African country. Many shipping companies resort to paying ransoms, saying they have few alternatives. Last month, Somali militiamen finally relinquished a merchant ship hijacked in October. In November, Somali pirates freed a Ukrainian ore carrier and its 22 member crew after holding it for 40 days. It was unclear whether a US$700,000 ransom demanded by the pirates had been paid.

One of the boldest recent attacks was on Nov. 5, when two boats full of pirates approached a cruise ship carrying Western tourists, about 100 miles off Somalia and fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles. The crew used a weapon that directs earsplitting noise at attackers, then sped away.

Somalia has had no effective government since 1991, when warlords ousted a dictatorship and then turned on each other, carving the nation of 8.2 million into a patchwork of fiefdoms.

22 Jan 06 - 05:22 PM (#1653766)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

You know, real pirates aren't nearly as much fun as the Disney versions.

Charley Noble

23 Jan 06 - 10:57 AM (#1654175)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Don't tell Bush that and maybe he'd do something useful in spite of himself.

23 Jan 06 - 12:43 PM (#1654209)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

I doubt he could pronounce Arrrgh.

A

26 Jan 06 - 11:47 AM (#1655999)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This is a very long, very well-researched article. It's one of those accounts that is so annoying, because there has been a steady trickle of people saying "something isn't right here" and they have been largely ignored by the mainstream publishing world. The fact that most of those ignored voices were Indians and scholars (Indian and otherwise) and that the story only makes news when told by a mainstream white (?) writer is a classic problem in American Indian literature scholarship.

Here is a link to this very long piece. I'm running just the beginning of it here.

Navahoax
Did a struggling white writer of gay erotica become one of multicultural literature's most celebrated memoirists — by passing himself off as Native American?

By MATTHEW FLEISCHER
Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Miami Herald

The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping

In June of 1999 a writer calling himself Nasdijj emerged from obscurity to publish an ode to his adopted son in Esquire. "My son is dead," he began. "I didn't say my adopted son is dead. He was my son. My son was a Navajo. He lived six years. They were the best six years of my life."

The boy's name was Tommy Nothing Fancy and Nasdijj wrote that he and his wife adopted Tommy as an infant and raised him in their home on the Navajo reservation. At first, Tommy seemed like a healthy baby, albeit one who consistently cried throughout the night. "The doctor at the Indian Health Service said it was nothing. Probably gas."

But it wasn't gas. Tommy suffered from a severe case of fetal alcohol syndrome, or FAS. Though Tommy looked normal, his crying continued and as he grew older he began to suffer massive seizures. "I thought I could see him getting duller with every seizure. He knew he was slowly dying."

Nasdijj knew too, and he tried to give his son as full a life as time would allow. Fishing was Tommy's favorite thing to do and they went often — sometimes at the expense of his medical care. "For my son hospitals were analogous to torture. Tommy Nothing Fancy wanted to die with his dad and his dog while fishing."

Nasdijj's wife wanted Tommy in the hospital receiving modern medical treatment. "She was a modern Indian... She begged. She pleaded. She screamed. She pounded the walls. But the hospitals and doctors never made it better."

Though the conflict tore his marriage apart, Nasdijj continued to take his son fishing and, true to his last wish, Tommy died of a seizure while on an expedition.

"I was catching brown trout," Nasdijj wrote. "I was thinking about cooking them for dinner over our campfire when Tommy Nothing Fancy fell. All that shaking. It was as if a bolt of lighting surged uncontrolled through the damaged brain of my son. It wasn't fair. He was just a little boy who liked to fish... I was holding him when he died... The fish escaped."

The Esquire piece, as successful as it was heartbreaking, was a finalist for a National Magazine Award and helped establish Nasdijj as a prominent new voice in the world of nonfiction. "Esquire's Cinderella story," as Salon's Sean Elder called it, "arrived over the transom, addressed to no one in particular. 'The cover letter was this screed about how Esquire had never published the work of an American-Indian writer and never would because it's such a racist publication,' recalls editor in chief David Granger. 'And under it was... one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I'd ever read.' By the time the piece was published in the June issue, the writer (who lives on an Indian reservation) had a book contract."

The contract was for a full-length memoir, The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2000 to great acclaim. It was followed by two more memoirs, The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping (Ballantine, 2003), and Geronimo's Bones: A Memoir of My Brother and Me (Ballantine, 2004). As if losing a son was not enough, the memoirs portray a lifetime of suffering.

Nasdijj was born on the Navajo reservation in a hogan in 1950, he claims, the son of an abusive white cowboy "who broke, bred, and bootlegged horses" and a Navajo mother. "My mother," he writes, "was a hopeless drunk. I would use the word 'alcoholic' but it's too polite. It's a white people word... There is nothing polite about cleaning up your mother in her vomit and dragging her unconscious carcass back to the migrant housing trailer you lived in."

Nasdijj says his father would sometimes pimp his mother to other migrant workers for "five bucks" and that she died of alcoholism when he was 7. Though their time together was short and turbulent, Nasdijj says his mother instilled in him the Navajo traditions that now inform his work.

His father, he says, was a sexual predator who raped him the night his mother died. Because his father was white, Nasdijj says he was treated like an "outcast bastard" on the reservation. Like Tommy Nothing Fancy, Nasdijj claims to have fetal alcohol syndrome and to have been raised, with his brother, in migrant camps all over the country.

Nasdijj knows how to pull heartstrings. Both The Blood and The Boy revolve around the lives and deaths of his adopted Navajo sons. "Death, to the Navajo, is like the cold wind that blows across the mesa from the north," Nasdijj writes in The Blood. "We do not speak of it." But Nasdijj does speak of it. In fact, he speaks of it almost exclusively. Death and suffering are his staples.

"My son comes back to me when I least expect to see his ghostly vision," he writes. "He lives in my bones and scars."

But Nasdijj hasn't built his career purely through the tragic and sensational nature of his stories. His style is an artful blending of poetry and prose, and his work has met with nearly universal critical praise. The Blood "reminds us that brave and engaging writers lurk in the most forgotten corners of society," wrote Ted Conover in The New York Times Book Review. Rick Bass called it "mesmerizing, apocalyptic, achingly beautiful and redemptive... a powerful American classic," while Howard Frank Mosher said it was "the best memoir I have read about family love, particularly a father's love for his son, since A River Runs Through It."The Blood was a New York Times Notable Book, a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award and winner of the Salon Book Award.

The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping was published to more glowing reviews — "vivid and immediate, crackling with anger, humor, and love" (The Washington Post) and "riveting... lyrical... a ragged wail of a song, an ancient song, where we learn what it is to truly be a parent and love a child" (USA Today).

Shortly after The Blood came out, Nasdijj writes, he moved back to the Navajo reservation, where word of his book and his compassion spread. One day while fishing, a Navajo man and his 10-year-old son approached him. The man took Nasdijj aside and explained that he, his wife and their son, Awee, had AIDS. "They were not terrific parents," Nasdijj wrote "but they wanted this child to have a chance at life." Nasdijj was that chance. For the next two years Nasdijj cared for Awee until his death from AIDS-related illness.

The Boy won a 2004 PEN/Beyond Margins Award and helped solidify Nasdijj's place as one of the most celebrated multicultural writers in American literature. But as his successes and literary credentials grew in number so did his skeptics — particularly from within the Native American community. Sherman Alexie first heard of Nasdijj in 1999 after his former editor sent him a galley proof of The Blood for comment. At the time, Alexie, who is Spokane and Coeur d'Alene, was one of the hottest authors in America and was widely considered the most prominent voice in Native American literature. His novel Indian Killer was a New York Times notable book, and his cinematic feature Smoke Signals was the previous year's Sundance darling, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and winner of the Audience Award. Alexie's seal of approval would have provided The Blood with a virtual rubber stamp of native authenticity. But it took Alexie only a few pages before he realized he couldn't vouch for the work. It wasn't just that similar writing style and cadence that bothered Alexie.

"The whole time I was reading I was thinking, this doesn't just sound like me, this is me," he says.

Alexie was born hydrocephalic, a life-threatening condition characterized by water on the brain. At the age of 6 months he underwent brain surgery that saved his life but left him, much like Tommy Nothing Fancy, prone to chronic seizures throughout his childhood. Instead of identifying with Nasdijj's story, however, Alexie became suspicious.

"At first I was flattered but as I kept reading I noticed he was borrowing from other Native writers too. I thought, this can't be real."

Indeed, Nasdijj's stories also bear uncanny resemblance to the works of N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko and especially Michael Dorris, whose memoir The Broken Cord depicts his struggle to care for his adopted FAS-stricken Native Alaskan children. Although there was never more than a similar phrase here and there, Alexie was convinced that the work was fabricated. He wasn't alone.

Shortly after his review of The Blood came out in The New York Times Book Review, Ted Conover received an Internet greeting card from Nasdijj chastising him for his piece. Conover, an award-winning journalist whose 2003 book Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was taken aback. Not only is it highly unusual for an author to attack a reviewer, but it is especially unusual when the review in question was overwhelmingly positive — Conover's flattering words would grace the paperback cover.

Conover's main critique was that Nasdijj was "stingy with self-revelation." He questioned certain inconsistencies in the author's background, noting that Nasdijj sometimes said his mother was "with the Navajo," sometimes she was "Navajo, or so she claimed," and other times she was just "Navajo." Conover never accused Nasdijj of lying, he merely suggested that the writer be more forthcoming. Nasdijj, however, rejected this suggestion and sent the angry letter, which Conover characterizes as a sprawling diatribe.

"The whole thing was just really bizarre," Conover says.

Conover sent a copy of the card to Anton Mueller, Nasdijj's editor at Houghton Mifflin and an acquaintance. "I wondered if he might shed a little light on this," he says. Mueller, however, never responded and the incident left Conover wondering whether he should have been more thorough in investigating Nasdijj before writing his review. It didn't take him long to find an answer. Several weeks later, Conover was contacted by an expert in fetal alcohol syndrome who had read his review. She informed him that while she sympathized with the plight of Nasdijj and his son, the symptoms described in The Blood are not actually those of FAS.

Says Conover, "I immediately thought, 'Oh no, I've been duped.'"

[This story is quite long and the rest is at the link above]

26 Jan 06 - 12:27 PM (#1656030)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Bunnahabhain

Turns out sex is good for you in more ways than you knew....

BBC report

27 Jan 06 - 12:31 PM (#1656553)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

It has been so difficult to get any threads to load that I'll post this, then go back and try your link, Bunn.

I read an obituary this morning that was astonishing from an actuarial sense. "Go forth and muliply" is something this man and his wife took seriously. Here is the entire obit and here is the part that is amazing. This guy was born in 1910, was a mormon, and had a big family. A REALLY big family:

He is survived by his ten children, Betty Wammack, of Arlington, Washington, Donavee (Nelson) Joyner, of Florida, Carol (Gerald) Porter, of Utah, Georgia (Frank) Baird, of California, Avilda (Wallace) Baird, of Nevada, Joseph (Gisela) Dickson, of Arlington, Phillip (Sue) Dickson, of Utah, Kerry (Kathy) Dickson, of Arlington, Anna Stewart, of Yakima, Washington, Myra (Dean) Dudgeon, of Marysville, Washington; 69 grandchildren; 166 great-grandchildren; five great-great-grandchildren; and also his brothers, Jared Dickson, and John Dickson, of Arlington.

Whew!

27 Jan 06 - 01:08 PM (#1656581)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

It has been so difficult to get any threads to load that I'll post this, then go back and try your link, Bunn.

I read an obituary this morning that was astonishing from an actuarial sense. "Go forth and muliply" is something this man and his wife took seriously. Here is the entire obit and here is the part that is amazing. This guy was born in 1910, was a mormon, and had a big family. A REALLY big family:

He is survived by his ten children, Betty Wammack, of Arlington, Washington, Donavee (Nelson) Joyner, of Florida, Carol (Gerald) Porter, of Utah, Georgia (Frank) Baird, of California, Avilda (Wallace) Baird, of Nevada, Joseph (Gisela) Dickson, of Arlington, Phillip (Sue) Dickson, of Utah, Kerry (Kathy) Dickson, of Arlington, Anna Stewart, of Yakima, Washington, Myra (Dean) Dudgeon, of Marysville, Washington; 69 grandchildren; 166 great-grandchildren; five great-great-grandchildren; and also his brothers, Jared Dickson, and John Dickson, of Arlington.

Whew!

28 Jan 06 - 01:35 AM (#1656875)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Skivee

Seems to me that Brother Dickson really liked kids...or somethin'.

28 Jan 06 - 11:06 AM (#1657080)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I told a friend at work about this obit--she said she was from a large family and grew up with a great grandmother who never remembered her name, but she did know who Karen "belong to" (which of her children and grandchildren). Recognizing family lines was all the woman could manage in her old age.

SRS

31 Jan 06 - 11:10 PM (#1658684)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Ah. . . my namesake is acting up. Beautiful river. Lots of family stories from this area.

article

Crews battle to save homes along the Stilly
River washes away land as it flows past slide

OSO - Standing near the edge of his crumbling front yard Monday afternoon, Lon Slauson eyeballed the advance of the North Fork Stillaguamish River on his home. Behind him, the warning beeps of graders and dump trucks echoed. Crews hastily cut an emergency road through his back field, hoping to bring boulders to the river's edge in an attempt to save his home. Slauson gauged how fast the crews worked. He watched how swiftly his land vanished as the current gnawed away at the soil at a rate of 25 feet per hour. "Looks like the river's ahead of them," he said.

The race against the Stilly started Wednesday when a landslide plugged the river with an estimated 1 million cubic feet of debris. The debris dam forced the river to swing south. It plowed a new course through a tangle of alder and cottonwood trees - straight toward Slauson's home. On Monday, Slauson's back field was the frontline of the fight. If the river claimed his home, officials feared that a half dozen more would be lost in the neighborhood about 15 miles east of Arlington.

A key moment came about 4 p.m. Monday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished its emergency road. Crews still needed permission from Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon to build a bulwark with boulders, said Doug Weber, manager of the Corps' emergency program. Reinforcing a river bank with rocks, known as rip rap, is not normally allowed under environmental rules designed to protect fish. "There needs to be a decision made quickly," Weber said as the clock ticked. "Definitely today. We're ready to start as soon as we get permission. We would work through the night."

Just before dusk, Reardon and other county officials decided the rocks were the best way to control the river's fury. "We wanted to save one house and potentially save five or six others," Reardon said after visiting the site. Steve Thomsen, acting county public works director, said the river's new course may actually help fish by creating new habitat under tree cover.

By about 6 p.m., an excavator was dropping four washing machine-sized boulders into the water every minute. Floodlights lit the area like a high school football game. "We want to stand and fight right here," Noel Gilbrough, a Corps flood engineer, said as he stood on Slauson's porch. By 6:30 p.m., the water level was dropping, and the home appeared to be in the clear -until the next storm.

Crews had worked throughout the weekend keeping the river's new path clear of trees and other debris. They feared that the river could dam up and spill through the neighborhood. Then heavy rain Sunday night and early Monday sent the water rising. By first light Monday, Slauson's front yard started to dissolve like sugar in the surging brown water. His well pump house, firewood shed and a neighbor's trailer drifted away. Meanwhile, the air trembled as huge alder trees crashed into the water as the bank washed away. "Nobody around here got any sleep last night," Slauson said.

"The scary thing is, this is not even a very big (flood) event," said John Engel of the county's public works department. "This is a really minor event, and it's up to the bank-full here. There isn't any overflow (space). The overflow now is going to be through the neighborhood." Larry Forsman on Monday still clung to the hope that his retirement home could be saved. "We're too old to pick a new spot," Forsman said. "If we have to, we have to. But our intention is staying."

The National Weather Service is forecasting more rain throughout this week. However, officials don't anticipate the same volume of rain that pelted the region starting Sunday, said Johnny Burg, a weather service meteorologist. Everett was nailed with 1 1/2 inches of rain from 4 a.m. Sunday to 4 a.m. Monday. So far this year 6.31 inches of rain have fallen in Everett, nearly two inches more than normal.

01 Feb 06 - 06:02 PM (#1659541)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's another obit from a large family, and as it happens, I went to school with his oldest daughter. Didn't realize she came from such a huge family. Not so many as the mormon family--evidently my generation put the brakes on the huge families. There are a few tall stories included in this obit. I'm including only the first couple of paragraphs.

ten children; grandfather to 26; great-grandfather to 44; and great-great-grandfather to four more

SRS

07 Feb 06 - 11:32 AM (#1663870)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

This is not an obit. But close...

"Human chain pulls hunter from crocodileAssociated PressHARARE, Zimbabwe - A human chain of villagers pulled a hunter from the jaws of a man-eating crocodile in northeastern Zimbabwe, state media reported Monday.
Letikuku Sidumbu, 32, was attacked by the crocodile while trying to cross the swollen Mubvinzi river in the Goromonzi district, about 25 miles east of Harare, during an early morning hunting expedition with his uncle.
As the crocodile clenched it jaws on his right arm, a human chain of villagers tugged him from its grip in a struggle that also left him with a broken leg and chest and stomach injuries, Sidumbu told the state Herald newspaper from his hospital bed in Harare.
Crocodiles are the most dangerous animal to man in Zimbabwe. In recorded cases last year, they dragged away and ate 13 people - including children - according to the Communal Areas Management Program, a conservation group.
"I called out to my uncle to hit the crocodile with an ax," The Herald quoted Sidumbu saying.
But, he said, commotion by the two men's hunting dogs enraged the crocodile. He heard the voices of fellow vilalgers arriving from nearby Chitana Mafengu to help.
Before rescuers dragged him free, "one thing was clear that they wanted to salvage at least a piece of my flesh for burial should the crocodile get the better of them," Sidumbu said.

07 Feb 06 - 10:57 PM (#1664134)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I have one I saved from a while back, that I found during a Mudcat crash:

Thai Floods Leave Behind Gold Rush
January 14, 2006

THAM THA MAUK, Thailand - Severe floods that washed away homes, bridges and lives apparently have compensated hapless villagers in southern Thailand with a treasure - gold.

Hundreds of fortune-seekers armed with shovels and pans are flocking to the stream of Tham Tha Mauk village in search of the precious metal, which surfaced from stream banks after the deluge.

"The spirit of Tha Mauk (Grandfather Mauk) has given us worshippers a treasure to compensate for what we lost in the flooding," said 60-year-old Sangad Chankhaew as he flashed a broad smile after a buyer gave him $30 in cash for a gold nugget the size of a rice grain. Sangad found the nugget 30 minutes after starting his day of panning for gold.

He was among about 50 gold diggers on the banks of the Tha Mauk stream, scooping sand and mud into wooden pans and hopefully swishing them around in the water one recent morning.

November's flooding - the worst the area has seen in 40 years - caused landslides and the collapse of the stream's banks, exposing an area for gold digging.

"The gold is more plentiful than in the past years," said Sanguan, Sangad's older brother who goes by only one name. He said his family has made about $2,000 since they began panning after the water receded.

Sanguan's house was lightly damaged by the floods, and a part of his pineapple plantation was washed away.

The flooding swept away houses, roads and bridges in Prachuab Khiri Khan province's Bangsaphan district, 180 miles south of Bangkok, where the stream is located. Six people were killed in flash floods in Bangsaphan in November.

Gold diggers have offered flowers, incense and sweets to Tha Mauk's small spirit house, which was erected near the stream. Local folklore says that the spirit of Tha Mauk owns the gold-rich forest of the area and that he occasionally gives to worshippers from his stores.

Some gold buyers see their purchases here as his sacred gifts.

"This gold is a present from the holy spirit, so I bought it to keep for prosperity in my life," said Pradit Sawangjit, 42, a pineapple plantation owner who bought the nugget from Sangad.

Many gold diggers had left jobs at pineapple and coconut plantations to look for gold.

Ruangsri Polkrut, 52, traveled more than 60 miles from Chumpon province to sit on a rock by the stream for more than six hours a day to search.

"I've earned about 5,000 baht ($120) from three days panning for gold. It's not big money but enough for the school fee of my daughter for next term," Ruangsri said.

Tham Tha Mauk used to be a gold mining village, but gold digging ended some 30 years ago when vast swathes of forest were converted into private pineapple plantations.

"This area used to be a national forest, but the rich people turned this land into their private pineapple plantations," Sanguan said. "But after the water washed way part of the plantation and the banks of stream, we had every right to look for gold again."

09 Feb 06 - 05:04 PM (#1665478)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This is just so odd.

Suicidal man had destructive past

By Kirk Mitchell
DenverPost.com

A 56-year-old Miami man who apparently committed suicide on a United Airlines flight that was diverted to Denver Wednesday night had torched a North Miami car delearship over the weekend causing more than $1 million in damage. Gerald Georgettis was a passenger on a flight from Washington Dulles airport to Los Angeles when his body was discovered strangled by a rope in the lavatory, according to the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner. "It is apparent this was a suicide," said Virginia Quiñones, Denver police spokesperson.

On Saturday afternoon, Georgettis plowed his brand new SUV into the showroom window of North Dade Metro Ford, doused his car and others with gasoline and lit them up, according to a Miami Herald report. Police arrested him and charged him with first-degree arson, and felony criminal mischief. He posted a $1,500 bond on Sunday.

United flight #209 was diverted to Denver International Airport for an emergency landing at 4:20 p.m. after Georgettis' body was discovered. His body was taken to Fitzimmons Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:12 p.m., according to a Denver police report. Georgettis, an Australian, had for the past seven years managed the municipal theater for North Miami Beach. He scheduled concerts, graduations, seminars and plays in the 900-seat theater, said Harriet Orr, director of North Miami Parks and Recreation. He rented out the theater to producers and supervised technicians.

Georgettis formally was the concert manager for the rock group Pink Floyd, Orr said. "He was a terrific guy," she said. "He did a great job for us." Not once had Georgettis ever given an indication he had a hot tempter, Orr said. "We don't understand it," she said. "It's devastating to us."

12 Feb 06 - 05:24 PM (#1667050)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Someone will no doubt start a whole thread to do with this.

Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter
From Associated Press
February 12, 2006

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, his spokeswoman said Sunday. Harry Whittington, 78, was "alert and doing fine" after Cheney sprayed him with shotgun pellets on Saturday while the two were hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong.

Armstrong said Whittington was mostly injured on his right side, with the pellets hitting his cheek, neck and chest, and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. Whittington was in stable condition Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.

Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president was with Whittington, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, and his wife at the hospital on Sunday afternoon. Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.

Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey. Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview. "The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

She said Whittington was bleeding but not very seriously injured, and Cheney was very apologetic. "It broke the skin," she said. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that."

She said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington, holding his face and cleaning up the blood. "Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."

Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year. She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together. "This is something that happens from time to time. You now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.

14 Feb 06 - 10:35 AM (#1668160)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Arson was for kicks, agents told
In court papers, one suspect says they set the Edmonds condo fire to show they could.
link

EDMONDS - They wanted to start a fire and watch a big building burn just because they could. That was the reason two men gave federal agents for allegedly igniting a fire that destroyed a downtown Edmonds condominium building in December, according to court documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Random S. Haug, 21, and Daniel W. Shreve, 18, both of Everett, were charged in federal court Monday. Two teenagers, a girl and boy, also face arson charges in connection with the Dec. 17 blaze that caused $4.5 million in damage. If charged, the two teens would be prosecuted in Snohomish County Juvenile Court.

On the night of the fire, the four had been at a birthday party in Edmonds. Afterward, they filled half a small juice bottle with gasoline, according to court documents. Shreve told investigators the group targeted The Gregory, a 90,000-square-foot condominium and retail building, because some friends were working on the project, and they knew it would be unoccupied, according to documents.

They allegedly lit the bottle, threw it into the building and then drove up the hill and watched it burn for 20 minutes. They returned a second time after filling up a larger juice bottle with gas at a nearby station to create a bigger fire. This time they allegedly threw the gas on a stairway and hall and lit it, according to court records. They returned a third time and threw additional combustibles on the fire, charging documents say. About two hours later, the group returned to watch as the building was engulfed in flames. Shreve told investigators it was a "nice fire," and Haug described it as a "cool fire," according to court papers.

Haug told investigators that he felt bad that someone lost money and residents were evacuated, but said it was only property that was damaged, according to documents. The fire was set to make a statement that "we could do this," Haug told investigators, documents say. Both men told officers they didn't expect the entire building to burn down. "They did want only two to three rooms to burn," according to documents. Shreve also allegedly admitted that they had previously improvised gas bombs, throwing one at a billboard.

Haug and Shreve turned themselves in Thursday night at the Everett Police Department after law enforcement officers began speaking with people they knew, and one was given a lie-detector test, documents say.

Federal agents started focusing on the two men's friends after someone called a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tip line identifying Haug and Shreve as possible suspects. One acquaintance who was interviewed worked for the construction company that was building the Gregory, documents say.

Haug and Shreve are expected to appear today in federal court. The arson charge could net each of them between five and 20 years in prison.

14 Feb 06 - 12:51 PM (#1668260)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Nice story from today's Star-Telegram:

Overcoming obstacles is nothing new for this Arlington Heights freshman
link

FORT WORTH -- For two glorious minutes, Trevor Davis raced up and down the court in the Arlington Heights High School gym as the crowd stood and chanted: "Trevor!" "Trevor!" "Trevor!"

With one minute left in the final quarter, Trevor caught the ball to the left of the basket behind the three-point line. He aimed and fired. Swish! The crowd erupted. Trevor, 15, a freshman at Arlington Heights, is the manager of the varsity, junior varsity and freshman boys basketball teams.

Trevor also was born with spina bifida, a congenital spinal-cord defect that occurs when the spine fails to close properly in utero. The defect is known to cause paralysis and in some extreme cases, brain damage. But Trevor's brain is normal, and he has full use of most of his body. The only noticeable effects are in his legs and feet. He wears braces on both legs and has no muscle mass from the knees down. He's 4 feet 8 inches tall.

But Trevor has been infatuated with basketball since he was 5, he said.

Last year, he was team manager and played in several games at Monnig Middle School. This season, Trevor has practiced with all three basketball teams. That hard work paid off in the final minute of Monday's evening's freshman game against Western Hills High School, which Heights won, 77-43.

Coach J. W. Briscoe let Trevor play for two minutes because of his commitment to the team. "He's really an inspiration to all of us," said Seth Dahle, a starting guard on the Heights freshman basketball team.

In the front row was Trevor's 80-year-old grandmother, Dona Horsley. "When Trevor was born, they told my daughter that he would never walk," Horsley said. "There's been a lot of surgeries throughout his life. He didn't learn to walk until he was 3, but he's suited up today." Trevor has lived with Horsley since his mother was killed in a wreck three years ago. His father left the home soon after Trevor was born.

Harris Hughey, Arlington Heights' varsity coach, said Trevor is a dedicated manager. "He encourages all of us," Hughey said. "He's sharp as a tack and has drawn up plays that he gives to all of the coaches."

When Trevor enrolled at Heights, his goals included making good grades and earning a letter jacket. Hughey said he expects that Trevor will earn his letter after the basketball season of his sophomore year.

But Trevor has one more wish for this season: He'd like to attend a Dallas Mavericks game, something he's never done. "I do pretty much what every regular kid does," Trevor said. "I just live life."

14 Feb 06 - 01:40 PM (#1668292)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

You just gotta love it when the media focuses on somepositive story like that. They invest so much effort in the discovery of the shocking, dismaying, heartbreaking and disgusting ones, this is a pleasant change.

A

14 Feb 06 - 03:52 PM (#1668419)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: frogprince

Amen, brothers and sisters!

15 Feb 06 - 01:32 PM (#1669546)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Cupid connects, thanks to doctor
An Everett urologist helps his patient pop the question after kidney stone surgery.
link

It was a first for Everett urologist Dr. Gary Stack, playing cupid in the recovery room.

The patient, Delancey Woods, had asked for a little help surprising his girlfriend.

Stack walked into a room early Tuesday morning at Providence Everett Medical Center's Pacific Campus to brief Woods on having his kidney stones removed. Woods asked, "Can you do something for me?"

He pulled out a ring box and asked if Stack would help surprise his girlfriend. He had planned to propose on Valentine's Day before the kidney stone procedure was scheduled.

His girlfriend, Linda Hinen, wouldn't suspect his plan if he popped the question in the recovery room, Woods said.

Stack agreed, taking the ring box and putting it in his locker.

Later, when Woods was in the recovery room, Stack walked in shaking a small plastic specimen container with an orange screw top.

"Do you want to see your (kidney) stone?" Stack asked.

Woods, 40, turned to his girlfriend and asked if she wanted to see it.

Hidden inside was a rock, all right - a white-gold engagement ring.

"Linda Marie, will you marry me?" Woods asked.

Gazing at Woods, still dressed in his hospital gown and hooked to monitoring equipment, Hinen quipped, "I don't know. You're not down on your knee."

Recovery room nurses, tipped to the surprise, burst into applause when they heard Hinen, 48, say "yes" to the proposal.

"Every nurse in the hospital recovery room knew, but not me," Hinen said.

Woods had secretly phoned Hinen's family Monday evening to tell them of the plan.

The couple, who have been together almost four years and live near Bothell, were all smiles as they walked out of the hospital Tuesday afternoon. Caught up in the excitement of the moment, they said it was too early to talk about their wedding plans.

"Who would have thought?" Hinen wondered aloud.

"Me!" Woods retorted.

"I always tell him you gotta be pretty quick to pull one over on me," Hinen said. "Well, he got me."

16 Feb 06 - 10:05 AM (#1670017)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. - A man who pleaded no contest to a sodomy charge involving a sheep says he should not have to register as a sex offender.

Jeffrey S. Haynes said the state registry is intended to keep track of people who have committed crimes against humans.

But Calhoun County Circuit Court Judge Conrad Sindt told Haynes at his sentencing hearing that once he is released from prison, he must register with the Michigan State Police Public Sex Offender Registry.
Haynes, 42, of Battle Creek, was sentenced Monday to 2 1/2 years to 20 years in prison. He entered the plea in January. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such for sentencing purposes.
...
Police said Haynes had sex with a sheep at a Bedford Township farm on Jan. 26, 2005. The animal's owner caught him on the property and the sheep was found injured.

Haynes was arrested in June after a DNA sample taken from the animal matched Haynes' genetic material.

Haynes has prior convictions for burglary, home invasion and uttering and publishing, and was on parole for burglary at the time of the sex crime.

I didn't know you could be convicted for uttering and publishing. And how come raping a sheep isn't a parole violation? And if it isn't, then why should he have to register?

A

16 Feb 06 - 10:31 AM (#1670028)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Sounds like the vernacular the reporter used left out some of the phrase. It probably has to do with uttering and publishing threats or something more concrete.

17 Feb 06 - 12:42 PM (#1671237)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Not as heinous as uttering and pubolishing, but close:

Man obsessed with doorknobs faces prison

Associated Press
PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. - A man who claims he is obsessed with doorknobs faces three years in prison for a burglary spree in which dozens of them were taken from construction sites, along with tools and other materials.

A criminal complaint said Thor Jeffrey Steven Laufer told police he took a variety of items from the construction sites in the Milwaukee suburb of Mequon to disguise his obsession, "so that it would look like a typical burglary rather than someone just stealing doorknobs."

Laufer, 43, of Racine, was sentenced this week by Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Joseph McCormack to the three-year prison term, plus five years of extended supervision, and ordered to pay restitution. He had pleaded no contest to felony counts of burglary.

The thefts occurred in December 2004. Laufer also faces charges in Milwaukee County for similar incidents in suburban Franklin.
email thisprint thisreprint or license this

26 Feb 06 - 01:18 AM (#1679055)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Customers Cook Up Trouble With Fake Penis
AP (link)
Saturday, February 25, 2006

Pittsburgh (AP) -- A woman who claimed she was trying to cheat on a drug test was behind a bizarre incident in which a frightened convenience store clerk thought she had microwaved a severed penis, police said.

The clerk at the store outside Pittsburgh actually microwaved a prosthetic device used to cheat on drug tests, police said Friday. The incident unfolded late Thursday afternoon when a man and a woman entered the store and the man asked the clerk, "Can you microwave something for me? It's a life-or-death situation," according to an account the woman later gave police.

The man asked for paper towels, wrapped an object in them, and had the clerk microwave the item for 20 seconds, said McKeesport police Chief Joseph Pero. When it was finished, the clerk handed the item back to the man and saw what she thought was a severed penis, Pero said.

After news reports Friday, a woman called police to say she was with the man in the store and gave her account of what happened, Pero said. The woman told police she was applying for a job and was required to take a drug test. She said the man had filled the device with his urine, which she planned to submit for the test, Pero said.

According to the woman, the couple stopped to warm the device in the microwave so the urine would "pass the body temperature test," Pero said — that is, be warm enough to not arouse the suspicion of those administering the test. Pero said police weren't sure why the woman was storing the urine in a device mimicking male genitalia.

The woman wasn't applying for a job at the convenience store, but Pero said he didn't know anything else about the job.

The chief said the woman planned to come to the police station for an interview. Police Friday night said they had no new information and said the chief would have to answer any further questions on Monday. Pero wouldn't release the names of the man or woman. Charges, including harassment and disorderly conduct, were possible, he said.

The clerk at the Giant Eagle Get Go! is "still visibly shaking," Pero said. Giant Eagle, which owns the convenience store, said the microwave will be discarded.

02 Mar 06 - 08:11 PM (#1683734)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Study Shows Babies Try to Help
By LAURAN NEERGAARD (AP Medical Writer)

WASHINGTON - Oops, the scientist dropped his clothespin. Not to worry - a wobbly toddler raced to help, eagerly handing it back. The simple experiment shows the capacity for altruism emerges as early as 18 months of age. Toddlers' endearing desire to help out actually signals fairly sophisticated brain development, and is a trait of interest to anthropologists trying to tease out the evolutionary roots of altruism and cooperation.

Psychology researcher Felix Warneken performed a series of ordinary tasks in front of toddlers, such as hanging towels with clothespins or stacking books. Sometimes he "struggled" with the tasks; sometimes he deliberately messed up. Over and over, whether Warneken dropped clothespins or knocked over his books, each of 24 toddlers offered help within seconds - but only if he appeared to need it. Video shows how one overall-clad baby glanced between Warneken's face and the dropped clothespin before quickly crawling over, grabbing the object, pushing up to his feet and eagerly handing back the pin.

Warneken never asked for the help and didn't even say "thank you," so as not to taint the research by training youngsters to expect praise if they helped. After all, altruism means helping with no expectation of anything in return. And - this is key - the toddlers didn't bother to offer help when he deliberately pulled a book off the stack or threw a pin to the floor, Warneken, of Germany's Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, reports Thursday in the journal Science.

To be altruistic, babies must have the cognitive ability to understand other people's goals plus possess what Warneken calls "pro-social motivation," a desire to be part of their community. "When those two things come together - they obviously do so at 18 months of age and maybe earlier - they are able to help," Warneken explained.

But babies aren't the whole story. No other animal is as altruistic as humans are. We donate to charity, recycle for the environment, give up a prime subway seat to the elderly - tasks that seldom bring a tangible return beyond a sense of gratification. Other animals are skilled at cooperating, too, but most often do so for a goal, such as banding together to chase down food or protect against predators. But primate specialists offer numerous examples of apes, in particular, displaying more humanlike helpfulness, such as the gorilla who rescued a 3-year-old boy who fell into her zoo enclosure.

But observations don't explain what motivated the animals. So Warneken put a few of our closest relatives through a similar helpfulness study. Would 3- and 4-year-old chimpanzees find and hand over objects that a familiar human "lost"? The chimps frequently did help out if all that was required was reaching for a dropped object - but not nearly as readily as the toddlers had helped, and not if the aid was more complicated, such as if it required reaching inside a box.

It's a creative study that shows chimps may display humanlike helpfulness when they can grasp the person's goal, University of California, Los Angeles, anthropologist Joan Silk wrote in an accompanying review. Just don't assume they help for the reasons of empathy that motivated the babies, she cautioned.

08 Mar 06 - 09:54 PM (#1688762)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Missouri Housing Contract Comes With Dog

March 08, 2006
SCOTT CITY, Mo. - Housing contracts can get complicated in a hurry. Just consider the clause that Jared and Whittnie Essner agreed to when they bought their first home last week: "Rocky will be allowed to remain in home (with lots of love, care and attention) and negotiated visitation rights from current master. Chain link fence stays for him."

"In every offer, there's always something to be negotiated," said their real estate agent, Greg Lincoln. In this case, that something happened to be a beagle-mix dog named Rocky.

Jared, 20, and Whittnie, 19, were married last spring. They looked at more than 30 houses before settling on the quaint home at the corner of State and Mildred in this southeast Missouri town, about 100 miles south of St. Louis. The place made an instant impression on them when they toured it. So did the home's sole inhabitant: Rocky. "We thought, there honestly can't be a dog here if there's no one present," Jared said. Then, Rocky came bounding toward him.

One thing about Rocky - he's not shy. He is no bigger than a football, but covers the distance from his doghouse to the gate in a matter of seconds. He nuzzles guests and stares up at people with big round eyes. Rocky seems to smile in the way certain dogs can, with his pink tongue hanging over his lip. "He's the most lovable dog I've ever seen," Jared said.

The story of how Rocky came to occupy a 2-bedroom house by himself began three years ago. That's when a retiree named Carlos Chitty decided to get a dog. Carlos, 93, and his wife Ruby, 88, lived at the house for years. They never had kids, and life got pretty quiet after Carlos Chitty retired as owner of Carlos Grocery in downtown Scott City.

"My wife said, 'Why don't we ever have any company?'" Chitty recalled. "I said, 'Didn't you notice that all our friends have passed away and we're still hanging around? That's why.'"

Chitty saw an ad in the paper for free dogs. He said he drove to a home at the edge of town, where more than a dozen dogs were up for adoption. Again: Rocky's not shy. "Man, that little dog came running across the yard. He about licked my face off," Chitty recalled.

Twelve years ago, Ruby Chitty was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Carlos watched her personality slowly slip away. By the time Rocky came around, Ruby didn't remember Carlos, or really remember herself, Carlos said. But Rocky was always there. "I could talk to him. He would ride in my car. We were really buddies," Chitty said.

Earlier this year, it became clear Carlos couldn't take care of his wife any longer. "We'd just gone as far as we could go," he said. They moved into a nursing home. Rocky wasn't allowed. Friends and family took care of Rocky for a couple of months before the Essners saw the house. The couple didn't want Rocky to be evicted, so they wrote him into the contract.

The couple seems to be living up to their end of the deal. Rocky spends fewer nights outside and sleeps inside the house's entryway on a big pillow. Jared Essner installed a night light by the pillow recently because he thought it was too dark at night.

Carlos Chitty visited Rocky last weekend. At the retirement center, his dresser includes four pictures: Two portraits of Carlos and his wife, and two portraits of Rocky. Chitty said he wouldn't have given up the dog if he didn't have to. But it meant a lot to him when Whittnie Essner told him Rocky was still his. The couple were just dog-sitting. "I thought, well, if anybody has the dog, I'd want you to have him," Chitty said he told her.

08 Mar 06 - 10:12 PM (#1688776)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Awww, man; sometimes this kind of news just completely undermines my carefully built up cynicism about human nature, darn it! :>))

A

09 Mar 06 - 08:46 AM (#1689119)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Cod Fiddler

BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4748292.stm

Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.
The goat's owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up".

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

"They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife," Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

10 Mar 06 - 03:31 PM (#1690229)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

A judge gave a former nurse who killed at least 29 patients in two states six more life sentences, raising the total to 18, after a hearing in which the defendant had to be gagged with a cloth and duct tape.

Charles Cullen, who committed one of the worst murder sprees ever discovered in the U.S. health care system, spent 30 minutes repeating the sentence, "Your honor, you need to step down," hundreds of times.

Cullen, who was sentenced last week to 11 consecutive life terms in New Jersey, administered lethal overdoses to seven patients at nursing homes and hospitals in Pennsylvania, and tried to kill three others.

13 Mar 06 - 10:34 AM (#1692027)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Wesley S

So what's up with Kinky Freidman - the next Governor of Texas ?

According to my morning paper Kinky was handed a Guinness during a St Patricks Day parade - which violates the Texas open container law since he was riding in a car at the time. Since no police saw this happen he wasn't arrested. According to Kinky - and I'm paraphrasing here - "Guinness is the beverage that kept the Irish from taking over the world - and it's my patriotic duty to drink it"

13 Mar 06 - 10:43 AM (#1692042)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I signed one of his petitions the day after the primaries.

13 Mar 06 - 03:04 PM (#1692295)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

"Man obsessed with doorknobs faces prison"

This would have been an open and shut case but the vandel stole the handles!

Better late than never!
Charley Noble

13 Mar 06 - 10:33 PM (#1692719)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

This is truly mind blowing:

French archaeologists have taken pottery from ancient Pompeii and
played the grooves back like a record to get the sounds of the
pottery workshop, including laughter. Click "Telecharger la video" to
play the short video which contains a sample of the audio.

http://www.zalea.org/article.php3?id_article=496

Sounds from 70 AD recovered from the hardened clay of an ancient vase!! Wow!! What else is out there in the clay of the centuries?

A

18 Mar 06 - 01:42 AM (#1696695)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Less said about that the better, eh?

Here's a new one to mull over:

Mo. Drama Teacher Resigns Over Play Flap

The Crucible

Grease

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The New York Times

The Fulton Sun

Yes they have, and rightly so!

SRS

23 Mar 06 - 12:08 PM (#1701110)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Sometimes you read an obituary that scores a "10" in the "covers all the bases" category. This one works for me: Betty June (Shair) Watson.

She sounds like a woman after my own heart. Here's one paragraph in the obit:
"At Mom's request, no services will be held, but she said we could have a party. So for those who would like to share memories of our mom, an open house will be held at her home from 12:00-4:00 p.m., Sunday, April 2,. . ." Good photos with it also. None of the grainy or stretched and pixilated things you see too often.

SRS

23 Mar 06 - 12:19 PM (#1701117)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Bert

Our local paper, The Gazette, says that Bush plans to keep troops in Iraq for another two years.

I guess they haven't killed all the Iraquis yet.

23 Mar 06 - 02:36 PM (#1701165)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

The French Vase caper was a hoak. Woe!! I am red all over, like a newspaper.

A

23 Mar 06 - 02:44 PM (#1701168)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

B.C. ferry strikes rock, sinks
Native villagers help rescue 99 aboard; fate of 2 is unclear

link

HARTLEY BAY, B.C. -- In fishing boats and speedboats, the people of this small Indian village headed into the stormy waters off British Columbia's north coast to help rescue at least 99 passengers and crew members from a large B.C. ferry that hit a rock and sank early Wednesday. David Hahn, the president of B.C. Ferries, called the orderly rescue from the ferry's lifeboats and the fact that no one was seriously hurt miraculous. "Any time you have a major incident and you have no one hurt or killed in this type of thing, I think you always think it's a miracle," Hahn said.

But the fate of two people who had reservations for the trip remained a mystery, The Globe and Mail of Toronto reported. It was not clear whether Gerald Foisy and Shirley Rosette, both of the central B.C. community of 100 Mile House, boarded the ferry in Prince Rupert. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has begun a search for the couple.

Canadian Coast Guard spokesman Dan Bate said the southbound Queen of the North hit the rock without warning at 12:26 a.m. off Gil Island in Wright Sound, about 6 1/2 miles southeast of here. The area is about 80 miles south of Prince Rupert and about 580 miles northwest of Seattle.

Passengers and crew members aboard the 409-foot ship began boarding life rafts less than a half-hour later and were taken aboard villagers' boats and the Canadian icebreaker Sir Wilfred Laurier, Bate said.

Capt. Trafford Taylor, B.C. Ferries' executive vice president of operations, said the Queen of the North was out of the shipping channel when it hit the rock. An inquiry has begun. Weather at the time was reported to be 45-mph winds with choppy seas. The ferry left Prince Rupert at 8 p.m. for the overnight run to Port Hardy at the northern tip of Vancouver Island.

One passenger told Canadian Press she at first thought she was in the middle of a drill. "And then when they said to go to the other side of the boat, we knew it was real," Jill Lawrence said. "But it was very calm. Everyone seemed very calm, and the crew did an awesome job to get us off."

Nicole Robinson, a receptionist at the cultural center in Hartley Bay, a Gitk'a'ata Tribe town of about 200 residents, said many of those who arrived from the ferry were stunned and a few were treated for slight injuries. "We've just had a few patients come and go, minor injuries," she said. "The community all got together with blankets. Everybody's pretty cold, but they're all down at a community hall."

Some ferry passengers with minor injuries were flown by helicopter to Prince Rupert, Hartley Bay resident Wally Bolton said. Health officials in Prince Rupert told Canadian Press that 11 people had been treated at a hospital for cuts and scrapes.

Betsy Reece said everyone not out on the water was helping keep people warm and fed at the cultural center, where she works as a social worker. "I'm just totally amazed at how our small community banded together to assist people in need," she said.

23 Mar 06 - 05:03 PM (#1701296)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

Well, if your ship is going to strike a rock and sink it's nice when the lifeboats work and the crew knows how to work them. Three cheers for good training!!!

But will the Queen of the North rise again?

Charley Noble

23 Mar 06 - 10:04 PM (#1701477)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I read a related article that described her as "tipping on end and going down like the Titanic." If it hit a rock, it may have been in shallow water, but then, there can be some pretty big rocks in some pretty deep water out there. You might be able to find a nautical chart online and figure out for yourself if they can pull that one back up and fix it.

SRS

23 Mar 06 - 10:13 PM (#1701478)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's a really scary one to read in the newspaper. I first learned of this in the Sierra Club Raw newsletter I get (this is a link to the text online). They link to the story below. It's long so I won't run the entire thing. The SF Chronicle is pretty good about keeping their archives up for a long time.

A move to ease pesticide laws
Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer

Thursday, March 2, 2006

A little-noticed section of a congressional bill to overhaul the Endangered Species Act would give federal regulators a five-year pass from seeking expert scientific advice from wildlife agencies on the harmful effects of pesticides on rare animals and plants, a move environmentalists say would further threaten hundreds of animals including several in the Bay Area.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency evaluates insecticides and herbicides up for registration or, every 15 years, for re-registration. Under the law as it is now, if it finds evidence that a pesticide could affect animals and plants protected by the act, the agency must consult with wildlife agencies before approving its use.

Environmental groups say it is crucial that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have an opportunity to present scientific studies showing effects of chemicals on animals and plants because the groups have used the evidence in court to force the EPA to limit the use of dozens of pesticides that could hurt salmon, steelhead and the California red-legged frog.

But under the bill by Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, for five years the agency would not have to seek the expertise of wildlife agency scientists over how pesticides could affect the imperiled species.

The bill would eliminate key provisions of the nation's toughest environmental law safeguarding the 1,272 listed species of plants, birds, fish, amphibians, insects and mammals in the wild. The bill already has passed the House and is expected to find support in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The pesticide changes and other major revisions are opposed by environmental groups, and local governments and states across the nation are passing resolutions in support of the original 1973 act, including the California counties of Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz; and the city of Los Angeles.

"We see the act as a safety net for wildlife, and the Pombo bill cuts a hole in that net,'' said Sarah Matsumoto, field director of a nationwide coalition of 360 conservation, religious and hunting and fishing groups that want to save it.

In past years, the Fish and Wildlife Service has raised concerns about harm to listed species from pesticides, among them 2,4-D, atrazine, diazinon and endosulfan. In 2002, the agency wrote the EPA saying that the insecticide endosulfan, under consideration for re-registration at the time, could kill or disrupt endocrine systems of fish, birds, amphibians and mammals even at normal applications. Endosulfan should not be re-registered, the agency said.

But as of 2004, the EPA had registered 103 products with endosulfan for general use and about 60 special uses, according to Jeff Miller, wildlands coordinator at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco.

In response to a lawsuit the group filed in the case of the red-legged frog, a judge ruled that the EPA was in violation of the act because it didn't consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service over 66 pesticides, including endosulfan. The center filed a motion in January asking the judge to restrict the use of endosulfan in key frog habitat throughout California.

A report released today by the center, titled "Poisoning Our Imperiled Wildlife: San Francisco Bay Area Endangered Species at Risk from Pesticides," says the pesticides could harm 31 threatened animals, including the San Joaquin kit fox, Alameda whipsnake, Western snowy plover, California tiger salamander, the freshwater shrimp, Lange's metalmark butterfly and the delta smelt.

Some of the 35 plants disappearing from the region are the Presidio Clarksia, Tiburon Indian paintbrush and Sebastopol meadowfoam, the report says.

The original pesticide-review requirement was written into the Endangered Species Act to protect the hundreds of sensitive species at risk of extinction from poisons used on farms, forests and households. Pesticides were a major factor contributing to the decline of the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, California brown pelican and other species, and DDT was banned in 1972.

Pesticide industry representatives have been lobbying for years to remove the requirement, and they support it in the Pombo bill. They have argued that the EPA is the expert agency and that the pesticides don't need further scrutiny from the wildlife agencies if the EPA has carefully reviewed pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Recovery Act.

(The rest is here).

SRS

25 Mar 06 - 10:27 AM (#1702543)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

On campus, science embraces environmental ethics
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Special to USA TODAY
link

Justin Becknell became an environmental science major because he wanted to help solve ecological problems. He is so determined to get results, in fact, that he's developing a subspecialty in ethics.
The rationale oozes scientific pragmatism. Becknell, a junior at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, ranks among a rising generation that has too often seen the world ignore what scientists recommend. So he and peers at other institutions are striving to understand deep convictions that lead to roadblocks and breakthroughs in human relationships. In a word: values.

"It's interesting that these problems (of implementation) exist, but scientists certainly don't know how to solve them," Becknell says. "We're trying to learn how to be good scientists who can be trusted to provide data. But we also understand that to solve some global problems, it's going to involve a moral, society-wide shift in how people use resources and spend money."

Values-based approaches are gradually winning converts in a field that for decades has emphasized problem-solving through hard science. Even programs that developed interdisciplinary methods as far back as the early 1970s have only in the past five years come to closely examine moral reasoning and "environmental values." Some examples of the new direction:

This winter, Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., rolled out a required course for all 2,000 freshmen to explore their "responsibility" for the global environment.

Colgate University of Hamilton, N.Y., created a faculty position in environmental ethics in 2003 and introduced a course this winter examining how indigenous religious beliefs can support environmentalism in South Asia.

Students now study environmental values at not only the University of Minnesota, but also at the University of Denver, the University of San Francisco and Wells College in Aurora, N.Y.
[they missed the entire Environmental Ethics MA at U of North Texas]

Such academic tracks on one level aim to provide a forum for students to clarify their own values by considering concepts of environmental sustainability and interdependence. Yet on another level, they also aim to equip future scientists with "bridge building" skills that could make or break what happens to solutions developed in a laboratory. "To me, this is where the forefront in the past few years is," says Frances Westley, director of the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Scientists-in-training and scientists in practice are now realizing they need to develop a skill base that goes beyond merely being able to understand that other people have different ethical perspectives, but in real time being able to work with those people ... to be able to build trusts so that you say, 'Well, that's a different kind of know-ledge, but I understand the rules of evidence or the rules of truth in your system,' " Westley says.

On a recent afternoon, students tested their emergent skills in Dan Philippon's "Issues in the Environment" class at the University of Minnesota. They role-played several interest groups, each with a stake in a hot Midwest debate: prairie dogs. Some played ranchers with disdain for the creatures, whose holes can be big enough to trap and break a grazing steer's leg. Others urged protection for prairie dogs, a favorite of animal rights advocates and a primary food source for the endangered black-footed ferret. On another day, students considered how fertilizer used for crops in Minnesota kills off ecosystems downriver toward the Mississippi Delta. The goal in each case is the same: make students aware of interconnectedness, multiplicity of interest groups and the values that drive decisions.

"We could see this just as a technical problem to say, 'Well, we need to moderate our use of fertilizer on farmland,'" says Philippon, a professor of rhetoric with a specialty in environmental ethics. "But we can also see it as a question of values for how you bring that about — making the connection of what's happening in one landscape with what's happening in another."

Teachers of environmental values nevertheless face what Philippon calls "the danger of introducing advocacy into the curriculum." To minimize this risk, he says, he aims to provide a balance of viewpoints in lectures and readings. Even so, the Program in Agricultural, Food and Environmental Ethics, which he directs, embraces three core values of its own: biodiversity, sustainability and minimizing dangers to human health.

Other schools say they presuppose no particular environmental values but hope students will learn to defend their own. At Old Dominion, for instance, presenters in the required global environment course pre-test their material on colleagues, who critique whether a lecture will strike students as agenda-driven. Students "understand that maybe they need to decide on principles, but we're not going to tell them what they are," says Old Dominion president Roseann Runte. "We're not supposed to indoctrinate students. We're supposed to open their minds."

Still, some educators hope certain values will take root.

At Colgate University, assistant professor of religion Eliza Kent designed her new course, "Religion and Environmentalism in South Asia," with an eye, she says, toward urging students "to question the taken-for-granted idea that economic concerns are all that matter. I am trying to indoctrinate them with some sense of hope that these (environmental crisis) situations are reversible," Kent says. "I don't make any apologies for trying to instill in them hope that this environmental crisis can be reversed."

28 Mar 06 - 04:05 PM (#1704931)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

An obituary in today's (Everett, Washington) Herald

Her grandchildren have grandchildren!

Eva Jane (Cosgrove) Charles

Eva Jane Charles passed away on March 19, 2006. She was born August 14, 1914, in Everett.

children
Eva is survived by daughter, Sonja (Gerold) Clementson; son, James F. (Katheryn) Monger; sister-in-law, Mary (Bob) Starkle, daughter-in-law, Charlene Monger; (three sons, listed at the bottom, preceeded her in death)

grandchildren Ella Faye (Guss) Sanchez, Elizabeth Monger, Christoper (Christine) Clementson, Susan (Jose) Clementson, Wynn (Tammie) Clementson, Cheryl (Don) Sept, Tim (Jenner) Hensley, Randy Hensley, Rick Monger, Mary Lou (Brian) Garrett;

great-grandchildren Kahlia, Michael, Chris, Cody, David, Andrew, Ivy, Selena, Robert, Anthony, Albert, Courtney, Bryar, Amy, Duane, Maxine, Travis, Jordan, Austin, Gretchen, Rebecca, Cody, and Melissa;

great-great-grandchildren Kristin, Devan, Alix, Samantha, Lyla, Eve, Lillian, Charles, Jordan, Anthony, Larnell, Jazlyn, Kasey, Emmit, Dorthey, Jade, and Cody;

and special loved ones, Shirley (Ken) Hensley.
She was preceded in death by husband, Anthony Charles; parents, Lena and Jimmy Cosgrove; sons, Jack Monger, Richard Monger, and Robert Monger; and aunt and uncle, Archie and May Gould.
Services were held on March 25, 2006.

05 Apr 06 - 10:11 PM (#1711579)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

So sad, and clearly the diagnosis should be "broken heart," not "heart attack."

Woman Slumps at Grandchild's Funeral, Dies
April 05, 2006

CHICAGO - The grieving grandmother of one of four children killed in a house fire last week collapsed in a church pew as the children's funeral was about to begin, and was later pronounced dead of a heart attack.

Verna Glenn, 58, slumped into the arms of family members as she sat looking at the small white casket holding her 6-year-old granddaughter, Marlese Glenn. Fire officials said she died of a heart attack.

"It's the kind of thing that is unimaginable, to be with this family in the worst possible time of their loss and then to have it compounded with the loss of a grandmother on the very same day," said the Rev. Alan Ragland, pastor of the South Side church where the funeral was held.

Marlese, her 2-year-old sister LeShawn Harris, and their cousins Dontrell Harvest, 8, and Tykia Harvest, 9, died in the March 29 fire. Two adults were also injured in the blaze, which fire officials have said may have been caused by an electrical malfunction.

14 Apr 06 - 10:10 AM (#1718062)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Anger management dropout:

Pa. Man Kills Girlfriend Over Sandwiches

April 14, 2006

UNIONTOWN, Pa. - A man threw a microwave at his girlfriend, then fatally beat her after she refused to heat up sandwiches, police said. Walter S. Fordyce, 58, of Uniontown, remained jailed without bond Thursday on a charge of criminal homicide. It wasn't clear if he had an attorney.

Fordyce told police he began arguing with his live-in girlfriend, Mary McCann, 58, early Thursday. After throwing her to the floor, Fordyce threw a microwave oven onto McCann's chest after she refused to heat up sandwiches for him, he told police. Fordyce also said he stomped on McCann's chest repeatedly then banged her head on the floor until she lost consciousness - but that he also said he didn't mean to kill her, police said.

"It was an accident. I didn't do it on purpose," police quoted Fordyce as saying.

Fordyce ran to a neighbor's house for help, but couldn't find anyone there to call 911, police said. After returning home and checking McCann for a pulse - and finding none - he went downstairs and drank a beer before going to another neighbor's home and asking them to call 911, police said.

Autopsy results were not immediately available.

01 May 06 - 05:10 PM (#1731460)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's an uplifting story for everyone:
link
Published: Monday, May 1, 2006

Warehouse wonder
Intermec's Forklift of the Future prototype is loaded with the company's technology

By Eric Fetters, Herald Writer

EVERETT - Dreamers of past ages envisioned what cars, jets and spacecraft of the future might look like. Few, if any, imagined what the 21st century would mean for the lowly forklift. But designers at Everett's Intermec Inc. have thought about it, creating what they unhumbly call the Forklift of the Future.

With a flashy paint job and high-tech devices, it looks cool. Behind the looks, the forklift sports an onboard computer, wireless data transmission capabilities, automatic laser bar code scanners and radio frequency-identification readers.

Right now, it's a prototype forklift - not unlike the supercool concept cars shown off at auto shows. It's an attention-getting way to demonstrate how Intermec's products can improve warehouse and inventory management. But a wired machine like this might one day be offered for sale. Intermec and its partners are talking with the forklift industry's major manufacturers. "They're not just talking to us or interested in it because it looks neat, but because they see the competitive advantage," said John Bandringa, Intermec's director of corporate design and team leader on the forklift project.

While it doesn't always get much attention, efficient inventory and warehouse management isn't a small concern for many businesses. Wal-Mart, an early adopter of radio-frequency identification tags, can credit some of its success, and untold millions in savings, to having one of the most sophisticated inventory management systems in the retail industry. Providing the data collection products related to inventory management also has been lucrative to Intermec, which earned $65 million on sales of $875 million last year.

Intermec's designers usually deal with products no bigger than handheld computers and bar-code scanners. The Forklift of the Future project gave them a chance to dream big. "I've done other projects, but this is the most exciting," Bandringa said. While inventory and data collection technology is becoming well established in many warehouses, it's usually added on to forklifts as an afterthought. The Forklift of the Future design team's goal was to integrate the technology in ways that customers wanted.

To do that, Intermec sent its designers out of the office, Bandringa said. "It's really important to listen to the voice of the customer. We didn't just listen to the warehouse manager, we listened to the information technology manager, the forklift driver ... all of whom had different perspectives," he said.

After extensively surveying customers, Bandringa's team created hundreds of concepts, designs and foam models. In addition to figuring out what data collection devices to add to the forklift, the team focused on making all the technology as durable as possible. "Anything that you put on the forklift has to be at least equal to or more durable than the forklift itself," he said.

The Intermec team put much thought, for example, into cable managers - coverings to both organize and protect the crucial wires connecting the forklift's on-board computer, control grip and radio frequency-identification equipment. It turns out cables are prone to wear out fast in the not-so-delicate warehouse environment. The computer itself, an Intermec CV-60, is covered in magnesium.

The placement of the onboard Intermec computer in the steering column also came after considerable thought, Bandringa said. Most of the time, forklift computers hang down from the machine's roof, which can be harder for the driver to see.

The 10,000-pound electric Forklift of the Future also is outfitted with location-tracking technology that can direct a driver to the right warehouse aisle when delivering or retrieving an item. A video camera can help a driver see when placing pallets on high shelves. Plus, it's all designed for the driver's comfort. From the placement of the computer and control grip to the forklift's adjustable seat, it's relatively luxurious. Intermec's partners on the project, who provided parts or equipment, included Cascade Corp., which makes lifts, Cisco and RedPrairie.

So far, Intermec has been showing off the prototype at industry trade shows, where interest has been high. Bandringa doesn't deny the feature-filled forklift was a fun diversion from more everyday design tasks. "Personally, this is the most integrated and complex system I've worked on ... but this is also the most exciting," he said.

The result also gets good reviews from at least one forklift operator. "It's a lot smoother, quieter and has a lot more functions than the old equipment," said Jeff Harrington, who works in Intermec's warehouse near the Boeing Co. plant, where the new prototype has resided in recent weeks. "It's definitely very cool."

02 May 06 - 09:29 AM (#1732018)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Gee whiz, and I thought we saw 'the ultimate forklift' in 'Alien'...

05 Jun 06 - 10:46 AM (#1753307)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I want this designated hitter on my team! link

Woman's quick thinking saved three men on Martha Lake

LYNNWOOD - Alana Schutt thought the fisherman were goofing off when she saw them splashing around in the middle of Martha Lake. They weren't horsing around, she soon realized. They were sinking. "I noticed their boat was taking on water," said Schutt, 22, who spotted the three fisherman from her parents' back yard the night of May 26. "I could tell this was a situation that needed some attention."

Rather than wait for help, Schutt boarded her paddleboat and pedaled out to the distressed fishermen. She hauled the men and their boat to shore, according to a Snohomish County Sheriff's Office report released Wednesday. One of the fishermen was on the verge of drowning by the time Schutt reached him, she said. "I wasn't afraid at all," she said. "We see so many people on the lake all the time playing around, so initially I didn't think it was a big problem. When it turned into one, I was calm about the whole situation. I knew it was urgent and that I had to respond quickly."

The men were "wet and cold," but uninjured, the sheriff's report said. The fisherman who owned his group's boat was cited for not having life jackets on board, the report said.

Schutt, who was raised in her family's home near the lake, is a junior at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma and a designated hitter for her school's softball team. She was talking with her parents when she noticed the fishermen about 200 yards offshore. One of the men was swimming and another appeared to be hanging onto the side of their boat. Their boat was sitting low in the water, she noticed. She tried calling out to the men, but they were too far away, she said. "Then I knew that I had to go help them," Schutt said.

Two of the fishermen were exhausted by the time Schutt reached them. They rode on her boat while Schutt swam in the water, pushing her boat from behind with help from the third fisherman. They pulled the other boat behind them as they swam. Sheriff's deputies arrived as they neared the shore.

The last time Schutt had used her paddleboat was last summer. "I hope other people would do the same thing," she said.

06 Jun 06 - 07:26 PM (#1754549)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

The world-renowned Telegraph reports on space-feline misconduct:

Web judge says cat must keep its claws off bank's address
By Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor
(Filed: 06/06/2006)

A cat is not entitled to register a website that is "confusingly similar" to the name of a well-known bank, an internet arbitrator has ruled.

Morgan Stanley, the American-based investment bank that now markets platinum credit cards in Britain, complained about a website called mymorganstanleyplatinum.com.

The domain was registered last year in the name of "Meow, Baroness Penelope Cat of Nash DCB", whose address was given as a barn near Tenbury Wells, Worcs.

Asserting that this information was false, Morgan Stanley complained to the National Arbitration Forum in Minneapolis, which handles internet registration disputes.

Ruling in the case of Morgan Stanley v Meow at the end of last month, the arbitrator, Richard Hill, noted that the respondent claimed to be a cat, "that is, a well-known carnivorous quadruped which has long been domesticated".

However, Mr Hill continued, "it is equally well-known that the common cat, whose scientific name is Felis domesticus, cannot speak or read or write… Therefore, either the respondent is a different species of cat, such as the one that stars in the motion picture Cat From Outer Space, or the respondent's assertion regarding its being a cat is incorrect."

Mr Hill clearly smelled a rat. He had been told that the cat allowed Michael Woods, described as a human, to use the domain name in his work as a business consultant. Mr Woods, also from Tenbury Wells, conducts seminars in which he warns companies about the risks of not registering obvious domain names.

"If the respondent is in fact a cat from outer space," the arbitrator continued, "then it should have so indicated in its reply, in order to avoid unnecessary perplexity by the [arbitrator]. Further, it should have explained why a cat from outer space would allow Mr Woods to use the disputed domain name."

In the absence of such an explanation, Mr Hill concluded that if Meow was a cat from outer space, then it may have something to hide - "and this is indicative of bad faith behaviour."

In its defence, the cat had pointed out that a previous arbitration panel had found that Mr Woods was not acting in bad faith when he registered and used a similar domain name, morganstanleyplatinum.com.

But that case was different, the arbitrator concluded. "In that case the respondent was Mr Woods, and not a cat or someone who has misled the panel by pretending to be a cat."

Finding that by claiming to be a cat the respondent had acted in bad faith, the arbitrator transferred the disputed domain name to Morgan Stanley.

A spokesman for the investment bank said yesterday: "As Camille Paglia once said, 'Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest.' "

Meow was not taking calls.

11 Jun 06 - 04:51 PM (#1757402)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

You wonder how a "good company" could even have a bus sitting around in this kind of condition? --SRS

Kids took field trip on crumbling bus
Everett first-grader's mother alerts safety officials

By David Chircop, Herald Writer link

State authorities are investigating after a local charter company shuttled Lowell Elementary School first-graders in a bus the company's owner agreed doesn't belong on the road. Lynnwood-based Journey Lines Inc. has taken the bus out of service, pending an inspection by the state, owner Steve Abegg said earlier this week.

The bus shouldn't have been on the road, but its problems were largely cosmetic, he said. "We tried to give good customer service, but it turns out we gave lousy service here," he said.

Officials were alerted by Karen Stalberger of Everett. She photographed what she believed were safety problems while accompanying her 7-year-old son's class on a field trip to view a kangaroo farm near Arlington. Stalberger said the trip began with the driver starting the bus by raising a panel and touching wires together. She photographed exposed wires, an unfastened floor panel, window trim with missing screws, a broken taillight and a black mildewlike substance on the ceiling. She sent the images to school and state officials. The state Utilities and Transportation Commission began an investigation.

Abegg said he is taking the situation seriously, and has taken the 1985 Eagle out of commission.

Stalberger said there was much about the bus that concerned her. Heavy, metal items weren't bolted down, and the students were exposed to fumes, she said. During the trip, an unbolted floor panel at the rear of the bus flew up, revealing the engine and transmission. "You heard the air and you could smell the fumes. It was like having your window open driving down the road," Stalberger said. A father on the bus held the panel down with his feet, she said.

Abegg said he doesn't believe the situation was unsafe. He acknowledged a child could have touched the engine. "All (the father) had to do was push his foot down to keep the panel in place," he said. "It sounds treacherous, like it's the opening of a big monster, but it's just an opening that you can see through."

Journey Lines was hired for the field trip by Durham School Services, the Everett School District's official carrier. Durham said it won't send the Lynnwood carrier more work until the school district gives it the green light.

The school district pays Durham about $5 million a year for bus services. State law requires fewer inspections and allows lower standards for the carrier Durham hired for the field trip than it does for most school bus lines. School buses are inspected twice annually by the Washington State Patrol. Buses belonging to charter companies, such as Journey Lines, are inspected every 18 months.

Allan Jones, director of pupil transportation for the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said Durham is permitted to hire charter services, provided the companies maintain a satisfactory safety rating. Journey Lines Inc. has a satisfactory rating, according to officials at the state Utilities and Transportation Commission. It also has been fined for safety violations, records show.

In 1992, the company was fined after an accident on a school-sponsored ski trip that sent a Marysville woman to the hospital with a concussion and caused a middle school student to fly through a pop-out window, records show. The state found that the bus's brakes had failed before it left the road and flipped on its side.

In 2002, shortly after Abegg bought the company, the state warned that Journey Lines lacked adequate safety procedures and was in jeopardy of losing state certification. The company was cited for failing to maintain driving and repair records.

An April 2004 inspection of nine buses found six with safety violations. The state sidelined two buses: one for an emergency exit that didn't work, and the other for a loose U-shaped bolt securing the vehicle's axle. Other violations included broken overhead lights, a broken seat, a broken backup light and two unsecured fire extinguishers.

The most recent safety report, from April, found a single violation for failing to keep a maintenance file on one bus. The bus that carried Lowell Elementary students was not among those inspected. Abegg said he regrets that the bus was sent out. He described himself as a small businessman working hard to upgrade his 12-bus fleet.

The incident with Lowell Elementary School students was not reflective of his company, he said. Terrie DeBolt, Everett School District's transportation supervisor, vouched for the company. "I believe this is a real rarity for Journey Lines," she said. "It was just a bad call on their part to let the bus go. Somebody just made a really bad choice."

11 Jun 06 - 07:24 PM (#1757520)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

"Somebody just made a really bad choice"

... not expecting some parent might actually have a camera with them...

16 Jun 06 - 12:37 AM (#1761141)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Two Killed in Severed Head Crash in Idaho
From Associated Press, June 15, 2006

BOISE, Idaho - The severed head of a man's wife flew from his pickup truck Thursday when he crashed into an oncoming car, killing the driver and her child, police said. The investigation of the deadly wreck and the head, which was tossed onto the roadway by the impact, led police to the decapitated body of 47-year-old Theresa N. Time in the garage of the home she shared with her husband, Alofa Time, said Nampa police Lt. LeRoy Forsman.

A Boise police officer was driving behind Alofa Time's truck on a busy road when he noticed the man's erratic driving and then watched him slam into the car, said police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower. Time, who was not injured in the crash, told officers that he also was involved his wife's death, officials said. An autopsy was scheduled next week to determine Theresa Time's cause of death, Canyon County Coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morris said. [uh--decapitation is one way]

Time was being held on two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Samantha Nina Murphy, 36, and her 4-year-old daughter Jae Lynne Grimes, both of Boise. Murphy's other daughter was injured and was in stable condition at a Boise hospital.

"It was one of the more horrific and complex crime scenes on memory," Hightower said. "A woman and her child killed in a crash, and a severed head from an earlier homicide: It's nothing short of bizarre and tragic."

16 Jun 06 - 03:33 PM (#1761673)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Rat Study Shows Dirty Better Than Clean
Associated Press.June 16, 2006

WASHINGTON - Gritty rats and mice living in sewers and farms seem to have healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs, two studies indicate.

The lesson for humans: Clean living may make us sick.

The studies give more weight to a 17-year-old theory that the sanitized Western world may be partly to blame for soaring rates of human allergy and asthma cases and some autoimmune diseases, such as Type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. The theory, called the hygiene hypothesis, figures that people's immune systems aren't being challenged by disease and dirt early in life, so the body's natural defenses overreact to small irritants such as pollen.

The new studies, one of which was published Friday in the peer reviewed Scandinavian Journal of Immunology, found significant differences in the immune systems between euthanized wild and lab rodents.

When the immune cells in the wild rats are stimulated by researchers, "they just don't do anything they sit there; if you give them same stimulus to the lab rats, they go crazy," said study co-author Dr. William Parker, a Duke University professor of experimental surgery. He compared lab rodents to more than 50 wild rats and mice captured and killed in cities and farms.

Also, the wild mice and rats had as much as four times higher levels of immunoglobulins, yet weren't sick, showing an immune system tuned to fight crucial germs, but not minor irritants, Parker said. He said what happened in the lab rats is what likely occurs in humans: their immune systems have got it so cushy they overreact to smallest of problems.

"Your immune system is like the person who lives in the perfect house and has all the food they want, you're going to start worrying about the little things like someone stepping on your flowers," Parker said.

Challenged immune systems - such as kids who grow up with two or more pets - don't tend to develop as many allergies, said Dr. Stanley Goldstein, director of Allergy & Asthma Care of Long Island.

Parker said his study has drawbacks because he can't be sure that the age of the wild and lab rodents are equivalent, although he estimates the ages based on weight. He also could not control what happened in the past to the wild rats to see if they had unusual diseases before being captured and killed.

It would have been more useful had Parker studied extremely young wild rodents because, according to the hygiene hypothesis, that's when the protection from dirty living starts, said Dr. Stuart Levy, director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University.

Human epidemiological studies have long given credence to the hygiene theory, showing that allergy and asthma rates were higher in the cleaner industrialized areas than in places such as Africa. Parker's studies, looking at animal differences, may eventually help scientists find when, where and how environmental exposure help protect against future allergies and immune disorders, said Goldstein, and Dr. Jeffrey Platt of the Mayo Clinic in Minn., both of whom were not part of Parker's studies.

Parker said he hopes to build a 50-foot artificial sewer for his next step, so that he could introduce the clean lab rats to an artificial dirty environment and see how and when the immunity was activated.

That may be the biggest thing to come out of the wild and lab rodent studies, Platt said: "Then all of a sudden it becomes possible to expose people to the few things (that exercise the immune system) and gives them the benefit of the dirty environment without having to expose them to the dirt."

18 Jun 06 - 11:55 AM (#1762839)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

What can I say? These two have great grit and determination. I remember reading about that horrible accident and wondering what would happen with the children.--SRS

link

Published: Sunday, June 18, 2006
Family First
A young couple works to keep siblings together after a tragedy.

MARYSVILLE - He never really questioned what he would do. The decision wouldn't be easy, though it was obvious. Tyler Ringen and his wife, Fawn, had to keep the family together. The children had been through enough. They deserved a place to feel safe and someone to cry and laugh with them. They needed someone to guide their futures. They needed to know they would always be loved. Tyler Ringen, 25, and his 23-year-old bride understood. It was up to them to care for Fawn Ringen's three teenage siblings after the death of her parents.

Darrell and Sandra Knapp and their son Noah, 6, of Marysville died last year after a pickup truck hauling a travel trailer smashed head-on into their car on I-5 near Marysville. The couple left behind five children. "We needed to keep the family together. What kind of person would I be if I didn't?" Tyler Ringen said. "I don't ever recall discussing what we were going to do. There wasn't anyone else."

The Ringens, who married just two months before the crash, have since moved into the Knapp family home. They live there with their son Isaiah, 2, and three of Fawn Ringen's siblings: Amber, 17; Jeanine, 14; and Tony, 13. Their brother Alex Knapp, 21, lives in Everett with his wife.

The Ringens had their first child Saturday. Dove Ringen was born at 6:34 a.m. Their courage and dedication to the family has awed those around them. "My husband and I are so proud of both of them," said Tyler Ringen's mother, Marla Ringen. "The day it happened, you could see the determination in their eyes."

The young couple is following in the footsteps of Darrell and Sandra Knapp. The Knapps were fiercely caring, compassionate and giving to children in need, their daughter said. They opened their home to more than two dozen foster children. They later adopted five children. After the crash, the Ringens became the custodial guardians for the three teens.

"They were terrified of where they would go. They'd already lost their biological parents and now this," Fawn Ringen said. "I didn't want to see them thrown back into the system." Her husband makes it possible to keep the family together, she said. He makes it possible for her to continue her parents' legacy. "He's my best friend. I don't know where I'd be without him and his family," she said. "I probably wouldn't be able to do this."

Her husband shrugs off any praise about opening up his life to his sister's siblings. He loves his wife. He loves her family.

Marriage gives strength

"In his mind, Tyler just did what he had to do," Marla Ringen said. "He stands behind Fawn, but I don't think every 25-year-old, newly married man would take on these responsibilities." The Marysville man, a boat builder at Meridian Yachts, said it was his faith in his wife's abilities that helped him believe they could take care of the children.

"I wasn't sure how I would do, but I knew my wife was able," he said. Tyler Ringen met his wife about four years ago through a mutual friend who lived across the street from her family's Marysville home. They built a friendship. He encouraged and supported her through her pregnancy with Isaiah, calling her every day and taking her out once a week. He came to the hospital the day Isaiah was born. "My mom adored Tyler for that," Fawn Ringen said. Their friendship slowly grew into more, and the couple married in March 2005. Ringen adopted Isaiah. The little boy calls him Daddy.

In the months following the crash, the couple have been adjusting to their new roles. "It was important to both of us. We didn't want to be Mom or Dad," Fawn Ringen said. "We're not here to replace them. We're here to step in." She had helped her parents extensively with her siblings, some of whom have special needs.

At times, the new responsibilities have been challenging for her husband. He draws on what his parents taught him as they raised him and his older brother, he said. He's learning to supervise the teens' grades and school attendance, and how to hold them accountable for their chores. He's also learned to check in with his wife before he agrees to their requests, and that he needs to be bit sterner with discipline.

"I'm here to keep them going in the right direction," Tyler Ringen said. "I hope I'm learning."

Little time to grieve

The Ringens have been working through their own grief even as they guide three teens mourning the loss of their parents. The last couple of months have been especially trying as the couple have sorted through some medical and other concerns with Tony, Fawn Ringen said. "It's not easy on any of them, but had they not taken them, well, I think it would have been tougher," Marla Ringen said.

The teens also have had to adjust to the changes. "We're trying to get used to it," said Amber Knapp, 17. They like hanging out and watching "CSI" and "Stargate" with their brother-in-law. Tyler Ringen has found a "partner in crime" in Jeanine, 14, who also likes to ride four-wheelers and throw water balloons at unsuspecting targets, Fawn Ringen said.

The Ringens said they draw strength from their faith in God to see them through the rough patches. They also have had endless support from their families, the Atonement Free Lutheran Church and the community, they said. Fawn Ringen has become closer to her husband's parents, who have welcomed everyone, she said. "We're all family to them now," Fawn Ringen said.

And as the couple's household grows again, they feel they have the strength to protect and nurture what matters: their family. They know they made the right decision. "It may be too much, but it's not too much for us," Tyler Ringen said.

19 Jun 06 - 07:41 AM (#1763534)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST

Well said Stilly River Sage

25 Jun 06 - 01:49 PM (#1768769)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Storm warning for mobile phone users
link [Posted: Sun 25/06/2006]

Doctors have warned against using mobile phones outdoors during stormy weather. Writing in the British Medical Journal, three doctors described the case of a 15-year-old girl who was seen being struck by lightning while using her mobile phone in a large park in London during stormy weather. She was successfully resuscitated, however one year later, she suffered complex physical, cognitive and emotional problems.

The doctors explained that if somebody is struck by lightning, the high resistance of human skin results in the lightning being conducted over the skin without entering the body. This is known as flashover and has a low death rate. Conductive materials, such as liquids or metallic objects, disrupt the flashover and result in internal injury and a higher death rate.

To the doctors' knowledge, no similar cases have been reported in medical literature. Although they did find three cases reported in newspapers in Asia, all resulting in death. "This rare phenomenon is a public health issue and education is necessary to highlight the risk of using mobile phones outdoors during stormy weather to prevent future fatal consequences from lightning strike injuries related to mobile phones," the doctors said.

01 Jul 06 - 01:33 PM (#1773604)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Very interesting obituary from a resident of Everett, Washington who was 108 when she died.

link

Sept. 3, 1897 - June 3, 2006
Longtime Everett resident, Mary Landon, died Saturday, June 3, 2006, of natural causes. She was 108 years old.
In the mid 1930's, she and her husband, Clifford Victor Landon, made Everett their permanent home. Their charming Cape Cod house on Beverly Boulevard was a familiar landmark on the Bothell Highway to Everett. Every spring, the always starkly white home would be brilliantly framed at the corners with red and pink rhododendrons, and a blanket of vivid blue Lithodora along the walkway to the front doorstep. An avid gardener, Mary would greet folks with dirt smudged hands, a floppy garden hat, and a pair of clippers in her apron pocket. However, she always considered the privacy hedge along the north side of the property as "that darn hedge," which needed trimming "far too often."
Born September 3, 1897, to Thomas Paul and Hulda Abigail Furman, Mary Landon was raised on a farm in Canton, Pennsylvania. She attended grade school and was the part of the last class to graduate from the original Canton High School before it was torn down and a new one was built. Mary and her fellow senior classmates celebrated graduation with a trip to Washington, D.C., where they shook hands with President Wilson (she found his handshake cold and limp), toured the Smithsonian, the Mint and the other sights of the Capital. She met her future husband, Cliff, when they were both about age five--during a game of chase, she stole his new stocking cap and threw it down the outhouse toilet. Somehow all was forgiven and they married in 1916 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Early in their marriage, Cliff used his skills as a taxidermist to make what he thought would be a fine gift for Mary--a beautiful rattlesnake skin belt. Mary opened the gift, screamed and dropped it--little did Cliff know that she hated snakes!
For the next 18 years, Cliff and Mary, with two daughters in tow, lived and worked in Pennsylvania, Florida, California and Washington (Meadowbrook, Snohomish and Seattle). The family, now with a son, made their final move (much to Mary's relief) to Everett where they lived for 63 years. Now settled in the community, Mary's civic life blossomed. She made sandwiches for returning WWII pilots at Paine Field and organized the "Gulls Nest" club for teenagers during WWII. She served on the following organizations: Eastern Star; president of PTA and PTA Council; Youth Center Advisory Council; president of Snohomish District Washington State Federated Women's Club; president of Pilchuck Council for Camp Fire Girls and recipient of the Luther Gulick Award; Mother's Club for Boy Scouts; president and longtime member of Laurel Heights Study Club; and Daughters of the American Revolution, Marcus Whitman Chapter. With Cliff's retirement, and the children grown up, Mary pursued her love of teaching and became certified to teach adult education classes (Group Development) at Everett Community College. She continued to serve her community as a volunteer for the Snohomish County Victim/ Witness Assistance Program and the county court house. Also, she was selected to serve as a representative of the Federated Women's Club to the White House Conference on Crime in Washington, D.C.
Together, Mary and her husband shared many loves. As rock hounds (and members of the Everett Rock Club), they traversed all of the Western states and Canada in their camper, often following the back roads, usually without a plan or destination. Their basement was a treasure trove of fascinating minerals, sliced thunder eggs, prehistoric Eohippus teeth and polished agates. As card players, they enjoyed monthly group card parties, playing Pinochle, Bridge and 500, but Cribbage was the most fun for Mary, especially when skunking her husband, Cliff.
Frugal and creative, (skills learned during the Great Depression), Mary would wash used paper plates, and dry them, saving them for next time. On one occasion, however, a wet paper plate was placed in a hot oven for drying and was promptly forgotten. Frugality proved to be a rather charred affair.
Nonetheless, the Thanksgiving table was always set with Mary's Spode china "Wickerdale", a material indulgence she permitted herself later in life. The best times were spent after dinner, with servings of her cheddar cheese topped homemade Macintosh apple pie in front of each family member, talking about family history. She and Dad were the family's connection to the previous generations. Through her love of genealogy and history and her fascinating first hand stories of her parents and older brothers, and Civil War veteran and Libby Prison survivor, Grandfather Solomon Smith, the family learned about their ancestry. As she talked, she would proudly reach for an antique vase or plate from her display cupboard, saying this belonged to Mother-In-Law Florence or Sister-in-Law Rachel. Mary's favorite family heirloom was a ladies Pepperbox handgun, used for protection by the sister of a good friend of the family. As a school teacher during the Civil War, the sister had to cross both the North and the South's lines to get to school daily!
Spunky and quick to laugh, Mary loved public television, from the Forsyte Saga and Master Piece Theatre to Monty Python's "naughty bits of an ant" (a source of endless, silly laughter that left the family blue in the face and Cliff frowning). She also thoroughly enjoyed a good biography or a good mystery, and she frequently chipped away at her favorite witty Ted Shane crossword puzzle, asking others "what's a 10 letter word for xxxxxx?"
When a friend asked her at age 100, what was the most important accomplishment she had known in her life, she thought for a moment, and answered "women's rights"--not the automobile, nor the airplane, not the computer and not the moon walk. Thanks Mother for reminding us of what's important.
At the time of the death of her husband, Cliff, the two had been married for 81 years.
She is survived by her cherished children, Mary Elizabeth Landon Burns-Haley, of Renton, Washington, Frances Ella Landon Black, of Bellevue, Washington, and Thomas Edward Landon (Joyce), of Ocean Shores, Washington. As well she is survived by three generations of loving and devoted grandchildren, great-grandchil-dren and two great-great-grand-children.
We are forever grateful we had her for so many years, more years than we could have imagined-how lucky we are! We dearly miss her loving, kind heart, quick mind and sense of humor.

04 Jul 06 - 12:24 PM (#1775743)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

North Texas teens recover after being hit by lightning

By DEANNA BOYD, STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

From atop the West Spanish Peak in Colorado, Zach O'Neal, 15, and his 16-year-old friend Ernie Elbert celebrated their successful climb Sunday. They snapped photos of the spectacular view with O'Neal's cellphone. They marked their achievement by signing their names on a scroll kept atop the mountain and placing rocks in a cross formation. And they made a phone call to O'Neal's family, waving their hands wildly and dancing while the family watched through a telescope from the deck of their vacation condo miles away.

But within minutes, things took a terrible turn. A frantic Elbert called the O'Neals again, this time screaming for help. A bolt of lightning had hit Zach O'Neal on top of his head, sending electricity coursing through both teens and leaving the Aledo teenager motionless on the ground. They were alone and miles away from help.

In an hours-long ordeal Sunday afternoon, Elbert, injured but alert, used CPR to resuscitate his friend -- something he'd learned in his freshman health class. The two teens then prayed together before making the painful, slow journey down the mountain to the help that waited below. "God was definitely on the mountain with us," O'Neal said Monday, in a telephone interview from the Pueblo hospital where he and Elbert were being treated.

Storms came early

For more than a decade, O'Neal and his family have been going to Cuchara, a small resort town in south central Colorado. This summer, the Aledo High School sophomore was told he could take a friend. O'Neal asked Elbert, of Fort Worth, a junior at Paschal High School. The two were good friends. Their fathers play in a band together. Their families attend the same church.

Not long after arriving in Colorado, the teens decided they wanted to climb West Spanish Peak, a challenging but relatively safe hike to just over 13,600 feet. Their plan did not worry O'Neal's family. Two family friends in their 70s had taken the hike before. A forest ranger said the boys would be fine as long as they left the mountaintop around noon to avoid the frequent afternoon storms. But on Sunday, the storms came early.

After reaching the peak just before noon, O'Neal and Elbert saw a flash of lightning to the south, but it seemed far away. They ate the turkey sandwiches they'd brought along and began to pack up for the trek home. "All of a sudden my legs and waist kind of cringed and there was a big bang," Elbert said. "Everything felt really hot and I fell back."

Stunned, he took a few seconds to realize what happened. Immediately he looked for O'Neal, finding his friend a few feet away, lying on his back. His jeans had been shredded. His jacket had melted into his skin. His socks and his shoes, sturdy hiking boots he had borrowed from his grandfather, had been blown off. "He had blood on his eyebrow. He wasn't really breathing," Elbert said. " I went over and I did what I could remember of CPR. I still don't know if I did it right."

Gayle O'Neal, Zach's grandmother, was the one to answer Elbert's frantic phone call. At first, she said, she gently scolded the teen for playing such a joke. "I handed the phone to my son, Scott. Then I saw Scott's expression," Gayle O'Neal said. "Ernie had started crying." Scott O'Neal called 911, then jumped on a dirt bike and headed for the mountain. The rest of the family jumped in the car, comforting Elbert on the telephone as they rushed to the mountain's base to help direct rescue workers to the teens' location.

Limping down the mountain

Elbert first noticed his friend's lips trembling, then saw his chest rise and fall in shallow breaths. "I knelt next to him and started praying," he said. "After a while he started breathing heavily and then started moaning."

O'Neal awoke confused, asking repeatedly what had happened, then forgetting what he had been told and asking again. Although O'Neal said he doesn't remember those conversations, Elbert said it was at his insistence that they began to head down the mountain. "He said he was really cold and he was hurting really bad and so we needed to go down," Elbert said.

But before they did, O'Neal told Elbert that the boys should pray. "We knelt down and prayed that God would give us the strength, and he did," Elbert said.

With one of O'Neal's hiking boots destroyed, walking on the mountain's loose rock proved difficult. "He couldn't walk in them at all. I gave him one of my tennis shoes, which were also torn up but not quite as bad, and we went down the mountain," Elbert said. "We were limping down as fast as we could."

About an hour after the lightning strike, O'Neal's father reached the teens. With his help, they continued down. They met the first of several emergency responders about an hour later at the timberline. Both teens had wounds on their feet, burns and singed hair. In addition, O'Neal had a large wound near his eyebrow that required three stitches. After receiving medical aid, O'Neal was whisked away in a helicopter to St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center in Pueblo.

Elbert rode down the rest of the way, about two miles, on an all-terrain vehicle with David DeTray, assistant fire chief with the La Veta Protection District, before the O'Neals took him to St. Mary-Corwin. "He saved his buddy's life without a doubt," DeTray said in a telephone interview Monday. "I told him I thought he was an angel. I just think it's remarkable that kids that age have the compassion for each other, especially in this day and age."

Getting back to normal

DeTray said that in his 17 years of fire and emergency medical service, he had worked only three incidents in which people have been struck by lightning. In each of those, he said, the strike proved fatal. "That is the first lightning strike that I've seen anyone walk away from," DeTray said.

Since 1980, people have been struck by lightning 437 times in Colorado, according to the National Weather Service. Seventy-five of them have died. O'Neal was kept in intensive care Sunday night while Elbert was housed in the pediatrics unit as doctors ran tests to make sure neither had any internal damage.

The two teens traded barbs in messages passed by O'Neal's parents. "He made fun of me because he said I got the wussy end of the lightning. I made fun of him because he couldn't stay awake during the shock and he didn't duck in time," Elbert said, laughing. "He's definitely got his sense of humor back."

By Monday afternoon, the two teens were sharing a room in the pediatrics unit and playing Nintendo. "My husband said it was the very best and the very worst day ever," said Kelly O'Neal. "We feel that God's hand of protection was over them. They are just incredibly blessed and fortunate. We just can't thank Ernie enough."

13 Jul 06 - 03:32 PM (#1782835)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Bow Street Magistrates Court Set to Close
July 13, 2006

LONDON - One of London's most famous courts - where suspected terrorists, petty thieves and prostitutes mingle with the ghosts of Oscar Wilde, D.H. Lawrence and generations of killers - is closing Friday. With the end of Bow Street Magistrates Court goes a living monument in the development of British justice and a tangible link to the genesis of the capital's police service, descended from a posse created in 1749 by a former magistrate, the novelist Henry Fielding.

"We range from the very trivial offenses - begging, prostitution, and the sort of very low-level crime ... to the highly dangerous, and allegations of mass murder and all sorts of things," Chief Magistrate Timothy Workman said Thursday, sitting among packing boxes signifying his imminent departure to new quarters. That breadth of responsibility will remain the hallmark of the new City of Westminster Magistrates Court, which will absorb Bow Street's functions and staff. The old court and police station at Bow Street, opened in 1881 opposite the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, has been sold and may become a hotel.

Workman, 63, the 32nd magistrate to preside at Bow Street, says he hopes to take with him the dock from Court One. A padded bench enclosed by iron railings, the dock stands at the center of the wood-paneled room, facing the magistrate and his clerks. The two-seat press box, near the witness stand, has been known to accommodate nine squashed reporters. The public sits in a glass-enclosed pen at the back. The dock accommodated Wilde, the suffragettes Christabel and Emmline Pankhurst, the wife murderer Hawley Harvey Crippen, the Nazi propagandist William "Lord Haw Haw" Joyce and, more recently, the novelist and perjurer Lord Jeffrey Archer. Charles Dickens placed the Artful Dodger in the dock at Bow Street - in an earlier building - in "Oliver Twist."

The court was frequently in the news for handling extradition cases, including terrorist suspects wanted in the United States, Spain and elsewhere. The former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet, arrested in London on a Spanish warrant, was excused from appearing at Bow Street in 1999 because of illness. The court ordered his extradition but was overruled by the British government, and Pinochet went home.

Lawrence's novel "The Rainbow" was declared obscene by a Bow Street magistrate in 1915. In 1928, "The Well of Loneliness," by the lesbian writer Radclyffe Hall, suffered a similar fate.

The first Bow Street magistrate, Col. Sir Thomas De Veil, began dispensing justice from a house across the street from the present court in 1735. His successor, Fielding, commissioned half a dozen constables known as the Bow Street Runners in 1749. Fielding, the author of "Tom Jones," was dismayed by the squalor he found on Bow Street where, he said, "taverns and houses are kept by persons of the most abandoned character such as bawds and thieves, receivers of stolen goods."

Fielding was succeeded by his half brother Sir John Fielding, "the Blind Beak of Bow Street," who was reputed to recognize 3,000 criminals by their voices. He created the Bow Street Horse Patrol, arming his men with truncheons, cutlasses and pistols. The libertine Giacomo Casanova appeared in Sir John's court, accused of abusing a prostitute. Casanova was grateful to be discharged but confused his Fieldings, saying in his memoirs that it was an honor to appear before the great novelist.

The Bow Street Runners vanished in 1829 with the creation of the Metropolitan Police, who put their headquarters at Scotland Yard.

Bow Street's celebrities are vastly outnumbered by the forgotten losers and thugs and who are the bulk of the court's business. More than 95 percent of England's criminal cases originate in the magistrates' courts; only the most serious cases are referred up for trial by jury.

Reflecting wistfully on the end of a judicial era, the last chief magistrate at Bow Street said he believed its reputation was secure. "I would like to think that most people don't look upon it in awe, but do look upon it with great affection," Workman said. "There is a certain sense of security and history. Really, that goes on."

14 Jul 06 - 11:17 AM (#1783438)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Woman Asks 911 to Send 'Cutie Pie' Deputy
July 14, 2006

ALOHA, Ore. - A woman who called 911 to get "the cutest cop I've seen" sent back to her home got a date all right - a court date. The same sheriff's deputy arrested her on charges of misuse of the emergency dispatch system.

Washington County Sheriff's Sgt. David Thompson told KGW-TV of Portland it all started with a noise complaint called in last month by neighbors of Lorna Jeanne Dudash. The deputy sent to check on the complaint knocked on her door, then left. Thompson said Dudash then called 911, asking that the "cutie pie" deputy return. "He's the cutest cop I've seen in a long time. I just want to know his name," Dudash told the dispatcher. "Heck, it doesn't come very often a good man comes to your doorstep."

After listening to some more, followed by a bit of silence, the dispatcher asked again why Dudash needed the deputy to return. "Honey, I'm just going to be honest with you, OK? I just thought he was cute. I'm 45 years old and I'd just like to meet him again, but I don't know how to go about doing that without calling 911," she said.

"I know this is absolutely not in any way, shape or form an emergency, but if you would give the officer my phone number and ask him to come back, would you mind?" The deputy returned, verified that there was no emergency and arrested her for misusing the 911 system, an offense punishable by a fine of up to several thousand dollars and a year in jail.

Thompson said Thursday it was the first case he knew of in which someone called the emergency line for such a personal reason. "That's taking up valuable time from dispatchers who could be taking true emergency calls," he said.

27 Jul 06 - 03:51 PM (#1794811)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Common Pollutant Eyed in Cancer Study
By JOHN HEILPRIN (AP)
July 27, 2006

WASHINGTON - Growing scientific evidence suggests the most widespread industrial contaminant in drinking water - a solvent used in adhesives, paint and spot removers - can cause cancer in people. The National Academy of Sciences reported Thursday that a lot more is known about the cancer risks and other health hazards from exposure to trichloroethylene than there was five years ago when the Environmental Protection Agency took steps to regulate it more strictly.

TCE, which is also widely used to remove grease from metal parts in airplanes and to clean fuel lines at missile sites, is known to cause cancer in some laboratory animals. EPA was blocked from elevating its assessment of the chemical's risks in people by the Defense Department, Energy Department and NASA, all of which have sites polluted with it.

TCE is a colorless liquid that evaporates at room temperatures and has a somewhat sweet odor and taste. It is one of the most common pollutants found in the air, soil and water at U.S. military bases. Until the mid-1970s, it also was used as a surgical anesthetic.

TCE also has been found at about 60 percent of the nation's worst contaminated sites in the Superfund cleanup program, the academy said. Its 379-page report recommends that EPA revise its assessment of TCE's risks using "currently available data" - so no more time is wasted.

That's a step that could lead to stricter regulations. EPA currently requires limiting TCE to no more than 5 parts per billion parts of drinking water. A stricter regulation could, in turn, force the government to require more thorough cleanups at military and other sites.

A committee of academy experts said "a large body of epidemiologic data is available" on TCE showing the chemical is a possible cause of kidney cancer, reproductive and developmental damage, impaired neurological function and autoimmune disease. "The committee found that the evidence on carcinogenic risk and other health hazards from exposure to trichloroethylene has strengthened since 2001," the report said. "Hundreds of waste sites are contaminated with trichloroethylene, and it is well documented that individuals in many communities are exposed to the chemical, with associated health risks."

In 2001, EPA issued a draft document saying the risks of TCE causing cancer in humans were higher than previously thought. But that pronouncement was dropped after other federal agencies accused EPA of inflating the risks.

To mediate the issue, the Bush administration asked the academy to study the issue.

Duh.

03 Aug 06 - 10:55 AM (#1800557)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Patriotism just doesn't pay, I guess:

Man jailed for waving Old Glory in all his glory

Police frown on patriotic stroll along highway in just cowboy boots, hat

FORT PAYNE, Ala. - A man was arrested and charged with public lewdness for walking naked near a highway while waving an American flag.

The DeKalb County Sheriff's Department arrested Gerald Lynn Kelley, 52, the Fort Payne Times-Journal reported Tuesday.

Deputy Mike James said deputies were sent to Hammondville about 3 p.m. Sunday after receiving calls about two men walking nude along U.S. 11, just inside the town limits.

James said Kelley, who was allegedly drunk, was wearing only a cowboy hat and boots.

The other man, reportedly clad in the same attire and also carrying the American flag, could not be found. Police reports show that Kelley and the other man had been at a party that got out of hand.

Kelley posted a $1,500 bond and was released from DeKalb County Jail early Monday morning.

08 Aug 06 - 01:18 AM (#1804134)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

It breaks your heart to read about people who intentionally mistreat good animals like this. This is the kind of operation/operator that creates the kind of pit bulls that everyone fears.

300 pit bulls seized after fatal shooting in Liberty County
Associated Press

CLEVELAND, Texas - About 300 pit bulls were seized by authorities on Monday after the dogs were discovered in a Liberty County home suspected of being a base for a dogfighting ring. Liberty County officials discovered the dogs after investigating a fatal shooting during a robbery last week at a home in Cleveland, about 45 miles northeast of Houston.

Thomas Weigner, 27, the owner of the 23-acre property, bled to death after being shot in the leg, said Liberty County Sheriff Greg Arthur. Weigner's wife, father-in-law and three children were tied up during the incident, but were not hurt, Arthur said.

Authorities believe Weigner bred the dogs for fighting and shipped them across the country. "At this time, we don't believe it was a random home invasion," Arthur said. "We do believe there's a connection (to the dog ring)."

Authorities found no evidence that pit bulls fought on the property, but Houston Humane Society officers said there were 75 pups in chicken-type coops. The rest were chained to ground spikes, living in standing water and their own waste. Investigators estimate the dogs could be worth $500,000 to $1 million. The animals were being transported to a Humane Society wellness center in Houston, where they would be evaluated.

09 Aug 06 - 11:11 AM (#1805264)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

85-Year-Old Woman Is Left in Bank Vault
From Associated Press
August 09, 2006

ZURICH, Switzerland - An 85-year-old woman was found in the vault of a Swiss bank when she set off motion detectors hours after the bank was already closed, according to a statement released Wednesday. Employees at the Zuercher Kantonalbank apparently forgot about the woman.

The director of the bank's safe allowed the woman into the vault on Monday before closing it punctually at 4:30 p.m. local time - with the woman still deep in study of her documents, ZKB said. She remained so still that she initially failed to activate either the motion detector or the attached camera, the bank said in confirming a report that appeared in the Zurich-based daily "Tages-Anzeiger."

She was freed from the room four hours after the vault was closed. The bank gave the woman a bouquet of flowers for suffering from the ordeal and said it would decide on further nonfinancial compensation.

14 Aug 06 - 05:07 PM (#1809791)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1155AP_Legal_Rich__Poor.html

Luxury spending found in legal program

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The federal program that provides legal help to poor Americans turns away half of its applicants for lack of resources. But that hasn't stopped its executives from lavishing expensive meals, chauffeur-driven cars and foreign trips on themselves. Agency documents obtained by The Associated Press detail the luxuries that executives of the Legal Services Corp. have given themselves with federal money - from $14 "Death by Chocolate" desserts to $400 chauffeured rides to locations within cab distance of their offices.

The government-funded corporation also has a spacious headquarters in Washington's tony Georgetown district - with views of the Potomac River and a rent significantly higher than other tenants in the same building. And board members wrote themselves a policy that doubled the amount they could claim for meals compared with their staff.

The program's clients were upset when told of the spending. "I don't think that's right," said Richard Taylor as he walked from an austere, carpet-stained Legal Services office in Washington, his head covered with a towel to protect himself from the searing heat on recent summer day. "They're depriving some others that really need it and that's not good. ... It's supposed to be about the people."

Legal Services is a nonprofit corporation run with federal money that was created by Congress to provide legal help in civil matters for Americans who can't afford their own lawyers. It funds neighborhood clinics across the country where lawyers provide such help. Three congressional committees have questioned the program's spending as has the corporation's own internal watchdog. The chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee is threatening to withhold future money if the corporation doesn't trim its extravagance. "It's waste and abuse," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, citing the board's doubling of the meal money as an example. "At 200 percent, it seems to me what we would call in Iowa living high off the hog."

Legal Services officials defend their program, saying administrative expenses are kept separate from money distributed to the local, independently run legal outlets. Corporation spokesman Tom Polgar said LSC president Helaine Barnett and board chairman Frank Strickland "are aware they are using taxpayer funds and try to operate in a manner that is frugal and appropriate." Barnett is a former legal services attorney. Strickland is an Atlanta lawyer.

Barnett declined to be interviewed. Strickland did not return several phone messages seeking comment.

The scrutiny of Legal Services' spending comes as the corporation says it doesn't have enough resources to meet many poor clients' needs. Legal Services' own study found last October that for every client who receives service, one applicant is turned away for lack of resources. Since that study only counted those who contacted the program for assistance, the corporation said it likely underestimated the unmet need. Nine recent state studies demonstrated that less than 20 percent of the legal needs of low-income Americans were being met, LSC said.

Neighborhood Legal Services, the local program that serves the poor in the nation's capital, is a refuge where a federally funded lawyer can help a client stave off homelessness, fight an unscrupulous landlord, file for divorce or receive help with a host of other legal problems. The lobby of the inner city office looks like a doctor's waiting room that has used the same hardback chairs and magazine stand for decades. The carpet is worn and stained. Some offices are barely big enough for a desk.

Unlike Legal Services headquarters' well-stocked library, filled with criminal code books and Supreme Court opinions, the local program library has mostly bare walls. The conference table doubles as a staff lunchroom. Marie Parran of Washington, a legal services client, wants money supporting Legal Services headquarters to go instead to the field. "There's so many poor people in the Washington, D.C. area who need the help and can't afford a lawyer. I think that's money that should be going to the poor that live in D.C," she said.

Legal Services own internal watchdog, Inspector General Kirt West, has questioned whether the corporation's headquarters has more space than it needs and whether it pays too much for rent. The headquarters has multiple conference rooms and kitchen/pantry areas. Yet, the corporation's 11-member board of directors holds its meetings at hotels around the country, including Washington, at costs ranging from $20,145 to $55,125 - the latter in San Juan, P.R.

The decision not to use the headquarters conference room was explained in an October 2004 memo from board chairman Strickland. He said board members, who work outside the corporation, preferred the Melrose Hotel in the same upscale neighborhood as the headquarters. The board members sought "convenience to their rooms" and did not want to "feel confined" to headquarters for two entire days, he said. In addition, he said he was worried that the headquarters lacked privacy because "all meeting rooms at LSC have glass walls."

Bills from the Melrose, with all costs per person, included: a $59 three-entree buffet, an $18 breakfast featuring scrambled eggs with chives, a $17 breakfast including Belgian waffles, a $28 deli buffet, a $13 "high tea" service, a $12 "bagel break," a $12 "Crazy for Cookies" assortment and $14 "Death By Chocolate" desserts. Legal Services spokesman Polgar and Charles Jeffress, the LSC chief administrative officer, said the headquarters conference room can hold about 80 people, but that was too small to accommodate the 11-member board, the staff, the media and the public. They also contended that meal costs for board members may be just as expensive if catered at headquarters.

Beyond the hotel-prepared meals at their meetings, it made sense for board members to dine together. The board fashioned for itself an expense policy that permitted members to receive up to 200 percent of the allowable meal expense - as long as board members ate together. "The only time it was ever used was in conjunction with a board meeting," Jeffress said. The policy recently was rescinded after congressional investigators questioned it.

Barnett, Strickland and another board member have used limousine services. Strickland had a packed schedule last April 25, so the agency ordered a car and driver to take him and Barnett to meetings on Capitol Hill with lawmakers - about a 15-minute ride from headquarters. The car also took them to Arlington National Cemetery for a funeral and to a separate memorial service, also in Arlington - all short rides.

Even the Legal Services Corp. comptroller, David Richardson, questioned the expense. "With cab fares from our office to Capitol Hill costing $20 and the nominal cost of a cab to Arlington Cemetery and return, this $423.99 seems to be an extraordinary cost," he wrote in an internal memo. Polgar, who acknowledged making the decision to hire the car, said he was concerned that Strickland wouldn't make his schedule.

Barnett also used a hired car and driver to attend a funeral service for a former board member in Harrisburg, Pa., about a two-hour drive. The cost: $400. Polgar said Barnett, who does not have a car in Washington, wanted to work on the trip rather than rent a car and drive herself. The cost was competitive with train fare and airlines, he said.

Barnett and Strickland both attended the International Legal Aid Group Conference in Killarney, Ireland in June 2005. To get to Killarney from Shannon Airport, Barnett took a cab for $220 and returned to the airport by taxi for $189, a cost of $409 for a roundtrip of about 160 miles. Polgar said Barnett was supposed to have a free ride from Shannon, but she was stranded at the airport and had to take the cab. She couldn't find a ride for the return trip, he said.

The Legal Services headquarters in Georgetown was bought by a nonprofit group, Friends of the Legal Services Corp., that was formed to purchase a permanent headquarters. The board chairman, Thomas Smegal, said the $38 per-square-foot rent charged Legal Services was a good deal - even though other tenants were paying less than $30. Nonetheless, he said Legal Services was not getting ripped off.

Smegal said LSC's rent won't change for the 10-year lease, while other tenants' rents rise. The tenants paying low rent already had those leases when Friends took over the building, said Smegal, a San Francisco lawyer. When the building is paid off, he said, it will be turned over debt-free to the Legal Services Corp.

---

On the Net:

Legal Services Corporation: http://www.lsc.gov

14 Aug 06 - 10:49 PM (#1810032)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

5 kittens thrown in frying pan with pork chops, survive with burns
From Associated Press
August 14, 2006

BUFFALO, New York - Five kittens thrown into a frying pan with pork chops and hot oil were recovering at an animal shelter, and the man accused of scalding them was awaiting a court appearance.

The kittens, about six or seven weeks old, were injured Saturday when a visitor threw them into the cooking pan, authorities said.

The kittens suffered slightly burned skin and are expected to recover.

The resident of the apartment had left the kitchen, where he was cooking at the stove, when the kittens were scorched.

"The (visitor) started taking his clothes off, took two kittens, put them in the frying pan with the hot oil and pork chops and began swishing them around," said Charles Loubert Sr., an animal control officer. "Then he threw one kitten on the floor and he took the other one and wiped it off on the wall. Then he put three more kittens into the frying pan."

Police said they anticipated the suspect, whose identity was not released, would be charged Tuesday with animal cruelty.

15 Aug 06 - 11:05 PM (#1810806)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

The guy who put the little girl in the clothes tumble drier is now currently undergoing his trial.

16 Aug 06 - 09:26 PM (#1811760)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Let us know how it turns out. And link to the original story in the thread, if you would. I read back a ways and didn't see it. (I rediscovered some interesting old stories, though!)

SRS

19 Aug 06 - 01:32 AM (#1813582)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I heard on the news today that 200 of the pit bulls from Cleveland, Texas, are to be euthanized. So sad! A vet testified that dogs trained to be fighters can't usually be rehabilitated. Maybe they should hire Cesar Millan to evaluate the dogs individually instead of just throwing them away en masse. No, I don't want to see dangerous dogs become pets. But I would like to know that those they plan to kill are truly dangerous. The 100 left out of this number must be puppies that hadn't been staked out yet. What a cruel individual--one can't help think that justice was served when he was left to bleed to death after being shot. Maybe his family didn't struggle too hard to get themselves untied to come to his aid.

SRS

02 Sep 06 - 01:11 PM (#1825461)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

City plans to raze home where 90 cats were kept
STAR-TELEGRAM

GRAPEVINE -- The fur stops flying Tuesday. City officials have scheduled that day to demolish a house in the 1300 block of Airline Drive, where animal rescue officials had seized 85 cats by Friday morning.

Officials began the roundup Aug. 14 after the owners did not comply with orders to get rid of the scores of cats on the property. A neighbor alerted city officials to the problem. More than 90 cats had lived at the house, police said. Grapevine ordinances allow four animals per home.

No charges are expected to be filed against the owners because the cats had food and water, police said Friday. The couple has moved out, and the house is scheduled to be demolished Tuesday because it's been condemned for health reasons, authorities said.

Authorities will continue to set out cat traps over the holiday weekend. Captured animals are taken to North Texas shelters. The cats have had friends. Authorities have also seized 19 raccoons and five opossums at the house.

16 Sep 06 - 04:32 PM (#1836193)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Police: Strangled 'Intruder' a Hit Man
From Associated Press, September 16, 2006

PORTLAND, Ore. - When Susan Kuhnhausen returned home from work one day earlier this month, she encountered an intruder wielding a claw hammer. After a struggle, the 51-year-old nurse fended off her attacker by strangling him with her bare hands.

Neighbors praised the woman for her bravery, and investigators said they believed the dead man - Edward Dalton Haffey - was burglarizing Kuhnhausen's home. But after an investigation, police now say the intruder Kuhnhausen strangled was apparently a hit man hired by her estranged husband - Michael James Kuhnhausen Sr. - to kill her.

The 58-year-old husband was taken into custody Thursday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder. He was ordered held on $500,000 bail.

Haffey had worked as a custodian under Kuhnhausen at an adult video store, according an affidavit filed by the Multnomah County District Attorney's office.

Kuhnhausen and his wife were in the process of getting a divorce, and she told officers "her husband was distraught about the divorce and wanting to reconcile but that she was insisting on the divorce," the affidavit states.

A background check showed Haffey had served lengthy prison terms for conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and convictions for robbery and burglary.

Inside a backpack Haffey left at the scene was a day planner with "Call Mike, Get letter," scribbled on the week of Sept. 4, the affidavit said. Michael Kuhnhausen's cell phone number was jotted on the inside of a folder, it said.

An emergency room nurse who lives in a southeast Portland neighborhood, Susan Kuhnhausen arrived home on the evening of Sept. 6 to find Haffey coming at her with a claw hammer.

She was struck in the head and wrested the weapon away, but the struggle continued and Haffey bit the nurse, according to police. A large woman, she was eventually able to get the slight Haffey into a chokehold and police later found him dead in a hallway. An autopsy revealed the cause of death as strangulation.

Police say she acted in self-defense.

There was no sign of forced entry into the home, but according to the affidavit, Susan Kuhnhausen offered an explanation for the lack of evidence of a break-in: Her estranged husband had the security codes for the home's alarm system, and would have been able to disarm it.

Michael Kuhnhausen denies any involvement, the affidavit states.

Susan Kuhnhausen was out of town attending a nursing conference and did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

She left this message on her voicemail: "I'm not able to answer all the calls that I've received in the past few days. I'm being comforted by your concern and your support. I want you to know that our lives are all at risk for random acts, but more likely random acts of love will come your way than random acts of violence."

16 Sep 06 - 04:33 PM (#1836194)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I bet MOM MOAB would like this.

400

05 Oct 06 - 01:19 PM (#1851177)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

From Ananova Quirky News:

Ananova:

Man needed surgery after sex with hedgehog

A Serbian man needed emergency surgery after he had sex with a hedgehog on a witchdoctor's advice.

Zoran Nikolovic, 35, from Belgrade, says the witchdoctor told him it would cure his premature ejaculation.

But he ended up in an operating theatre after the hedgehog's needles left his penis severely lacerated.

A hospital spokesman said: "The animal was apparently unhurt and the patient came off much worse from the encounter. We have managed to repair the damage to his penis."

05 Oct 06 - 01:48 PM (#1851214)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I think not.

05 Oct 06 - 03:30 PM (#1851295)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

..therefore, I am not."

Hmmmmmmm...

06 Oct 06 - 01:41 AM (#1851726)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

What kind of weenie (pun intended) would even consider such a stunt? With such a sharp, stupid, and strong animal? How would he hold the animal in place and not come away with every part of him like a pincushion?

Pause a moment and mull over that mental image. . .

I feel pretty confident this article is there to test the level of gullibility of the readers. Or to check to see if they're paying attention.

SRS

06 Oct 06 - 06:58 AM (#1851852)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Emma B

Identity Parade?

A German plastic surgeon who was cheated out of payment by several women has given pictures of their enlarged breasts to police, in the hope the photos will help trace them. REUTERS/Ian Waldie

06 Oct 06 - 06:20 PM (#1852322)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

We usually post the articles, that's the nature of this thread. I found this version of the story at
Deutsche Welle

A number of women who ran off without paying after having breast enlargement operations at a Cologne clinic are being hunted by police who have issued posters of the errant breasts in a bid to catch the fraudsters.

German police have issued a set of "wanted" posters which may themselves become the victims of crime.

In the search for several women who have run out on a Cologne cosmetic surgeon without paying for their breast enlargements, local cops have issued photos of the breasts in question in an attempt to capture the perpetrators.

While hoping the pictures will lead to an arrest, there are fears that the pictures themselves could end up on the bedroom walls of local teenage boys. However, this remote possibility has not stopped the Cologne cops using all the resources at hand to catch the top-heavy fraudsters.

"The women registered under fake names," Michael König, the Cologne surgeon, told Bild newspaper. "After the operations, which lasted about an hour, they just ran away."

Post-op runner leaves surgeon out of pocket

According to König, one patient, "Tanja", went out for "fresh air" after an 8,000-euro ($10,000) boob job. "She never came back and never paid," König said. He now plans to demand payment in advance.

Bild published a five-column picture of Tanja's naked breasts. "It's probably the most unusual 'wanted' poster police ever had," the newspaper wrote.

The fraudsters are still at large.

13 Oct 06 - 06:18 PM (#1858240)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I've talked to my kids about this several times. If someone tries to abduct you from a parking lot, put up a fight right there. Never let them get you under their control and take you away, hoping they won't hurt you like they say they won't. They're sick and they're lying. Same goes for this school stuff-don't think like a victim, don't let that individual have control. I see I'm not the only one who has had those those thoughts. More power to them. Burleson is the school district directly south of where my son goes to school.

link
Posted on Fri, Oct. 13, 2006

Students told to fight back if gunman attacks

The Associated Press

BURLESON - Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they got - books, pencils, legs and arms.

"Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success," said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools.

That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed.

But school officials in Burleson said they are drawing on the lessons learned from a string of disasters such as Columbine in 1999 and the Amish schoolhouse attack in Pennsylvania last week.

The school system in this working-class suburb of about 26,000 is believed to be the first in the nation to train all its teachers and students to fight back, Browne said.

At Burleson - which has 10 schools and about 8,500 students - the training covers various emergencies, such as tornadoes, fires and situations where first aid is required. Among the lessons: Use a belt as a sling for broken bones, and shoelaces make good tourniquets.

Students are also instructed not to comply with a gunman's orders, and to take him down.

Browne recommends students and teachers "react immediately to the sight of a gun by picking up anything and everything and throwing it at the head and body of the attacker and making as much noise as possible. Go toward him as fast as we can and bring them down."

Response Options trains students and teachers to "lock onto the attacker's limbs and use their body weight," Browne said. Everyday classroom objects, such as paperbacks and pencils, can become weapons.

"We show them they can win," he said. "The fact that someone walks into a classroom with a gun does not make them a god. Five or six seventh-grade kids and a 95-pound art teacher can basically challenge, bring down and immobilize a 200-pound man with a gun."

The fight-back training parallels the change in thinking that has occurred since Sept. 11, when United Flight 93 made it clear that the usual advice during a hijacking _ Don't try to be a hero, and no one will get hurt _ no longer holds. Flight attendants and passengers are now encouraged to rush the cockpit.

Similarly, women and youngsters are often told by safety experts to kick, scream and claw they way out during a rape attempt or a child-snatching.

In 1998 in Oregon, a 17-year-old high school wrestling star with a bullet in his chest stopped a rampage by tackling a teenager who had opened fire in the cafeteria. The gunman killed two students, as well as his parents, and 22 other were wounded.

Hilda Quiroz of the National School Safety Center, a nonprofit advocacy group in California, said she knows of no other school system in the country that is offering fight-back training, and found the strategy at Burleson troubling.

"If kids are saved, then this is the most wonderful thing in the world. If kids are killed, people are going to wonder who's to blame," she said. "How much common sense will a student have in a time of panic?"

Terry Grisham, spokesman for the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department, said he, too, had concerns, though he had not seen details of the program.

"You're telling kids to do what a tactical officer is trained to do, and they have a lot of guns and ballistic shields," he said. "If my school was teaching that, I'd be upset, frankly."

Some students said they appreciate the training.

"It's harder to hit a moving target than a target that is standing still," said 14-year-old Jessica Justice, who received the training over the summer during freshman orientation at Burleson High.

William Lassiter, manager of the North Carolina-based Center for Prevention of School Violence, said past attacks indicate that fighting back, at least by teachers and staff, has its merits.

"At Columbine, teachers told students to get down and get on the floors, and gunmen went around and shot people on the floors," Lassiter said. "I know this sounds chaotic and I know it doesn't sound like a great solution, but it's better than leaving them there to get shot."

Lassiter questioned, however, whether students should be included in the fight-back training: "That's going to scare the you-know-what out of them."

Most of the freshman class at Burleson's high school underwent instruction during orientation, and eventually all Burleson students will receive some training, even the elementary school children.

"We want them to know if Miss Valley says to run out of the room screaming, that is exactly what they need to do," said Jeanie Gilbert, district director of emergency management. She said students and teachers should have "a fighting chance in every situation."

"It's terribly sad that when I get up in the morning that I have to wonder what may happen today either in our area or in the nation," Gilbert said. "Something that happens in Pennsylvania has that ripple effect across the country."

Burleson High Principal Paul Cash said he has received no complaints from parents about the training. Stacy Vaughn, the president of the Parent-Teacher Organization at Norwood Elementary in Burleson, supports the program.

"I feel like our kids should be armed with the information that these types of possibilities exist," Vaughn said.

14 Oct 06 - 09:29 AM (#1858624)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

I suppose that could be called an IdenTITy Parade...

15 Oct 06 - 09:31 PM (#1859872)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Woman gives birth to grandchild

Countries have different attitudes to surrogacy

BBC

A Japanese woman in her 50s gave birth to her own grandchild last year, using an egg from her daughter and sperm from her son-in-law, a doctor has revealed.
It was the first time a woman has acted as a surrogate mother for her daughter in Japan, local media reported.

The case is set to stir debate in Japan where surrogate births are opposed by the government and a key medical group.

Japan's justice ministry also views the woman who gives birth as a child's mother - not the biological mother.

This legal position has led a Japanese celebrity couple to go to the courts to try to win the right to register twins born to a surrogate mother as their own children. Their case is continuing.

Yahiro Netsu, the head of the Suwa maternity clinic in Nagano, told a news conference that the woman gave birth last year, Reuters reported.

She had agreed to in vitro fertilisation and to act as a surrogate mother because her daughter had had her uterus removed due to cancer and was therefore unable to bear children.

Both the mother and child were reported to be in good health.

Dr Netsu said the woman had first registered the baby as her own and then the child was adopted by her daughter and son-in-law.

17 Oct 06 - 03:43 PM (#1861486)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Drunk Norwegian breaks into prison
Associated Press

OSLO, Norway - In a different kind of jail break, a very drunk young man surprised prison guards by breaking into their northern Norway jail. "You might say we were a bit perturbed to find this person on our turf," prison warden Geir Broen said on the state radio network NRK on Monday.

Broen said the district prison in the Arctic town of Bodoe is rebuilding its outer fence, and that the man broke through a section of temporary fencing.

The weak fence is of no help to real prisoners seeking a way out, since they are confined within the walls of the jail compound.

The Norwegian, identified only as being in his 20s, was apparently was trying to find his way home after a Friday night party.

"I don't think this guy knew where he was, and he was pretty well under the influence," Broen said on the radio.

When police came to pick up the man to take him home, he told them he thought he was in Moerkved, a neighborhood about 6 miles east of the prison.

"I guess you could say this was notable day in the history of the Bodoe Jail," Broen said. "But I hope we don't have many similar incidents in the future."

18 Oct 06 - 10:40 AM (#1862195)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

A Clyo landlord was accused of trespassing when she was found sleeping at a property she rents.

Deputies responded to a call at 5:47 a.m. Oct. 10 in which Jennifer Lynn Ingram of 110 Lehigh Circle was found sleeping at 120 Lehigh Circle, a property she rents. The renter said she returned home from work to find Ingram asleep in the master bedroom.

Police said Ingram smelled of alcohol when she was escorted from the house.

Officers offered a phone to Ingram so she could call for someone to pick her up, but she snatched the phone and screamed profanities, according to the police report.

When officers tried to arrest Ingram, she began struggling and fighting. An officer said Ingram broke a radio clip on his belt. When placed in a police car, Ingram struck her head against the window and kicked her feet.

At Effingham County Jail, jailers used a stun gun on Ingram.

Ingram was charged with interference with government property, disorderly conduct and obstruction.

22 Oct 06 - 01:04 AM (#1865442)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Toilet ice rips hole in couple's roof
Associated Press

CHINO, Calif. - A chunk of blue ice, apparently from the holding tank of an aircraft toilet, ripped a hole in an elderly couple's roof and destroyed a bed. William McElroy was watching a movie with his wife Evelyn and would normally have been in the bed when the block of ice crashed into the house Wednesday night.

"It was a huge crash. It shook the whole building but we thought it was a car," McElroy said. The couple went outside to investigate but found nothing, so they returned to finish watching the movie.

They didn't discover the chunk of ice on the bed and the 2-foot-wide hole in the ceiling until Thursday morning.

"If I'd been looking at TV (in his bedroom) I'd have had it," he said.

"I think we had somebody extra looking over us," Evelyn McElroy said from her wheelchair Thursday afternoon.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said Thursday if the offending chunk of ice is from an airplane, then it is likely the cause of a leak in a holding tank of the aircraft's bathroom.

Blue ice occurs when waste leaks from a plane's bathroom onto the outside of the plane and freezes at high altitudes. The liquid begins to thaw as the plane descends, Gregor said.

22 Oct 06 - 05:06 AM (#1865496)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

OK - Don't eat blue ice then...

BTW, the other day a bolt fell from a Singapore Airlines plane on takeoff into a house in Aus - it smashed a couple of roof tiles, and cracked the ceiling.

23 Oct 06 - 05:45 PM (#1866747)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Some days you read about the sick people in the world and you want to shut the blinds and curl up with a good book. Probably NOT a murder mystery. . . what kind of sick game was this young woman playing, why ISN'T she under arrest, all things considered, and how did she convince this guy of the veracity of her made-up story? I wonder she really had been up to? Or what she though this guy might do to her? All speculation leads down dark alleys.

Sailor Kills Marine After Lie About Rape
From Associated Press
October 23, 2006

NORFOLK, Va. - A sailor pleaded guilty Monday to abducting and killing a Marine corporal he thought had been involved in a gang rape. The rape turned out to be a lie, but the truth surfaced too late.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Cooper Jackson, 23, pleaded guilty Monday to premeditated murder, kidnapping, impersonating a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent and obstruction of justice in connection with the death of Cpl. Justin L. Huff, 23. In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to spare him a possible death sentence.

Federal agents had testified at his Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury investigation, that Jackson had been fooled into falling in love with a woman who called herself Samantha and made up a story about being raped by servicemen.

"Samantha" turned out to be Ashley Elrod, a 22-year-old hotel clerk on North Carolina's Outer Banks, who testified that she lied about being raped. She said she "might have" told Jackson that one of the Marines was named Huff or Huffman, and she said Jackson called her after Huff was killed. Elrod has not been charged.

During his court-martial, Jackson told the Navy judge how he posed as an NCIS agent and took Huff to North Carolina to get information about the purported rape. He said he then slit Huff's throat and buried the body to avoid being caught. "I'd broken several laws and I had a missing Marine with me," Jackson said at his hearing Monday. "Quite frankly, I was scared of the consequences of what would happen, of being caught, more so than I was of the consequences of taking his life."

If the judge accepts the plea, Jackson could be sentenced to life in prison with or without the possibility of parole, said his lawyer, Don Marcari. The sentencing phase was to begin Tuesday.

Huff, 23, of Indianapolis, was reported missing Jan. 2 after he didn't show up for class at the Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center in Virginia Beach, where Jackson also was a student. Agents said Jackson, of Boones Mill, confessed when they questioned him Jan. 12. The next day, he led agents to Huff's body in a wooded area in Currituck County, N.C., just south of the Virginia-North Carolina border.

23 Oct 06 - 07:55 PM (#1866823)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

I have a friend whose ex-wife attempted to murder him and his kids - the boy still bears the knife scars on his back - she regularly hooks up with new guys who she manages to convince that it happened the other way round - so he regularly gets visits from new guys trying to 'sort him out'...

23 Oct 06 - 08:28 PM (#1866838)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

If it 's not too late perhaps he can let a contract with young Jackson.

A

24 Oct 06 - 08:42 AM (#1867131)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Well we can't avoid politics in the newspapers I suppose.

The Libertarian party candidate for governer in Alabama (that's in the US, for those who need a hint) began her campaign with a slogan:

Vote Nall Y'All

When a weekly newsrag ran a column about her, with comment and picture showing "some cleavage," the columnist did apologize:

"Nall, who designed the campaign art work, said the idea came to her after a weekly newspaper columnist wrote about her campaign one week and then wrote an apology the next week for the paper accompanying his column with a picture of Nall that showed lots of cleavage.

"Nall said she was offended at first that her neckline was being discussed in the newspaper, but then realized that when a campaign budget runs lower than a neckline, "you have to be outrageous to get attention."

"Now her campaign is offering everything from T-shirts to marijuana stash boxes adorned with a photo of her in a dress with a plunging neckline and the words: "More of these boobs."

"Below that are pictures of other candidates for governor — including Republican incumbent Bob Riley and Democratic Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley — along with the words: "And less of these boobs."

The picture she's using on the campaign stuff appears to be This One.

Story at MSNBC

"No matter how far back Nall finishes on Nov. 7, that won't be the last that voters will see of her. She's already making plans to run against Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in Alabama's 3rd Congressional District in 2008.

""I enjoy this," she said."

John

24 Oct 06 - 10:48 AM (#1867264)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

That's the spirit! I'd have never discovered that article on my own.

30 Oct 06 - 12:12 AM (#1871885)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I think they should recognize this boy's interest in a career direction and give him a break. And driving lessons, when he's old enough.

Boy Reportedly Takes Stolen Bus on Route
October 29, 2006

FERN PARK, Fla. - A 15-year-old boy stole a bus, drove it along a public transit route, picked up passengers and collected fares, authorities said Sunday. Ritchie Calvin Davis was already on probation for taking a tour bus and driving passengers around, authorities said.

In Saturday's incident, he took the bus from the Central Florida Fairgrounds in Orlando, where it was parked awaiting sale at an auction, a Seminole County sheriff's report said. The bus belongs to the Central Florida Transportation Agency, which runs LYNX public transit services in the Orlando area.

"I drove that bus better than most of the LYNX drivers could," the teen, who is too young to drive legally, told a deputy after he was stopped and arrested. "There isn't a scratch on it. I know how to start it, drive it, lower it, raise it."

Passengers and deputies noted Davis drove the bus at normal speeds and made all the appropriate stops on the route. One passenger, suspicious of the youthful looks of the driver, called 911.

The bus had two passengers when deputies stopped it in Fern Park, about 12 miles north of the fairgrounds. Authorities believe Davis picked up a total of three passengers and collected only a few dollars.

He was charged with grand theft auto and driving without a license. A court hearing was scheduled Tuesday to determine whether he will be charged as an adult.

A message left at the home of a man identified as a Davis relative was not immediately returned Sunday.

30 Oct 06 - 02:57 PM (#1872401)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I found that this story had been edited--and actually, they took out the best part! How often does one actually get to GO TO THE TWILIGHT ZONE? I had a hint of that tune in my head as a read this to my amused son at breakfast this morning:

Passengers and deputies noted that Davis drove the bus at normal speeds and made all the appropriate stops. He had the route down to a T.

But Jeffrey Johnson of Orlando, one of his passengers, noticed that things were not quite right. Riding close to the front of the bus, he noticed that the driver looked too young and was not in uniform.

Johnson, who was taking the bus to his favorite barber shop, looked for the bus security camera. His heart sank when he saw only twisted wires hanging where the camera was supposed to be.

Then he noticed that the ads in the bus were outdated. And that it was filthy.

"That's when I thought 'Oh, my God,'" Johnson said. "It was extremely surreal."

Johnson dialed 911.

The bus had one passenger besides Johnson when deputies stopped it in Fern Park, about 12 miles north of the fairgrounds. Authorities believe that Davis picked up a total of three passengers and collected only a few dollars.

30 Oct 06 - 03:12 PM (#1872410)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Raises an interesting question -- how many of the old Rod Serling plots would have been completely ruined by the presence of cell phones?

A

02 Nov 06 - 11:48 PM (#1875149)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

So somebody has a problem with PayPal?

PayPal got bombed on Halloween?

Which oneaya dunit?

John

03 Nov 06 - 10:38 AM (#1875393)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Not me! I find PayPal fairly civilized these days. eBay dips into my account regularly and quietly and gets richer and richer, but as long as they let me keep a little of it, I'm happy.

03 Nov 06 - 10:48 AM (#1875395)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Our count is way short. Maybe this will fix it.

SRS

03 Nov 06 - 10:49 AM (#1875396)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Nope.

10 Nov 06 - 12:00 AM (#1880907)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Deer's Head Gets Stuck in Fake Pumpkin
By JAMES PRICHARD, Associated Press
November 09, 2006

CASCADE TOWNSHIP, Mich. - A plastic jack-o'-lantern meant for collecting Halloween candy is threatening the life of a small, immature deer that calls a gated community home. The fake pumpkin has been stuck on the animal's snout for at least several days. It hangs there like an orange-and-black feed bag from its thin handle, which appears to be snagged on the young buck's ears or horn buds.

Ironically, the container that resembles a feed bag and is intended to hold children's treats is instead keeping the animal from eating. It also looks as if the plastic pumpkin prevents the deer from drinking. Animal experts who went Thursday to the neighborhood in Kent County's Cascade Township to assess the situation not only saw the deer but got to within 35 to 40 yards of him, said Bert Vescolani, director of the John Ball Zoo in nearby Grand Rapids.

Zoo personnel, as well as other animal experts, planned to return to the site Friday. If they see the deer, they hope to safely shoot a tranquilizer dart into him, remove the plastic jack-o'-lantern after the buck becomes unconscious, and then take the animal somewhere to recover until he can be released back into the wild.

Although Vescolani and the others got a good look at the buck, which has been spotted in a herd of several deer, they could not get close enough to make a good assessment of his physical condition. Still, the bucket was not impairing the animal's vision, and the deer looked strong, he said. "He seems to be doing pretty well," Vescolani said. "I'm always amazed at how wildlife makes it sometimes, even under the hardest conditions."

Anesthetizing the buck and taking him away carries some degree of risk, Vescolani said, but the creature surely will die of starvation or dehydration unless the plastic pumpkin is removed from his head. The bucket also would make it much easier for hunters to see the animal when the state's deer firearm season begins Wednesday.

Deb Larson, who lives in the wooded, semi-rural gated neighborhood that the buck frequents, said she appreciates the effort to save the animal being made by the zoo, the Humane Society of Kent County and the Grand Rapids-based Wildlife Rehab Center Ltd., a nonprofit group that helps to rehabilitate abandoned and injured wildlife.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has provided them with guidance and other assistance. "I'm very thankful that they are going to try and get him," Larson said.

Vescolani said he and the others will do their best to save the deer. "There are a lot of folks trying to do the right thing, and hopefully we'll get the right results that'll be the best for the animal," he said. "That's what we all want."

10 Nov 06 - 12:02 AM (#1880908)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Printer friendly says that last post was number 425.

10 Nov 06 - 09:52 PM (#1882808)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

Now you know how Rudolph got stuck woth his red nose....

Perhaps starting part 2 of this thread may fix teh problem that means that this thread title is duplicated in the thread list?

10 Nov 06 - 10:20 PM (#1882816)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

The only one that seems to have a second (mirror) part and wrong numbers is MOAB. We've tried tricks on both of these threads to try to get them to open and enumerate the posts correctly. No luck so far.

SRS

13 Nov 06 - 01:33 AM (#1884420)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Am I the only one here who thinks that anyone fooling around a buck in the fall rutting season has to show up in his autopsy a few marbles short? Penned or not, this animal would be dangerous.

Deer Attacks, Kills His Owner in N.Y.
From Associated Press
November 12, 2006

ELLENBURG, N.Y. - A deer being kept in a pen attacked and killed his owner Sunday, state police said. The buck that killed Ronald Donah, 43, was among about a half dozen deer penned up on his property in Ellenburg, about 180 miles north of Albany, said state Trooper Joseph House.

Details of Donah's injuries and what may have prompted the attack were not available Sunday. Maureen Wren, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said Donah had a license to keep the white tail deer on his property but did not know why he was doing so.

She said deer attacks, at least in the wild, are extremely rare. Donah was taken to CVPH Medical Center in Plattsburgh, where he died. An autopsy was scheduled for Monday.

13 Nov 06 - 05:09 AM (#1884484)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

An article in the November-December issue of American Scientist caught my eye for a couple of "popuot" lines:

Mirror Mirror: Evidence that psychology, like biology, is conserved between human and nonhuman species augurs a shake-up for science and society, G. A. Bradshaw, Robert M. Sapolsky

The article starts off with:

Back in 1974, an unusual report from Jane Goodall at the Gombe Stream Wildlife Research Centre in Tanzania caught the public eye. Chimpanzees had committed infanticide and were engaging in war. Not only were they acting in unanticipated ways, chimpanzees were acting like humans. Goodall's discovery bridged the divide between Homo sapiens and other species.

The article continues with the argument that there is little in the way of a real dividing line separating animals from humans. There are differences in "quality" and "quantity," but little difference in "kind," for emotions and behaviour as well as for physical characteristics. This requires an adjustment in how animal (and human) behaviour is studied.

The article is accessible for reading, but the "interesting" comments were more like side notes:

We now recognize that species other than humans engage in an array of behaviors that bring variety and depth to life: dolphins teach cultural customs to their young, octopi demonstrate diverse personalities, and rats show a sense of humor.

I've heard reports of all that, but:

… This is one of the reasons that chimpanzee homicide, laughing mice and empathetic sheep are considered newsworthy: …

I once knew an old farmer whose eyes got sort of misty when he spoke of a nanny goat that had died a few years before, but I don't know if she reciprocated the tenderness. A separate book review (not web accessible) asserted that elephants bury their dead, defend the gravesite, and return on their annual migrations to "grieve" at the burial site. The same book asserts that elephants buried one young man whom they had "killed out of necessity" and defended his grave from those who attempted to collect the body as if he was one of their own …

But I think the "empathetic sheep" demands comment, and I'm not sure I can provide an appropriate one, as I can't recall a specific reference to this characteristic. Perhaps, if it's true that the some of our members¹ are the authorities here, we should invite some opinions … .

Like, did anyone ever feel she was just using them, or did she really care? Or maybe she just felt sorry for … ?

John

¹Ducking, weaving, bobbing, and running as fast as possible

13 Nov 06 - 01:04 PM (#1884810)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Okay, okay, I don't read this Britney FedEx stuff as a rule, but this one caught my eye in the Google News:

Listen up, Britney: Forget K-Fed, and stay off talk show couches
THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION
Monday, November 13, 2006 link

Britney Spears may have shed her lesser half, but she need not shed any tears. Now free of dancer/rapper (tee hee)/multiple babydaddy hubby Kevin Federline, it's time for the former Mouse-keteer and mom to get her life and career back on track, and we're gonna tell her how.

Here's our advice for the post-K-Fed Britney:

Don't adopt a baby from a Third World country - We know it's trendy, and her MTV Video Music Awards mentor and liplock partner Madonna has done it, but these are children, not Hummers or imported Japanese sneakers or whatever the latest celebrity "must-have" item is.

Not to mention Britney hasn't proven particularly adroit with the mommying skills - a tip, car seats start at $49.98 at Babies R Us - but it'll also save her the embarrassment of asking for a baby from a foreign country, "Y'know, like New Mexico."

Keep your shoes (or at least socks) on when flying. We hate to rehash an incident from two years ago when Britney took off her shoes on a plane and caused olfactory distress among her fellow first-class passengers, but we have to, for her benefit. Smelly feet don't really jibe with that glam, pop star image, unless you look like Kid Rock or Axl Rose.

Recent appearances and a return to model-esque physique may render this advice moot, but just to be clear: lose the trailer trashy white tank tops.

Take a page out of the Cee-Lo/Gnarls Barkley playbook and record an off-the-wall collaboration with a left-field producer, maybe George Clinton or Fatboy Slim. Bring in another down-on-their-luck pop star (Janet Jackson sure seems to need some love these days) and you've got the comeback story of next year.

Write an autobiography. Make no mistake, the public has an insatiable urge to hear every detail about what a doof Federline was. So capitalize on it by dishing on every microbe of dirt, greasy hair and lughead machismo and relish the fact you don't have to play nice for the gossip rags any more.

Just be sure to hire a good editor. We're anticipating there might be a few typos and run-on sentences that have to be weeded out before it goes to print.

Leverage the above book and resurgent singing career into a side gig as a girl power-esque advice guru for young girls with Bad Boy Syndrome. Before too long, Oprah comes calling with an offer for a recurring spot to give thoughtful words to wayward teens every quarter or so.

Stay away from Scientologists and Kabbalists. After her public relations nightmare of the past few years, the last thing Britney needs to do is have a Tom Cruise couch dance episode on the "Megan Mullally Show" or something.

Get back out there. In that spirit, we even cooked up some potential suitors:

1. Flavor Flav - Purely for comic relief (like Michael Jackson and Bubbles back in the day) and possible reality show deals.

2. Ryan Phillippe - Guy's so down on his luck after getting the boot from Reese Witherspoon, he'll kiss your feet AND the ground you walk on. Just remember the above item about the socks.

3. Nick Lachey - This would be a hard sell for Lachey, who's probably not itching for another blonde pop singer prone to extended bouts of ditziness. But he's a solid guy who can sing (collaboration potential) and might just bite on the chance to stick it to ex-wife Jessica Simpson by moving up the pop cultural food chain.

4. Lance Bass - Just seeing if you're still paying attention.

16 Nov 06 - 09:18 PM (#1886594)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Does talk about Britney make anyone else think of a phantasy world? ... as in "la la land."

Some may or may not have heard of the website Second Life, where Dell has created a "Dell Island." In Second Life, gamesters create their virtual world, spend their virtual money, and reap virtual fortunes. Apparently, one can virtually "spec" a virtual Dell PC there and it is virtually delivered to ones virtual home if paid for with the virtual money in use; but there is also the option to pay in $US and have the virtual computer (virtually?) delivered to ones real home.

The Dell Island also contains a virtual Dell factory, and a virtual computer museum where one can virtually view the virtual bathroom where Michael Dell claims he virtually had to hide his computer parts from his parents while building his first machines.

The new "island" was announced in a virtual press conference on Second Life, of course. Dell declines to say how much they paid for the rights to "build their island," but it's rumored to have been virtually a fortune.

It all sounds about as real as most stuff about Britney.

Second news flash:

I think I've heard of this one before, but they're claiming it's something new.

The gift (secret Santa?) for the 'catter who has everything.

John

16 Nov 06 - 11:59 PM (#1886738)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I think it was the summary of her misadventures that caught my eye. It's kind of sad, the public life she leads. Hardly gives her an opportunity to grow up, with every mistake being front-page fodder.

SRS

17 Nov 06 - 01:38 AM (#1886764)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

SRS -

I pay so little attention to the celebrity news that it's really hard to have much of an opinion; but there have been a few glimpses recently that suggest she's perhaps smarter than she acts. Perhaps a lot of the bizarre stuff is just the script her manager gives her - although she does seem to have a talent for following it.

Or maybe the stuff when she looks a little more sane is the script.

John

17 Nov 06 - 10:02 AM (#1886900)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I read a piece in the business pages the other day that talked about the divorce laws in California being the reason for some of the timing and odd behavior of folks. Why "fraud" is reasonable grounds after all, when looking at the other options. You don't have to prove fraud, you do have to prove total insanity.

SRS

17 Nov 06 - 01:36 PM (#1887060)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

From the local newsrag, and probably not destined to appear in wider circles, yesterday it was reported that apparently two men went to another man's home where an argument, believed to be something about a pair of audio speakers, erupted.

One of the two "assailants" fired several shots "in the direction of the third man." The shooter then stuffed the gun into his belt, where it discharged, "striking him in one testical and then penetrating the calf of his leg."

In today's news, it was reported that the injured man has been arrested and will be charged, probably with at least three felonies. His "partner" likely will also face charges.

John

17 Nov 06 - 05:44 PM (#1887172)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,danspin

Only in the USA.... coincidentally I stumbled upon your thread - what a fortunate stumble....

Living in the UK (London), I must say that you guys are so lucky to live in the US of A. We're dying over here for those trigger-happy gun stories. Long Live the NRA (wanna open a UK branch?)

17 Nov 06 - 07:40 PM (#1887252)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I think you mistake the nature of this thread. This is where we post interesting, oddball, topical articles for others to read if they're curious because this thread is back on the page. The NRA gets no endorsement here. But then, if you're dying for these stories, maybe you're looking for reasons to NOT have the NRA in the UK?

Today's contribution, and you'd think the woman flight attendent would know better:

Breast-Feeding Case Leads to Punishment
From Associated Press
November 17, 2006

BURLINGTON, Vt. - A commuter airline has disciplined a flight attendant who ordered a passenger off a plane for refusing to cover herself with a blanket while breast-feeding her toddler, the airline said Friday. Freedom Airlines spokesman Paul Skellon did not specify the discipline in an e-mail announcing the action against the employee who had Emily Gillette, of Santa Fe, N.M., removed from the plane Oct. 13 at Burlington International Airport.

Gillette, 27, said she was breast-feeding her 22-month-old daughter in a window seat in the next-to-last row, with no part of her breast showing and her husband between her and the aisle. The flight attendant tried to hand her a blanket and told her to cover up, Gillette said. She declined, telling the flight attendant she had a legal right to nurse her daughter. Breast-feeding is protected under state law.

The case received broad news coverage this week, days after Gillette filed a complaint with the Vermont Human Rights Commission. On Wednesday, about 30 parents and their children protested the airline's treatment of Gillette by staging a "nurse-in" at the Burlington airport.

Skellon said that after the flight attendant ordered Gillette off the plane, the captain of the Delta Air Lines flight being operated by Freedom apologized and asked her family to reboard, but they refused. Gillette, however, said the airline never offered her a chance to get back on board the New York-bound plane. "I would have jumped at the opportunity," she said.

Delta paid for a hotel room and rebooked the family on a different airline the next day.

18 Nov 06 - 07:29 PM (#1887979)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

The deer mentioned above seems to have shed his unusual head ornament.

18 Nov 06 - 07:48 PM (#1887987)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

I think you're projecting again, Robin...

A

18 Nov 06 - 09:24 PM (#1888047)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I heard that today, on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me.

20 Nov 06 - 02:04 AM (#1888747)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

This hasn't appeared in my local newsrag, but will probably make page 17F in a week or so.

MSNBC reports that an "approval" has been obtained for increased release of records from the "Holocaust Archive" currently held at BAD AROLSEN, Germany. This archive appears to consist largely of detailed records maintained by Germany during the WWII purges, and have been administered for the past 50 years mainly/exclusively by the International Red Cross. The Red Cross has been extremely restrictive about allowing access to the archives, and/or reporting any of the contents, largely (they claim) due to German restrictions on privacy of individuals.

This is not a "done deal" as all of the 11 nations with "ownership" of the archive must agree to the release. If and when all 11 agree, each of the 11 member nations is to be given a digital copy of the records, which they may or may not then make available to their own people. It is probable that even if/when the archive is approved for distribution, access will be limited to "accredited scholars" and others with verifiable need to know what's there.

Story at Archive Release [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15791203/]

John

20 Nov 06 - 09:15 AM (#1888898)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This has skated past the edge of my radar--I've noticed subject headings on articles about more information from new archives to be released or already released. I'll pay more attention to see if this is the one they're speaking of.

SRS

24 Nov 06 - 04:11 AM (#1892295)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

At MSNBC yesterday, so it'll be in my newspaper day after tomorrow (if at all). Check your local news:

EPA to regulate nanosilver.

Nanosilver refers to silver particles less than 10^-9 meters in diameter. Particles of this size are being used in a number of products where it is claimed that the silver "kills bacteria."

A specific example cited as a nanosilver product was "Odor Eater" shoe sole inserts, but there are a number of such products now being marketed.

The environmental concern, and the "justification" given for EPA action, is that anything that kills bugs could contaminate groundwater and kill beneficial fauna. (The EPA regulates "insecticides" and other pest control products.)

In typical beaurocatidiot manner, the announcement says that "Any product that claims germicidal action by using nanosilver will be subject to the new regulation." Producers of any material that claims to kill germs using nanosilver will be required to show that no harmful environmental impact will be produced.

The EPA admits quite openly that as long as the maker does not claim that the nanosilver kills germs a manufacturer is free to market the same products without regulation, and one manufacturer already has anticipated the new regs by dropping the word "germicidal" from all labelling and advertising - and will thereby be free from having to comply with the new restrictions.

The EPA suggests that this is a "test case" to see whether they can get by with regulating other similar kinds of products, and predicts a long series of court cases. (Expect some mfr to argue that by limiting what they can say their product does, the reg is an Unconstitutional infringement of their freedom of speech, etc.)

John

24 Nov 06 - 12:12 PM (#1892546)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

"Nano" is the latest high-tech term to hype, and I suspect has been overused by advertisers. It may amount to nothing, if Madison Avenue comes clean (so to speak).

SRS

24 Nov 06 - 01:31 PM (#1892599)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Stilly -

"Nanotechnology" is being hyped by a few advertisers, and in most places it's just for advertising; but it's a very real deal for the people in technology development (and in the "venture capital" world).

Technology Review carries at least one article per month recently, American Scientist has about one per quarter, and lots of other "scientific" publications are trying to keep up with what's "coming."

The really interesting articles still seem to end with "... commercial applications within the next x years." But there are lots of things people think it can do; and the ones who are really trying to do it aren't sloppy about what they mean when they use the term.

John

24 Nov 06 - 01:59 PM (#1892608)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I know all about it--we have a large nanotechnology research center at the university where I work. We see articles all the time in the student and local newspapers about the work they're doing.

What I meant was that people are latching onto the term to try to ride along with the growth of this industry, whether they actually are doing nano work or not.

SRS

25 Nov 06 - 03:06 AM (#1892985)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Not really big news, but the Washington Post reports a bad day in court for one young gentleman:

"As Devin K. Hoerauf's robbery trial in Rockville was wrapping up Tuesday afternoon, the 19-year-old accidentally dropped a bag of marijuana on the floor when he stood up at the defense table.

"The judge's assistant noticed a plastic bag containing "a green, leafy substance" and pointed it out to a Montgomery County deputy sheriff, who picked it up and added two misdemeanor charges — possession of a controlled substance and possession of paraphernalia — to Hoerauf's criminal history.
"To make matters worse, his mother, a defense lawyer, was by his side at the time — representing him."

A.n.d..h.i.s..m.o.t.h.e.r..s.a.i.d... ...

"He is brain-damaged, your honor. I don't mean he's just a defendant who does dumb stuff. This is a boy with an IQ in triple digits. His brain is glued together with Silly Putty. He can't think his way out of a paper bag, but he can do physics."

Story at MSNBC

John

26 Nov 06 - 01:14 AM (#1893712)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I know someone like that. Kind of the reverse. He can't do the physics, but he can get into trouble and think his way out of a paper bag. Trouble is, he keeps getting into trouble (arguments) and getting fired, though he's convinced that in the end the boss always understood and agreed with him, that it was everyone else who was stupid.

26 Nov 06 - 04:10 AM (#1893741)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: autolycus

SRS. Does Madison Avenue in particular, and
advertising in general, EVER "come clean.?"

Ivor

26 Nov 06 - 12:10 PM (#1893991)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

With the judicious use of subpoena soap sometimes it happens.

27 Nov 06 - 06:13 PM (#1894015)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I missed posting a couple of stories while the 'cat was down. I'll have to see if I can relocate them.

27 Nov 06 - 06:46 PM (#1894066)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

Another Worrying Bush Appointee : Abstinence Czar
By: Nicole Belle @ 7:15 PM - PST
In yet another appointment made apparently from Bizarro World, Bush has named Dr. Eric Keroack the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs, overseeing the Office of Family Planning.

AlterNet :

He's a favorite guest speaker at meetings of the National Right to Life Committee. He's on the medical advisory council for the notorious Leslee Unruh's National Abstinence Clearinghouse, whence he expounds on such topics as the physical and emotional consequences of premarital sex.

He teaches that there is a physiological cause [pdf link] for relationship failure and sexual promiscuity — a hormonal cause-and-effect that can only be short-circuited by sexual abstinence until marriage.[..]

He's the full-time medical director for A Woman's Concern, a chain of Boston area crisis pregnancy centers, where he spreads all the usual lies about abortion and uses ultrasound scans as a tool to influence the decisions of women who might be considering abortion.

He was one of the "experts" who determined that federally funded abstinence education programs must mention contraceptives only in relation to their failure rates and promote abstinence until marriage.

[..]Keroack works his heart out for the Christian right. And it appears that, as of Monday morning, he'll be working for us, too.

28 Nov 06 - 10:10 AM (#1894627)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I heard about this yahoo on NPR recently. Ol' Dubya just keeps pushing his agenda along. And this guy, he's going to give the name a bad reputation (for those who don't know the difference between Jack Kerouac and Eric Keroak).

SRS

28 Nov 06 - 11:06 AM (#1894669)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

VIVE la difference!!!

A

28 Nov 06 - 05:31 PM (#1895015)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

EFF Accepts Barney's Surrender

Purple Dinosaur Backs Off and Pays Up; Free Speech Rights
Preserved

San Francisco - The corporate owners of the popular
children's television character Barney the Purple Dinosaur
have agreed to withdraw their baseless legal threats
against a website publisher who parodied the character and
to compensate him for fees expended in defending himself.

The agreement settles a suit filed by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) in August on behalf of Dr. Stuart
Frankel against Lyons Partnership, owners of the Barney
character. Frankel received repeated, meritless
cease-and-desist letters from Lyons, claiming his online
parody violated copyright and trademark law. EFF's suit
asked the court to declare that Frankel's parody was a
noninfringing fair use protected by the First Amendment.

"We wish we hadn't had to file a lawsuit to finally get
Barney's lawyers to stop harassing a man who was just
expressing his opinion about a cultural phenomenon," said
EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "Hopefully Lyons
Partnership has learned its lesson and will have more
respect for fair use in the future."

This settlement is the latest development in EFF's ongoing
campaign to protect online free speech from the chilling
effects of bogus copyright claims. Earlier this month, EFF
filed suit against Michael Crook -- a man who claimed
copyright infringement in an effort to censor his online
critics.

"Those who misuse copyright should know that they can be
sued for doing so," said McSherry. "This settlement should
send a message to those who want to use copyright law as a
pretext for censorship."

EFF was assisted in this case by Elizabeth Rader, James
d'Auguste, and Brian Carney, attorneys with the firm of
Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP, which is defending
Dr. Frankel's free speech rights on a pro bono basis.

For the original complaint:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/barney/frankel_v_lyons_complaint.pdf

28 Nov 06 - 11:47 PM (#1895238)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I had to go look for a longer version of this story online. The local paper edited out a couple of paragraphs. Even with all of the information, it's a really strange story (and one wonders at how they managed to stay in the house that long with that "strange smell," and how hard they needed to be hit over the head to figure out what that smell means, regardless of a missing relative):

Woman's body found behind bookcase

NEW PORT RICHEY, Florida (AP) -- A woman's body was found wedged upside-down behind a bookcase in the home she shared with relatives who had spent nearly two weeks looking for her.

A spokesman for the Pasco County Sheriff's Office said Mariesa Weber's death was not suspicious. Family members said they believe she fell over as she tried to adjust the plug of a television behind the bookshelf.

Weber, 38, came home October 28 and greeted her mother, then wasn't seen again. Her family thought she had been kidnapped and contacted authorities. Family members scoured her room for clues but found nothing, although they did notice a strange smell.

On November 9, Weber's sister went into her bedroom and looked behind a bookcase, where she saw the woman's foot. Using a flashlight, the family saw Weber was wedged upside-down behind the unit.

"I'm sleeping in the same house as her for 11 days, looking for her," her mother, Connie Weber, told the St. Petersburg Times. "And she's right in the bedroom."

Both Weber and her sister previously had adjusted the television plug by standing on a bureau next to the shelf and leaning over the top. Her family believes Weber, who was 5-foot-3 and barely 100 pounds, may have fallen headfirst into the space.

"She's a little thing," her mother said. "And the bookcase is 6 feet tall and solid. And she couldn't get out."

The sheriff's office said Weber appeared to have died because she was unable to breathe in the position she was in.

29 Nov 06 - 07:44 AM (#1895437)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Man accused of spray-painting goats

The Associated Press
Updated: 6:03 a.m. CT Nov 29, 2006
MAHOPAC, N.Y. - A man broke into a barn on Thanksgiving morning, spray-painted three pet goats and scattered pages of pornographic magazines on the floor, apparently to harass the property owner, police said Tuesday.

That's probably enought to give the gist of the story. Details at the link.

There's apparently some sort of local feuding going on. The vet says there was harm to the goats - largely from digesting the porn(?).

One cop said ""Obviously it's not an occurrence you see every day,"

Yes? ... No? ...

John

29 Nov 06 - 08:24 AM (#1895471)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Trade sanctions imposed on N. Korea:

U.S. bans sales of iPods to N. Korea

"The U.S. government's first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run the communist government."

"But the list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim's swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis.

The new ban would extend even to music and sports equipment. The 5-foot-3 Kim is an enthusiastic basketball fan; then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented him with a ball signed by Michael Jordan during a rare diplomatic trip in 2000.

"Experts said the effort — being coordinated under the United Nations — would be the first ever to curtail a specific category of goods not associated with military buildups or weapons designs, especially one so tailored to annoy a foreign leader. U.S. officials acknowledge that enforcing the ban on black-market trading would be difficult.

"The population in North Korea, one of the world's most isolated economies, is impoverished and routinely suffers widescale food shortages. The new trade ban would forbid U.S. shipments there of Rolexes, French cognac, plasma TVs, yachts and more — all items favored by Kim but unattainable by most of the country."

"U.S. intelligence officials who helped produce the Bush administration's list said Kim prefers Mercedes, BMW and Cadillac cars; Japanese and Harley Davidson motorcycles; Hennessy XO cognac from France and Johnny Walker Scotch whisky; Sony cameras and Japanese air conditioners."

Is this a switch on the WWII US project to airdrop pornography into Germany "to drive Hitler insane" - and will it work as well?

John

29 Nov 06 - 08:39 AM (#1895483)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

IHOP will stop carding customers

A Quincy Massachusetts IHOP began demanding that customers surrender their drivers licenses before being seated, "to stop Dine-and-Dash customers."

Some people objected, but apparently quite a few gave their ID to the "security guard."

The company has stated that this is NOT corporate policy, and the restaurant involved has agreed to stop the practice.

The real question is whether the management at this restaurant is more stupid than those who were willing to let them "hold" their personal IDs.

John

29 Nov 06 - 02:00 PM (#1895772)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Ve haff VAYS off makink you pay for your pancakes. I suggest you surrender your documentz kvietly...

03 Dec 06 - 02:30 PM (#1898999)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

The Russian web site AllofMP3.com has been offering mp3 downloads for significantly less than the $0.99 (US) per piece typical for other web sources. A news item suggests that anyone who wants a bunch might want to grab them before the site goes down, although the details are a bit fuzzy.

[quote – with link added]

Update: U.S., Russia Target AllofMP3.com for Shutdown, 11.29.06, By Mark Hachman

According to a document released by the U.S. Trade Representative to Russia, controversial MP3 download site AllofMP3.com is to be targeted for closure by U.S. and Russian authorities.

The meeting was characterized as the results of "bilateral negotiations on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization". A spokesman for AllofMP3.com said Wednesday that the site would not be shut down.

The document, a "fact sheet" dated Nov. 19, identifies AllofMp3.com as an example of "Internet piracy".

"The United States and Russia agreed on the objective of shutting down websites that permit illegal distribution of music and other copyright works. The agreement names the Russia-based website allofmp3.com as an example of such a website.

"Russia will take enforcement actions against the operation of Russia-based websites; and investigate and prosecute companies that illegally distribute copyright works on the Internet," the sheet added.

Russia said it would also act by June 1, 2007 to take action and prevent rights societies from taking action without consent of the rights holders themselves; AllofMP3.com claims it holds licenses from the Russian Licensing Societies, including the Federation of Rights Holders for Collective Management of Copyright with Respect to the Use of Musical Works in Interactive Regime (FAIR) and the Russian Organization on Collective Management of Rights of Authors and Other Right Holders in Multimedia, Digital Networks & Visual Arts (ROMS).

The meeting was designed to "strengthen border enforcement against piracy and counterfeiting," according to the USTR document. Among other concerns was bringing Russia in line with the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, known as the TRIPS Agreement.

However, a spokesman for AllofMP3.com denied the report.

"AllofMP3 will not shut down and the Russian authorities have not agreed to shut down the company," a company spokesman said. "The Russian government agreed to make changes to the Copyright Law but the changes are far from being decided. However, AllofMP3 will alter its business plan to fit within the new parameters."

AllofMP3.com has said previously that it would move to an ad-subsidized format.

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 5:04 PM EDT on Nov. 29 with comments from an AllofMP3.com representative.

[end quote]

Oh Yeah: Disney is suing YouTube – again – and again - - -

John

05 Dec 06 - 10:52 PM (#1901268)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Mom has son arrested for premature ...

....

....

unwrapping?

A South Carolina woman called the cops when she found her 12 y.o. son repeatedly sneaking out a gift he was to receive for Christmas from his grandmother. Cops cooperated by "taking the boy in," later released him to mother's custody.

The story sound like the kid has some real problems, but I suppose it made a cute headline.

John

05 Dec 06 - 10:57 PM (#1901269)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Swedish border cops busted

[quote]
Two border control officers face discipline for photo collection
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:36 p.m. CT Dec 5, 2006

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Two Swedish border control officers risk disciplinary action for keeping a photo collection of "exceptionally beautiful" women who passed through their checkpoint, police officials said Tuesday.

The officers, who were working at a ferry terminal near Stockholm, made photocopies of the women's passport photos and placed them in a binder. They also noted the date of birth next to each entry, the Stockholm police department said.
The binder contained instructions on how to compile the collection, and orders to make backup copies in case the binder would go missing or be confiscated by "evil-minded bores," police said.
The instructions also stated that only "exceptionally beautiful" women belonged in the collection and that no personal data, aside from the date of birth, should be included.
The men's employer found the binder and reported them to police, but the matter was dismissed because the compilation was not considered illegal.
Stockholm police passed the matter to the national police's disciplinary board, which recommended the men get away with a warning.

[endquote]

Have any of our mudcat ladies "crossed the line" recently?

May we see the pictures?

John

08 Dec 06 - 12:26 PM (#1903555)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram today (a href="http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/16193785.htm">link)

Woman jailed after shooting victim dies

FORT WORTH - A 47-year-old man who was shot in the head Wednesday night during an exchange about whether he could smoke inside a friend's house died Thursday afternoon, authorities said. Robert Williams was pronounced dead at 3:10 p.m. at John Peter Smith Hospital.

Margore Carter, 49, was arrested Thursday evening by members of the U.S. Marshal's Task Force at a relative's home in Arlington, police said. She faces a murder charge.

Witnesses told police that Williams was drinking with Carter, her sister and the sister's husband in her house in the 3200 block of Todd Avenue. About 8 p.m., the sister's husband suggested that Williams should go outside to smoke, homicide Detective Tom Boetcher said. Williams refused.

A witness said that "the suspect then jokingly stated that she had something that would make him go outside," Boetcher said. Carter went to her bedroom and returned with a gun, investigators said. Acting Sgt. Mike Carroll said she first aimed the gun at a window near Williams and pulled the trigger. The gun just clicked.

"From the other witnesses' statements, they all thought she was kind of playing around," Carroll said. "She then walks up to him, puts it to his head and pulls the trigger, and it does go off. "According to her, she was surprised."

Carter remained at the house Wednesday evening and cooperated with investigators, police said. Boetcher said the case should serve as a reminder of the importance of gun safety. "People should be aware that all weapons can be deadly -- whether the gun is believed to be loaded or unloaded," he said. "And people are responsible for their actions if their reckless conduct results in someone's death."

08 Dec 06 - 05:58 PM (#1903916)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Don Firth

That story is a good example of the pandemic ignorance even a lot of gun owners have about the way firearms function and the trouble they can get into as a result. The gun in this case was undoubtedly a revolver with some chambers empty and at least one loaded. Every time you pull the trigger, it rotates the cylinder and the hammer falls on a new chamber. Keep pulling the trigger until a loaded chamber comes up and things can get loud. And sometimes nasty.

But I guess that can work a couple of ways. Ignorance of the way firearms function once saved President Gerald Ford's life. "Squeaky" Fromm, a disciple of Charles Manson's, was sent to assassinate Ford on a visit he made to California. She was given a Colt .45 automatic, loaded with five rounds in the magazine. She was told that all she had to do is walk up to Ford, point the gun at him, and pull the trigger. The Secret Service apparently didn't pay any attention to the scruffy little hippie, and she got to within a few feet of Ford. She apparently knew enough to cock the hammer, which she did, pointed the gun at Ford, and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a click. She was crying, "It didn't fire! It didn't fire!" as the Secret Service belatedly disarmed her and wrestled her to the ground.

But what happened, of course, was that whoever loaded the gun slipped the loaded magazine into the grip as usual, and apparently assumed it was ready to fire. Either that, or he assumed that "Squeaky" knew something about handguns, which she didn't. After inserting the magazine, you have to pull the slide back and release it. As the mainspring snaps the slide forward, it strips a cartridge off the top of the magazine and chambers it. So, although there were bullets in it, the gun that "Squeaky" was using was functionally not loaded.

Don Firth

11 Dec 06 - 09:41 AM (#1906300)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

"EDINBURGH, Scotland -

"In this age of cell phones, text messages and computer keyboards, one Scottish school has returned to basics.

"It's teaching youngsters the neglected art of writing with a fountain pen.

"…

"Teachers taught too

"The children learn a handwriting style developed by teachers at the school, which charges $12,500 a year. New teachers are also put through a course on how to write with pens — as well as refresher courses on literacy and numeracy — before they are let loose in classes."

Such radical reactionary concepts would never be permitted in my school district!

Imagine! Expecting literacy from teachers.

Must be a bunch of nutcases….

John

11 Dec 06 - 09:55 AM (#1906323)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Seems appropriate to bring back an old favorite:

Primary Emergency Network Computer Interface Liaison device

This device is designed to meet short time emergency needs in case of a computer operations failure, or operational delay. This device is the Primary Emergency Network Computer Interface Liaison device (P.E.N.C.I.L.). This device has been field tested extensively, including certification testing, as well as volume and stress testing. Properly maintained, the device meets all the requirements for coding and data input. Prior to use, the (P.E.N.C.I.L.) will require preparation and testing. Tools and supplies required will be: A sharpened knife or grinding device; and a supply of computer paper (with or without holes).

Gripping the device firmly in your hand, proceed to scrape or grind the wooded end until it has a cone-like appearance. The dark core area must be exposed to properly function.

Place a single sheet of computer paper on a smooth, hard surface. Take the backup device, place the sharpened point against the paper, and pull it across the paper. If properly done, this will input a single line.

CAUTION: Excessive force may damage components of the device or damage the data reception device. If either the P.E.N.C.I.L. or the paper are damaged, go back to the preparation instructions above.

Proper use of the device will require data simulation input by the operator. Placing the device against the computer page forming symbols as closely resembling the computer lettering system you normally use. At the completion of each of the simulated letters, lift the device off the page, move it slightly to the right, replace it against the page, and form the next symbol. This may appear tedious, and somewhat redundant, but, with practice, you should be able to increase yourspeed and accuracy. The P.E.N.C.I.L. is equipped with a manual deletion device. The device is located on the reverse end of the P.E.N.C.I.L. Error deletions operate similarly to the "backspace" key on your computer. Simply place the device against the erroneous data, and pull it backwards over the letters. This should remove the error,and enable you to resume data entries.

CAUTION: Excessive force may damage the data reception device. Insufficient force, however, may result in less than acceptable deletion, and may require re-initialization of action as above. This device is designed with user maintenance in mind. However, if technical support is required, you can still call your local computer desk supervisor at (800)-YOU-DUMMY

12 Dec 06 - 12:08 AM (#1907101)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I cannot believe that a puppy that size and age, no matter WHAT the breed, did this. And that the parents were just "asleep" in the room all of the time? Something stinks about this story, and it isn't the dog!

Louisiana Police: Puppy Gnawed Off Baby's Toes
December 11, 2006

BOSSIER CITY, La. - A pit bull puppy chewed off four of a baby girl's toes while the child's parents slept, police here said Monday. The parents were booked on charges of child desertion and criminal negligence and were being held in the Bossier Parish Jail pending an initial court appearance. Police said the parents were sleeping on a mattress in the living room of their residence and the month-old girl was in an infant seat beside them when the puppy began chewing on their baby's toes.

Mary Shannon Hansche, 22, and Christopher Wayne Hansche, 26, told police they woke up to the sound of the baby crying, found her mangled foot and took her to the hospital about 8:30 a.m. Sunday. "They did not see the dog injuring the child," police spokesman Mark Natale said.

The girl underwent surgery Sunday at Sutton's Children's Hospital in Shreveport. There was no way to reattach the child's toes, Natale said Monday.

The puppy was 6 weeks old and had no record of receiving its shots and will be quarantined for 10 days to check for rabies. Natale said he did not know what the puppy's fate would be after that. "The puppy itself was just several weeks old! I mean this was essentially a puppy," Natale said. "This puppy might have been trying to nurse on the toes of this baby," veterinarian Michael Dale speculated. "I know that sounds a little far fetched, but that's the first thing that comes to my mind."

Teresa Miller, who sold the puppy to the Hansches, was skeptical the dog did it. "He didn't chew on anything while he was with me. Out of all of them (in the litter), he was the least chewy." Another veterinarian, Dr. Valri Brown, said if the puppy chewed off the infant's toes, it would not have happened quickly. "It would have to be a period of time - maybe at least an hour," she said.

Meanwhile, the puppy's been quarantined at Bossier City's animal control office for the next 10 days to check for rabies. Natale said he did not know what the puppy's fate would be after that. When she is released from the hospital, the child will be placed in a foster home until the case against her parents is settled, officials said.

12 Dec 06 - 05:01 AM (#1907213)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Woman bitten by spider loses 10 lbs. of skin Doctor predicts it may take six months for full recovery from small nip

Updated: 8:13 p.m. CT Dec 11, 2006
HERMISTON, Ore. - A small spider bite turned out to be a big problem for Cindy Pettey. Pettey awoke when she was bitten on the stomach in the middle of the night a few weeks ago, but thought little else of it. Then she started running a fever, she felt achy and weak. The bite sore became larger.

Next thing Pettey knew, a doctor was telling her he believed she'd been bitten by a dangerous hobo spider.

Pettey had surgery that removed 10 pounds of skin and flesh, leaving her with an abdomen covered in stitches.

"It looks like I was bit in half by a shark," Pettey said.

Rob Hendrickson, a physician and director of the Oregon Poison Control Center, said the hobo is a non-aggressive spider that bites only when cornered. For example, when someone puts on a shoe with a spider inside.

The hobo is one of two dangerous spiders in Oregon. The other is the black widow. The brown recluse does not exist in Oregon, he said.

"In reality, most spiders are venomous, but aren't capable of penetrating human skin," Hendrickson said.

Hobo spider venom may cause necrosis, or death of the skin. When a spider injects venom below the skin, it reddens, swells, then turns black. But there is some doubt in the medical community about whether venom causes the skin death, Hendrickson said.

"If the venom can actually cause necrosis in humans," he said, "... then it is a very rare event."

John

12 Dec 06 - 05:27 AM (#1907228)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Updated: 2:35 p.m. CT Oct 5, 2006
OSLO -

German drugmaker Schering warned consumers on Thursday not to use hemorrhoid cream on their faces.

The warning came after a male stylist said on Norwegian television that many photo models used the cream in the morning to get rid of puffy eyes, which the drug company said seemed to have boosted demand for such products at pharmacies. Beauty magazines in the U.S. have been advising the same for years.

"This is a pharmaceutical and not a cosmetic," the group's Norwegian subsidiary Schering Norge AS said in a statement, warning especially to keep hemorrhoid cream out of the eyes.

No comment.
John

12 Dec 06 - 09:39 AM (#1907371)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Don't those benign and peaceful christians just give you a warm and fuzzy feeling this time of year?

Trees Being Returned to SeaTac Airport

December 12, 2006

SEATAC, Wash. - Christmas trees are going back up at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Pat Davis, president of the Port of Seattle commission, which directs airport operations, said late Monday that maintenance staff would restore the 14 plastic holiday trees, festooned with red ribbons and bows, that were removed over the weekend because of a rabbi's complaint that holiday decor did not include a menorah.

Airport managers believed that if they allowed the addition of an 8-foot-tall menorah to the display, as Seattle Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky had requested, they would also have to display symbols of other religions and cultures, which was not something airport workers had time for during the busiest travel season of the year, Airport Director Mark Reis said earlier Monday.

Port officials received word Monday afternoon that Bogomilsky's organization would not file a lawsuit at this time over the placement of a menorah, Davis said in a statement. "Given that, the holiday trees will be replaced as quickly as possible," he said. Davis added that the rabbi "never asked us to remove the trees; it was the port's decision based on what we knew at the time."

There were no immediate plans to display a menorah, airport spokesman Bob Parker said, saying restoration of the trees was expected to take place overnight Monday. "A key element in moving forward will be to work with the rabbi and other members of the community to develop a plan for next year's holiday decorations at the airport," the port statement said.

The rabbi has also offered to give the port an electric menorah to display, said his lawyer, Harvey Grad. "We are not going to be the instrument by which the port holds Christmas hostage," Grad said, emphasizing the rabbi never sought removal of the trees, but addition of the menorah. The rabbi had received "all kinds of calls and emails," many of them "odious," Grad said, adding he was "trying to figure out how this is consistent with the spirit of Christmas."

Thirteen trees had sat above foyers that lead outside to the airport drive. The largest tree, which Reis estimated to be 15 or 20 feet tall, was placed in a large lobby near baggage claim for international arrivals. After the removal, some airline workers decorated ticketing counters with their own miniature Christmas trees.

Customer service agents with Frontier Airlines pooled their money Monday morning to buy four 1-foot-high Christmas trees, which they placed on the airline's ticketing counter. Atop a Delta counter, workers put up a tree several feet tall. The airlines lease space for ticket counters from the airport, and can display trees there if they want, Reis said.

12 Dec 06 - 10:41 PM (#1908015)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

A lot of people are putting their lives on the line because these three climbed Mt. Hood in December. December is NOT the month in which one climbs a volano in the Pacific Northwest. Not if one has a lick of common sense.

Search Continues for Missing Climbers
From Associated Press
December 12, 2006

COOPER SPUR, Ore. - Rescue teams equipped with ice axes, ropes and other high-altitude gear were once again frustrated Tuesday in their efforts since the weekend to find three climbers on Oregon's highest mountain. After battling high winds and blowing snow, search teams broke for the day without success. An Oregon National Guard helicopter was able to survey the lower half of the mountain, but bad weather kept the crew from getting much higher than the 6,000-foot level on the 11,239-foot peak. Crews began coming off the mountain in the afternoon to conclude their search by dark.

Rescue teams planned to debrief and map out a strategy for Wednesday, said Deputy Gary Tiffany, spokesman for the Hood River sheriff's office, which has been coordinating the search. More snow and high winds were expected Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. "Right now, they're dealing with 50 to 60 mph winds in the area they're searching, and blowing snow. It really cuts down their visibility," Joseph Wampler, sheriff for Hood River County, said earlier Tuesday.

Rescue teams have been combing the upper elevations since Monday in search of the three experienced climbers. Winds weren't as gusty on Tuesday and snowfall wasn't as heavy, but the weather conditions were bad enough to once again frustrate efforts to locate the climbers.

The last anyone heard from the climbers was on Sunday, when one, 48-year-old Kelly James, used his cell phone from a snow cave to say the group was in trouble. He said his two companions - Brian Hall, 37, also of Dallas, and Jerry "Nikko" Cooke, 36, of New York City - had gone for help.

Officials have not been able to reach James on his cell phone since then, Wampler said, but search officials have been able to narrow the approximate location through cell phone signals. Searchers believe James' snow cave is near the summit, on the northeast side, but it is unclear where the other two climbers might be. "A snow cave can provide excellent shelter from wind and precipitation," said Steve Rollins, a search leader with Portland Mountain Rescue. "If you're well prepared in a snow cave, you can last a really long time."

Two more storms are expected this week, with one beginning early Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.

Families of the missing climbers have flown to nearby Hood River to await word on their loved ones. They include Frank James of Orlando, Fla., Kelly's older brother.

Frank James said at a news conference that it wasn't clear from the four-minute call his brother placed to family members on Sunday whether he was injured. His brother did say he was feeling the effects of the cold and was worried about the weather. "Today's the day for courage and for prayers. Courage can help us see through this snowstorm, and our prayers can literally move mountains," he said.

13 Dec 06 - 03:27 PM (#1908657)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Wouldn't it be amazing to have a collection like this to leave to a university or other research facility? link

A Triumph in a Garage
Mayme Clayton's Trove of Black History Gathers Dust, and Momentum

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; C01

LOS ANGELES

Working entirely on her own, spending her librarian's salary and later her Social Security checks, Mayme Clayton amassed one of the finest collections of African American history in the world -- and stored it in her garage.

"I got to warn you, it's scary in here." This is Mayme's son, Avery Clayton, talking. He's jiggling his keys and opening the door. He reaches, finds the light switch, clicks. Inside? It is amazing .

"Originally," Avery apologizes, "there were tables and chairs, like a library, and you could sit down. But as you can see -- "

The roof sags, it may leak. There are books, floor to ceiling on shelves, but the passages between the stacks are blocked, with storage cabinets and film cases and cardboard boxes overflowing with photographs, journals, cartoons, correspondence, playbills, magazines, all dusted with a soft fungal dander. Mold.

The old garage appears held together by its peeling paint, out in an overgrown garden, behind a bungalow in a modest neighborhood. For a moment, before the eye begins to settle on the antique book spines in the gloomy light, the garage looks like a hoarder's hiding place, ready for a bulldozer and a trip to the city dump. "She was a hoarder, she was," Avery says. "But she was a hoarder with a vision."

That is the opinion of the experts, too. "She has everything," says Sue Hodson, curator of literary manuscripts at the prestigious Huntington Library east of Los Angeles. "This is probably the finest collection of African American literature, manuscripts, film and ephemera in private hands. It is just staggering. It is just superior in every way."

Hodson says that when the Mayme Clayton Collection is moved, secured, cleaned and catalogued, it will be among the top such archives in the United States, alongside the Vivian G. Harsh Collection at the Chicago Public Library and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. (The Schomburg's director, Howard Dotson, described the Clayton holdings as "major and significant" in the Los Angeles Times.)

Avery, a retired art teacher who is now the force behind preserving his mother's legacy, says this is "only a fraction of the collection." The rest of the Claytonia is scattered in storage rooms around Los Angeles and in a climate-controlled vault at a film warehouse, which protects its vast cinema archive of more than 1,700 titles and represents the largest pre-1959 black film collection in the world, including rare silent reels.

Many people may forget that alongside white cinema was its black counterpart, "race movies" seen in some 600 African American theaters and starring the likes of Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, Katherine Dunham and Sammy Davis Jr. The most prolific director and producer was Oscar Micheaux, and Clayton found original prints of many of his films, including the silent movie "Body and Soul," which introduced Paul Robeson to the screen, and "The Exile," Micheaux's first talkie, made in 1931.

By the time she died in October, at age 83 of pancreatic cancer ("I've got a so-so body with a go-go mind," she said in her later years), Mayme Clayton amassed almost 30,000 rare, first-edition and out-of-print books. She was especially strong on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, obtaining first editions and correspondence from Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston.

Her trove includes the first book published in America by an author of African descent, Phillis Wheatley's "Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral," dated 1773, when she was a slave in Boston. Clayton has the only known copy signed by the author; she paid $600 for it in 1972, far more than she usually spent. Her collecting style was more bargain basement than Sotheby's auction. She'd prowl used bookstores, flea markets, estate sales. When old people died, she'd get into their attics.

In the garage, it still feels like a treasure hunt. There are the first issues of Ebony magazine (She picked up Vol. 1, No. 1, for a dime). A book about Denzel Washington next to "The Negro in Tennessee: 1865 to 1880." There's a "How to Box" manual by Joe Louis lying on a box of Jim Crow cartoons with the label "Negro Jokes" beneath the original movie poster for "Porgy and Bess."

"Oh, that's the one that hung at the premiere at the Orpheum Theatre in New York," says Avery. "Here, look at this."

His mother possessed a complete set of the first abolitionist journal in America, "The African Repository," dated 1830 to 1845. Among the manuscripts, there is an emphasis on paper that predates the Civil War: travel passes and bills of sale for slaves, and plantation inventories.

Avery describes one dated 1790. "They had 408 slaves in the inventory, along with the livestock, the chickens and cows and whatnot. For the slaves, it lists occupation. Field hand. House worker. Blacksmith. Distiller. You know the number one job? Breeding stock. Sixty-two women. You can read all about slavery, but when you hold a document like that in your hand, that is powerful."

In an interview with NPR, Mayme Clayton said, "Unless you know where you've been, you really don't know where you're going." She was born in Van Buren, Ark., and went to New York at age 21 to work as a model and a photographer's assistant, which is where she met her husband, a barber 16 years her senior who brought her back to Los Angeles, and the little house and its garage in the West Adams neighborhood where she lived at the time of her death. Clayton was known as competitive golfer, a quiet force in the community, an obsessive collector/stacker/finder/keeper who enjoyed e-mailing bawdy jokes. She went on to get her master's and doctoral degrees, spending most of her career as a librarian at the University of Southern California and UCLA; she began her collecting because the universities didn't seem that interested in African American artifacts.

Avery Clayton remembers his mother collecting right until the very end. "She bought a poster for a thousand dollars a few months before her transition and I still don't know where she got the money," he says. It was for a black cowboy movie, a popular subgenre, called "The Bronze Buckaroo."

Clayton has assembled a robust group of volunteers and local politicians for the task at hand. He needs to raise $7 million, but doesn't seem too worried. Culver City has already leased him a 24,000-square-foot former courthouse (for a dollar a year), and various universities will provide technical help to curate and organize the pieces. The Mayme Clayton Collection, Avery says, will be out of the garage in weeks. "Before the winter rains," he promises.

Julie Page, head of the preservation department at the University of California at San Diego library, is managing the move, under a federally funded program to save endangered collections. The garage makes her nervous. "I just can't wait to get it all out of there. That collection really needs to be in a secure, safe environment." It is time.

14 Dec 06 - 03:22 PM (#1909650)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Blind Texas Gun Laws

Will equal protection shoot down personal protection?

Visually impaired Texans, grab your rifles! State Representative Edmund Kuempel has introduced an amendment that would allow blind people to hunt game using laser sights (not even Cheney could miss!). Currently prohibited, such sights would greatly assist the guides of blind sportsman to aim and say when to shoot at the animals.

According to Kuempel, a Republican from the San Antonio area, "this opens up the fun of hunting to additional people, and I think that's great." While few people would argue that the visually impaired aren't entitled to enjoy life to its full extent, is allowing them to shoot guns in public areas really such a "great" idea?

If the measure passes, as expected in 2008, should we anticipate similar legislation allowing blind people to compete at auto racing?

14 Dec 06 - 08:04 PM (#1909841)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I heard this yesterday--they were treating it like a joke on the local news. Scary thought, eh?

14 Dec 06 - 08:11 PM (#1909847)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

The state of the Brave New World:

Man in Germany Foils Burglary in Brazil

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/
2006/12/13/financial/f102507S62.DTL

"Businessman Joao Pedro Wettlauser was in Cologne, Germany, on Sunday
when he received an alert on his phone informing him that someone had
entered his vacation house in Guaruja, 54 miles south of Sao Paulo,
police said.

He quickly turned on his laptop and, thanks to security cameras
connected to the Internet, was able to see a tattooed man stuffing
goods into trash bags..."

15 Dec 06 - 12:39 AM (#1909979)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

World's tallest man saves plastic eating dolphins

BEIJING, China (AP) -- The long arms of the world's tallest man reached in and saved two dolphins by pulling out plastic from their stomachs, state media and an aquarium official said Thursday.

The dolphins got sick after nibbling on plastic from the edge of their pool at an aquarium in Liaoning province.

Attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because the dolphins' stomachs contracted in response to the instruments, the China Daily newspaper reported.

Veterinarians then decided to ask for help from Bao Xishun, a 7-feet-9 herdsman from Inner Mongolia with 41.7-inch arms, state media said.

Bao, 54, was confirmed last year by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's tallest living man.

Chen Lujun, the manager of the Royal Jidi Ocean World aquarium, told The Associated Press that the shape of the dolphins' stomachs made it difficult to push an instrument very far in without hurting the animals.

People with shorter arms could not reach the plastic, he said.

"When we failed to get the objects out we sought the help of Bao Xishun from Inner Mongolia and he did it successfully yesterday," Chen said. "The two dolphins are in very good condition now."

Photographs showed the jaws of one of the dolphins being held back by towels so Bao could reach inside the animal without being bitten.

"Some very small plastic pieces are still left in the dolphins' stomachs," Zhu Xiaoling, a local doctor, told Xinhua. "However the dolphins will be able to digest these and are expected to recover soon."

15 Dec 06 - 09:13 AM (#1910189)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

A Heart(?) Warming Story

Tabasco scraps museum to 'protect the nation'

Reuters
Updated: 8:37 p.m. CT Dec 14, 2006

NEW ORLEANS - The maker of the world famous Tabasco hot pepper sauce has scrapped plans for a museum to pay for a more urgent need: the building of a levee to protect itself from another hurricane.

McIlhenny Co. will shore up its Avery Island facility in Louisiana, 15 months after Hurricane Rita's tidal surge came within inches of flooding the plant and halting production of Tabasco, The Times-Picayune newspaper reported Thursday.

The plant, which sits over 9 feet above sea level and 13 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, will be protected by a 17-foot levee that will cost $4.5 million.

"We've got to protect the nation from bland food,"

company vice president Tony Simmons said.

©2006 Reuters Limited

John

20 Dec 06 - 10:27 AM (#1914771)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Woman Puts Baby Through Airport X-Ray

December 20, 2006

LOS ANGELES - A woman mistakenly put her 1-month-old grandson through an X-ray machine at Los Angeles International Airport, authorities said. A startled security worker noticed the shape of a child on the carry-on baggage screening monitor and immediately pulled him out, the Los Angeles Times reported for a story in Wednesday's editions. The infant was taken to a local hospital, where doctors determined he did not receive a dangerous dose of radiation.

"This was an innocent mistake by an obviously inexperienced traveler," said Paul Haney, deputy executive director of airports and security for the city's airport agency. The incident happened early Saturday, airport officials said. Haney said in 1988, an infant in a car seat went through an X-ray machine at the Los Angeles airport.

21 Dec 06 - 02:26 PM (#1915952)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

And from the Poetry in Science department, this highly inspiring image:

Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds

00:01 20 December 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Debora MacKenzie

The moth uses its barbed proboscis (close-up below) to penetrate the eyelid of sleeping birds and drink tears (A close-up of the moth's proboscis reveals its barbed tip (Image: Roland Hilgartner / Mamisolo Raoilison)A species of moth drinks tears from the eyes of sleeping birds using a fearsome proboscis shaped like a harpoon, scientists have revealed. The new discovery – spied in Madagascar – is the first time moths have been seen feeding on the tears of birds.

Roland Hilgartner at the German Primate Centre in Göttingen, Germany, and Mamisolo Raoilison Hilgartner at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, witnessed the apparently unique sight in the island state's Kirindy forest.

Tear-feeding moths and butterflies are known to exist elsewhere in Africa, Asia and South America, but they mainly feed on large, placid animals, such as deer, antelope or crocodiles, which cannot readily brush them away. But there are no such large animals on Madagascar. The main mammals – lemurs and mongoose – have paws capable of shooing the moths. Birds can fly away.

21 Dec 06 - 05:39 PM (#1916130)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I read an essay by David Quammen ("Natural Acts" used to appear in Outside magazine) about the moths that do this. They'll go for human tears also.

21 Dec 06 - 11:46 PM (#1916375)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Babies with made-to-order defects?

"Prenatal testing creates controversial options for parents with disabilities
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:10 p.m. CT Dec 21, 2006

The power to create "perfect" designer babies looms over the world of prenatal testing.

But what if doctors started doing the opposite?

Creating made-to-order babies with genetic defects would seem to be an ethical minefield, but to some parents with disabilities — say, deafness or dwarfism — it just means making babies like them.

And a recent survey of U.S. clinics that offer embryo screening suggests it's already happening.

Three percent, or four clinics surveyed, said they have provided the costly, complicated procedure to help families create children with a disability."

I would suggest following the link and reading the entire article before leaping to an opinion on this one. Click "Print this" at the bottom of the first page, and just cancel the printer, to get the whole thing in one scroll.

Quite probably reading the whole thing won't change most peoples "first leap opinion" but it's only fair to see the whole thing first.

John

22 Dec 06 - 02:06 AM (#1916425)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Three bag ladies: wanted by London Police

Purse-wielding women bag suspect
U.K. police looking for trio of unarmed purse pursuers they 'admire greatly'
The Associated Press, Updated: 7:16 p.m. CT Dec 21, 2006
LONDON - They are the purse pursuers, the handbag heroes. Police said Thursday they are looking for a trio of women who bagged a fleeing fugitive, armed only with their purses.

The plot: The man, who was wanted on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and assaulting three police officers, was being chased by police across a bridge in Worcester, central England on Dec. 14.

Uniformed and plain-clothed officers had been chasing the man, whom they had been trying to trace for three months, but were unable to catch him.

Closed-circuit TV captured one woman bravely blocking the sidewalk, forcing the fugitive to run into the road, while a second lambasted him with her purse. The third joined in, forcing the man into the arms of a nearby van driver, who held him until police arrived.

"There they were, all minding their own business, when they realized simultaneously that action needed to be taken," said Richard Bull, spokesman for West Mercia Police.

"They didn't know one another, but they all thought the same thing."

"They surprised the man, but also demoralized him — after all, the world and his wife were already after him," Bull added.

He said police do not encourage citizens to apprehend suspects, who can turn nasty.

"But we admire greatly what they have done."

© 2006 The Associated Press

John

22 Dec 06 - 11:25 AM (#1916784)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Patrons toss dead cat through drive-thru

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) -- An employee working the drive-through window at a McDonald's will have a tale to tell. When the worker went to the open window thinking the car pulling up had already ordered, the people in the car threw a dead cat through the window, police said.

Cedar Rapids Animal Control officer Matt McAtee said the black domestic shorthair appeared to have been dead for a while.

"It looked like somebody had picked it up off the road," McAtee said.

Police were called to the restaurant about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday.

The people in the car drove off. A description of the car was not available, but employees knew the people in the car, police said.

No charges had been filed. The investigation was continuing.

McDonald's officials declined comment.

---
Information from: The Gazette, http://www.gazetteonline.com/
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

24 Dec 06 - 10:25 AM (#1918136)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

Here's something fascinating, glowing pigs! This is just what the world has been waiting for:

Click here for website

Scientists Create Fluorescent Pigs
Date: Friday, 13 January 2006 @ 17:33:16 GMT - Topic: General

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three "glow in the dark"
pigs. While other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, these
are claimed to be the only pigs in the world which are green through and
through, reports the BBC:

The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from
jellyfish into a normal pig embryo. The researchers hope the pigs will
boost the island's stem cell research, as well as helping with the study
of human disease.

In daylight, the researchers say the pigs' eyes, teeth and trotters look
green. Their skin has a greenish tinge. In the dark, shine a blue light
on them and they glow torch-light bright. The scientists will use the
transgenic pigs to study human disease. Because the pig's genetic
material is green, it is easy to spot.

BBC - Taiwan breeds green-glowing pigs (by Chris Hogg)

Naturally, scientists need more fluorescent pigs before such tests can
begin, and the team hopes the three little pigs will mate and produce
glow-in-the-dark offspring. And, of course, they will have a nice
fundraising sideline in knocking out fluorescent bangers for the kids'
novelty food market.

Charley Noble, bringing home the bacon

24 Dec 06 - 12:22 PM (#1918193)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Do you suppose when they mate they experience a spectacular afterglow?

24 Dec 06 - 01:25 PM (#1918230)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

Pigs is pigs! But I'm sure there will be some glowing reports with regard to the progress of this project.

Can you imagine what will happen when the fluorescent pigs escape their pen and are seen by some half drunken motorist on his way back home after a hard evening's work at the local watering hole?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

25 Dec 06 - 02:45 AM (#1918542)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Post Offices Catch Up After Snowstorm
From Associated Press
December 24, 2006

DENVER - An army of 1,500 mail carriers fanned out across Colorado and Wyoming on Christmas Eve, making rare Sunday deliveries in a bid to get hundreds of thousands of blizzard-delayed packages to their destinations on time. "This is an unprecedented effort," Postal Service spokesman Al DeSarro said. They all volunteered for the extra duty, he said. Normally, about 100 carriers would be working on Sunday, he said.

A blizzard dropped up to 3 1/2 feet of snow on Colorado and Wyoming last week, disrupting mail service for parts of three days amid the Christmas delivery crunch. The storm also shut down roads, businesses, schools and airports - including Denver International, the nation's fifth-busiest. That delayed mail arriving from elsewhere as well as deliveries within the two states. "There were flights of packages that didn't get in until Saturday morning," DeSarro said, adding that 300,000 packages arrived at post offices in the two states on Saturday and Sunday.

Mail carrier Robin Smith, who was delivering packages in suburban Aurora, said she volunteered for the gratification of helping other people. "I have two little girls, a 10- and a 6-year-old, and they think it's really cool that I'm playing Santa Claus," she said. Smith said one elderly woman was overwhelmed when she knocked on her door and handed her a package. "She looked very lonely and her car was buried" in snow, Smith said. "She was like, 'I didn't know I would see this.' I gave her a great big one. It was to 'Grandma.'"

Mail carrier Danny Chavez said some people in Aurora were surprised to see him but others expected it. "They say 'Thank you very much and Merry Christmas' and I say the same to them," he said.

DeSarro said about 500 carriers would make deliveries on Christmas Day. "It's going to be a huge load," he said.

29 Dec 06 - 02:09 PM (#1921435)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Spices impact Puget Sound

Tests of treated sewage in Seattle area find spike in cinnamon, vanilla

The Associated Press
Updated: 3:09 p.m. CT Dec 26, 2006

SEATTLE - Researchers at the University of Washington say all that holiday baking and eating has an environmental impact — Puget Sound is being flavored by cinnamon and vanilla.

"Even something as fun as baking for the holiday season has an environmental effect," said Rick Keil, an associate professor of chemical oceanography. "When we bake and change the way we eat, it has an impact on what the environment sees. To me it shows the connectedness."

Keil and UW researcher Jacquelyn Neibauer's weekly tests of treated sewage sent into the sound from the West Point treatment plant in Magnolia showed cinnamon, vanilla and artificial vanilla levels rose between Nov. 14 and Dec. 9, with the biggest spike right after Thanksgiving.

Natural vanilla showed the largest increase, "perhaps indicative of more home baking using natural vanilla," Keil and Neibauer wrote.

[The article continues to say that snickerdoodles aren't a significant environmental pollutant (a matter of opinion) but the presence of "spice contamination" in measurable quantities clearly illustrates the effects of all the other crap (pun intended) we flush down the toity.]

John

29 Dec 06 - 03:54 PM (#1921510)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Interesting, from the same article:

The county did not spend any money on the study, but officials at King County's Wastewater Treatment Division said they were happy to cooperate because they expected the results to reinforce their message: What goes down the drain has to come out somewhere. That goes both for pesticides and industrial chemicals as well as vanilla and cinnamon. "It's an ability to look at a whole population's behavior through one pipe," said Randy Schuman, a county science and technical support manager who helped arrange the wastewater testing.

Keil's findings present a light side of what scientists say is potentially a serious situation. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies have documented that antibiotics, contraceptives, perfumes, painkillers, antidepressants and other substances pass through the sewage system into waterways.

King County researchers several years took caffeine measurements to try to learn whether the city's coffee drinking habits had any effect on the sound. Caffeine was found in more than 160 of 216 samples in water as deep as 640 feet.

30 Dec 06 - 03:16 PM (#1922432)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Woman charged with malicious castration

LILLINGTON, N.C. (AP) -- A woman attacked a man in his genitals during a Christmas party, injuring him badly enough that he needed 50 stitches, authorities said Friday. Rebecca Arnold Dawson, 34, was charged with malicious castration in a fight early Tuesday at a party hosted by the 38-year-old man's girlfriend, police said.

All three were heavily intoxicated, police Chief Frank Powers said.

Dawson is accused of grabbing the man's genitals. Police said a weapon was not used. He declined to elaborate.

"I believe he needed more than 50 stitches to repair the damage, but he is back home at this point," police Cpl. Brad Stevens said. "All we can tell you is that the injury was done with her hands."

Dawson does not have a listed phone number.

State law describes malicious castration as cutting off, maiming or disfiguring a person's genitals with the intent to hurt or render the victim impotent.

Dawson, who was released Wednesday on $50,000 bond, also was charged with offenses including assault causing serious bodily injury.

The castration arrest was the first of its kind in Lillington, a town of about 3,000 roughly 30 miles south of Raleigh, Powers said.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

30 Dec 06 - 03:31 PM (#1922447)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,heric

Whoa now there's a woman with a unique future. She might market a little video of her future employment interviewers as she makes the diclosure of "malicious castration."

30 Dec 06 - 04:56 PM (#1922546)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

France to publish UFO archive online

CNES has collected statements and documents for almost 30 years

Reuters
Updated: 9:31 a.m. CT Dec 29, 2006

PARIS - The French space agency said it will publish its archive of UFO sightings and other phenomena online, but will keep the names of those who reported them off the site to protect them from pestering by space fanatics.

Jacques Arnould, an official at the National Space Studies Centre, said the French database of around 1,600 incidents would go live in late January or mid-February.

He said the CNES had been collecting statements and documents for almost 30 years to archive and study them.

It consists of around 6,000 reports, many relating to the same incident, filed by the public and airline professionals. Their names would not be published to protect their privacy, Anould said.
Advances in technology over the past three decades had prompted the decision to put the archive online, he said, adding it would likely be available via the CNES Web site.¹

¹ The CNES site appears to be attempting to connect, but today everyone seems "out to lunch" as it won't complete the page download for me. Perhaps later.

John

30 Dec 06 - 06:40 PM (#1922652)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I was able to connect just now. I'll have to brush off my French!

SRS

30 Dec 06 - 06:47 PM (#1922656)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,heric

Our Founders were illegal immigrants

By William Hogeland
December 28, 2006

Every nation is a nation of immigrants. Go back far enough and you'll find us all, millions of potential lives, tucked in the DNA of our African mother, Lucy. But the immigrant experience in the United States is justly celebrated, and perhaps no aspect of that experience is more quintessentially American than our long heritage of illegal immigration.

You wouldn't know it from the immigration debate going on all year (the bipartisan immigration bill-in-progress, announced this week, is unlikely to mention it), but America's pioneer values developed in a distinctly illegal context. In 1763, George III drew a line on a map stretching from modern-day Maine to modern-day Georgia, along the crest of the Appalachians. He declared it illegal to claim or settle land west of the line, all of which he reserved for Native Americans.

George Washington, a young colonel in the Virginia militia, instructed his land-buying agents in the many ways of getting around the law. Although Washington was not alone in acquiring forbidden tracts, few were as energetic in the illegal acquisition of western land. And Washington was a model of decorum compared with Ethan Allen, a rowdy from Connecticut who settled with his brothers in a part of the Green Mountains known as the Hampshire Grants (later known as "Vermont"). The province of New York held title to the land, but Allen asserted his own kind of claim: He threw New Yorkers out, Tony Soprano style, then offered to sell their lots to what he hoped would be a flood of fellow illegals from Connecticut.

Meanwhile, illegal pioneers began moving across the Alleghenies and into the upper Ohio Valley, violating the king's 1763 proclamation and a few more besides. (George would today be accused of softness on immigration; he kept shifting the line westward.) Immigrants from such diclassi spots as Germany and Ireland violated the laws and settled where they pleased. The upper Ohio was rife with illegal immigrants, ancestors of people who, in country clubs today, are implying a Mayflower ancestry.

Parallels to today's illegal immigration are striking. Then as now, it was potentially deadly to bring a family across the line. But once across, illegals had a good chance of avoiding arrest and settling in. Border patrols, in the forms of the British Army and provincial militias, were stretched thin. The 18th century forest primeval, like a modern city, offered ample opportunities for getting lost. Complex economies thrived in the virgin backwoods, unfettered by legitimate property titles.

When conflicts developed between the first and second waves of illegals, some salient social ironies arose, too. By the early 1770s, George Washington had amassed vast tracts to which his titles were flatly invalid. The Revolution rectified that. With British law void, Washington emerged from the war with his titles legal by default. But he acquired another problem: low-class illegals were squatting on his newly authenticated, highly valuable property.

Washington harbored no fond feeling for breakers of laws that he too had recently flouted. "It is hard upon me," he lamented without irony, "to have property which has been fairly obtained disputed and withheld." He went to court to have the squatters evicted, complaining that they had "not taken those necessary steps pointed out by the law." He was appealing to righteousness from atop a high but wobbly horse.

Descendants of the great immigration experiences of the 19th and 20th centuries visit the Ellis Island Immigration Museum to learn of the tribulations of ancestors who risked much to become Americans. Those of us whose ancestors risked everything as illegal immigrants, and in the process helped found a nation, owe our forebears a debt of gratitude, too. Without their daring disregard of immigration laws, we might not be here today.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hogeland is the author of "The Whiskey Rebellion: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and the Frontier Rebels Who Challenged America's Newfound Sovereignty."

30 Dec 06 - 07:29 PM (#1922682)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

The CNES page has an English version reached by clicking on the word "English".

But I don't seem to find their UFO collection.

A

30 Dec 06 - 11:15 PM (#1922819)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Amos -

The MSNBC article indicated that the UFO collection won't be up until "sometime later." The expected date was vague.

"Jacques Arnould, an official at the National Space Studies Centre, said the French database of around 1,600 incidents would go live in late January or mid-February."

That would seem to be a "promise from a politician." I don't know if a promise from a French politician is more or less reliable than from any other kind.

John

30 Dec 06 - 11:49 PM (#1922838)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I still need to brush up on my French!

01 Jan 07 - 12:45 AM (#1923742)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Washington Post: Scientists announce mad cow breakthrough

A research company has succeeded, apparently, in producing a dozen calves in which the gene that codes for the production of prions has been "knocked out," leaving the animals with no normal prions.

Mad cow disease is caused when malformed prions introduced into an animal pass their deformation to existing normal prions present in the animal. Prions cannot reproduce themselves, but can transmit their deformity to "good prions" that happen to be present.

The implication of these "genetically engineered" cattle is that they should be completely immune to mad cow disease, as they have no natural prions.

These experimental stock were produced to permit production of sera for other medical uses that would not be susceptible to inclusion of the mad cow prions. They were not intended, at this time, for use as food. The FDA has approved use of cloned animals for food, but has not yet approved "genetically engineered" animals for such use; and it is likely that gaining approval will be much more difficult than for clones.

It is estimated that it will take at least 6 months to be reasonably assured that the calves produced will survive without problems, although at present they appear "normal" in all respects. Some researchers have believed that normal prions are required in some biological processes, particularly in brain development; but for now the absence of prions in these dozen critters doesn't seem to have harmed them.

Stay tuned for more - maybe in about a year...

John

01 Jan 07 - 10:24 AM (#1923956)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Ils sont tous les meme animaux.

Doesn't matter where they were born!

:D

A

01 Jan 07 - 12:38 PM (#1924066)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

On Africa's Great Peaks, Glaciers Are In Retreat
Recent Report Blames Loss of Equatorial Ice On Post-'70s Warming

Associated Press
Sunday, December 31, 2006; Washington Post, A18

NARO MORU, Kenya -- Rivers of ice at the Equator -- foretold in the 2nd century, found in the 19th -- are melting away in this new century, returning to the realm of lore and fading photographs.

From mile-high Naro Moru, villagers have watched year by year as the great glaciers of Mount Kenya, glinting in the equatorial sun high above them, shrank to white stains on the rocky shoulders of the 17,000-foot peak.

Climbing up, "you can hear the water running down beneath Diamond and Darwin," mountain guide Paul Nditiru said, speaking of two of 10 surviving glaciers.

About 200 miles due south, the storied snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, the tropical glaciers first seen by disbelieving Europeans in 1848, are vanishing. And to the west, in the heart of equatorial Africa, the ice caps are shrinking fast atop Uganda's Rwenzoris -- the "Mountains of the Moon" that the ancient Greeks surmised were the source of the Nile River.

The total loss of ice masses ringing Africa's three highest peaks, projected by scientists to happen sometime in the next two to five decades, fits a global pattern playing out in South America's Andes Mountains, Europe's Alps, the Himalayas and beyond.

Almost every one of more than 300 large glaciers studied worldwide is in retreat, international glaciologists reported in October in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. This is "essentially a response to post-1970 global warming," they said.

Even such strong evidence may not sway every climate skeptic. Some say it's lower humidity, not higher temperatures, that is depleting Kilimanjaro's snows, for example.

Stefan Hastenrath of the University of Wisconsin, who has climbed, poked, photographed and measured East Africa's glaciers for four decades, says what's happening is complex and needs more study. But on a continent where climatologists say temperatures have risen an average 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century, global warming does play a role, he says.

"The onset of glacier recession in East Africa has causes different from other equatorial regions. It's a complicated sort of affair," he said by telephone from Madison. But "that is not something to be taken as an argument against the global warming notions."

In Kampala, Uganda's capital, veteran meteorologist Abushen Majugu agreed. "There's generally been a constant rise in temperatures. To some degree, the reduction of the glaciers must be connected to warming," he said.

It was 10 years ago, on the 100th anniversary of the first expedition to the Rwenzoris, an Italian effort, that Majugu and his colleagues were struck by a gift from Italy to Uganda: photographs from 1896 showing extensive glaciers atop the spectacular, remote, three-mile-high mountains.

In a scientific paper this May, Majugu and British and Ugandan co-authors reported that this ice, which covered 2.5 square miles a century ago, is less than a half-square-mile today.

The glaciers are "expected to disappear within the next two decades," they concluded. And because the 2nd century Greeks were at least partly right, that means a secondary source of Nile River waters will also disappear.

At Mount Kenya, too, "it's a dying glacier," Hastenrath said, referring to the mountain's big Lewis Glacier, once a mile-long tongue of ice draped over a saddle between peaks. "At the rate at which it goes, the end could come soon," he said.

In a meticulous new summary, the Wisconsin scientist, who first investigated Mount Kenya in 1971, shows that its ice fields have shrunk from an estimated 400 acres to less than one-fifth that area in the past century. After decades of work, he has concluded that several interrelated phenomena were responsible.

In the early years, sparser clouds and precipitation in East Africa allowed solar radiation to evaporate exposed areas of ice, which then wasn't adequately replenished, Hastenrath said. But more recently, the reduction in ice thickness has been uniform, pointing to general warmth, not limited sun exposure, as the cause. Eight of 18 glaciers have disappeared.

"Northey's gone. Gregory's about finished," said John Maina, as if mourning old friends. The 56-year-old guide knows Mount Kenya's glaciers and peaks well, having led climbers up its face since he was a teenager. As he prepared for yet another trek from Naro Moru, he recalled how it once was.

"We used to be able to ski on Lewis, but now it's all crevasses," he said. "We would climb all the way up Lewis on ice to Lenana peak, but now it's climbing on rocks. And the ice is weak. We're seeing blue ice, weak ice."

Up at 10,000 feet, where he mans a weather station in the clouds, another longtime guide, Joseph Mwangi, 45, makes his own projections. "In five years, Lewis Glacier will be gone," he said.

Mwangi worries that the water loss may unravel the unique ecosystem that surrounds him, with its high-altitude trees and bamboo groves, blue monkeys and giant forest hogs. "The lobelia trees might die," he said.

Animals are already dying in the foothills and plains below.

Glaciologists say "terminal" glaciers often discharge -- and waste -- large amounts of water in the early years, then release increasingly less as they shrink. Villagers here seem to confirm that: The Naro Moru River and other streams off Mount Kenya ran very high some years back, they say, but are now growing thin. A years-long drought magnifies the problem.

"The more the snow goes down, the lower the rivers," said Roy Mwangi, the area water officer here.

The trouble has already begun, he said. Miles downstream on the Naro Moru, where the river now vanishes in the dry season, livestock are dying of thirst. Desperate nomadic herdsmen have raided points upriver, blocking intakes for farm irrigation systems, he said.

"There's a lot of suffering on the lower side. These are armed men. I'm afraid there will be conflict," Mwangi said.

Hardship may spread even to Nairobi, Kenya's capital. Most of the country's shaky electric grid relies on hydropower, and much of that is drawn from water streaming off Mount Kenya. In a U.N. study issued in early November, scientists predicted that the glacial rivers of Mount Kenya and the rest of East Africa may dry up in 15 years.

"The repercussions on people living down the slopes will be terrible," said Grace Akumu, a Kenyan environmentalist.

Many scientists say similar repercussions could follow wherever human settlements depend on steady runoffs from healthy glaciers -- in Peru and Bolivia, India and China. It could also extend beyond that to coastal settlements, they say, as oceans rise because of the melting of land ice.

The October report by European and North American glaciologists in Geophysical Research Letters estimates that glacier melt contributed up to one-third of the one- to two-inch rise in global sea levels in the past decade. And that contribution is accelerating. Since 2001, they report, dying glaciers apparently have doubled their runoff into the world's rising seas.

01 Jan 07 - 11:12 PM (#1924496)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

UFO at O'Hare
KXAN-TV similar report

Nearly identical reports on what must have been a slow day in the news room.

Air Traffic Control confirmed that "someone asked" if they'd seen something. Radar and visual checks showed nothing unusual. The FAA is assuming "weather phenomena" due to a fairly clear day with low cloud ceilings and lots of ground lights.

At least one O'Hare controller, union official Craig Burzych, was amused by it all:

"To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," he said.

Some commercial pilots might say "but not unusual."

John

02 Jan 07 - 01:45 AM (#1924554)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I heard about that on the radio today. Real interesting!

SRS

03 Jan 07 - 06:11 AM (#1925476)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

UFOs has some additional comment on the reported sightings at O'Hare airport (01 Jan 07 - 11:12 PM above); but the more interesting thing is a link in the article to a web site/page devoted to some really gorgeous clouds (including kinds that could maybe be mistaken for UFOs(?))

Take a peek at Strange Clouds

John

03 Jan 07 - 06:21 AM (#1925478)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

And then there's those Beautiful People of New York:

[quote]

Associated Press: 9:33 p.m. CT Jan 2, 2007

NEW YORK - Sick subway passengers, most of them dieters who faint from dizziness, are among the top causes of train delays, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

After track work and signal problems, ill passengers rated among the main reasons for subway disruptions between October 2005 and October 2006, according to an analysis of MTA statistics, AM New York reported Tuesday.

Asim Nelson, a transit emergency medical technician, told the paper that fainting dieters topped the "sick customer" list.

"Not eating for three or four days, you are going to go down," Nelson said. "If you don't eat for 12 hours, you are going to get weak."

Although the agency doesn't keep an official record of the nature of each rider's illness, the paper said that an average 395 delays each month are caused by sick customers.

Fainting spells caused by missed meals topped other "sick customer" causes, including flu symptoms, anxiety attacks, hangovers and heat exhaustion, according to Nelson.

Nelson is part of the MTA's "sick Customer Response Program," which consists of emergency medical technicians and registered nurses. When a rider becomes sick, the train conductor must stay with the passenger until emergency responders arrive.

[endquote]

John

03 Jan 07 - 11:59 AM (#1925690)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Oiled prisoner slips out of Norway jail

Associated Press
OSLO, Norway - A Lithuanian held on suspicion of theft in an Arctic Norway jail slipped out of custody - literally - by stripping naked, smearing himself with vegetable oil and sliding through the prison bars, police said Wednesday.

"He slipped through the bars on Christmas Eve," said Svein-Erik Jacobsen, operation leader for the Oest-Finnmark Police District. The unusual escape made national news in Norway on Wednesday. [snip]

A

03 Jan 07 - 12:07 PM (#1925696)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Man saved from garbage truck after call

Associated Press

OAK PARK, Mich. - A man who awoke inside a garbage truck that was about to compact its load was rescued after making a frantic cell phone call to police, authorities say.

The man, who is unemployed but not homeless, was scavenging for bottles Thursday when he fell asleep in a Dumpster, said police Lt. Mike Pousak. He awoke when the container was unloaded into a truck.

He told police he didn't know which truck he was in but gave a dispatcher the location of the Dumpster he fell asleep in, Pousak said.

He had tried yelling for help but no one heard him.

Police soon lost contact with the man when his cell phone battery became dislodged, Pousak said. Police checked several trucks, including one in a parking lot.

"An officer went and pounded on the side of the truck and somebody pounded back," Pousak said.

03 Jan 07 - 01:28 PM (#1925755)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's an interesting and tidy little obit from today's paper:

Gertrude Sparks

Sept. 3, 1904 -Dec. 15, 2006
After 102 years of healthy good living Gertrude Sparks has gone on to be with the Lord. Born in Idaho in a town called White Bird. The Harrah family comprised about 14% of the population. There were eight girls and four boys. They had a typical family farm with wheat, garden crops, chickens, cows, cats, horse or two. Gertrude became Mrs. L. Sparks and raised a son, Richard Sparks, and daughter, Maxine Sparks Murray. She now has seven grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

Gertrude worked as a House Mother to student Nurses at Everett General Hospital in Washington. She worked there for 19 years until the last class of Nurses graduated. She retired and spent the winter season of 1967 as a guest of Mary Fonken and liked Ramon Park so much she bought her place on Loganita Drive in 1968.

Playing Bridge was a SPECIAL favorite of hers, but she liked most card games and always enjoyed Bingo. Gertrude was seldom idle. She was a knitter and liked to go fishing. Her trophy fish was caught in Powell River B.C. Canada where she caught a 60-pound salmon.

Gertrude moved into Merrill Gardens in Seattle in the late l990's.
Gertrude had been struggling with mobility the last couple months and in December she fell and ended up in Providence Hospital where she was able to see all of her grandchildren before her passing on December 15, 2006.

A celebration of her Life will be at 11 a.m., Friday, January 5, 2006, at Washington Memorial Funeral Home in SeaTac, Washington.

03 Jan 07 - 01:34 PM (#1925759)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Well, it's funny. It is interesting, as she lived to be 102, and as there is so much left unsaid in the obituary. A placid and uneventful surface, probably rich with events not mentioned, naughtinesses and affections and adventures we will not know. Those student nurses, for example. What tales Mrs. Sparks could have told, had she been so inclined!

A

03 Jan 07 - 06:35 PM (#1925969)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I was quite impressed by that fish, also!

03 Jan 07 - 10:15 PM (#1926125)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Adrianel

Amos:
That oiled Lithuanian must have been mighty cold, naked on Christmas Eve in the Arctic.

03 Jan 07 - 10:33 PM (#1926141)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Yes, but when your covered with bear-fat the windchill factor is less noticeable.

A

05 Jan 07 - 11:51 PM (#1927947)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Amos - I've heard that being covered with bare fat makes people more sensitive to the cold.

IS THIS A NEW TERRORIST WEAPON?

Flour-filled condoms case finally laid to rest

Philadelphia to pay $180,000 to woman jailed 21 days in misunderstanding

The Associated Press
Updated: 8:45 p.m. CT Jan 5, 2007

PHILADELPHIA - A woman who was arrested and jailed for three weeks on drug charges for what turned out to be flour-filled condoms has settled a lawsuit against the city for $180,000.

"Under the circumstances, something went terribly wrong," Janet H. Lee's attorney, Jeffrey Ibrahim, said Wednesday. "We're trying to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again."

Lee was a freshman at Bryn Mawr College in 2003 when she tried to take three condoms filled with flour in her carry-on bag on a flight to Los Angeles. They were discovered by airport screeners, and authorities said initial tests showed they contained drugs. Lee was held for 21 days on drug trafficking charges until later tests showed she was telling the truth.

Lee said the flour-filled condoms were a phallic toy students would squeeze to deal with exam stress, and she thought they were funny and packed them to show friends at home. Lee, now a 21-year-old senior, said she did not know that drug dealers often carry drugs in condoms.

A trial had been scheduled to begin Thursday in Lee's lawsuit. Lynne Sitarski, a lawyer for the city, said the city was not admitting wrongdoing or liability.

© 2006 The Associated Press.

URL: AP via MSNBC

John

06 Jan 07 - 12:09 AM (#1927959)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Hogzilla was a Runt

Hog wild! Hunter kills 1,100-pound beast

Behemoth of a hog killed in Atlanta suburub, weighed at truck station

The Associated Press
Updated: 8:38 p.m. CT Jan 5, 2007

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. - A giant wild hog boasted to be bigger than the near-mythical "Hogzilla" caught in southern Georgia a few years ago has been killed in a suburban Atlanta neighborhood.

The hog hung snout down from a tree Friday in William Coursey's front yard, not far from where the avid hunter said he shot the beast. He said he hauled it to a truck weight station, which recorded the hairy hog at 1,100 pounds.

The Department of Natural Resources did not know whether the hog was a record for the state. "We don't keep records on hogs," said Melissa Cummings of the DNR's public affairs department.

But Coursey believes his behemoth surpasses the famed super swine shot and killed in 2004 that weighed in at half a ton on the farm's scales. A team of National Geographic experts later confirmed "Hogzilla" didn't quite live up to the 1,000-pound, 12-foot hype, saying the beast was probably 7 1/2 to 8 feet long, and weighed about 800 pounds.

The news of Coursey's kill got people talking about the enormous beasts that roam the state.

"Nobody keeps official records," said Daryl Kirby, an editor with Georgia Outdoor News. "But it's one heck of a hog."

© 2006 The Associated Press.

John

06 Jan 07 - 12:19 AM (#1927963)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Two Passers-By Catch Toddler From Falling From Four-Story Building

January 5, 2007 (link)

New York, NY (AHN) - The timely arrival of two passers-by saved a 3-year-old toddler from certain harm when they caught the boy as he fell four-stories from a fire escape in the Bronx.

Police said that Julio Gonzales, 43, and Pedro Nevarez, 40, were passing by the neighborhood when they saw the toddler, Timothy Addo, dangling from a four-story building on Thursday. Apparently, the boy's babysitter took off her eyes from him and he was able to crawl out of the window.

Gonzales said, "He was hanging on for dear life."

The two men scrambled to position themselves under the fire escape to catch Addo when they heard people in the building scream for help as the boy slowly loosened his grip.

Nevarez adds, "No one came. We knew it was up to us."

The boy tumbled and hit the chest of Nevares so hard that knocked him off balance, but Gonzales was quick to catch him.

Timothy was treated at the hospital for a cut on his forehead.

Katrina Cosme, the 26-year-old mother of Timothy, who was at work when the incident happened said, "He's fine. He's happy. He's smiling."

Detective John Sweeney said they had questioned the babysitter and investigation is still on going.

The crucial catch came two days after a bystander threw himself onto a Manhattan subway track to save a man who had fallen, and a day after three police officers delivered a baby on a Brooklyn subway platform.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, "This is the week of heroes in New York."

06 Jan 07 - 12:23 AM (#1927964)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This is what I was originally looking for a minute ago when I was distracted by the last headline. Photo of hog.

06 Jan 07 - 12:41 AM (#1927969)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Gosh Stilly - at least the killer's better lookin' than the hog.

John

06 Jan 07 - 12:53 AM (#1927972)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Army urged dead soldiers to re-enlist

[Who says the volunteer Army is enough. Sounds desparate to me.]

Recruitment letters mistakenly sent to 275 dead, wounded officers

The Associated Press
Updated: 11:08 p.m. CT Jan 5, 2007

WASHINGTON - The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.

The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action. The 75 represent more than one-third of all Army officers who have died in Iraq since the war began.

"Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters," the Army said in a brief news release issued Friday night.

The Army did not say how or when the mistake was discovered. It said the database normally used for such correspondence with former officers had been "thoroughly reviewed" to remove the names of wounded or dead soldiers.

"But an earlier list was used inadvertently for the December mailings," the Army statement said, adding that the Army is apologizing to those officers and families affected and "regrets any confusion."

The total number of Army officers who have died in Iraq since the war began stood at 217 as of Dec. 2, according to the latest available Pentagon statistics. In all, the Army has had 1,552 soldiers — combining officers and enlisted — killed in action in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, plus 409 who died of non-hostile causes.

The number of Army officers wounded in action in Iraq stood at 894 as of Dec. 2, out of an Army total — for both officers and enlisted — of 14,165, according to the latest Pentagon figures.

Altogether, at least 3,006 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.

© 2006 The Associated Press.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16493727/

John

06 Jan 07 - 12:58 AM (#1927978)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Having a kid in the house makes you fatter

"Adults living with young children eat equivalent of an extra pizza a week"

I think the headline says it all. You can check out the article if you want the details.

"Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids."

John

07 Jan 07 - 01:47 AM (#1928911)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Not exactly "newspaper" but:

The Great Chair Heist on YouTube (3:42), purports to be an actual surveillance video from an apartment complex lobby in New York City - edited for YouTube of course.

The story at The Internet Finds Its Purpose affirms that this is indeed the apartment complex where a "product reviews coordinator," known as "PJ" at PC Magazine resides.

"… PJ had just directed me to the incredible YouTube video of a man casually stealing two full-sized arm chairs from PJ's co-op building lobby. It was originally taken by a surveillance camera and then edited for the viral video site. The video's "director," Tcement, added the title "The Great Chair Heist" and some funny captions throughout the 3-minute 42-second video. …"

Maybe someone knows this guy? (the thief, that is).

John

07 Jan 07 - 02:00 AM (#1928914)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Poor guy, had to "settle" for the smaller chairs. :-/

07 Jan 07 - 02:13 AM (#1928919)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: freda underhill

W Pushes Envelope on US Spying
New postal law lets Bush peek through your mail

by James Gordon Meek

WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned. The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions. That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.

Bush's move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise.

"Despite the President's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill. Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.

"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington. "The danger is they're reading Americans' mail," she said.

"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush's claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."

A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It's something we're going to look into."

Martin said that Bush is "using the same legal reasoning to justify warrantless opening of domestic mail" as he did with warrantless eavesdropping.

Published on Thursday, January 4, 2007 by the New York Daily News

07 Jan 07 - 11:44 AM (#1929195)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

As through this world you wander,
You'll meet lots of funny men.
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

Woody

A

07 Jan 07 - 01:48 PM (#1929351)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

How right he was! I dare say that there are more occurrences of the later than the former.

10 Jan 07 - 10:34 AM (#1932326)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Wesley S

According to the associated press today 1/10/07:

JAMES BROWN STILL NOT BURIED:

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) -- The body of soul singer James Brown has yet to be buried as attorneys and his children work to settle issues surrounding his estate, including where he will be laid to rest.

For now, his body lies in a sealed casket in his home on Beech Island, said Charles Reid, manager of the C.A. Reid Funeral Home in Augusta, Georgia, which handled the services.

Brown died of heart failure December 25 at age 73.

His will has yet to be filed, said Buddy Dallas, an attorney for the singer.

The room where Brown's body lies is being kept at a controlled temperature, and security guards keep watch, Reid said.

The funeral home delivered Brown's body after services December 30, Reid said.

Brown's home has been locked since hours after his death to protect his memorabilia, furnishing, clothes and other personal items, Dallas said.

"Just imagine what would have happened," Dallas said. "Items of James Brown would have left there like items off the shelves of Macy's in an after-Christmas sale."

The trustees for his will, along with Brown's children, will determine the burial site, Dallas said.

Tomi Rae Hynie, Brown's partner, said shortly after his death that she encountered locked gates as she tried to get into the home she says she shared with the singer and their 5-year-old son.

She wouldn't discuss the incident Tuesday, but her lawyer said Hynie should be granted access to the home. The attorney would not say whether Hynie would take legal action.

"The hope is that all parties can sit down and figure out what the problem is and what the challenges are," attorney Thornton Morris said. "And once we figure out what the challenges are we'll see if we can't resolve something that's a win for everybody."

Meanwhile, a woman who claims Brown raped her nearly 20 years ago said Tuesday she will continue her lawsuit.

Jacque Hollander has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her sexual harassment suit, which a lower court ruled last year she had waited too long to file.

A Supreme Court decision on whether to hear the case is pending.

She argues that the two-year statute of limitations in such cases does not provide equal protection to women.

"This has been a long road that ended tragically Christmas morning," Hollander said in a phone interview with the Associated Press.

"As a rape victim, I will never get to face him in court, and it hurts," she said. "But we are moving forward. We filed against his organization, as well as him. So now his organization stands in front of him."

In her lawsuit, Hollander said Brown raped her at gunpoint in 1988 while she was his publicist. She seeks $106 million in damages.

A federal appeals court tossed out Hollander's lawsuit in August.

"There was nothing to it 20 years ago and nothing to it 20 years later," Dallas said.

10 Jan 07 - 08:31 PM (#1932793)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

'Butt-printing' art teacher fired

The Associated Press
Updated: 4:21 a.m. CT Jan 10, 2007

RICHMOND, Va. - An art teacher whose off-hours work as a so-called "butt-printing artist" became widely circulated among high school students has been fired.

The Chesterfield County School Board, in a unanimous voice vote, fired Stephen Murmer at a meeting Tuesday night, spokeswoman Debra Marlow said.

In its decision, the board reasoned that students have a right to receive their education in an environment free from distractions and disruptions, Marlow said. The decision also is in keeping with court rulings that hold that teachers are expected to lead by example and be role models, she said.

Jason Anthony, Murmer's attorney, called the vote "a bad day for the First Amendment." - "Chesterfield lost a tremendous asset today," he said.

Murmer, a teacher at Monacan High School, was suspended in December after objections were raised about his private abstract artwork, much of which includes smearing his posterior and genitals with paint and pressing them against canvas.

His paintings sell for as much as $900 each on his Web site.

The unique approach to art became a topic when a clip showing Murmer, wearing a fake nose and glasses, a towel on his head and black thong, turned up on YouTube.com and became the talk of the high school.

**********************

A quick search did not find the alleged website of the artist, however one "report" on the school firing also claims that he posted a video "demonstrating how he paints with his butt."

There are s.o.o.o. many levels on which one could comment that I think I'll refrain.

John

10 Jan 07 - 11:15 PM (#1932872)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

It seems his name is Stan, not Stephen, and here is a video of him in action.

SRS

11 Jan 07 - 12:26 AM (#1932925)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

I almost posted that I'd leave it for Stilly to find his page, but ...

Good hit.

John

11 Jan 07 - 12:32 AM (#1932929)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Explanation for innocent bystanders:

Stilly River Sage is much better informed than I am about more "modern" kinds of art. Although I have some familiarity with older, more conventional stuff, I didn't find this artist; but I was sure that Stilly would know how to locate his page if she had any interest in doing so.

Not that I thought seriously that there would be any particular interest.

John

11 Jan 07 - 10:55 AM (#1933350)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,saulgoldie

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-2541133,00.html

11 Jan 07 - 09:22 PM (#1933869)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

...
File this to read later

Foot-dragging is worse than ever — and makes us poorer and fatter

The Associated Press
Updated: 5:48 p.m. CT Jan 11, 2007

Procrastination in society is getting worse and scientists are finally getting around to figuring out how and why. Too many tempting diversions are to blame, but more on that later.

After 10 years of research on a project that was only supposed to take five years, a Canadian industrial psychologist found in a giant study that not only is procrastination on the rise, it makes people poorer, fatter and unhappier.
... ... ... ...
In 1978, only about 5 percent of the American public thought of themselves as chronic procrastinators. Now it's 26 percent, Steel said.
... ... ... ...
Early studies looking at U.S. and Canadian cultures didn't find any differences in the two countries' procrastination problem, but Steel said when he has more time he'll get around to more cross-cultural studies.

Studying procrastination as a field has a benefit, said the professor. The more he knows about the problem and the causes, the less he procrastinates — even though he sheepishly acknowledges his study was completed five years late.

The good thing about studying procrastination, he said: "If you take a day off from it, you can always say it's field research."

My kinda job.

John

12 Jan 07 - 12:37 AM (#1933998)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Goodness, Saulgouldie--what a story!

[snip]
"The professor had hoped to spend the afternoon listening to his fellows discoursing on arcane topics. Instead, he was handcuffed to another suspect in a "filthy paddywagon" and fingerprinted in a detention centre, where his peppermints were confiscated. His bail was set at £720 and he remained behind bars for eight hours. When he told a judge his side of the story in court the next morning the case was dropped."

His peppermints were confiscated?

12 Jan 07 - 01:18 AM (#1934006)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

There were some "interesting(?)" comments from readers at Saulgoldie's link too, although I don't know that they added much to the story.

Of course his peppermints were confiscated. How would the police know that a dangerous criminal wouldn't have cyanide embedded in them to avoid being tortured for vital information?

John

12 Jan 07 - 02:15 PM (#1934545)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Boat washed off freighter found on Washington coast

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ABERDEEN, Wash. -- A 25-foot boat that apparently was knocked off a freighter in a storm washed ashore about two miles south of the Queets River on the Washington coast.

The Grays Harbor County sheriff's office says the boat was part of a shipment of four boats made in Port Townsend [Washington] for the Chilean Navy.

The boat found yesterday near Cape Elizabeth had "Armada de Chile" painted on it.

12 Jan 07 - 02:24 PM (#1934558)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

And the Bush propaganda machine will soon tell us it's an invasion by Chilean radical extremists? (Not too unbelievable, perhaps.)

John

12 Jan 07 - 02:32 PM (#1934565)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I seem to have stumbled into the shipping news today. This story begs the question--why did this oil tanker go from Alaska to Long Beach, CA, then BACK to Washington to unload the last of it's cargo? Why not unload at Cherry Point on the way there and have less to haul and expend less energy in the second leg of the trip? I can't believe the harbor at Anacortes is too shallow to accept the full ship--they've been in and out of there for decades. Anyway. . .

Anchors fall off two oil tankers from Alaska
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEATTLE -- Anchors fell off two oil tankers during heavy weather as they were carrying crude oil from Alaska to Long Beach, California.

The anchors were discovered missing when the tankers were being unloaded at Long Beach. The ships were allowed to continue to Washington where they finished unloading at a refinery at Cherry point. Now they are waiting -- one at Port Angeles and one at Seattle -- for new anchors.

The Coast Guard, the state Ecology Department and the Alaska Tanker Company of Beaverton, Oregon, are investigating what went wrong.

The company C-E-O Anil Mathur (ahn-HEEL' MAHTH'ur) says one anchor was lost from each ship -- Alaskan Frontier and Alaskan Navigator, in storms late last month. Each ship has a total of two anchors and the remaining anchor on each ship is cracked. He says the company is flying four anchors -- 15 tons each -- from Holland to be installed next week.

Officials say there was no harm to the environment.

12 Jan 07 - 06:15 PM (#1934757)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

First Bloggers, now Floggers

Sponsored blogs stir controversy

The curtain has been pulled on a deceptive new advertising tactic in which companies camouflage ads as product praise in online postings masquerading as independent blogs.

Several companies have been exposed for launching fake blogs - known as "flogs" - in a practice that coincides with an increase in the number of real bloggers secretly paid to endorse products.

Blogs, a term derived from "web logs," are rampant on the Internet and are considered online journals in which people post personal opinions, musings, rants and more.

Online firm Technorati reported on last week it was tracking more than 63 suspicious blogs.

Wily marketers have infiltrated the blogging world, paying for favourable commentary on products.

However posting product commentary without alerting readers that bloggers were compensated for their opinions is unethical and potential illegal, according to US Federal Trade Commission rules.

Sony Computer Entertainment America, a subsidiary of Japan-based Sony, admitted last week that it created a bogus blog baptised "All I want for Christmas is a PlayStation Portable."

The blog was passed off as the work of an amateur hip-hop musician named "Charlie," who enthusiastically praised the PlayStation.

In a short message on the Charlie blog, Sony apologised for being "a little too clever."

The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, came under fire in October for a blog portrayed as an online journal kept by a typical US couple, named Laura and Jim, as they travelled across the country in a motor home.

The couple's blog praised Wal-Mart for letting them park their hulking recreational vehicle overnight in store parking lots and told of encountering Wal-Mart workers nationwide that praised their jobs and their employer.

Business Week magazine revealed that the couple's cross-country trip was sponsored by Wal-Mart - a fact unmentioned in the online postings.

Companies such as PayPerPost and ReviewMe, which link bloggers and advertisers, are fueling the phenomenon.

PayPerPost, a five-month-old pioneer in the practice, is true to its name regarding favourable online blog postings.

On ReviewMe, bloggers in any language can offer to post their thoughts on products for $US500 a review.

ReviewMe explains on its site that it cannot guarantee favourable reviews, but that most of the posted opinions are positive.

"We do not allow advertisers to require a positive review," the company said in a statement. "The vast majority of reviews are measurably positive, although many do contain constructive criticism."

Blog-for-hire publicity campaigns can be comprised of thousands of postings, according to a PayPerPost spokesman that wished not to be identified.

Fake "independent" blogs by companies or secretly manipulated by advertisers break US law by misleading consumers, according to federal regulators.

The FTC warned this month that "such connection must be fully disclosed" and that its staff "will determine on a case by case basis whether to recommend law enforcement actions to the commission."

Faced with the FTC threat, PayPerPost announced this week it would change it service agreement to require bloggers who were being paid to say so in their postings. Previously they had left it to the blogger's discretion.

Many PayPerPost competitors have yet to adopt such a rule, and the torrent of user-generated videos, images, and text flooding the internet has aspiring advertisers navigating uncharted waters.

Attention seekers from fledgling music bands to major corporations have seen clever online content "go viral" - lingo for being spread for free worldwide by people using email and online links.

Both video-sharing website YouTube and teen-oriented social networking MySpace, for example, have become venues for companies to establish promotional pages. (just kidding)

John

13 Jan 07 - 04:02 AM (#1935064)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Spas soothe pain in the 'tech neck'

'BlackBerry thumb,' other workplace maladies prompt new therapies

Reuters
Updated: 6:08 p.m. CT Jan 12, 2007

NEW YORK - When massage therapist Grace Macnow first heard the term "BlackBerry thumb," she didn't know what it meant. Now, treating it is a new and booming part of her spa business.

Therapies to treat workplace woes such as a sore thumb from tapping on a hand-held computer, the aches of "tech neck" from typing on a laptop or even skin irritation from chatting on a cell phone are the latest rage to hit high-end spas, where the weary can seek relief at the end of an arduous workday.

"It's huge," said Cindy Barshop, the founder of Completely Bare salons in New York, who has introduced Purity Plus facials to help clean clogged pores and breakouts tied to cell phone use. "I'm pretty shocked," she said about the popularity of the new service. "Everybody's calling me about it. I think a lot of people have that problem."

The Purity Plus facial at Completely Bare, complete with herbal mask, steam treatment and massage, costs $185 and takes roughly an hour.

Joe Silverman, 31, was one of the first clients to sign up for the new tech neck massage at the Dorit Baxter New York Day Spa in midtown Manhattan. "I've been feeling such pain with keyboards and BlackBerry typing and always being on the go," said Silverman, who owns technology company New York Computer Help. "We don't take care of ourselves, whether it's our posture or just pressure. "You go home and you go to sleep, and you start to turn over or you are trying to move, you definitely feel it," he added. "It definitely takes a toll."

Macnow, at her spa Graceful Services, started offering specialized massages for BlackBerry thumb and tech neck last month after getting requests from clients. They've proved to be among her most sought-after services. "When they first called me, I didn't know what BlackBerry thumb was," she said. "Now I know."

Her massages feature deep muscle pressure intended to relax the shoulders, neck and arms.

Named after Ontario-based Research In Motion Ltd's popular personal digital assistant, the stress-related injury BlackBerry thumb was recently recognized by the American Physical Therapy Association as an official workplace malady.

Aida Bicaj, who offers cell phone facials at $225 a session in a townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side, says she has found a wealth of clients among stressed-out professionals and office employees who are overworked in competitive jobs. "With that, you have a lack of sleep and you have stress," she said. "It's identified in your face right away."

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

John

13 Jan 07 - 09:39 PM (#1935801)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

BlackBerry thumb,
BlackBerry thumb,
It's so dumb to get BlackBerry thumb!
BlackBerry thumb,
BlackBerry thumb,
I'd rather strum than get BlackBerry thumb!

Anyone want the tune?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

14 Jan 07 - 08:29 PM (#1936762)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

WomanDiesDrinkingWater

Woman in water-drinking contest dies

Water intoxication eyed in 'Hold Your Wee for a Wii' contest death

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:24 p.m. CT Jan 13, 2007

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A woman who competed in a radio station's contest to see how much water she could drink without going to the bathroom died of water intoxication, the coroner's office said Saturday.

Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead Friday in her suburban Rancho Cordova home hours after taking part in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest in which KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system for the winner.

"She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad," said Laura Rios, one of Strange's co-workers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento. "She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her."

It was not immediately know how much water Strange consumed.

A preliminary investigation found evidence "consistent with a water intoxication death," said assistant Coroner Ed Smith.
John Geary, vice president and marketing manager for Entercom Sacramento, the station's owner, said station personnel were stunned when they heard of Strange's death.

"We are awaiting information that will help explain how this tragic event occurred," he said.

Initially, contestants were handed eight-ounce bottles of water to drink every 15 minutes.

"They were small little half-pint bottles, so we thought it was going to be easy," said fellow contestant James Ybarra of Woodland. "They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk."

Ybarra said he quit after drinking five bottles. "My bladder couldn't handle it anymore," he added.

After he quit, he said, the remaining contestants, including Strange, were given even bigger bottles to drink.

"I was talking to her and she was a nice lady," Ybarra said. "She was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for kids."

© 2007 The Associated Press.

14 Jan 07 - 10:16 PM (#1936821)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

What a sad, idiotic way to die. How many people at that radio station had to work to promote a contest like that, and did no one say to them that this could be dangerous?

16 Jan 07 - 06:06 AM (#1938030)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Man's cell phone ignites in pocket

[quote]
Fire burned his hotel room and caused severe burns over half his body
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:11 p.m. CT Jan 15, 2007

VALLEJO, California - A cell phone apparently ignited in a man's pocket and started a fire that burned his hotel room and caused severe burns over half his body, fire department officials said.

Luis Picaso, 59, was in stable condition Monday with second- and third-degree burns to his upper body, back, right arm and right leg, Vallejo Fire Department assistant chief Kurt Henke said.

Firefighters arrived at the residential hotel Saturday night to find Picaso lying on the bathroom floor after a malfunctioning cell phone in his pants pocket set fire to his nylon and polyester clothes, Henke said.

The flames spread to a plastic chair, setting off a sprinkler that held the fire in check, he said.

Authorities declined to name the phone's manufacturer and model.

The fire and water caused $75,000 damage to the room and a business on the ground floor, Henke said.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

[endquote]

While the article doesn't specifically say so, most cell phones, and many other kinds of small portable devices, use the same general kind of Lithium batteries recently recalled by nearly every laptop computer maker in the world due to some "spontaneously flaming computers". There is a substantial history of other similar smaller recalls by makers of computers and of several kinds of other devices.

The problem is not apparent in the majority of batteries sold; but is at least "disconcerting" when it appears, and does not appear to have been completely solved.

Wearing polyester(?).

John

16 Jan 07 - 07:59 AM (#1938096)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Pardon for U.K.'s last convicted witch?

Woman was jailed for 9 months during World War II as threat to Britain

Reuters
Updated: 8:56 a.m. CT Jan 15, 2007

LONDON - The granddaughter of Britain's last convicted witch has launched a fresh campaign to gain a posthumous pardon for Helen Duncan, jailed at the height of World War Two as a threat to the nation.

"I will carry on fighting to clear her name," said Mary Martin who still vividly remembers being taunted in the playground in 1944 as "witch spawn." "The memories are still fresh. It was so unfair. She was totally innocent. It was ludicrous she was ever taken to court," the 72-year-old told Reuters.

Duncan, a medium who conducted seances across Britain, was arrested at a time when officials feared details of the upcoming D-Day landings in France could be revealed. She disclosed -- allegedly through contacts in the spirit world -- the sinking of two British warships long before the news was officially made public.
She also told the parents of a missing sailor that his ship, HMS Barham, had sunk. That was true, but to preserve morale, the sinking was not announced. Found guilty of witchcraft, Duncan was jailed for nine months. Martin said wartime leader Winston Churchill called the conviction "tomfoolery."

When re-elected in 1951, Churchill repealed the 1735 witchcraft act but Duncan's conviction was never quashed. She died in 1956.

'A real stigma'
Martin petitioned Britain's Home Secretary (Interior Minister) in vain in 1999. Now she is determined to try again, bolstered by support from Gordon Prestoungrange, holder of a medieval Scottish barony. In 2004 he used his position as the local baron in the coastal town of Prestonpans to pardon 81 women and men executed for witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries.

"When Mary Martin was growing up as a youngster, it was a real stigma," he told Reuters. "The wound is still open today."
He said the campaign on www.prestoungrange.org/helenduncan/ had taken on an international dimension with backing from the Witch Museum in the Massachusetts town of Salem, where in 1692 20 girls, men and women were executed for witchcraft.

Prestoungrange says the time is right for a pardon in Britain: "The 300 soldiers executed for cowardice in the First World War have been pardoned... we are now also apologizing for the slave trade...
"This was a bizarre decision. They were looking at some way of silencing the lady. They actually thought she was on the inside as a spy with information from somewhere. They were fearful she had access to official secrets. The case was ridiculous."

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

John

16 Jan 07 - 09:33 AM (#1938196)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

This raises some interesting questions, dunnit? actually thought she was on the inside as a spy with information from somewhere. They were fearful she had access to official secrets. The case was ridiculous.", quotha.

Well it WAS ridiculous, but I would like to know -- if it was not witchcraft -- by what means she was able to announce unknown events that turned out to be correct, such as the sinking of the Barham. If it occurred by ordinary means (gossip, for example), then the accusations are even more ridiculous.

A

16 Jan 07 - 10:11 AM (#1938238)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

It was certainly a missed opportunity to discover what else she could divine through the ether. I originally read that story some months ago, and thought they'd gotten around to pardoning her. I guess not.

For any bean counters in the audience, this post is number 547. I think there are only a few Mudcat threads that have the numbers scrambled, those I regularly participate on are this one and the MOAB.

16 Jan 07 - 11:07 AM (#1938304)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JennyO

SRS - the thread "You must leave now" has also been affected showing 2587 posts when it should be 2956.

Jenny (another bean counter)

16 Jan 07 - 11:41 AM (#1938355)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I don't think I'll post this on the James Brown obit thread, it's really a side issue. It has been my understanding that major events like marriage and divorce tend to make some wills void. There was an ancient one at my Dad's house, written before all of us were born and naming some man I had never heard of as our guardian if both parents died. Birth, divorce, lots of things made that obsolete. Brown's was more recent, but it seems logical that the spouse (whether married or common law) and the child have a good case to be included in the estate. Huff seems to be trying to set up the playing field to suit the adult children heirs--another thing I was told was that if you actually intend to disinherit someone, you should name them and say so in your will, because otherwise they have a case for having been missed or excluded by accident. The result in Dad's case was that he died intestate because there was nothing to work from on the old one. It would be a shame if that is the case for Brown--because the majority of his intentions could be ignored and a fight ensue. Estates are hard to work on, even WITH a will.

Brown's will drawn up before marriage
Associated Press
AUGUSTA, Ga. - James Brown's will, which was read last week and excludes his partner, Tomi Rae Hynie, and their 5-year-old son, was drawn up 10 months before the child's birth and more than a year before their marriage, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

The will was signed Aug. 1, 2000, Strom Thurmond Jr., Brown's probate attorney in Aiken, S.C., told The Augusta Chronicle. Brown, who died last month in Atlanta at age 73, married Hynie in December 2001. James Brown Jr. had been born six months earlier, on June 11.

The exclusion has added to a dispute about the soul singer's legacy. Brown's attorneys contend that Hynie is not Brown's widow because she was still married to another man when they said their vows. They have said Hynie later annulled her previous marriage, but she and Brown never remarried. Hynie says she was legally married to Brown.

The will calls for Brown's personal effects to be divided equally among the singer's six adult children. North Augusta, S.C., lawyer James Huff said that if a will specifically names some children but excludes others, the excluded children have no claim to the parent's assets, regardless of when they were born.

Huff represented Brown when he sought to annul his marriage to Hynie in 2004, a petition the singer later dismissed.

17 Jan 07 - 01:18 PM (#1939614)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Labradoodle Awakens Owner During Fire
From Associated Press
January 16, 2007

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - A savvy Labradoodle has one lucky owner. Firefighters said Bella, a mix of poodle and Labrador retriever, saved the life of her owner Matt Carcerano on Monday, waking him before his Santa Cruz cottage went up in flames.

At 3:30 a.m. Bella woke Carcerano, a 32-year-old welder, with a combination of growling, whimpering and barking.

"It was weird. I was sound asleep and she made noises I'd never heard before," Carcerano said. "I opened my eyes and it was just orange."

The floor-to-ceiling wall heater in the 50-year-old, two-room cottage was on fire, and Carcerano rushed out in socks and pajamas just as the entire place went up in flames. All of his belongings were destroyed except for a few photo albums he was able to grab.

The cottage had no smoke detectors. Fire department battalion chief Mike Venezio called Bella a lifesaver.

Carcerano said he planned to take Bella for a two-hour romp on her favorite local beach, once he took care of some personal issues.

"I gotta go buy shoes," he said.

17 Jan 07 - 01:45 PM (#1939637)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Runaway, 9, Sneaks on Flight to Texas
From Associated Press
January 17, 2007

LAKEWOOD, Wash. - A 9-year-old boy with a history of stealing cars and running away sneaked onto a plane bound for Texas, getting caught after flubbing an airport connection, officials said.

Semaj Booker apparently found a Southwest Airlines boarding card and made it through airport security Tuesday, hopping two separate flights but landing in San Antonio, Texas - short of his Dallas destination, police said.

"The only thing I have to offer on that is that were looking into it," Southwest spokeswoman Beth Harbin said.

The fourth-grader remained Wednesday in juvenile custody in San Antonio. He had been trying to get to his grandfather in Dallas, where he used to live.

The boy was unhappy after his family moved to Lakewood, outside Tacoma. His odyssey began Sunday when he stole a car that was left running outside a neighbor's house, only to be spotted by police near the interchange of Interstate 5 and State Route 512.

Police pursued Semaj at speeds up to 90 mph until he took an exit and the engine blew, after which the car went over a curb and coasted into a tree. He refused to come out of the car, so officers broke a window to unlock a door and immediately recognized him as a frequent runaway and car thief, Lakewood police Lt. David B. Guttu said.

Last month he also crashed a stolen car before being caught by police in Tacoma, and more recently he was caught in Seattle in a stolen car that had run out of gas, said his mother, Sakinah Booker.

She believes he learned to drive from playing video games on a PlayStation.

Booker said she had hoped to soon move her four sons back to Dallas, but Semaj grew tired of waiting.

Semaj was "incredibly motivated to get to Texas," Guttu said. "He doesn't want to live in Washington state."

Booker said her son dislikes the neighborhood where the family lives and is afraid of a sex offender who lives nearby.

"He does not like it here at all," she said.

17 Jan 07 - 11:37 PM (#1940150)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Mom has the numbers right at MOAB but this one is still low. Printer friendly shows the last message was number 551, not 380, but clearly someone is in the Mudcat workshop tinkering with the software. Thank you, whoever it is!

SRS

18 Jan 07 - 12:27 AM (#1940172)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Great story! I knew this fellow when I worked in Darrington in the Forest Service. And you should see his house. . . I was tempted to practice my rock climbing on his fireplace wall.

Rescuer survives his own scare
A Darrington helicopter pilot who has helped save dozens of lives is injured in a crash in the snow.

By Kaitlin Manry (The Herald, Everett, Washington)
January 17, 2007

It was over in four seconds.

Anthony Reece was working 140 feet in the air, piloting his helicopter as part of a logging operation in the mountains of Skagit County. About 1 p.m. on Jan. 4, the Darrington man noticed that the sky had darkened. Snow started to fall. He knew icy weather could cause problems. So he decided to call it a day and head in. In the five decades he spent flying, he had never been injured in a crash.

At 70 years old, he didn't want to start. But on his way in, someone radioed him and asked him to pick up a final load of cedar. As he readied his Hughes 369 for the load, the helicopter's engine quit. Using the chopper's last bit of inertia, he pointed upward at the snowy sky, giving a colleague working on the ground time to run out of the way.

The blades slowed.

He fell.

As his chopper neared the ground, Reece thought "God darn, this is gonna hurt."

The next thing he remembers is a loud crunch, then someone pulling at his feet. He felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. As co-workers moved Reece into a pickup truck and rushed him down the mountain, his wife of 48 years, Sue Reece, got a call from her brother. He was working near the wreck.

Anthony crashed, he told her. Firefighters and emergency medical technicians were on their way up. Her husband was injured, but moving. Sue Reece hopped in her car and drove from Darrington to Mount Vernon. "I thought, 'Well, maybe he'll be all right,'" she recalled. "Of course I worried about him. I've been doing that real regular for 48 years." She met her husband at a Mount Vernon hospital and rode in an ambulance with him to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Diagnosed with three cracked vertebrae and a split sternum, Reece spent four days in the hospital. On Jan. 8, he returned to his house in the woods of Darrington.

Balloons and flowers from well-wishers filled his living room. A borrowed hospital bed sat by the window. Sue Reece said she tried to pay for the bed, but the owner refused. Anthony Reece had plucked her son from a raging river years ago.

As a pilot, Reece has participated in hundreds of search and rescue missions. He's found lost hikers and carried injured climbers to safety. He's also transported the bodies of fallen outdoorsmen home, so their families could see them one last time. "I would describe him as one of my heroes," said Kelly Bush, district ranger and search-and-rescue coordinator at North Cascades National Park. "He's definitely saved lives. There are dozens of lives - people that have been in the last hours of living that are critically injured - and if it were not for his quick response and skill they wouldn't be living today."

Among the missions Reece participated in are several well known rescues. In 2005, he flew the bodies of Mountaineers leader Johanna Backus and two other climbers after they died in a rockslide on Sharkfin Tower in the North Cascades National Park. He flew their injured climbing partner to safety. The previous year, he responded when Nigel Aylott, a well-known Australian adventurer, was killed by a falling boulder near Darrington during the Subaru Primal Quest adventure race. He's also credited with saving Seattle Weekly writer Brian Miller after he fell while climbing 8,815-foot Forbidden Peak in the North Cascades park.

"A number of people owe their lives to his skillful piloting," Bush said. "We rangers are a dime a dozen. A good pilot is really what it's all about."

In 2005, 81 pilots died in the United States. When you add in people who fly bush planes, crop dusters or ferry around celebrities, it's easy to see why pilots have the third most dangerous job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As he's flown through his youth into old age, Reece has lost many pilot friends to accidents. He always has accepted the risk, all the while doing everything he can to minimize it. He says he doesn't scrimp on maintenance and avoids unnecessary danger. People who've flown with him say he's an expert at reaching difficult areas safely.

Dave Doan, aviation manager for the state Department of Natural Resources, has flown with Reece for 30 years, fighting forest fires and managing the department's timber. He said Reece is known throughout the Pacific Northwest as a safe, reliable pilot. "I felt very comfortable and very safe whenever I was with him," Doan said. "He never took chances. He never did anything that would scare you or anything like that. Comparing him to other pilots, he was in the top tier."

As is standard, the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash. Reece thinks a chunk of ice slid off the chopper into its air intake valve, instantly killing the engine.

As for flying again, it's not on the schedule anytime soon. Reece wears a brace to support his broken bones and gets around with the help of a walker. He sleeps in the hospital bed and is under the watchful eye of his wife. She's not in any rush to see him return to the skies.

However, flying has always been a part of Reece. Ever since he was a boy he's been enamored with planes, always dreaming of soaring above the clouds. And much to his wife's dismay, the gray-haired grandfather is not sure he can drop the urge to fly. "God knows," he said, shaking his head. "It's hard to tell what an old, dumb guy like me will do."

18 Jan 07 - 12:56 AM (#1940177)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Wow.

A

18 Jan 07 - 10:09 AM (#1940518)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Metchosin

This may be a spoof or old news as it came to me in an email titled My Kind of Nursing Home. Hopefully it wouldn't be my kind, this is rather sad, they booted the poor old buggers out for showing a little iniative too.

Nine Oldsters booted out of nursing home -- for trying to have an orgy!

By MIKE FOSTER - Weekly World News
LONDON -- A group of nine love-hungry codgers were booted out of an old folks home after they tryed to have an orgy in the recreation room!
The unidentified oldters, who ranged in age from 73 to 98, had apparently planned the unauthorized after-hours get-together for weeks. according to Melinda Helterford, spokesperson for the well-respected Edith Scarborough Nursing Home.
"They somehow got it in their heads to celebrate the 90th birthday of one of the women with a kind of sex party," said Miss Helterford.
"This may sound harmless or amusing to some people, but Scarborough has a reputation to uphold. We cannot tolerate that kind of conduct."
The nursing home made a concerted effert to keep the bizarre story out of the press and so details are difficult to come by.
But according to British papers, the let-it-all-hang-out party took place just after midnight on October 28. The three wrinkly Romeos and six sagging seductressess gathered together in the rec room and stripped to the buff.
"They really set the scene", a nursing home staffer who was not identified told a London tabloid. "They'd got their hands on candles which they lit, and even put on music to create the mood."
The nude geezer gala went on for about 20 minutes before orderlies heard rumba music coming from the recreational room and went to investigate.
When they opened the doors, they were shocked to find old-timers crowded together in their birthday suits, slathered in baby oil.
"They hadn't got too far--I guess it was taking some of the gents a while to get started," the staffer said.
"But they were all naked.
Believe me, it was the scariest thing I've seen in my life."

18 Jan 07 - 10:10 AM (#1940519)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Thomas the Rhymer

UPI international, today...

Would-be groom jailed for swallowing ring

DORCHESTER, England, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- A would-be groom is in jail for 12 weeks for allegedly trying to get a free weeding ring for his future bride by swallowing it in a British jewelry store.

While visiting a jewelry store in Dorchester, England, Simon Hopper allegedly swallowed the ring, worth nearly $3,500, and was arrested for attempted theft, Sky News reported.

Hopper had been looking at rings with jeweler Fred Burgess, when he allegedly swallowed the ring while the other man's back was turned.

When Burgess asked where the ring had gone, Hopper responded by claiming he had already returned it to him.

Suspicious, Burgess contacted the police and only discovered the ring when one of the responding officers used a metal detector to search Hopper.

Burgess said the crime was one thing, but waiting the next few days for it to return to him naturally was another matter.

"He managed to hold on for four days but then the inevitable happened and I got the ring back," he told Sky News. "It's had several good cleans. I'm not sure I'll be revealing its background to the future buyer."

18 Jan 07 - 01:27 PM (#1940714)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

NORMAN, Oklahoma (AP) -- The pilot of a TV news helicopter used the wind from the aircraft's rotor to push a stranded deer to safety after it lost its footing on a frozen lake and could not get up.

A small crowd had gathered to watch the deer struggling, its hooves repeatedly slipping, near the shore of Lake Thunderbird around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

With the helicopter's camera rolling, KWTV pilot Mason Dunn used the wind from the rotor to push the deer, initially sending it into a break in the ice where the animal managed to hold onto the ice with its front legs.

Dunn then lowered the helicopter and the wind sent the deer sliding on its belly across the ice until it reached shore and scampered into a nearby wooded area.

18 Jan 07 - 02:36 PM (#1940790)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

You can see the video here. It's today's video--if you wait to view it you may need to go to the January 18 videos, if they archive them.

SRS

20 Jan 07 - 04:06 AM (#1942278)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Sex offender applies to school — as 12-year-old

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:34 a.m. CT Jan 20, 2007

The article is rather long, but summarizing:

A 29 year old convicted sex offender convinced two "old guys" (61 and 43) that he was a 12 year old kid, and moved in with them where they reportedly had regular sex.

The scheme came apart when one of the old fellows tried to enroll the 29 year old in school (in Phoenix, AZ) as a 12 year old, claiming to be his grandfather.

It is reported that the two old guys were "greatly offended" to learn that they'd been conned by the 29 y.o.

Four arrested, the fourth being a former cellmate(?) of the "kid."

Reports indicate he was enrolled in some other schools, but it's not yet known whether he actually attended any of them.

And alternate possibility: they all knew exactly what was going on, and were attempting to get him into the school to find "new juveniles."

If it's too bizarre to be believed, someone's probably tried it. (opinion)

John

20 Jan 07 - 06:43 AM (#1942337)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

DNA exonerations put heat on Texas county

12th person cleared in Dallas County, more than most states

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:33 a.m. CT Jan 20, 2007

DALLAS - In a case that has renewed questions about the quality of Texas justice, a man who spent 10 years behind bars for the rape of a boy has become the 12th person in Dallas County to be cleared by DNA evidence.

That is more DNA exonerations than in all of California, and more than in Florida, too. In fact, Dallas County alone has more such cases than all but three states — a situation one Texas lawmaker calls an "international embarrassment."

James Waller, 50, was exonerated by a judge earlier this week and received an apology from the district attorney's office after a new type of DNA testing on hair and semen showed he was not the rapist who attacked a 12-year-old a boy living in Waller's apartment building in 1983. The boy had been the chief witness against him.
... ... ... ...
Only New York, Illinois and Texas have had more DNA exonerations than Dallas County, which has a population of 2.3 million, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions.
... ... ... ...
Since the nation's first DNA exoneration in 1989, 26 defendants have been cleared in Illinois, including 11 in Chicago's Cook County, according to the Innocence Project. There have been 21 exonerations each in Texas and New York, nine in California and six in Florida, the organization said.

In Dallas County, about 400 prisoners who filed wrongful-conviction claims have received DNA testing, leading to the 12 exonerations, said Trista Allen, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. New District Attorney Craig Watkins, who took office two weeks ago, is determined to look into the underlying causes, she said.

[end quote]

It was noted that even though cleared of the crime, it will require separate legal action to remove his name from the "registry of sex offenders."

Personal observations:

BUT WHAT IF - the percentage of false convictions in Dallas County is NOT different than elsewhere, and the rest of them just aren't looking as hard? [not an assertion, just a question]

It generally is not a trivial matter for someone once convicted to get a DNA test in an old case, and many places put significant restrictions on reopening cases to consider "new evidence," even when evidence as potentially compelling as a DNA result is claimed. (It took this fellow 7 years to get his test, and to get it admitted.)

Twelve exoneratons out of 400 tests implies an error rate in convictions of 3% of those tested, from a few cases where presumedly there was reason to expect an error might be found. The 400 who were tested are a very small fraction, one supposes, of those who'd like to have a re-hearing. (Has anyone ever heard of a convicted person who didn't want one?)

Texas doesn't have a particularly sterling reputation, with lots of claims of "frontier justice" and "lynch mob convictions;" but the information in this article doesn't necessarily support the implied conclusion (and slur) of the article. (A more complete set of statistics might support an entirely different set of lies?)

John

20 Jan 07 - 08:08 AM (#1942382)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: The Fooles Troupe

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10419961

Spy report poor value for money
7:15AM Saturday January 20, 2007

The US Defence Department has acknowledged that an espionage report it produced warning about Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside was not true. The Defence Security Service has started an internal review.

20 Jan 07 - 03:22 PM (#1942688)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Foolestroupe -

Bee-dubya-ell reported the denial in the thread BS: Canadian Spy Coins. "Discussion" already posted there.

John

21 Jan 07 - 01:11 AM (#1943025)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Thief chooses wrong pickup to steal
Lake Stevens man jumps in truck bed, subdues thief at high speed
The Herald (Everett, WA) link

CLEARVIEW - When he stopped to do the right thing, he never expected it would turn into a hair-raising ride at freeway speeds standing in the back of his pickup truck. It was a stunt usually performed by Jackie Chan but instead pulled off by Clint Lucas, a Lake Stevens construction manager.

After witnessing a car accident at the intersection of 180th Street SE and 35th Avenue SE, Lucas, 26, stopped to make sure everyone was OK. That's when police believe Trinidad Mendoza, who was involved in the high-speed crash, got into Lucas' 2006 Ford F-350 and started to drive away, according to a police affidavit filed in Everett District Court. Lucas, who stands 6-1 and weighs 200 pounds, jumped into the bed of his $40,000 truck. He held on as Mendoza sped off, the court papers said.

"I don't really know how I was feeling," Lucas said. "I just had a lot of adrenaline going through me. It's a hard thing to describe. I just knew I needed to get the truck stopped, and I needed to get him out of it." Lucas was balancing in the bed as his truck swerved west on 180th Street. Mendoza stopped briefly, perhaps so Lucas could get out, but then started driving again, Lucas said. "He seemed pretty scared, like he didn't know what he was doing. I think he expected me to jump out of the truck," Lucas said. Lucas wasn't going anywhere.

"By that point, I was pretty committed," he said. With the truck moving at freeway speeds, Lucas kicked in the back window with his steel-toed work boots. Lucas clubbed the man with rolled-up construction plans and an old trowel. Finally, Mendoza stopped about a half-mile down the road, according to the court document.

"I needed to stop him. He just stole my truck, and I wasn't going to let him get away with it," Lucas said. Lucas jumped out of the back of the pickup, gave chase, and wrestled Mendoza to the ground. Two other men, who had seen what happened, helped subdue the renegade driver. They used plastic zip ties to cuff Mendoza's wrists until police arrived. "I knew I wanted to get him stopped," Lucas said.

Mendoza is being held at the Snohomish County Jail for investigation of car theft and a warrant for parole violations. Bail is $10,000. Lucas suffered scrapes on his knee and forearms, he said. His willingness to help out was bruised, too.

"It happened when I was trying to help somebody," Lucas said. "I will definitely think twice next time I see something." Still, he realized the whole incident could have been a lot worse. He could have been seriously injured and the driver could have put up more of a struggle. And just as he was trying to do the right thing for someone else, others stopped to help him. "That people actually decided to stop and help me," he said, "That was great."

23 Jan 07 - 12:46 AM (#1945120)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

How to save a hairless dog?

'Hairless dog' species beats extinction

Peru protects 'punk' animal given its ancient lineage
By Andrei Khalip , Reuters, Jan 22, 2007

LIMA, Peru - His eyes gleaming with joy underneath a natural yellow mohawk, Josh the Peruvian Hairless Dog heads out to greet tourists at Lima's Pucllana ruins.

About the size of an English pointer, Josh and his kin are not guard dogs, instead they are guarded behind the walls of this and other historic monuments on the Peruvian coast — the hairless hound's habitat for more than 3,000 years.
...
Its history is long and rather sad, especially after the Spanish conquest starting in 1532.

Native pre-Incan civilizations used the dogs for hunting and as pets for company. They are represented on the ceramic pottery of the Chimu, Moche and Chancay cultures found on the coast. They were sometimes mummified and buried along with people to help the departed find their way to the world of the dead or to continue serving their owners in the afterlife.

The Spanish brought giant war dogs to fight the natives and would often amuse themselves by setting off one such dog against a small pack of the smaller local breed.

"There are reports it could tear four, five hairless dogs in pieces easily," Vargas said, caressing Josh's head.

For centuries afterwards, it mostly ceased being a pet animal and would roam along the coast feeding on mollusks, often hunted by people simply for fun or for skins, believed to help with arthritis and used sometimes as thermal bags due to a popular myth that they retain heat.

As a result, the breed got to the 21st century on the brink of extinction, and that's when the government decided to safeguard it by ordering all archeological sites along the coast to have at least a pair -- after Huaca Pucllana's 1989 initiative. They are now also Peru's only own world-registered breed.

"We know there are quite a few now, and there are people breeding them and people buying them here and for export — it is a luxury dog now," Vargas said, adding though there was still a lot of prejudice against the dog's naked skin.

"Ugly dog, they call it, dirty dog, 'punk' dog. But it is much cleaner than hairy dogs — leaves no hair around the place, has no fleas, does not provoke allergies. And it is a great company and a live thermal bag in winter."

Josh, his mother, Jala, and brother, Cuni, feel quite at home at the Lima ruin, where the breed had lived for millennia.

"It's rather curious," Vargas said. "As soon as the museum closes it's like they say: 'Our home is ours again,' and start walking up and down the walls of the ruin. They are the masters here."

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

[If you wanna dig, you gotta get TWO DOGS!]

[Full story and photo at link, for now]

23 Jan 07 - 04:39 AM (#1945199)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Tijuana police issued slingshots

Guns confiscated amid allegations of collusion with drug runners

The Associated Press
Jan 23, 2007

TIJUANA, Mexico - The police department has issued about 60 slingshots to officers in the violent border city of Tijuana, where soldiers confiscated police weapons two weeks ago on allegations of collusion with drug traffickers.

Municipal police spokesman Fernando Bojorquez said Monday that the slingshots, along with bags of ballbearings, were given to officers patrolling areas of the city visited by tourists.

Tijuana's police force of 2,000 officers has been without guns since Jan. 5, but some patrol alongside armed state police.

President Felipe Calderon sent 3,300 soldiers and federal police to Tijuana at the beginning of January to hunt down drug gangs. The soldiers swept police stations and took officers' guns for inspection amid allegations by federal investigators that a corrupt network of officers supports smugglers who traffic drugs into the U.S. The weapons are still being checked.

About 100 police demonstrated outside Tijuana town hall on Monday demanding the return of their guns. "The arms are our tools for work," said officer Juan Manuel Nieves. "Do they want more police to be killed?"

More than 300 people were slain in Tijuana last year including 13 police officers.

© 2007 The Associated Press

John

23 Jan 07 - 10:01 AM (#1945450)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This post is going to be a mixed bag of sorts.

I found photos of the hairless dogs via Google.

This particular pooch seems to counter something I read, probably at Mudcat at one time on some trivia thread, about male dogs having nipples. I think the statement was that they don't, but this pooch clearly does. In the "for what it's worth" department--which may be nil.

And though the biggest problem is in Ciudad Juarez, opposite El Paso, that last post triggered a memory of a troubling and unsolved mystery in Mexico, the murder of hundreds of young women. If you're subscribed to read the Washington Post you should be able to read this article. It is from Dec. 16, 2005, and starts:

Unresolved Murders of Women Rankle in Mexican Border City
New State Officials Seek Justice in Hundreds of Bungled Cases

By Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 16, 2005; Page A30

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Almost 18, Laura Berenice Monarrez was a serious student with dreams of a big future. She wanted to be a medical examiner, she told her mother in a long conversation on Sept. 18, 2001. Boys were just a distraction from her career plans, she said.

Three days later, "Bere" Monarrez disappeared. Seven weeks after that, her body and those of seven other pretty young women were found in an abandoned cotton field beside a busy boulevard near downtown. All had been raped and strangled.

Today the so-called campo algodonero or "cotton field" case remains unsolved, as do many of the 377 slayings of women and girls over the past 12 years in this gritty, industrial border city.

"For us, four years have passed and we have a lot of programs, but we have no justice," said Benita Monarrez, 43. Although government funds have been established to compensate families of murder victims, she said, the money means nothing as long as her daughter's killer remains at large. "For me, that is injustice."

For years, the mysterious deaths and disappearances of women have frustrated officials and terrified families in Juarez, a transient city where thousands of women live in shantytowns and work in maquiladoras, the factories on the U.S. border that produce electronic circuit boards and auto parts.

About a fourth of the victims were kidnapped, raped and strangled in a similar way, leading victims' families to believe that a sexual serial killer remains on the loose. The whereabouts of almost 40 other women who have disappeared since 1993 are still unknown. And this year, the number of homicides with female victims has surged to 30, although authorities attribute 80 percent of them to domestic or family violence.

find the rest online.

23 Jan 07 - 10:50 AM (#1945505)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Good news for our science readers and writers! The flaws of Wikipedia are being addressed:

Scholarpedia

23 Jan 07 - 07:35 PM (#1946081)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Stily -

Excellent picture of the hairless, although this one seems to be missing the tail-tuft hair that the first article indicated was "characteristic." Some variation within the breed is likely, of course.

There have been several articles recently on various locales where large numbers of disappearances, almost invariably of women or children, have been reported, with some being confirmed as murders (sexual or otherwise), others attributed to "sex slavers," and some just "traditional brutality." It might merit a separate thread, but I can see that as being extremely depressing if many of them were all visible together in one place.

John

23 Jan 07 - 09:17 PM (#1946162)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I poked around that Google page of images and found the following:

It was adjacent to this photo on this page. Lots of search terms, should you be so inclined! Me, I'll stick with a really short-haired Am. Staff. Terrier and a Catahoula mix.

SRS

23 Jan 07 - 10:32 PM (#1946195)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

I have no idea what the kennel clubs have to say about it, but the "Mexican hairless" (Chihuahua?) term was always, so far as I saw, applied to little lap dogs with white (or pink) skin. The Peruvians appear to be of a rather different kind; but the world is full of so many different and remarkable things that I can't quibble.

John

23 Jan 07 - 10:33 PM (#1946196)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

The counts says 400. I wonder if Foolestroupe will tell of if it's off again.

John

24 Jan 07 - 12:13 AM (#1946230)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Yours was actually post 571. That 400 is just a phantom.

24 Jan 07 - 12:42 AM (#1946245)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Yeah Stilly, 12 x 50 is hardly 400 - which I knew; but I couldn't resist tweaking Robin.

Airline defends removing family from flight

AirTran Airways backs decision to boot parents, toddler for temper tantrum

The Associated Press, Updated: 3:06 p.m. CT Jan 23, 2007

ORLANDO, Fla. - AirTran Airways on Tuesday defended its decision to remove a Massachusetts couple from a flight after their crying 3-year-old daughter refused to take her seat before takeoff.

AirTran officials said they followed Federal Aviation Administration rules that children age 2 and above must have their own seat and be wearing a seat belt upon takeoff.

"The flight was already delayed 15 minutes and in fairness to the other 112 passengers on the plane, the crew made an operational decision to remove the family," AirTran spokeswoman Judy Graham-Weaver said.

Julie and Gerry Kulesza, who were headed home to Boston on Jan. 14 from Fort Myers, said they just needed a little more time to calm their daughter, Elly.

"We weren't given an opportunity to hold her, console her or anything," Julie Kulesza said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
The Kuleszas said they told a flight attendant they had paid for their daughter's seat, but asked whether she could sit in her mother's lap. The request was denied.

She was removed because "she was climbing under the seat and hitting the parents and wouldn't get in her seat" during boarding, Graham-Weaver said.

The Orlando-based carrier reimbursed the family $595.80, the cost of the three tickets, and the Kuleszas flew home the next day.
They also were offered three roundtrip tickets anywhere the airline flies, Graham-Weaver said.

The father said his family would never fly AirTran again.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

What an abominable shame that the whole world can't stop for a spoiled 3 year old, -- -- or is it?

John

24 Jan 07 - 10:03 AM (#1946599)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I saw that earlier, then read the child behavior thread that has been going to a couple of days. It sounds like those parents set this kid up for the tantrum. They're lucky they were offered extra flights, let alone reimbursement for the original fare.

Temper tantrums aren't difficult to avoid, but it means you have to head them off before they get started. There are all sorts of ways to do that. I have two kids, and we never had a tantrum because no one ever let them consider getting so wound up.

SRS

24 Jan 07 - 12:19 PM (#1946713)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Woman leaves town a $4 million surprise

By ANGELA K. BROWN, The Associated Press
link

GRANDVIEW [Texas]-- Wynonia Pallmeyer never lived in Grandview. But once a month for more than a decade, she drove 35 miles from her home in Fort Worth to this small town she had grown to love. Few here knew the unassuming and sometimes tenacious silver-haired woman, other than people involved in the nursing home where her husband, Edward, lived the last years of his life. Now Pallmeyer has made a lasting mark on the town, leaving it nearly $4 million, almost a third of her $14 million estate.

"I'm not surprised by her generosity -- just that she had that much money," said Martha Bennett, a Grandview Bank vice president who served with Pallmeyer on the nursing home's board. "You just don't run into people like that."

Pallmeyer's relationship with Grandview, a town of about 1,400, began in the mid-1980s after her husband became ill and needed long-term care. Someone referred her to the not-for-profit Grandview Nursing Home, ranked among the best in Texas. She was so pleased with the home that she joined its board and continued to serve long after her husband's death. When the facility needed something -- an ice cream machine, a whirlpool, a van, money for a chapel -- Pallmeyer provided it, administrator Barbara LeBaron said.

Although she wore diamond jewelry and drove a Mercedes, Pallmeyer never flaunted her money, friends said. She lived in a modest 2,000-square-foot house built in 1959 and valued at $150,500. Pallmeyer, who died at 86 in June 2005, apparently didn't know the total value of her estate -- which she amassed over decades with her husband by buying real estate and mineral rights. Friends said she had a keen business sense. So Pallmeyer, who had no children or other relatives, requested in her will that three of her friends form a committee to decide how her riches would be distributed after her death.

"For some odd reason, she didn't want to make those choices herself," said the Rev. Donnie Voss, a senior associate pastor at Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth, which Pallmeyer attended for decades. "But she was clear in her intent that the money would go to charitable causes." Committee member Rudolph McDuff, a former Grandview mayor who knew Pallmeyer for 25 years, said she was "a nice lady who knew what she wanted to do and didn't listen to nobody."

She never discussed leaving her money to the town but said she wanted the nursing home taken care of, McDuff said. So all of McDuff's recommendations -- charities and churches -- involved Grandview. The nursing home will receive about $2 million. LeBaron said she had no idea how much it was receiving until she and a co-worker opened an envelope and found a check for almost $1 million last fall, after the will was finalized. The rest of the money will arrive later.

"We had to look at it," LeBaron said with a laugh. "To think what an effect it could have for us and that somebody could be that generous."

The nursing home had already borrowed nearly $1.5 million from the federal government to build a therapy wing, beauty salon and break room. Now the board expects to be able to repay the loan sooner, LeBaron said. The Grandview Youth Association, which has received about half of its $200,000, has already built a youth football field. It plans to build baseball and soccer fields and a pavilion to be named after Pallmeyer, said Janet Smith, an association board member.

The Grandview community center, closed for more than a year, plans to use its $600,000 for much-needed renovations, and the town's library will use its $200,000 for expansion. "Knowing her the way I did, I knew she'd be satisfied with giving it to different groups instead of one person or organization," McDuff said.

Among the other beneficiaries are several universities in North Texas and a homeless shelter and a charitable foundation in Fort Worth. The other two committee members were a minister at Pallmeyer's church and one of her neighbors in Fort Worth.

Community leaders say Pallmeyer's legacy and what her gift will mean can't be overestimated. "It's hard to describe in words how you feel," said Robert Stewart, president and CEO of Grandview Bank. "In Grandview, we have a very small business community, and obviously they struggle for funding. These gifts are going to go a long way toward taking care of the needs these organizations have."

25 Jan 07 - 11:19 AM (#1947663)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

U. of N.C. goofs, tells 2,700 they're in

© 2007 The Associated Press

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — An admissions department e-mail sent from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill congratulated 2,700 prospective freshmen this week on their acceptance to the school.

The problem is that none of the students have been admitted. They are on the school's wait list and won't find out until March whether they've made the cut.

"We deeply regret this disappointment, which we know is compounded by the stress and anxiety that students experience as a result of the admissions process," Stephen Farmer, the school's director of undergraduate admissions, said in a news release.

Farmer said two employees accidentally sent the e-mail Tuesday. It began, "Congratulations again on your admission to the University."

The e-mail was intended to request midyear grades from high school students who have already been accepted to the school.

Admissions officials have sent follow-up e-mails apologizing for the error. They have also e-mailed admissions counselors around the nation to explain the mistake.

About 20,000 people apply each year to UNC Chapel Hill, and the school enrolls about 3,800 new freshmen.

26 Jan 07 - 12:02 AM (#1948282)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Mountain Lion Attacks Hiker in California
January 25, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO - Wildlife officials on Thursday credited a woman with saving her husband's life by clubbing a mountain lion that attacked him while the couple were hiking in a California state park. Jim and Nell Hamm, who will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next month, were hiking in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park when the lion pounced. "He didn't scream. It was a different, horrible plea for help, and I turned around, and by then the cat had wrestled Jim to the ground," Nell Hamm said in an interview from the hospital where her husband was recovering from a torn scalp, puncture wounds and other injuries.

After the attack, game wardens closed the park about 320 miles north of San Francisco and released hounds to track the lion. They later shot and killed a pair of lions found near the trail where the attack happened. The carcasses were flown to a state forensics lab to determine if either animal mauled the man.

Although the Hamms are experienced hikers, neither had seen a mountain lion before Jim Hamm was mauled, his wife said. Nell Hamm said she grabbed a four-inch-wide log and beat the animal with it, but it would not release its hold on her husband's head. "Jim was talking to me all through this, and he said, 'I've got a pen in my pocket and get the pen and jab him in the eye,'" she said. "So I got the pen and tried to put it in his eye, but it didn't want to go in as easy as I thought it would."

When the pen bent and became useless, Nell Hamm went back to using the log. The lion eventually let go and, with blood on its snout, stood staring at the woman. She screamed and waved the log until the animal walked away. "She saved his life, there is no doubt about it," said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the Department of Fish and Game.

Nell Hamm, 65, said she was scared to leave her dazed, bleeding husband alone, so the couple walked a quarter-mile to a trail head, where she gathered branches to protect them if more lions came around. They waited until a ranger came by and summoned help. "My concern was to get Jim out of there," she said. "I told him, 'Get up, get up, walk,' and he did."

Jim Hamm, 70, was in fair condition Thursday. He had to have his lips stitched back together and underwent surgery for lacerations on his head and body. He told his wife he still wants to make the trip to New Zealand they planned for their anniversary, she said.

Nell Hamm warned people never to hike in the backcountry alone. Park rangers told the couple if Jim Hamm had been alone, he probably would not have survived. "We fought harder than we ever have to save his life, and we fought together," she said.

27 Jan 07 - 01:14 PM (#1949754)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

This could be a song challenge, but I think the song's already been written - several times:

Cops: Escapee surfaces at NASCAR track

Fugitive driving singer Gayle's bus says he was to give racer Stewart a ride

The Associated Press, Updated: 4:01 p.m. CT Jan 26, 2007

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - It has all the makings of a country song: an escaped prisoner, his terminally ill mother, a Wal-Mart truck, NASCAR and a Nashville singer's tour bus.

Since Christopher Daniel Gay, 32, escaped from a prisoner transport van Sunday in South Carolina, police say, he has evaded a five-state manhunt by stealing a pickup, a big rig and the bus that belongs to singer Crystal Gayle.

No one has been reported injured, and the search for him continued Friday.

Initially, police say, his motive for fleeing was simple. "I take it he was just trying to see his mom," said Michael Douglas, the police chief in Pleasant View, Tenn., near the home where Gay's mother is dying of cancer.

Gay, who has a history of theft involving trucks and other heavy equipment, escaped during a bathroom break in Hardeeville, S.C., as he was being taken from Texas to face felony theft charges in Alabama. The van was taking a route allowing it to pick up prisoners in other states.

He stole a pickup truck in South Carolina and made his way more than 300 miles northwest to Manchester, Tenn., where he stole a Wal-Mart tractor-trailer filled with $300,000 worth of merchandise, police said.

On Tuesday, Gay got to within 50 yards of his mother's home, about 25 miles northwest of Nashville, but abandoned the Wal-Mart truck¹ and fled into some woods, authorities said.

"What he done was wrong, but he knows his mama don't have long," his mother, Anna Shull, told The Tennessean this week. Efforts to contact Gay's family were unsuccessful Friday.

Authorities don't think Gay got to see his mother.

Since then, authorities believe he stole the bus belonging to Gayle — the younger sister of Loretta Lynn, known for her long hair and hits such as "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue."

A man believed to be Gay arrived Thursday night at USA International Speedway in Lakeland, Fla., telling the track's manager he was there with NASCAR racer Tony Stewart and asking him for help getting a new generator for the tour bus he was driving, officials said. The Speedfest 2007 event is being held there this week, but there are no plans for Stewart to appear.

"His story just started having a lot of inconsistencies, so we asked him for some identification," said speedway President Bill Martino in a phone interview Friday. The man, who Martino said was clean-cut and dressed nicely, refused and fled.

Track officials, suspicious of the man's story, provided authorities with the license plate number of the tour bus.

'There's got to be a country song ...'

Gayle didn't know the bus was missing from the Nashville garage where it was parked until speedway officials called Thursday night, police said. Her husband and manager, Bill Gatzimos, couldn't immediately be reached for comment Friday, but he told WSMV-TV, "There's got to be a country song in having your bus stolen and taken for a joyride by a fugitive."

© 2007 The Associated Press.

¹ "big rig from Walmart" would probably scan better in your song.(?)

John

27 Jan 07 - 06:23 PM (#1949978)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

But he couldn't stay away from them NASCAR tracks:

Police arrest escapee at NASCAR track

Christopher Daniel Gay, 32, was arrested around 11 p.m. Friday at the Daytona International Speedway where he had been watching a race, said Lt. Patrick Myers, spokesman for Daytona Beach Police.

John

27 Jan 07 - 07:08 PM (#1950001)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

I didn't get to see my dyin' mama,
Lying on her deathhbed, on her back,
But at least I got to steal a tour-bus
And watch those NASCAR drivers round the track.

Yeah, there's some kinda ballad in there.

A

27 Jan 07 - 08:56 PM (#1950068)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

I thought his momma's statement was 'bout half way there:

"What he done was wrong,
but he knows his mama don't have long,"

John

28 Jan 07 - 05:29 AM (#1950208)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

New Mother Lied About Her Age

The Associated Press
Updated: 1:17 a.m. CT Jan 28, 2007

LONDON - A 67-year-old woman who is believed to be the world's oldest new mother told a British Sunday newspaper she lied to a U.S. fertility clinic — saying she was 55 — to get treatment.

Carmela Bousada said in her first interview since she gave birth to twin boys on Dec. 29 that she sold her house in Spain to raise $59,000 to pay for in vitro fertilization at a California clinic, The News of the World reported.

"I think everyone should become a mother at the right time for them," Bousada said in a video of the interview provided to Associated Press Television News. "Often circumstances put you between a rock and a hard place and maybe things shouldn't have been done in the way they were done but that was the only way to achieve the thing I had always dreamed of and I did it," she said.

Bousada turned 67 this month but said she told the Pacific Fertility Center in Los Angeles she was 55 — the clinic's cut off for treating single women, the report said. She said the clinic did not ask her for identification.

Dr. Vicken Sahakian, the clinic's medical director, confirmed late Saturday that he treated Bousada, but said clinic procedures would have required her to provide her passport.

"I did not know that she was 66," Sahakian told The Associated Press, declining to comment on her case further. "We do check identity."

Looking for a husband

Bousada now hopes to find a younger husband to help raise her two sons, Pau and Christian, the newspaper said.

The retired department store employee lived with her elderly mother for her entire life in Cadiz, in southern Spain. She hatched her plan to have children after her mother died, at an unspecified age, in 2005, the newspaper said.

She kept her plan secret from her family and when she finally told them she was two months pregnant, they thought she was joking.

"Yes, I am old of course, but if I live as long as my mom did, imagine, I could even have grandchildren," she said in the video.

She was hospitalized during her pregnancy after she collapsed in a supermarket, but said her health has been good since she delivered.

"When the doctors said they had to make an incision for the Caesarian, I told them, 'Make it really low so that I can still wear a bikini,"' Bousada was quoted as saying.

The twins, who were born seven weeks premature, remained in hospital for three weeks, but are now healthy and at home with Bousada, the report said.

Romanian citizen Adriana Iliescu gave birth to baby Eliza Maria in January 2005, also at the age of 66. Bousada was 130 days older than Iliescu when she gave birth.

29 Jan 07 - 09:39 PM (#1951895)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Judge orders new trial after juror sips vodka during proceedings

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A judge ordered a new trial in a case in which a juror sipped vodka throughout the trial.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Geoffrey Morris said in his order that new trials may be granted only in the most extreme circumstances.

But he said "the inexcusable, disruptive behavior of this juror was so extraordinary as to render this relief appropriate."

The case involved a lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed she was injured when a garbage truck ran into her car.

The jury foreman told Morris that the juror had been disruptive and uncooperative during deliberations, and eventually became so inebriated she could not participate.

MORE at COURTTV.COM

30 Jan 07 - 04:49 AM (#1952117)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Naked student interrupts lunch

Prank 'went a little farther than he intended,' police officer says

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:36 p.m. CT Jan 29, 2007

WESTERVILLE, Ohio - A high school lunch period was disrupted Monday by a greased, naked student who ran around screaming and flailing his arms until police twice used a stun gun on him, authorities said.

Taylor Killian, 18, had rubbed his body with grapeseed oil to keep from being caught, and got up after the first time he was shocked to continue running toward a group of frightened students huddled in a corner at Westerville North High School, Lt. Jeff Gaylor said.

"That prank went a little farther than he intended, I guess," Gaylor said.

Officer Doug Staysniak was monitoring the lunch period when Killian, with long hair and a full beard, ran in the room toward students, who screamed and ran away. The officer is normally assigned to a middle school and did not recognize Killian as a student, Gaylor said.

Police said that an administrator ordered Killian to stop, but that the student made a sexual gesture and kept running.

Killian is charged with inducing panic, public indecency, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. He was being held at the county jail Monday, and it was not known whether he had a lawyer.

School officials reported that Killian was a good student, Gaylor said. There was no indication of substance abuse or a medical problem.

© 2007 The Associated Press

Must have been a very slow day at the schoolhouse, and a rather dull time at the newsroom for this one to get in; but do note that last paragraph.

Sorry girls, no pictures with the article.

John

30 Jan 07 - 12:38 PM (#1952584)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Let's hope they have the good sense to leave it as a prank and get that young man out of jail, out of the courtroom, and back into his classes. Why on earth should he be sitting in jail? Clearly he wasn't armed!

SRS

31 Jan 07 - 10:20 PM (#1954180)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Suspicious devices close Boston bridges

Suspicious devices part of marketing plan

Promotion of 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force' cartoon closes Boston bridges

The Associated Press
Updated: 7:26 p.m. CT Jan 31, 2007

BOSTON - More than 10 blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. Most if not all of the devices depict a character giving the finger.

Boston police said Wednesday night one person had been arrested in connection with the hoax, and authorities scheduled a 9 p.m. news conference to provide more details.

Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless.

"It's a hoax — and it's not funny," said Gov. Deval Patrick, who said he'll speak to the state's attorney general "about what recourse we may have."

Turner Broadcasting, a division of Time Warner Inc. and parent of Cartoon Network, said the devices were part of a promotion for the TV show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries and a meatball.

"The packages in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger," Turner said in a statement, issued a few hours after reports of the first devices came in.

It said the devices have been in place for two to three weeks in 10 cities: Boston; New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Atlanta; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; San Francisco; and Philadelphia.

... ...

Does this new attitude mean the kids would get in trouble for welding the trolley car to the tracks, or putting the police car on top of the dome, or ... (There are at least 3 books that even I know of with much more creative jokes by the boys and girls at the beaver house, amd now the mayor gets mad 'cause a talking milkshake gives him the finger?

John

01 Feb 07 - 10:30 AM (#1954600)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Big baby! Ouch!

link

Big baby causes sensation in Cancun

AP - CANCUN, Mexico - He is called "Super Tonio," and at a whopping birth weight of 14.5 pounds, the little fellow is causing a sensation in this Mexican resort city. Cancun residents have crowded the nursery ward's window to see Antonio Vasconcelos, who was born early Monday by Caesarean section. The baby drinks 5 ounces of milk every three hours, and measures 22 inches in length.

"We haven't found any abnormality in the child, there are some signs of high blood sugar, and a slight blood infection, but that is being controlled so that the child can get on with his normal life in a few more days," Narciso Perez Bravo, the hospital's director, said on Wednesday.

In Brazil, a baby born in January 2005 in the city of Salvador weighed 16 pounds, 11 ounces at birth. According to Guinness World Records, the heaviest baby born to a healthy mother was a boy weighing 22 pounds, 8 ounces, born in Aversa, Italy, in September 1955. Antonio's mother, Teresa Alejandra Cruz, 23, and father, Luis Vasconcelos, 38, said they were proud of the boy, and noted that Cruz had given birth to a baby girl seven years ago who weighed 11.46 pounds.

01 Feb 07 - 10:48 AM (#1954621)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Bill would require labels on analog TVs

STAR-TELEGRAM link

Super Bowl aficionados, consider yourself warned. If you're planning on buying a new TV to watch the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts face off this weekend, make sure you get the right TV. If you don't, your set could be dark for future Super Bowls. That's because broadcasters will stop transmitting analog signals Feb. 17, 2009, and TVs that can't receive all-digital broadcasts -- primarily older sets that use antennas -- won't work without converter boxes.

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, wants warning labels put on any remaining analog TVs up for sale so consumers know what they're buying. "Digital televisions are selling like umbrellas in a thunderstorm, outpacing all expectations, and the Feb. 17, 2009, transition date is still two years away," said Barton, who filed the Digital TV Education Bill along with Reps. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Fred Upton, R-Mich. "But we should use our transition time wisely.

"This legislation ... will ensure that the relatively small number of consumers who are still using those analog televisions with over-the-air antennas in two years understand what they need to do."

Critics say the bill is a way for the GOP to keep some oversight of the issue. Democrats are expected to oversee the transition to digital, as well as a coupon program designed to help make the switch more affordable. Barton said the proposal is in response to a bill that went into effect last year, requiring analog broadcasts to switch to digital broadcasts by 2009. He said he wanted to boost public education provisions.

Consumers who watch TV by cable or satellite don't have to worry; those who use antennas can get a converter box to make their sets still work. The Federal Communications Commission estimates that about 14 percent of households with TVs used antennas in 2005.

"That number is likely to dwindle even further as more consumers subscribe to satellite and cable service," Barton said. "And under FCC rules, all analog television receivers manufactured after March 1, 2007, must also be able to receive digital signals over the air, so people with new televisions will not need converter boxes."

Manufacturers have been working to make many TVs digital-ready for some time. At Best Buy near Ridgmar Mall, most of the television sets are already digital-ready.

Even though warning labels aren't yet required, employees say they make sure that potential buyers know which TVs will be affected by the digital change, said John Johnson, a salesman there. "We only have a few small TVs that will be impacted," he said. "Some say if it lasts a couple of years, that's OK."

DIGITAL TV IS COMING

Why change:

Broadcasters have used analog technology since the 1940s to put TV into Americans' homes. Digital TV is a newer way to do that. Congress is requiring the switch to give viewers better sound and picture quality and allow for more channels. But without a converter, analog TVs won't receive the broadcasts after the digital switch is made Feb. 17, 2009.

What the bill would do:

The legislation would require retailers to post signs near any analog-only TVs; cable and satellite operators to include information in their bills about the transition; broadcasters to file reports with the Federal Communications Commission about consumer-education efforts; the FCC to create a public-outreach program and give Congress progress reports on those efforts; and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration to establish energy standards for digital-to-analog converter boxes.

Converter boxes:

These boxes hook up to analog TV sets to let them receive digital broadcasts. Officials say they aren't sure how much they will cost, but estimates are that it will be less than $100 per box, although some could sell for more than $200. The NTIA will run a "coupon" program geared to cut the cost of a converter box by $40. The program has not launched yet but ultimately will provide two coupons by mail to households that request them. Applications for the coupons will be available some time between Jan. 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009.

www.ntia.doc.gov

SOURCE: Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Star-Telegram research

01 Feb 07 - 06:26 PM (#1955055)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

Al Gore nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway - Former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday.

"A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference," Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen of the Socialist Left Party to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier before the nomination deadline expired Thursday.

"Al Gore, like no other, has put climate change on the agenda. Gore uses his position to get politicians to understand, while Sheila works from the ground up," Brende said.

During eight years as Bill Clinton's vice president, Gore pushed for climate measures, including for the Kyoto Treaty. Since leaving office in 2001 he has campaigned worldwide, including with his Oscar-nominated documentary on climate change called "An Inconvenient Truth."

02 Feb 07 - 01:41 AM (#1955282)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Lots of people get nominated for these prizes--the trick is to win!

SRS

06 Feb 07 - 05:06 AM (#1958750)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Initiative would make kids mandatory

Gay marriage proponents want couples to have children or get annulment

The Associated Press, 9:41 p.m. CT Feb 5, 2007

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Proponents of same-sex marriage have introduced a ballot measure that would require heterosexual couples to have a child within three years or have their marriages annulled.

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance acknowledged on its Web site that the initiative was "absurd" but hoped the idea prompts "discussion about the many misguided assumptions" underlying a state Supreme Court ruling that upheld a ban on same-sex marriage.
The measure would require couples to prove they can have children to get a marriage license. Couples who do not have children within three years could have their marriages annulled.

All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized," making those couples ineligible for marriage benefits.

The paperwork for the measure was submitted last month. Supporters must gather at least 224,800 signatures by July 6 to put it on the November ballot.

The group said the proposal was aimed at "social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation."

Cheryl Haskins, executive director of Allies for Marriage and Children, said opponents of same-sex marriage want only to preserve marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

"Some of those unions produce children and some of them don't," she said.

© 2007 The Associated Press

John

06 Feb 07 - 02:09 PM (#1959317)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

So much for all of the security measures taken by individuals to protect themselves, and from the credit reporting agencies to protect the info. Yahoos like this group get it and aren't very careful. Sheesh!

More found documents to be destroyed
STAR-TELEGRAM

HURST [TX]— More documents are scheduled to be burned Tuesday after boxes of the paperwork which contained identity information were found Monday discarded in a trash bin, police said.

Police were notified about the paperwork found in the 700 block of Texas 10. The documents were traced to Metro Credit Services, which went out of businesses several weeks ago and left the documents in an office, police said. "The business was a collection agency and they would receive documents with all this information on them," said Hurst police Sgt. Craig Teague.

The owner of the office hired workers to clean out the office and threw out the documents not knowing they had personal information, police said.

Authorities spent about two hours Monday burning the documents, which contained driver's license numbers, residents' date-of-births and social security numbers. Officials plan to spend another two hours Tuesday burning more documents.

06 Feb 07 - 02:34 PM (#1959353)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Don Firth

I heard that story about the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance wanting marriages that don't produce children every three years annulled just after the clock radio came on this morning, and I thought I was still in the throes of one of those Fritos with salsa dip, anchovy pizza, chocolate malt, and a big glass of grape juice before going to bed type dreams. No one, not even that bunch, could be that deep in the Abyss of Abject Asininity.

But lo! I find it's true!!

There is indeed ample reason for the weeping of Jesus!

Don Firth

06 Feb 07 - 03:05 PM (#1959388)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

it's irony, Don. Irony! What you get from Geritol.

A

06 Feb 07 - 09:13 PM (#1959818)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: frogprince

Don, a bit surprised at you not getting tbe point : ).
I remember seeing old fundamentalist literature, dating to 50 years or more before anyone ever mentioned the idea of gay marriage, which declared that no woman should ever be allowed to marry if it was known that she could not produce children. At least that's one screwed up idea that, so far as I know, has largely died out.

06 Feb 07 - 10:15 PM (#1959850)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Don Firth

Later on, I read the story in the Seattle Times. I definitely had the wrong end of the stick. But I was half asleep when I heard it.

Nice touch. I wonder if all those long-time married couples who are heavily into "protecting the sanctity of marriage" and who stay together after menopause will suddenly find themselves "living in sin."

How's that for a hot flash?

Don Firth

06 Feb 07 - 10:32 PM (#1959856)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Meanwhile, the most bizarre story, and one I heard when I first woke up, had to do with the astronaut love triangle.

Astronaut charged with attempted murder

By MIKE SCHNEIDER and ERIN McCLAM Associated Press Writers

ORLANDO, Fla. — She was the Robochick. He was Billy-O.

According to police, her obsession with him led her to drive 900 miles from Houston to Orlando, bringing with her a trenchcoat and wig, armed with a BB gun and pepper spray, and wearing a diaper to avoid bathroom breaks on the arduous drive.

Once in Florida, Lisa "Robochick" Nowak apparently confronted the woman she believed was her rival for the affections of William "Billy-O" Oefelein. And this tawdry love triangle has one more twist — it involves two astronauts.

Nowak, 43, a married mother of three who flew on a space shuttle in July, was charged with attempted murder, accused of hatching an extraordinary plot to kidnap Colleen Shipman, who she believed was romantically involved with Oefelein, a space shuttle pilot. Specifically, police said, Nowak confronted Shipman, who was in her car at the Orlando airport, and sprayed something at her, possibly pepper spray.

At first the astronaut was charged with attempted kidnapping and other counts. Then prosecutors upped the charge to attempted murder, basing it on the weapons and other items they said police had found with Nowak or in her car: pepper spray, a BB-gun, a new steel mallet, knife and rubber tubing. Nowak was released from jail on $25,500 bail and ordered to wear a monitoring device.

Her lawyer, Donald Lykkebak, took issue with the most serious charges. "In the imaginations of the police officers, they extend these facts out into areas where the facts can't be supported," Lykkebak said.

NASA put Nowak on a 30-day leave and removed her from mission duties. Agency spokesman John Ira Petty at Johnson Space Center in Houston said he was concerned about the people involved and their families. But, he added, "We try not to concern ourselves with our employees' personal lives."

The details of the relationships of all three were unclear. Nowak and Oefelein, who both live in the Houston area, had trained together as astronauts, but never flew into space together. Shipman, 30, works at Patrick Air Force Base near Kennedy Space Center. Earlier, Nowak was quoted by police as saying she and Oefelein had something "more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship."

Neither Oefelein nor Shipman could be reached for comment Tuesday, nor could Nowak's husband be found. But police found a letter in Nowak's car that "indicated how much Mrs. Nowak loved Mr. Oefelein," the arrest affidavit said. And Nowak had copies of e-mails between Shipman and Oefelein.

Nowak and her husband separated several weeks ago after 19 years of marriage, according to a statement put out by her family. "Personally, Lisa is an extremely caring and dedicated mother to her three children," the statement said. "Considering both her personal and professional life, these alleged events are completely out of character and have come as a tremendous shock to our family."

Accustomed to wearing astronaut diapers during the space shuttle's launch and return to Earth, Nowak wore them on the drive to Orlando so she would not have to make bathroom stops, police said. There, according to police, Nowak donned a wig and trench coat, boarded an airport shuttle bus with Shipman and followed her to her car. Then, crying, Nowak sprayed a chemical into the car. Shipman drove to a parking lot booth and sought help.

A police affidavit made public Tuesday said Nowak had "stealthily followed the victim while in disguise and possessed multiple deadly weapons." The affidavit said the circumstances of the case "create a well-founded fear" and gave investigators "probable cause to believe that Mrs. Nowak intended to murder Ms. Shipman."

Lykkebak said that Nowak only wanted to talk to Shipman. Asked about the weapons, he said, "You can sit and speculate all day." The judge also ordered Nowak to stay away from Shipman and to wear an electronic monitoring device upon returning to her home in Houston.

A vague profile began to emerge of Nowak, who graduated from high school in Maryland in 1981 and the U.S. Naval Academy in 1985. She has won various Navy service awards. In a September interview with Ladies' Home Journal, Nowak said her husband, Richard, "works in Mission Control, so he's part of the whole space business, too. And supportive also."

On Tuesday, a Houston neighbor, Bryan Lam, told The Associated Press that in November he heard the sounds of dishes being thrown inside the house and the police came. "I've seen them arguing before," he said.

Nowak, in a NASA interview last year, before her mission aboard Discovery, as well as in an interview with ABC News, spoke about the strain her career placed on her family. She has twin 5-year-old girls and a son who is 14 or 15. "It's a sacrifice for our own personal time and our families and the people around us," she said in the NASA interview. "But I do think it's worth it because if you don't explore and take risks and go do all these things, then everything will stay the same."

In an in-flight news conference aboard Discovery last summer, she talked about waiting nearly 10 years for her first space flight. "It's been a long wait, but it's worth the wait," she said.

NASA astronauts often have nicknames, at least among their crewmates and Mission Control. Aboard Discovery last July, Nowak and crewmate Stephanie Wilson were known as "the Robochicks" because they operated the shuttle's robotic arm that checked the spacecraft for damage. A smiling, put-together woman in her NASA photos, Nowak's police mug shot showed a fatigued, haggard face with scraggly hair.

Oefelein, a 41-year-old Navy commander nicknamed "Billy-O" by his comrades, trained with Nowak but never flew with her. He piloted a Discovery mission in December to the space station where astronauts rewired the outpost, installed a new $11 million section and dropped off a new American crew member. Oefelein is unmarried but has two children. He began his aviation career as a teenager, flying floatplanes in Alaska.

The Orlando Sentinel reported Shipman is an engineer assigned to the 45th Launch Support Squadron at Patrick air base, and a Federal Aviation Administration pilot directory indicates she is certified as a student pilot.

Chief astronaut Steve Lindsey, who flew with Nowak to the space station last July aboard Discovery, and fellow astronaut Chris Ferguson attended Monday's court hearing. "Our primary concern is her health and well-being and that she get through this," Lindsey told reporters afterward. Ferguson said he was "perplexed" by Nowak's alleged actions.

NASA spokeswoman Nicole Cloutier-Lemasters said shuttle crews that fly for two-week stints do not go through psychiatric screenings. She said crews assigned to the space station are screened before, during and after missions. NASA will not conduct an investigation, Cloutier-Lemasters said.

At least one retired astronaut, Jerry Linenger, said the space agency should review its psychological screening process. With NASA talking about a 2 1/2-year trip to Mars, it would be dangerous for someone to "snap like this" during the mission, he said.

"An astronaut is probably the most studied human being by the time you go through your testing, your training," Linenger said. "I think there's still a lot of unknowns out there."
___

AP National Writer Erin McClam reported from New York for this story. AP writers Malcolm Ritter in New York, Seth Borenstein in Washington, Rasha Madkour in Houston, Kelli Kennedy in Miami and Jim Ellis in Cape Canaveral contributed to this report.

08 Feb 07 - 02:28 AM (#1960771)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Police: Angry thief rams car into store
STAR-TELEGRAM link

BEDFORD [TX]— An irate thief rammed his car into the front doors of a gas station twice after an employee quizzed him about paying for a small jar of lip balm, police said Wednesday. The impacts were enough to crack the front door frame, police said.

No one had been arrested as of Wednesday, but police were tracking the thief using a license plate number the employee wrote down while the man was ramming the store with his car.

The theft happened about 2 a.m. Tuesday in the 2200 block of Murphy Drive. The clerk told police that a man about 6-foot-2 and weighing 200 pounds walked into the Texaco Food Mart, picked up a small jar of Carmex and started to walk out. As he reached the front door, the clerk asked him if he was going to pay for it, police said.

The man strolled out, got into a white two-door car and then drove the car into the front door, police said. He backed up and then rammed the front door a second time before driving away, police said.

The thief took off with the $1.39 Carmex and caused about $2,000 in damage.

08 Feb 07 - 02:34 AM (#1960775)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's a nice story!

Rescue turns second-grader, custodian into heroes

STAR-TELEGRAM link

It was loud as boys and girls giggled and gabbed in the Westcliff Elementary School cafeteria. Then things turned serious. A second-grader began choking on a crunchy cheese snack.

"His face started turning red," said Brendon Peden, 8. "His face kept getting redder and redder. Then, it got purple."

Brendon was soon on his feet trying to save his classmate with the Heimlich maneuver. Brendon had seen it work on television, but he needed more muscle.

"I heard some yelling," said Billy Davis, head custodian at Westcliff for 18 years. He picked up the two boys and the chair and performed a quick Heimlich.

"Whatever he had in his throat, came out," Davis said. "I'm just glad I was there. He got a second chance."

Next week, Davis and Brendon will be recognized at a Fort Worth school board meeting for their heroism on that January day. The two are stars at Westcliff Elementary, but they remain somewhat low-key about their status on campus.

"We're just regular heroes, not superheroes," Brendon said.

08 Feb 07 - 03:04 AM (#1960796)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Dog wins bite fight with robbery suspect
link

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Man bites dog; dog bites back. That was the sequence when Alsatian police dog Edge cornered two suspects on a cliff side after a grocery store robbery in Napier, New Zealand, police said on Thursday.

One of the suspects leaped down the slope and landed almost directly into the hands of police officers waiting at the bottom. The other suspect, who was armed with a knife took on Edge, and bit the dog in the struggle.

"He bit the dog first," Detective Sergeant John McGregor told The Associated Press.

Edge was unfazed, sinking his teeth into his attacker.

"The dog did win the fight, the offender ended up with one or two lacerations," McGregor said. "I think he knew he was going to get bitten - so he bit the dog first."

Two men were arrested and appeared in Napier District Court Wednesday charged with aggravated robbery for the attack on the grocery store on Tuesday, during which the owner was stabbed. They were ordered to remain in police custody until Feb. 21.

In June 2006 Edge underwent emergency surgery after an offender stabbed him in the chest with a hunting knife. After surgery and a blood transfusion, the dog made a complete recovery.

Napier is a coastal city 125 miles north of the capital, Wellington.

11 Feb 07 - 06:15 AM (#1963827)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Linked as a sidebar "issue of interest" at MSNBC, a video report should be at:

Man invents 'no foam' beer tap

Feb. 8: A Wisconsin man says he's got the answer for the perfect mug of beer. It's an electronic beer tap that eliminates the head of foam. WEAU's Mary Rinzel reports.
NBC News Channel

As my connection is too slow to make looking at videos worthwhile, I'll just hope the link works. Posted here in the backwater area, since a too public announcement could lead to strife and rancor.

In a separate article:

Scientist serves up doughnuts with a kick

Also including "Perky pastries; hair-care treatment, lodging from lock-ups "

COMMENTARY , By Brian Tracey, Business Editor, MSNBC

That cup of coffee just not getting it done anymore? How about a Buzz Donut or a Buzzed Bagel? That's what molecular scientist Robert Bohannon has come up with.
Bohannon says he's developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods, without the bitter taste associated with the stimulant. Each piece of pastry is the equivalent of about two cups of coffee.

"This gives people the opportunity if they want to have a glass of milk and want to have caffeine. It will get them going," Bohannon said.

The amount of caffeine in his creations can vary, but Bohannon can easily put 100 milligrams of caffeine — the equivalent of a 5-ounce cup of drip-brewed coffee — into the treats he plans to market under the "Buzz Donuts" and "Buzzed Bagels" names.

Bohannon, who runs medical-testing firm as well as owning Sips Coffee & Tea cafe in Durham, N.C., isn't selling the amped-up baked goods yet, but he says he thinks there's demand the snacks.

"There's some mornings that I'd like juice instead of coffee but I still want that caffeine kick," said Stephanie Harris, a customer at Sips Coffee & Tea. "So I would love to have a caffeinated bagel or caffeinated doughnut. That would be awesome."

But with waistlines and anxiety already expanding across the nation, some observers already question whether it's wise to combine two key sources of these problems — caffeine and calories. "I see nothing positive from this," said Barry Popkin, a nutrition scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "In many ways we're creating a super caffeine generation. They're undersleeping, they consume a lot of caffeine to stay awake but they don't understand there are health effects.

Bohannon said recently began seeking patents and shopping the products to companies including Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc., Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks Corp. There's no word yet on whether the companies like the idea.

We're betting at least Starbucks is going to take a pass.

Not-so bad ideas

Looking for an unusual last-minute Valentine's day gift for your sweetie? Well, now about treating her with an appointment an upscale London beauty salon that says it can give her hair the ultimate shine by treating it with a mixture that includes semen from thoroughbred bulls.Hari's in the ritzy Chelsea neighborhood offers a 45-minute "Aberdeen Organic Hair" treatment that involves massaging a protein-rich mixture of bull semen and a plant root into the client's hair, a spokeswoman said.Owner Hari Salem told media that he tried hundreds of products — including wild avocados and truffle oil — before hitting on bull semen as the elusive element in a formula for making hair look gorgeous."The semen is refrigerated before use and doesn't smell," Salem told the U.K.'s Metro newspaper. "It leaves your hair looking wonderfully soft and thick."He said the treatment will be offered providing the bulls can keep up the supply.The bulls may have to choose between treating hair or creating heirs.

Guests will be free to check out when they please if Hungary succeeds in converting its hulking jails into luxury hotels.Keen to fill a hole in its budget and replace some of its overcrowded prisons with new facilities, the Hungarian government is talking to a Spanish firm interested in buying its jails in prime downtown locations.Once home to some of the country's most dangerous criminals, the star-shaped Csillag prison in the south-eastern city of Szeged is one jail that could be sold, with the proceeds used to build a more modern, humane prison in the suburbs."You could do marvels with that building," said State Secretary Ferenc Kondorosi, who noted Hungary's prisons have a 138 percent occupancy rate.We're hoping future guests will be treated better, otherwise they might actually prefer solitary confinement.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive© 2007 MSNBC InteractiveThe Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Maybe you didn't really want to know?

John

12 Feb 07 - 12:31 PM (#1964948)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

One wonders what kind of family these kids have grown up in? And will the parents be held accountable for their children's behavior?

10-Year-Old Girl Charged in Store Attack
From Associated Press, February 12, 2007

BOSTON - A gang of girls attacked a woman at a discount store, hitting and kicking her and tearing off her clothes, said police, who arrested a 10-year-old girl accused of being involved. The girl, who was not identified, was charged with assault and battery for kicking the 22-year-old woman in the head and stomach on Sunday, said Officer Eddy Chrispin. The three other girls were not arrested, but police said they would seek criminal complaints against them. Their names and ages were not released.

The woman apparently had bumped into the 10-year-old girl in an aisle at a Target store and refused to apologize, Chrispin said. Witnesses told police the four girls then knocked the customer to the floor "where she was being hit, her hair was being ripped out, and her pants were taken off," he said. The victim was treated at a hospital.

12 Feb 07 - 01:35 PM (#1965015)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Bee-dubya-ell

And the moral of the story is:

"When someone asks for an apology, give it to 'em! Munchkins included!"

13 Feb 07 - 11:34 AM (#1966115)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Policeman in serious condition
Feb. 13, 2007 link

FORT WORTH -- The first period was competitive hockey -- firefighters and police officers shoving and bumping on the rink at Fort Worth Ice.

The game Saturday ended, however, with the officers hugging their opponents.

Early in the second period, firefighters leaped from their bench and performed CPR on a Fort Worth police officer who had a heart attack while playing in the charity hockey match Saturday.

The event drew several hundred people and raised $4,000 for the family of officer Dwayne Freeto, who was killed on duty in December.

On Monday, the officer who had the heart attack was in serious condition at Harris Methodist Fort Worth, a hospital official said.

A police official said privacy laws prevented him from identifying the officer.

"Those firefighters saved his life," said Sgt. Kevin Foster, who was watching the match.

Police were leading the firefighters 2-1 when the officer fell face first, fire Capt. Joe Short said.

"It wasn't a slip," Short said. "You could tell something was wrong."

Firefighters scaled the wall in front of their bench and "swarmed" the officer, said Debbie Papenfuss, an organizer of the match.

The officer was breathing irregularly: deep, shallow, deep, Short said.

Then he stopped.

Short gave the officer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while other firefighters rotated chest compressions, he said. A fire truck arrived with an automated external defibrillator.

In their rubber boots, those firefighters had trouble getting across the ice. So the firefighters wearing skates got the defibrillator and restarted the officer's heart.

The officer was taken to the hospital, and the match was called. Officers and firefighters knelt together in prayer.

The firefighters just did as they were trained, Short said.

"It's a little different with all those people and the mayor, fire chief and police chief watching you," he said. "But we're glad we were there and hope he's OK."

14 Feb 07 - 10:36 PM (#1968146)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Former Congressman Faces Indecent Exposure Charges

A man who once represented Bradford County [near our county-- ~WYS~]in congress is now facing indecent exposure charges.

Authorities in Florida say Joseph McDade exposed himself to two women at a beach resort. The 75-year-old republican has been charged with exposing his sexual organs. The charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a one-thousand dollar fine.

McDade represented the 10th congressional district from 1963 to 1999, when he retired.

14 Feb 07 - 10:46 PM (#1968158)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

When men get to that age and get into this kind of trouble, it's a good idea to have a doctor with an MRI or other scanner check them out to see if they've had any "small" or "silent" strokes. Those seem to contribute to what often constitutes aberrant behavior in old guys. Maybe he's always been this way and just now got caught, but if this is something totally out of character, he needs a checkup. (This comes from my late-psychiatric MSW social-worker mother, after discussing some odd behavior in my late-father-in-law.)

SRS

14 Feb 07 - 10:49 PM (#1968165)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Well, he's in Florida now.

~S~

16 Feb 07 - 10:04 AM (#1969748)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This incredibly resourceful group almost merit a thread on their own:

Canny Pilot, Travelers Subdue Hijacker
February 16, 2007

TENERIFE, Canary Islands - A fast-thinking pilot with passengers in cahoots fooled a hijacker by braking hard upon landing, then accelerating to knock the man down. When he fell, flight attendants threw boiling water in his face, and about 10 people pounced on him, Spanish officials said Friday.

The Air Mauritania Boeing 737 carrying 71 passengers and a crew of eight was hijacked by a lone gunman brandishing two pistols Thursday evening shortly after it took off from Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, for Gran Canaria, one of Spain's Canary Islands, with a planned stopover in Nouadhibou in northern Mauritania.

The hijacking alarmed Spanish officials because a trial of 29 people accused in the Madrid terrorist bombings of 2004 had begun the same day in Madrid. But the man's motives were not terrorism; he wanted the plane to fly to France so he could request political asylum, said Mohamed Ould Mohamed Cheikh, Mauritania's top police official.

"We were afraid. We thought it was people from al-Qaida or the Algerian GSPC who were going to cut our throats," said Aicha Mint Sidi, a 45-year-old woman who was on the plane. The GSPC is a Muslim extremist group.

"I trembled during and after the hijacking. I thought the plane was going to blow up any minute, either in mid-air or on landing," said another passenger, Dahi Ould Ali, 52. Both spoke after returning to Nouakchott.

The hijacker has been identified as Mohamed Abderraman, a 32-year-old Mauritanian, said an official with the Spanish Interior Ministry office on Tenerife, another of the islands in the Atlantic archipelago. He spoke under ground rules barring publication of his name. Mauritania has said the hijacker was a Moroccan from the Western Sahara.

The hijacker ordered the pilot to fly to France, but the crew told him there was not enough fuel. And Morocco denied a request to land in the city of Djala in the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, so the pilot headed for Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, the original destination.

Along the way, speaking to the hijacker, the pilot realized the man did not speak French. So he used the plane's public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon landing, then speed up abruptly. The idea was to catch the hijacker off balance, and have crew members and men sitting in the front rows of the plane jump him, the Spanish official said.

The pilot also warned women and children to move to the back of the plane in preparation for the subterfuge, the official said.

It worked. The man was standing in the middle aisle when the pilot carried out his maneuver, and he fell to the floor, dropping one of his two 7 mm pistols. Flight attendants then threw boiling water from a coffee machine in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.

Around 20 people were slightly injured when the plane braked suddenly, the official said.

The hijacker was arrested by Spanish police who boarded the plane after it landed at Gando airport, outside Las Palmas.

Air Mauritania identified the heroic pilot as Ahmedou Mohamed Lemine, a 20-year-veteran of the company.

20 Feb 07 - 09:33 AM (#1973607)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

From a Times story on Jimmy Carter's campaign against diseases in Africa:

"Mr. Carter has almost managed to wipe out one horrific ailment — Guinea worm — and is making great strides against others, including river blindness and elephantiasis. In this area, people are taking an annual dose of a medicine called Mectizan — donated by Merck, which deserves huge credit — that prevents itching and blindness.

Mectizan also gets rid of intestinal worms, leaving Ethiopian villagers stronger and more able to work or attend school. Among adults, the deworming revives sex drive, so some people have named their children Mectizan."

Little Master Viagara and Miss Ambien are sooooo proud!! :D

A

20 Feb 07 - 10:24 AM (#1973672)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

These climbers were incredibly lucky to have been found and helped off of the mountain. They're lucky that 500 foot slide didn't send them airborne off of a cliff.

But they are absolute IDIOTS for taking a dog and for climbing that mountain at this time of year. ANY climber who undertakes a climb of any of the Cascade volcanoes in Washington or Oregon before mid-March should be compelled to sign a document that acknowledges "rescue groups are not going to risk their lives coming to rescue you if you're really going to make this half-assed trip this time of year on this mountain." The tail wags the entire expedition, when poorly trained climbers or poorly planned trips force the excellent climbers into dangerous situations to rescue folks who have no business being up there.

A distinction in this article implies that they did some things right--the locator device and staying warm (the dog is a plus and a minus on this trip--I can't imagine what the dog suffered on a trip like this, but it can't have been a great trip for him)--but they were rock climbers, not mountaineers. There is a big difference between the two. As a former member of a technical rock climbing and mountaineering rescue group, I see a couple of types of rescues turn up in the news--those where accidents happen and someone needs help, and where something stupid happened and someone needs help. Despite their equipment, this was where something stupid happened.

Rant over.

Rescuer: Dog May Have Saved Climbers
February 20, 2007

GOVERNMENT CAMP, Ore. - Three climbers who tumbled off a ledge on Mount Hood were taken away in an ambulance after they hiked down much of the state's highest peak with their rescuers - and a dog who may have saved their lives.

"We're soaking wet and freezing," said one of two rescued women as she walked from a tracked snow vehicle to an ambulance.

One of the women, whose name was not released, was taken to a Portland hospital and being treated for a head injury, said Jim Strovink, spokesman for the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department.

"She's going to be fine," he said, noting that she had walked most of the way down the mountain.

Two others, Matty Bryant, 34, a teacher in the Portland suburb of Milwaukie, and Kate Hanlon, 34, a teacher in the suburb of Wilsonville, were taken to Timberline Lodge on the mountain to rejoin five other members of the climbing party, he said.

Rescuers using an electronic locating device found the three climbers and their black Labrador, Velvet, on Monday morning in the White River Canyon, where they had holed up overnight at about 7,400 feet, officials said. The crew hiked with them down the east flank of the 11,239-foot mountain; on the way down, the climbers got into a tracked snow vehicle that took them to the ambulance.

"The dog probably saved their lives" by lying across them during the cold night, said Erik Brom, a member of the Portland Mountain Rescue team. He described the wind in the canyon as "hellacious."

The two women left the snow vehicle first, followed by Bryant and the dog. The three climbers boarded the ambulance, and Velvet leapt in after them.

In addition to the dog, who provided warmth and comfort, rescuers attributed the happy outcome to the climbers' use of an electronic mountain locator unit that guided searchers to their exact position.

"That's why it is a rescue, not a recovery," Lt. Nick Watt of the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office told a news conference at Timberline Lodge, a ski resort at 6,000 feet. "They did everything right."

The three were in a party of eight that set out Saturday for the summit, camped on the mountain that night and began to come back down on Sunday when they ran into bad weather, officials said.

As they were descending at about 8,300 feet, the three slipped off a ledge. They slid about 500 feet down an incline and later moved from the site of the fall, rescuers said.

"They're lucky to be alive after that," Strovink said.

Trevor Liston of Portland, who was among the five who made it off the mountain Sunday, said at a news conference at Timberline Lodge that he saw the three fall, but he didn't say how it happened.

Someone in the party used a cell phone to place an emergency call to authorities. Rescue officials maintained regular cell phone contact overnight with the three who had fallen.

Brom, a member of the team that found them, said the climbers had traveled miles from the site of the fall, descending.

Battling winds up to 70 mph and blowing snow, rescue teams had worked through the night trying to locate the climbers, said Russell Gubele, coordinating communications for the rescue operation.

Teams made it close to the missing climbers overnight, but decided to wait until daylight Monday because they couldn't see anything, Gubele said. Rescuers moved cautiously during the night because of "very severe avalanche danger," he said.

Gubele described the trio as "experienced rock climbers, but not necessarily experienced in mountain climbing."

In December, three climbers who did not have mountain locator units went missing on the mountain. Authorities searched for days, but were able to recover the body of only one climber, Kelly James of Dallas, who died of hypothermia. The bodies of Brian Hall of Dallas and Jerry "Nikko" Cooke of New York have not been found.

In the past 25 years, more than 35 climbers have died on Mount Hood, one of the most frequently climbed mountains in the world.

20 Feb 07 - 11:53 AM (#1973790)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Listening to the news today I did hear a remark from someone on the rescue squad that they didn't mind these mid-winter rescues because they like the practice.

That's a convenient attitude to have if these kinds of rescues are going to keep coming. Healthier for the rescuers who are out risking their lives. I recognize that were I out doing the rescue work now my attitude might dilute some of the creative energy needed for a successful outcome in the work.

SRS

23 Feb 07 - 12:46 AM (#1976719)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Amazing that detectives were able to keep track of this--but depressing that he was able to duplicate the conditions so that they could find him (again and again).

NYPD Tip Leads to Montenegro Arrest
February 22, 2007

NEW YORK - A tip from a New York detective investigating the 1990 killing of a Bronx widow has led to the arrest of a man in Montenegro who is a suspect in similar slayings in Europe, officials said Thursday. The suspect, identified in Montenegro as Smail Tulja, 67, was arrested in his home in the tiny Balkan country's capital, Podgorica, on an FBI warrant, officials said. An FBI affidavit filed in the United States identified the suspect as Smajo Djurlric; the New York Police Department said his name was Smajo Dzurlic.

U.S. officials said Tulja was wanted in the unsolved beating and dismemberment death of Mary Beal, 61, and may be involved in up to seven other killings of women in Belgium and Albania. "It's gratifying that after 17 years this guy's in custody for the terrible thing that was done to her," said Detective James Osorio, a member of the NYPD's Cold Case and Apprehension Squad.

After Tulja appeared in court in Montenegro on Thursday, his lawyer there, Dusan Luksic, told The Associated Press: "My client is not guilty of the murder of Mary Beal." Tulja had twice before eluded authorities seeking to question him about dismemberment murders. In 1990, he left the country after Beal's decapitated, dismembered body was found in two bags near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Tulja, then a cab driver living in New York, had dated Beal and detectives discovered bloodstains in his Bronx apartment, said Sgt. Dennis Singleton, who investigated the case.

Then in the mid-1990s, New York authorities working with their Belgium counterparts learned Tulja was living there and a possible suspect in the dismemberment killings of five women there, but he again left the country, the sergeant said. Last year Osorio learned about the dismemberment killings of two women in Albania and noted the slayings "were carried out in a similar fashion to Mary Beal," court papers said. His squad eventually sought the assistance of federal and international authorities, and Interpol located him in Montenegro.

Tamara Popovic, national police spokeswoman in Montenegro, confirmed that police in Belgium and Albania consider Tulja a suspect in the killings of several women in those countries. Tulja's attorney said that he had no information about the other killings.

23 Feb 07 - 02:27 PM (#1977197)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's one from my home town!

Police: Washington Man Stole Up to 300 Cars
February 23, 2007

EVERETT, Wash. - Authorities said a man stole a pickup, a sedan and a Volkswagen Beetle - along with perhaps 300 other cars. Not to mention boats and recreational vehicles. Taylor Jacob Norton, 22, sold many of the vehicles to support a methamphetamine habit, and used others just to give rides to friends, sheriff's Detective Jess Sanders said. Drug paraphernalia was found in his home, investigators reported. "He's a one-man crime ring," Sanders said.

An electronic beacon from a stolen car led to Norton's arrest on Jan. 23 in his mobile home outside Arlington, 40 miles north of Seattle, authorities said. In the yard, authorities said, were four stolen vehicles - a 1994 Chevrolet pickup, a 1998 BMW 528, a 2003 BMW 325 and a 2003 Volkswagen Beetle, which had the locator device.

Norton then led investigators to dozens of homes where he said he stole vehicles, recalling the make, model and license plate number of each one, as well as how he made off with it, Sanders said. At each house, a theft matching his account was confirmed by law enforcement officials. "He enjoyed telling us," the detective said. "It's something he's really proud of."

Norton was being held for investigation of 48 crimes with bail totaling $201,000. Deputies believe he also stole dozens of cars in western Washington. "There are a lot of people stealing a lot of cars," Sanders said, "but that's a lot of cars for one person to steal."

11 Mar 07 - 04:07 PM (#1993611)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

So You Say You Went to College?

Dog with college degree called to court

Attorney says police chief, canine earned degrees from same online school

The Associated Press
Updated: 8:48 a.m. CT March 1, 2007

FOSTORIA, Ohio - An attorney challenging the authority of the city's police chief wants the department's police dog to appear in court as an exhibit, because he says the dog and the chief have criminal justice degrees from the same online school.

The issue gives "one pause, if not paws, for concern" about what it takes to get the degrees from the school based in the Virgin Islands, Gene Murray wrote in a court document filed Monday.

Murray is seeking to have a drug charge against a client dismissed by arguing that police Chief John McGuire — who is accused of lying on his job application — was not legally employed and had no authority as an officer.

McGuire is to go on trial in March on charges of falsification and tampering with records. A special prosecutor said McGuire lied on his application and resume about his rank, position, duties, responsibilities and salary in three of his previous jobs.
McGuire was hired as chief of this northwest Ohio city a year ago.
The union that represents Fostoria police officers and dispatchers filed a lawsuit challenging McGuire's hiring.

Murray said asking that the police dog, Rocko, show up in court at an evidence hearing is a key to discrediting McGuire, who took part in a traffic stop and search in October that resulted in drug possession charges against Clifford Green of Fostoria.

Both McGuire and Rocko, who is listed as John I. Rocko on his diploma, are graduates of Concordia College and University, according to copies of diplomas that are part of Murray's motion.

The court filing did not say how the attorney knows that diploma is for the dog or how Rocko allegedly managed to enroll in the college.
"My client had absolutely nothing to do with any animal getting a degree from an institution of higher learning," said McGuire's attorney, Dean Henry. "The whole thing is bizarre."

He said the dog was with the department before McGuire began working there.

Seneca County Prosecutor Ken Egbert said he will ask the judge to deny the request and limit the hearing to matters that are relevant.
"I don't think it's necessary to bring the actual dog," Egbert said.
A date has not been set for the evidence hearing.

City leaders have said McGuire's hiring was not influenced by his college degree, and any confusion about his background was resolved during interviews.

"We've already been through all that," Safety Service Director Bill Rains. "That was answered to our satisfaction."

Fostoria is about 35 miles southeast of Toledo.

© 2007 The Associated Press

John

12 Mar 07 - 11:36 AM (#1994423)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

In death, a hidden cost of obesity

People were obese in more than a quarter of cases analyzed by the county last year.
link

As more Americans tip the scales, the impact of the nation's obesity problem is also felt at the end of life's journey. Funeral homes and the Snohomish County [Washington] Medical Examiner are seeing the trends in weight gain affect how they do their work. More often, bigger cots, larger cremation and embalming facilities, more staff and power hoists are needed to lift and prepare a growing number of deceased obese people.

"It's very important that you treat the deceased with dignity and respect," medical examiner spokeswoman Carolyn Sanden said.

The changes have increased costs for taxpayers and often, for families of the departed as well. "People are getting larger with time," Snohomish County Medical Examiner Dr. Norman Thiersch said. "Unfortunately we haven't had the ability to track it until last year."

Of the cases investigated last year, county officials provided the weight of 326. More than one-fourth - 84 adults - were considered obese based on their body mass index. Fifteen people each weighed more than 300 pounds. The heaviest of the county's cases in 2006 was a middle-aged man who weighed 499 pounds and was over 6 feet tall.

People are considered obese if they have a body mass index of more than 30, according to the World Health Organization. Body mass is a common way to gauge whether someone is overweight or obese using height and weight.

The trend in weight gain was a key factor in the county Medical Examiner's Office request to spend $75,000 for an on-call body transport service this year.

Worker injuries from removal and transport of heavier bodies is an ongoing and increasing problem in the Medical Examiner's Office, officials said.

The injuries have become expensive, staff reports to the County Council said, averaging $16,000 a year since 2003. One open claim is $93,300, officials said.

Officials plan to hire First Call Plus of Washington, called the state's largest body removal, cremation and embalming company. The Kent-based company is run by Jerry Webster, the retired chief investigator from the King County Medical Examiner's Office.

Once Webster's firm is hired, the county's seven medical investigators no longer will have to lift and transport bodies. Instead, they'll be able to focus on investigations, case work and going to the new calls. The county also has spent $18,000 in recent years on larger tables and electric hoists. "To accommodate the larger body, we needed the larger table," Thiersch said.

The county's older, smaller stainless steel tables could handle the weight of a 300- or 400-pound body. However, it was the size of the bodies that proved too large to be properly rolled over and examined, he said.

Crews now use electric winches to pull heavy bodies on stretchers into investigation trucks. Nylon straps and hoists now are used to transfer bodies within the medical examiner offices.

Devices also protect the bodies from unintended damage, which can offend families or obscure evidence of crimes or disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate 22 percent of adults in Washington are obese and another 36 percent are overweight. Nationwide, an estimated 33 percent of adults between 20 and 74 years old are obese. The national obesity rate has more than doubled from the 15 percent estimated to be obese in a survey from the late 1970s.

Funeral home directors have noticed the trend. "It's not unusual to encounter 300-pound people now, which used to be the exception rather than the rule," said Jim Noel, who has worked 47 years in the funeral home profession and is executive director of the Washington State Funeral Directors Association.

Federal and state worker safety rules have led to more back-saving equipment at funeral homes, including lifting devices, Noel said. Cots are wider and sturdier for carrying obese people and have extra handholds.

The challenges don't end with transportation. About two-thirds of people in Washington state are cremated after they die, Noel said. And as people gain weight, uniquely designed crematory furnaces are increasingly necessary.

Some funeral homes are able to cremate most bodies, but sometimes must contract for larger cremations with Webster's facility in Kent, said Mark Hunstman, managing director at Solie Funeral Home and Crematory in Everett.

Webster's cremation services are often needed when bodies reach about 300 pounds. "We have the equipment to handle these morbidly obese folks, the decedent remains and the expertise in cremating them," he said. He has special cots that cost nearly $4,000 and are able to handle a 1,000-pound body. He also is called for services because he has embalming tables large enough for the morbidly obese.

Webster said he sees families who buy custom-sized caskets for large family members, and the family of one 784-pound woman had to buy three cemetery plots. Cremations for the obese can cost hundreds of dollars more depending on what funeral homes charge, Webster said.

"This whole issue of obesity can be a very sensitive issue to some of the survivors," he said. "One of the biggest concerns from families is, how is this person going to be treated? Is it going to be dignified and respectful? We show a lot of care.

"Our hope and goal through everything is that a large person is handled in a dignified and respectful manner regardless of their size."

18 Mar 07 - 09:54 PM (#2000722)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Bald Eagle Nest Found in Philadelphia
March 18, 2007

PHILADELPHIA - Wildlife authorities have found the first bald eagle nest in the city in more than 200 years and hope the occupants will produce offspring, state officials said. The nest "demonstrates the resilience of this species and its apparent growing tolerance to human activity," said Dan Brauning, a supervisor with the state Game Commission, in a statement Friday.

Officials are not disclosing the nest's exact location, to avoid disturbing it, but it is being closely monitored, the commission said. "We don't know if the nest will result in the pair successfully breeding and laying eggs yet, but we are very hopeful," Brauning said.

The state began a campaign to re-establish the eagle population in 1983, when only three nesting pairs remained in Pennsylvania. Officials said last year that the number was higher than 100. Bald eagles were upgraded from endangered to threatened status by the federal government in 1995 and by the state a decade later.

18 Mar 07 - 11:03 PM (#2000741)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Wonderful news!

A

19 Mar 07 - 12:11 PM (#2001152)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

NPR this morning made an avian faux pas by offering some throw-out like like "Philadelphia is waiting for the stork to arrive." But storks are Old World birds and we're awaiting the hatching of New World birds. Oh, well, can't expect them to always be right.

SRS

20 Mar 07 - 08:42 AM (#2001966)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

I have always said a man's vision should exceed his vocabulary, or what's a metaphor?

Waiting for the stork to arrive is one.

Eagles, though, don't use it. They have a different method of language. They use some obscure metaphor about making omelettes without killilng babies or some such.

A

20 Mar 07 - 09:37 AM (#2002023)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Oops! Tech Error Wipes Out Alaska Info
From Associated Press
March 20, 2007
link

JUNEAU, Alaska - Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing an account worth $38 billion. It happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account - one of Alaska residents' biggest perks - and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well. There was still hope, until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.

"Nobody panicked, but we instantly went into planning for the worst-case scenario," said Permanent Fund Dividend Division Director Amy Skow. The computer foul-up last July would end up costing the department more than $200,000. Over the next few days, as the department, the division and consultants from Microsoft Corp. and Dell Inc. labored to retrieve the data, it became obvious the worst-case scenario was at hand.

Nine months worth of information concerning the yearly payout from the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier, the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth certificates and proof of residence. And the only backup was the paperwork itself - stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

"We had to bring that paper back to the scanning room, and send it through again, and quality control it, and then you have to have a way to link that paper to that person's file," Skow said.

Half a dozen seasonal workers came back to assist the regular division staff, and about 70 people working overtime and weekends re-entered all the lost data by the end of August. "They were just ready, willing and able to chip in and, in fact, we needed all of them to chip in to get all the paperwork rescanned in a timely manner so that we could meet our obligations to the public," Skow said.

Last October and November, the department met its obligation to the public. A majority of the estimated 600,000 payments for last year's $1,106.96 individual dividends went out on schedule, including those for 28,000 applicants who were still under review when the computer disaster struck. Former Revenue Commissioner Bill Corbus said no one was ever blamed for the incident. "Everybody felt very bad about it and we all learned a lesson. There was no witch hunt," Corbus said. According to department staff, they now have a proven and regularly tested backup and restore procedure.

The department is asking lawmakers to approve a supplemental budget request for $220,700 to cover the excess costs incurred during the six-week recovery effort, including about $128,400 in overtime and $71,800 for computer consultants. The money would come from the permanent fund earnings, the money earmarked for the dividends. That means recipients could find their next check docked by about 37 cents.

20 Mar 07 - 09:40 AM (#2002028)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

A very hopeful lesson.

A

22 Mar 07 - 09:32 AM (#2003996)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Jeep Runs Over Va. Man While He's in Bed

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 22, 2007
Filed at 9:07 a.m. ET

ROANOKE, Va. (AP) -- The underside of a car is a familiar sight to auto mechanic Dean Blevins. Seeing one on top of him at 2:30 in the morning, while he was in bed -- that was new. A Jeep crashed through a wall of Blevins' apartment early Tuesday and pinned him in his bed. It took firefighters an hour to free him, but he suffered only minor bruises and scrapes.

As he saw the vehicle's engine above him and felt hot antifreeze splash onto his face, Blevins said, his initial thoughts were less about his injuries than about going after the driver.

''If I'd a had my gun,'' he told The Roanoke Times, ''I'd a probably shot him.''

The driver, Wesley Dewayne Smith, 34, of Roanoke, was charged with driving under the influence.

Building owner Wesley Dearing said the Jeep's windshield got snagged between the first and second floors of the wood-frame building, probably saving Blevins from being crushed.

Blevins, 58, was treated at a hospital and released. His apartment was condemned until repairs could be made, but he said he had calmed down enough to laugh about the experience.

''I'm lucky to be alive,'' he said.

22 Mar 07 - 09:46 AM (#2004003)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

JERSEY CITY, March 21 — There's the holdup, and then there's the push-up. Now this: Three people made off with nearly $12,000 worth of bras and panties at a Victoria's Secret at the Newport Center Mall here as customers milled about on Tuesday night.

The police said that about 7:30 p.m. two men and a woman wearing a puffy white coat grabbed dozens of undergarments from roll-out drawers on two display tables and stuffed the merchandise into large "booster bags" (shopping bags lined with aluminum foil), which investigators say thwart the sensors in anti-theft systems.

In all, the police said, the take was $6,921 worth of panties and $4,905 in bras.

"That's a lot of underwear," said Lt. Edgar Martinez, a spokesman for the Jersey City Police Department.

22 Mar 07 - 12:54 PM (#2004151)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

The latest conservative Christian social invention is the Fancy Dress Chastity Ball.

Read all about it.

Boy, do these guys know how to party, or what?

I am a little perplexed that they call these Chirstian values, though. Is this part of the Christian belief system? I don't remember reading that directive, although this might be selective memory on my part.

A

22 Mar 07 - 02:34 PM (#2004235)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

What a sanctimonious bunch, reinforcing a double-standard (the boys don't have to go, do they?) and withholding the really useful information like how to prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy. Like these girls are going to marry men who are virgins, keep it a closed system? Ha!

But critics say that while teaching abstinence to children may be laudable, it is just as essential to make them aware of sexually transmitted diseases and condom use.

They also point to studies showing that the majority of adolescents who take purity pledges break them within a few years, often by engaging in risky and unprotected sex.

One study conducted by researchers at the universities of Columbia and Yale found that 88 percent of pledgers wind up having sex before marriage.

"Unfortunately these young people tend, once they start to have sex, to have more partners in a shorter period of time and to use contraception much less than their non-pledging peers," said Debra Hauser, executive vice president at Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based non-profit organization.

"Teens may pledge with the best of intention... and then as they break their pledges they are so shamed and embarrassed that it's unlikely they will go for help."

22 Mar 07 - 02:55 PM (#2004253)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

[KING]

A woman is a female who is human,
Designed for pleasing man, the human male.
A human male is pleased by many women,
And all the rest you hear is fairy tale.

[ANNA]

Then tell me how this fairy tale began, sir.
You cannot call it just a poet's trick
Explain to me why many men are faithful
And true to one wife only.

[KING]

[Spoken] They are sick!
[Singing] A girl must be like a blossom
With honey for just one man.
A man must be like honey bee
And gather all he can.
To fly from blossom to blossom
A honey bee must be free,
But blossom must not ever fly
From bee to bee to bee.

(But I didn't write that!! (Ducks and runs))

A

26 Mar 07 - 12:10 PM (#2007599)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Monday, March 26, 2007

His selfless wish
Make-A-Wish granted Colton Wilson's hope for a better field for his varsity baseball team at South Whidbey High School

By Kevin Johnson, Herald Writer
link

LANGLEY - If you had one wish, what would it be? Money? A vacation? Another wish or two? How about asking for something for someone else? Maybe something for your high school or your community. Perhaps for a new baseball field. That's the dream the Make-A-Wish Foundation granted last month to Colton Wilson.

Colton, a sophomore catcher on the South Whidbey High School varsity baseball team, was diagnosed last July with a rare form of cancer known as Ewing's sarcoma.

Ewing's sarcoma is characterized by the presence of cancer cells in the bone or soft tissue. According to the American Cancer Society's Web site, about 150 children and adolescents in the United States are diagnosed with this type of tumor each year. Colton's cancer was found in the tibia of his right leg.

During his treatment, the Make-A-Wish Foundation learned of his illness. The foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fulfilling the dreams of children with life-threatening medical conditions. Last year, the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Alaska, Montana, Northern Idaho and Washington granted 260 wishes, typically for family vacations or other personal requests.

Though most diehard baseball fans might have chosen to have a catch with their favorite big-league player or see their favorite team at spring training, Colton chose a different path - renovating the high school baseball field. The wish caught everyone - his parents, his coach, even the people at the Make-A-Wish Foundation - by surprise. No one expected a wish like this. Especially from a teenager.

"Kids usually wish for something for themselves," Jessie Elenbaas, Colton's Make-A-Wish coordinator said. "It's one of those rare wishes, so selfless. It's a powerful thing."

Said Dave Guetlin, South Whidbey's head baseball coach: "It blew my socks off that a young man could be that selfless. It's just jaw-dropping. It truly is."

In a letter to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Colton explained his reasoning. "The reason I chose this wish is because my community has been behind me with each step of this hard experience," he wrote. "Their fundraisers, cards, homemade food, phone calls, and more have helped me get through this and I want to return the favor." Colton learned he was qualified for a wish while going through his first round of chemotherapy. Shortly after, while still at Children's Hospital in Seattle, he decided on his request. He told his older sister, Stina, he wanted a new field for the high school.

"It was just amazing," Colton's mother, Lana Wilson, said. "I didn't know how amazing it was until the coach came over and he was in tears."

A frightening diagnosis

Colton's battle with Ewing's sarcoma began last summer.

On a Saturday in July, he was riding his dirt bike on property down the street from his home when he began to feel pain in his right shin. That evening, the pain intensified and Colton had trouble sleeping. But the following morning, the pain was gone. Colton went to spend the night at his grandmother's house in Mukilteo. He planned to a attend a baseball camp at Everett Community College the next day.

But the pain returned and once again he had trouble sleeping. His grandmother took him to a walk-in clinic in Everett. Doctors took an X-ray of the leg. After more X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exams the Wilsons heard the shocking news - Colton had a tumor. He was advised to head straight to Children's Hospital in Seattle to begin treatment.

Colton went through his first round of chemotherapy in August to shrink the tumor. In November, surgeons removed 51/2 inches of his bone and replaced it with bone from a donor.

On March 6, doctors took an X-ray to see how the natural bone was reacting to the donor bone. "Everything looked really good," Lana Wilson said. "They say that they are, 'Talking to each other.'"

Community support

Colton currently walks with the aid of crutches, although he recently got the OK to put more weight on his right leg and can abandon the crutches when he's home.

Meanwhile, his teammates and the community have rallied around the teenager and his wish.

All 26 South Whidbey baseball players - junior varsity and varsity included - have gone under the razor, shaving their heads to honor their teammate, who lost his hair while undergoing chemotherapy.

The players also wear Colton's jersey number - 51 - on their caps.

"We just wanted to rally around him," teammate C.J. Baker said.

Colton's wish list for the Falcons' baseball field includes, among other things, a new outfield fence, bleachers, field tarps, pitching screens and a new mound.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation plans to secure much of the needed materials through donations, then use its resources to fill in the gaps. Elenbaas said the goal is to have the renovation completed by the end of the school year.

Even beyond the field improvements, Colton's wish has had a positive impact on the community, Guetlin said. "Colton has touched a lot of lives, he really has," Guetlin said. "I talk about him in my classes (saying), 'You're all going to have adversity. Look at what Colton's doing.' There are a lot of lessons to be learned from someone like Colton."

Throughout his battle with cancer, Colton has maintained a positive attitude. "He said, 'There's a reason this happened to me,'" Lana Wilson said. "Something good will come from all this.'"

His mother says that Colton's prognosis is good. He turned 16 in early February and got his driver's license a couple days later. The chemotherapy ends in June and he should be done with all of his tests by July.

In the meantime, coach Guetlin already has a job lined up for Colton when he returns to practice. The catcher, who earned a varsity letter last season as a freshman, will be charting pitches and driving around the field in a golf cart. And who knows, maybe next season he'll once again be crouching behind the plate, this time receiving pitches in the House that Colton Built.

His own field of dreams.

Colton's wish

Colton Wilson's wish to see the South Whidbey High School baseball field renovated includes the following:

A new outfield fence
Two sets of aluminum bleachers
Field tarps to cover the mound and home plate
A new pitcher's mound
Protective screens
Home plate and pitching mats
Baseballs
Bats

Batting helmets
To donate to Colton's wish list, contact his wish coordinator, Jessie Elenbaas, at 206-623-5380.

26 Mar 07 - 05:16 PM (#2007832)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Last Mustang Ranch building destroyed
Blaze was part of firefighting training
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:02 a.m. CT March 26, 2007

RENO, Nev. - The last remaining building on the grounds where the infamous Mustang Ranch brothel once stood went up in flames Sunday.
The 48-room, 20,000-square-foot structure known as the Mustang Ranch II annex was destroyed as part of a firefighting training exercise.
"It's out with the old and in with the new," said a woman who goes by Air Force Amy, who once worked there. "The day of the $20 roll in the hay in a trailer is gone."

The building was the last at the former site of the Mustang Ranch, the state's first legal brothel. The government padlocked the ranch, located just east of Reno, in 1999 after years of tax problems.

In 2003, the government auctioned off the annex for $8,600 to Dennis Hof, a brothel owner who planned to use it as a museum. Moving it was too expensive, so he donated it to fire crews.

Amy, now employed by Hof, said the annex was built in 1983 for male prostitutes but the plans didn't fly. It later housed about 20 women compared with 50 women at the busier main building.

The government sold the gaudy pink stucco buildings that formed the heart of the complex for $145,000 to another brothel owner, who moved them to another site and continues to operate them under the famous name.

The BLM plans to return the Mustang Ranch land to a natural state and use it for public access to the Truckee River.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

27 Mar 07 - 09:59 AM (#2008444)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I looked up the site. I'd like one of those t-shirts--send folks into a tizzy here, where our toads are good toads. But makes the point for not importing critters. (I call my house "toadhouse" in my wireless network--that was the first critter that met me on the doorstep when I was moving in.)

Group Finds Toad the Size of a Small Dog
March 27, 2007
link

DARWIN, Australia - An environmental group said Tuesday it had captured a "monster" toad the size of a small dog. With a body the size of a football and weighing nearly 2 pounds, the toad is among the largest specimens ever captured in Australia, according to Frogwatch coordinator Graeme Sawyer. "It's huge, to put it mildly," he said. "The biggest toads are usually females but this one was a rampant male ... I would hate to meet his big sister."

Frogwatch, which is dedicated to wiping out a toxic toad species that has killed countless Australian animals, picked up the 15-inch-long cane toad during a raid on a pond outside the northern city of Darwin late Monday.

Cane toads were imported from South America during the 1930s in a failed attempt to control beetles on Australia's northern sugar cane plantations. The poisonous toads have proven fatal to Australia's delicate ecosystems, killing millions of native animals from snakes to the small crocodiles that eat them.

As part of its so-called "Toad Buster" project, Frogwatch conducts regular raids on local water holes, blinding the toads with bright lights then scooping them up by the dozen. "We kill them with carbon dioxide gas, stockpile them in a big freezer and then put them through a liquid fertilizer process" that renders the toads nontoxic, Sawyer said.

"It turns out to be sensational fertilizer," he added.

28 Mar 07 - 10:44 AM (#2009485)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Husband to really look up to

March 28, 2007

The world's tallest man, whose search for a bride covered the world, ended up marrying a woman about half his age and half his height from his home town, Chinese media reported today.

Bao Xishun, 56, a 236cm herdsman listed by Guinness World Records as the tallest living man, married a 29-year-old Chinese saleswoman, the Beijing News said.

"After sending out marriage advertisements across the world and going through a long selection process, the efforts have finally paid off," the newspaper said.

His bride, Xia Shujuan, a mere 168 cm, comes from Chifeng in Inner Mongolia, as does Bao.

(From the Sydney Morning Herald which has a picture of the happy couple.

28 Mar 07 - 11:30 AM (#2009546)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

BA Sat Corpse in First Class

From The (London) Sunday Times, March 18, 2007:

A BRITISH Airways passenger travelling first class has described how he woke up on a long-haul flight to find that cabin crew had placed a corpse in his row.

The body of a woman in her seventies, who died after the plane left Delhi for Heathrow, was carried by cabin staff from economy to first class, where there was more space. Her body was propped up in a seat, using pillows.

The woman's daughter accompanied the corpse, and spent the rest of the journey wailing in grief.

Paul Trinder, who awoke to see the body at the end of his row, last week described the journey as "deeply disturbing", and complained that the airline dismissed his concerns by telling him to "get over it".

28 Mar 07 - 12:05 PM (#2009575)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I read about that--you'd think that they'd offer their first class passenger a free ticket or some suitable compensation. The body is disturbing enough--the wailing would be very difficult to sit through.

SRS

28 Mar 07 - 12:11 PM (#2009581)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

A man must be like honey bee
And gather all he can.
To fly from blossom to blossom
A honey bee must be free,

A blossom ain't the Queen.

28 Mar 07 - 05:12 PM (#2009912)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Town uses snowplows against tumbleweed

Montanans are used to being inundated by snow, but this is a new twist

The Associated Press
Updated: 5:54 a.m. CT March 28, 2007

BOZEMAN, Mont. - Montana residents are used to digging themselves out after heavy snowstorms, but residents of one neighborhood had to put a snowplow to different use: clearing mounds of tumbleweed from their driveways.

Winds flooded a Springhill-area neighborhood with tumbleweed Tuesday, covering sheds, burying mailboxes and blocking a street and driveways.
Residents of Shooting Star Lane were forced to use snowplows and pitchforks to clear the debris.

Cindy Bowker, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years, awakened to find tumbleweed surrounding her home, blanketing her back deck and windows.

She had to tunnel through the weeds from her front door to her two-car garage and driveway.

"Both garages were covered," Bowker said. "We got the real dense stuff out and just drove through it. It was up over the headlights. It was all the way up the steps and covered our front door."
A few residents of the seven-home cul-de-sac blamed a 160-acre farm northeast of them for the tumbleweed problem. Half of the farm's crop went bad last year, and the weeds sprouted on about 80 acres, Bowker said.

Across the street from Bowker, Hank and Jan Mueller's snowmobile, shed, camper and driveway were covered with tumbleweed.

"We've had blizzards up here, but this was not like anything we have ever seen," Jan Mueller said.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

John

28 Mar 07 - 05:28 PM (#2009930)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Circuit City to fire more than 3,400 workers Retailer will replace them with new employees paid at market-based rate

The Associated Press
Updated: 12:45 p.m. CT March 28, 2007

RICHMOND, Va. - Circuit City Stores Inc. said Wednesday it plans to cut costs by laying off about 3,400 retail workers, or 8.5 percent of its in-store staff, and hiring lower-paid employees to replace them. It is also trimming about 130 corporate information-technology jobs.

Its shares rose nearly 2 percent in afternoon trading.

Circuit City, the nation's No. 2 consumer electronics retailer behind Best Buy Co. Inc., said the store workers being laid off effective Wednesday were earning "well above the market-based salary range for their role." They will be replaced as soon as possible with employees who will be paid at the current market range, the company said in a news release.

"We are taking a number of aggressive actions to improve our cost and expense structure, which will better position us for improved and sustainable returns in today's marketplace," Philip J. Schoonover, Circuit City's chief executive, said in a statement.

Circuit City employs about 40,000 part-time and and full-time store employees, according to spokeswoman Jackie Foreman. Those being laid off will get severance packages and may apply for any open positions after 10 weeks, Foreman said.

[Some additional hype at the link.]

John

29 Mar 07 - 10:29 AM (#2010669)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Wesley S

Sheep hoarder charged with animal cruelty

POSTED: 2:40 a.m. EDT, March 29, 2007

Story Highlights• North Carolina man kept 77 sheep at his home; some lived inside
• 30 sheep had to be killed because of health problems
• 13 lambs have been adopted by a high school

APEX, North Carolina (AP) -- A man who kept 77 sheep in his suburban home was charged Wednesday with 30 counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty.

David Watts, 47, was being held at the Wake County jail in lieu of $12,000 bail after a court appearance. A judge denied a request by Watts' lawyer to release him pending trial.

Watts surrendered the flock to animal control officers Monday after police found some sheep grazing on artificial flowers in the town cemetery in Apex, a suburb of Raleigh. (Watch neighbor complain of odor from house )

Thirty of the sheep were euthanized because of various health problems. In addition, sheep bones and carcasses were found in Watts' yard.

Veterinarian Kelli Ferris, who examined the flock, said some of the animals' hooves had never been trimmed, causing infections that led the sheep to walk on their knees.

Watts kept some of the younger sheep on the ground floor of his house and kept the others in pens in the yard, authorities said.

Watts denies abusing the animals. He told The News & Observer of Raleigh on Tuesday that he was overwhelmed by the number of lambs born this year.

Watts, who said he has raised sheep for a decade, called the animals "relaxing to be around."

"It's like in Florida, you can swim with the dolphins. If you can get sheep to follow you, it might be a similar experience."

A high school in western North Carolina adopted 13 lambs. The lambs will live on the school farm, where students will care for them. It was unclear where the rest of the sheep went.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

29 Mar 07 - 10:33 AM (#2010670)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Polygamy!! Shameful.

A

29 Mar 07 - 03:39 PM (#2011001)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

The snowplow/tumbleweed story sounds like practice for the Sunday (April 1) edition of the paper.

30 Mar 07 - 10:50 AM (#2011804)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

There are some really troubling murder stories turning up in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram this week. This is an ongoing story that is interesting in that I think they got it right when attributing responsibility for the crime.

Husband pulled trigger, but wife indicted
link

FORT WORTH -- In December, Darrell Roberson fatally shot a man outside his Arlington home after finding the man and his wife in a compromising position inside a pickup. But Roberson is no longer in trouble with the law. His wife, Tracy Denise Roberson, is now the one facing criminal prosecution in connection with the killing.

On Wednesday, a Tarrant County grand jury declined to indict Darrell Roberson, 38, on a murder charge in the death of 32-year-old Devin LaSalle. Instead, the panel on Thursday returned an indictment against Tracy Roberson on a charge of manslaughter, stemming from allegations that she recklessly caused LaSalle's death by falsely claiming that she was being raped, prompting her husband to shoot LaSalle.

Tracy Roberson, 35, was also indicted on a charge of making a false report to a police officer on accusations that she also lied to Arlington police, telling them she was being raped when, officials said, she had actually been having an affair with LaSalle. A warrant for her arrest was issued Thursday.

Legal experts said they have never heard of a case quite like this before but that the legal theory behind it seems sound. "It certainly is different," said George E. Dix, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "But the theory sounds perfectly acceptable to me. That is interesting."

Jason Gillmer, an associate professor at Texas Wesleyan School of Law in downtown Fort Worth, agreed. "I've never heard of a case like this, but if you think about the theory behind it, it makes sense," Gillmer said. "He is entitled to defend his wife and his family against aggravated assault. If he believes that is what is happening, he is entitled to use force. She didn't intend for her husband to kill her lover, but she recklessly caused it. "Whether or not a jury will be convinced remains to be seen."

Police have said that, in the early morning hours of Dec. 11, Darrell Roberson called his Arlington home trying to reach his wife more than a dozen times before his 7-year-old daughter finally answered. A short time later, Darrell Roberson, who had been playing cards in Dallas, headed to his home in the 6100 block of Ivy Glen Drive, police have said.

When he arrived, Roberson saw his wife, clad in a robe and underwear, with a man in a Chevrolet Silverado pickup, police have said. After Tracy Roberson claimed that the man was trying to rape her, her husband fired four shots at the vehicle as the man tried to drive away with his wife, police have said. LaSalle -- a UPS employee who had recently moved to Mansfield from New Orleans -- was struck once in the head. The father of three was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police have said that in the hours before the shooting, LaSalle received a text message from Tracy Roberson that read: "Hi friend, come see me please! I need to feel your warm embrace! If ur unable to I completely understand!!! Call me," according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Police have said that they do not know how long the couple had been seeing each other.

Arlington police investigated the shooting for several days before arresting Darrell Roberson on a murder warrant. Darrell Roberson, who works for a real estate firm, turned himself in to the Collin County Jail on Dec. 16 and was released shortly after on $100,000 bail.

According to court records, Tracy Roberson had not been taken into custody as of late Thursday afternoon, and it did not appear that she had a defense attorney. If convicted of manslaughter, Tracy Roberson faces two to 20 years in prison. Making a false report to a police officer is a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine.

Prosecutor Sean Colston, who is handling the case, said he could not comment on the grand jurors' deliberations because they are secret. Generally speaking, however, he said there are certain defenses to crimes based on what a reasonable person believes at the time of the offense.

"If a person has a reasonable belief that he needs to defend someone based on a fact that later turns out to be false, that does not take away that justification for him," Colston said. "If a person has a reasonable belief that their actions are necessary, they can be afforded self-defense and defense of a third party."

No one answered the door at the Robersons' home Thursday. A neighbor said Darrell Roberson moved out late one night about a week after the shooting. She said she has not seen Tracy Roberson.

01 Apr 07 - 06:50 PM (#2013855)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

15-year-old jailed for pushing is released

BROWNWOOD, Texas

Shaquanda Cotton, whose yearlong stay in a juvenile prison for pushing a hall monitor made her a symbol of alleged racial bias and the troubled Texas Youth Commission, was released Saturday, a state lawmaker said. The 15-year-old was freed from the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex and picked up by her mother, said Rep. Harold Dutton, chairman of the House juvenile justice committee, who lobbied state officials for Cotton's release

Dutton said Cotton and her family headed back to Paris, her East Texas hometown near the Oklahoma border, where civil rights activists have held two protests in as many weeks calling for her release. "She had a whole cavalry" when picked up, said Dutton, a Houston Democrat.

Cotton was sentenced on a felony count of shoving the teacher's aide, who is classified as a public servant, before the morning bell at Paris High School in 2005. She had no prior criminal convictions.

Activists say the fact that the same judge sentenced a white 14-year-old girl to probation for burning down her own house signaled evidence of racial bias.

02 Apr 07 - 09:05 AM (#2014295)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

From a NY Times article about deaths of US soldiers in Iraq:

""Crying doesn't make me any less of a man," said the 1-12 commander, Lt. Col. Morris Goins, who tears up as he recounts how one of his soldiers drowned in a canal, trapped in his Bradley fighting vehicle. "To not show emotion, you're an idiot, or you're living a pipe dream. If someone were to tell me not to show emotion, I'd hit them in the lip.""

02 Apr 07 - 09:57 AM (#2014351)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

take this dick's(spammer) user # and post it. There are things that can be done.

02 Apr 07 - 10:46 AM (#2014383)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

What are you going on about, Don? Did this thread get hit with spam? It's gone now.

02 Apr 07 - 10:49 AM (#2014390)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Someone added a long post advertising porn to the thread, and it was efficiently deleted by a clone.

A

02 Apr 07 - 11:17 AM (#2014413)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Thank you, clone! I've started participating in a film discussion list and must say that it is a delight to participate where only members can post. Anyone misbehaving is banned, and it makes for a much nicer overall environment.

SRS

03 Apr 07 - 08:06 AM (#2015173)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: beardedbruce

Survey shows Britons checking up on partners
POSTED: 11:43 p.m. EDT, April 2, 2007
Adjust font size:
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Britons are a nation of spies, rifling through their partners' text messages, tapping phone conversations and even tailing loved ones with web cams and satellite navigation systems, a survey reveals.

The most favored way of keeping tabs on a partner is checking their text messages, with more than half (53 percent) of those questioned admitting sneaking a peek. The number shoots up to 77 percent in the 25 to 34 age group.

The second most popular way of finding out if a partner has been a love-cheat is to read their e-mails -- 42 percent told the UK Undercover Survey that they had carried out such a ploy.

The third is the old-fashioned one of rummaging through a partner's pockets, (39 percent), a technique popular with women.

Men prefer to break another unspoken rule -- reading a partner's diary.

Neither is the spoken word safe from eavesdropping.

About one in three (31 percent) of those questioned in the survey, commissioned by the Science Museum in London, for its Science of Spying exhibition, said they covertly listened in on their partner's conversations.

A small number of the 1,129 people questioned, said they had even secretly recorded their partner's telephone conversations, using dictaphones or other such taping devices.

This method was the most popular with the over-55s age group, where one in 20 (5 percent) put their hands up. This age group also included people using web cams and GSM tracking devices.

Almost one in 10 (9 percent) have resorted to checking up on their partner by following them.

Harry Ferguson, former M16 agent, said: "Everyone has the ability to be a bit of a spy every now and again, and you don't need to have James Bond's gadgets to enter the world of espionage."

The Science of Spying exhibition ends in September.

03 Apr 07 - 08:07 AM (#2015177)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: beardedbruce

Police: Slain woman had restraining order
POSTED: 9:05 p.m. EDT, April 2, 2007
Story Highlights• NEW: Woman had restraining order against suspected killer, police say
• NEW: Victim identified by colleagues as Rebecca Griego, 26
• Two bodies, weapon found in office on the fourth floor of Gould Hall
• Co-worker said woman asked friends to watch out for her former boyfriend
Adjust font size:
SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- A University of Washington researcher was shot to death in her office Monday morning by a former boyfriend who then turned the gun on himself, police said.

Officers responding to reports of gunfire found the two dead in an office on the fourth floor of Gould Hall, the university's architecture building, Assistant University Police Chief Ray Wittmier said.

The 26-year-old woman was granted a restraining order last month against Jonathan Rowan, according to court documents. University police said he was not affiliated with the school.

"I cannot find him but he can find me (knows my place of work)," the victim, identified by colleagues as Rebecca Griego, wrote in a restraining order petition filed against Rowan on March 6 in King County Superior Court.

About six shots were fired, and a handgun was found in the room. There were no eyewitnesses, and no one else was harmed, Wittmier said.

Lance Nguyen, who worked with Griego at the Runstad Center for Real Estate Research, said the victim had become increasingly worried about her former boyfriend in recent weeks.

"She said it's a psycho from her past," Nguyen said.

In the restraining order petition, Griego wrote that Rowan had threatened her and her sister, and said he had threatened suicide "because he couldn't see me."

Campus police were not aware of the restraining order, Wittmier said. He also said he did not think the man had permission to carry a handgun on campus, where firearms are banned.

Student Meghan Pinch, 27, was in a first-floor classroom when she heard several loud bangs. She said that she did not think they were gunshots at first but that police then told everyone to evacuate.

"No one wanted to really think it was real," Pinch said as she waited outside to learn whether the victims were people she knew.

"We all are pretty close in this building," she said.

Gould Hall, built in 1972, houses three architecture department offices, a dean's office, a library, shop, lab, computer facilities and classrooms, according to the university's Web site.

The building, in an urban neighborhood on the edge of the campus, was closed for the day, with classes rescheduled elsewhere on campus.

03 Apr 07 - 10:01 AM (#2015275)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Both of these posts are evidence of a serious disordinate importance on sexual connection. Interesting questions arise: what problems is this obsession being used to hold at bay? If sexuality were NOT a solution (in the minds of those involved) what would they then have to face up to? What is it about a sexual relationship that seems to be such a great solution to these other confusions, whatever they may be? ANd finally, what would you have to identify yourself as (to yourself) in order to be vulnerable to such a neurotic computation?

A

04 Apr 07 - 01:26 PM (#2016309)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Here's a really wierd one regarding the sexual connection, Amos. Really wierd. And of all names, for the perp to be named "Lorelei," is also just so against type, because it brings to mind the Marilyn Monroe character.

Woman, 30, posed as teenage boy in sex case
Everett woman, 30, accused of assaulting 14-year-old girl, police say

By Jackson Holtz, Herald Writer
link (the page has had such heavy traffic that they converted it to text only)

EVERETT - An Everett woman who posed as a teenage boy was arrested Sunday for allegedly molesting a 14-year-old girl who believed the older woman was her boyfriend. Lorelei Josephine Corpuz, 30, lived for more than a year as a 17-year-old boy named "Mark," according to papers filed in Everett District Court. As "Mark," Corpuz persuaded the girl's family to let "Mark" live in their home as the girl's boyfriend. Corpuz claimed to be an orphan, police alleged.

It wasn't until police arrested Corpuz on Sunday on an unrelated matter that the girl and her family learned that "Mark" was a woman - and almost twice the age they were led to believe, according to court papers. That's when officers were told that Corpuz allegedly had beaten and sexually assaulted the girl.

"The family was very surprised to learn that this female who had presented herself as a juvenile male was in fact" an adult woman, Everett police Sgt. Robert Goetz said Tuesday.

Police initially arrested Corpuz on a traffic warrant. On Tuesday, she was being held at the Snohomish County Jail on $150,000 bail for investigation of third-degree child rape. No charges have been filed.

The case may leave lasting emotional scars for the girl and her family, experts said. "This is an extremely unusual story," said Lucy Berliner, director of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Trauma Stress in Seattle. "Female-on-female sexual abuse is the rarest category. It doesn't happen very often at all."

The girl met "Mark" in September 2005 at a shopping mall, Goetz said. They spoke over the phone and went on a date, according to court papers. "Mark" told the girl and her parents that his mother died of cancer and his father killed himself, the papers said. The girl told police the relationship became abusive and that she was hit weekly and twice was bitten on the back.

Corpuz was driving without a license when police stopped her on Sunday and determined she had a traffic warrant from Marysville for driving without a license. The 14-year-old was in the car at the time and Corpuz was reluctant to let police talk to the girl, Goetz said. The girl's parents were called and the family was interviewed. English is not their native language, Goetz said.

Corpuz has a criminal history stretching back to 2001. The state's court computer database lists "Mark" as her alias on a theft case in King County six years ago. Everett and Marysville police recognized her as a woman. She may have been able to pass herself off as a man when stopped by Lynnwood police earlier this year, however.

In February, a person was stopped for driving with a suspended license in Lynnwood and was using Corpuz's "Mark" alias. That person has the same height, weight, race and eye color as Corpuz, but police on Tuesday couldn't confirm that it was her. The person was given a ticket and released, said Paul Watkins, a Lynnwood police spokesman.

When posing as a man, Corpuz apparently uses her brother's name and identity, Goetz said. "She was able to get away with it," he said. "Apparently she's good at what she does."

The combination of being abused - then learning her trust was misplaced - may be especially difficult for the girl, Berliner said. "One is trauma, the other is shocking," she said. "Having both at the same time is very likely to make the effects of the abuse worse." The girl needs the loving support of family and friends, said Dr. Frank Ochberg, a Michigan psychiatrist and internationally known expert on the effects of trauma.

"In this kind of case it's almost inevitable that there will be a period of time when the victim blames herself and feels embarrassed," he said. "A lot of what you deal with is self-blame. You'd think the perpetrator would feel shame and embarrassment, but it doesn't work that way. It's the victim who feels that way."

The girl and her family need to be reassured that this is a highly unusual case, Berliner said. They shouldn't feel bad. "Why would you suspect it? How often do people go around lying about their gender?" she said. "It's too weird for people to imagine, so why would you imagine it?"

04 Apr 07 - 01:46 PM (#2016339)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: frogprince

Sounds like Lorelei is an accomplished thespian...

04 Apr 07 - 02:15 PM (#2016365)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

That's fer thure.

A

04 Apr 07 - 03:28 PM (#2016439)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: beardedbruce

Authorities: Fifth-graders posted lookout, had sex in class
POSTED: 6:36 a.m. EDT, April 4, 2007

Story Highlights• Four students allegedly have sex in classroom while fifth acts as lookout
• Four children charged with obscenity, fifth with being an accessory
• Teacher who was to supervise class went to assembly instead
• Word of incident passes from students to teacher to sheriff's office

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Five fifth-grade students face criminal charges after authorities said four of them had sex in front of other students in an unsupervised classroom and kept a classmate posted as a lookout for teachers.

The students were arrested Tuesday at the Spearsville school in rural north Louisiana, authorities said. Two 11-year-old girls, a 12-year-old boy and a 13-year old boy were charged with obscenity, a felony. An 11-year-old boy, the alleged lookout, was charged with being an accessory.

"After 44 years of doing this work, nothing shocks me anymore," said Union Parish Sheriff Bob Buckley. "But this comes pretty close."

Authorities said the incident happened March 27 at the school, which houses students from kindergarten through 12th grade. A high school teacher normally watches the fifth-grade class at the time, but went to an assembly for older students and the class was inadvertently left unattended, Buckley said. (Watch authorities try to determine if a crime was committed )

The class, which had around 10 other students, was alone for about 15 minutes, he said.

"When no teacher showed up, the four began to have sex in the classroom with the other elementary students in the classroom with them," he said.

It took a day for authorities to find out about the incident. A student who had been in the class told a high school student about it the next day, Buckley said. The student told a teacher, and school officials notified the sheriff's office. Detectives began questioning students Thursday.

School officials did not return calls seeking comment.

The students, who were not identified because of their age, were released to their parents after their arrests, Buckley said. They will next be arraigned in juvenile court.

A message seeking comment from the district attorney was not immediately returned.

Buckley said it was unclear what penalties the children could face.

04 Apr 07 - 03:48 PM (#2016455)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Man, where was all this when I was in fifth grade?

A

05 Apr 07 - 12:53 AM (#2016943)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Terror Watch: A fired U.S. attorney strikes back

The Justice Department called David Iglesias, the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, an 'absentee landlord'—a key reason listed for his firing last December. Just one problem: Iglesias, a captain in the Navy Reserve, was off teaching classes as part of the war on terror. Now Iglesias is striking back, arguing he was improperly dismissed.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 2:26 p.m. CT April 4, 2007

April 4, 2007 - When he wasn't doing his day job as U.S. attorney in New Mexico, David Iglesias was a captain in the Navy Reserve, teaching foreign military officers about international terrorism.
But Iglesias's military service in support of what the Pentagon likes to call the Global War on Terror (GWOT) apparently didn't go down well with his superiors at the Justice Department. Recently released documents show that one reason aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cited in justifying the decision to fire Iglesias as U.S attorney late last year was that he was an "absentee landlord" who was spending too much time away from the office.

That explanation may create new legal problems for Gonzales and Justice. Iglesias confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he was recently questioned by lawyers for the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog agency, to determine if his dismissal was a violation of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), a federal law that prohibits job discrimination against members of the U.S. military.

At the encouragement of Office of Special Counsel director Scott Bloch and his deputies, Iglesias said he is this week filing a formal legal complaint with OSC against the Justice Department over his dismissal on this and other grounds. (While the Justice Department normally prosecutes USERRA violations, the OSC, an independent federal agency that protects the rights of whistle-blowers, takes the case when the potential violator is the federal government itself.) "I want to make sure they didn't fire me because of my military duty," Iglesias said. "When I was away from the office, it wasn't like I was going on vacation in Europe." (A Justice Department spokesman did not respond for a request for comment on whether Iglesias's firing might have been a violation of the law.)
The OSC's inquiry into the Iglesias case—first reported this week in NEWSWEEK— injects yet another irony to the controversy over the U.S. attorney firings.

The Bush administration has vigorously promoted enforcement of USERRA—in large part because of the dramatic increase in National Guard and military reserve members who have been called into active duty due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The law's purpose—highlighted by Gonzales himself in a Justice Department press release last summer—is to make sure reservists and National Guard members don't suffer in the workplace when they are called to serve their country.

Gonzales announced last August the creation of a special Web site to inform reservists and National Guard members of their rights under the law. At the time, he also touted the first-ever class-action lawsuit under USERRA that had been brought by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. The suit against American Airlines alleged the company had reduced employment benefits for two pilots—one of them, like Iglesias, a captain in the Navy Reserve—because the pilots had taken too much leave to perform their military service. "This nation depends on our reservists to faithfully carry out their duty," said Wan J. Kim, assistant attorney general in the charge of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, when the lawsuit suit was filed. "No reservists—indeed, no members of our armed forces—should ever be punished or discriminated against for answering the call of duty."

"This is a really interesting issue," said Sam Wright, a veteran U.S. Navy lawyer and leading expert on USERRA, when asked about whether the law might apply in Iglesias's case. (Wright recently retired from government service).

Wright noted that USERRA prohibits employers—including government agencies—from taking any "adverse employment action" against reservists or National Guard members because of their military service or even using such service as a "motivating factor" in such actions.

While it is far from clear that the law can be stretched so far as to apply to U.S. attorneys, the circumstances of Iglesias' dismissal closely parallel the sorts of USERRA cases that are increasingly being brought by Bush administration lawyers, according to Wright and others familiar with the act.

Iglesias's background as a Navy JAG (Judge Advocate General) Corps lawyer and his membership in the Navy Reserve was well known within the Justice Department. Indeed, it was a major part of his biography when, at the recommendation of his original patron, Sen. Pete Domenici, he was first nominated by President Bush to serve as U.S. attorney in 2001. (Assigned to represent a young Marine charged in a military hazing incident in Guantánamo Bay in 1986, Iglesias mounted a vigorous defense of his client, in part by raising questions about the conduct of the commanding officer. His performance was the inspiration for the Tom Cruise character in the movie, "A Few Good Men.")

When he took off to perform his required 45 days of reserve duty each year, Iglesias said his secretary regularly notified the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys; officials there fully understood the reason he was going to be away, he said.

Those duties expanded in recent years, with the advent of the war on terrorism. In addition to prosecuting routine JAG Corps cases at naval bases in San Diego and Washington state, Iglesias told NEWSWEEK he was also enlisted to teach courses for allied military and intelligence officers at the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies at the U.S. Naval Station in Newport, R.I.—and at the Joint Special Operations University in Florida.

"I've taught foreign special forces on legal issues related to law enforcement and military operations," Iglesias said, in an e-mail exchange with NEWSWEEK. The courses focus in part on the use of military versus law-enforcement rules of engagement. "I try to get them to think of what rules of force apply to terrorists," he said.
But it wasn't until months after he was abruptly terminated as U.S. attorney last December that Iglesias was surprised to discover that his time away from the office doing his military service may have been a factor—or at least was being cited as a factor—in his dismissal.

In February, when the controversy over the abrupt firings of eight U.S. attorneys erupted, top Justice Department officials prepared internal "talking points" for Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who was preparing to answer questions about the dismissals before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The talking points, part of thousands of pages of internal Justice Department documents released last month, show that officials listed "performance-related" reasons that McNulty could cite to explain why Iglesisas was fired. The second reason given was that Iglesias was "perceived to be an "absentee landlord" who relies on the first assistant U.S. attorney to run the office." (In one version of the talking points, the words "absentee landlord" are underlined.)

Although McNulty never addressed the specific reasons for Iglesias's firing in his Feb. 6 public testimony, a Justice Department official (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters) confirmed that the deputy attorney general later mentioned the "absentee landlord" factor in a private briefing for congressional staffers.

To be sure, Justice officials cited other reasons, as well. They described Iglesias in the talking points as "under performing generally" and as a "lackluster manager."
They also contended that he was not doing enough to enforce border security. But one of McNulty's principal deputies, William Moschella, appeared to emphasize specifically the point about Iglesias being away from the office too much during his later testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. When asked by Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez about the department's reasons for firing Iglesias, Moscella replied that "Iglesias had delegated to his first assistant the overall running of the office. And, quite frankly, U.S. attorneys are hired to run the office."

Of the U.S. attorneys fired, Iglesias's case has arguably created the biggest problem for the Justice Department. As Gonzales's former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, testified last week, Iglesias was not on the original list of U.S. attorneys to be fired last fall—and was only added in November after White House aide Karl Rove complained to Gonzales that Iglesias was not doing enough to prosecute voter-fraud cases—a top GOP campaign priority. Iglesias has testified that he got two phone calls last October from Rep. Heather Wilson and Senator Domenici, both New Mexico Republicans, pressing him to bring indictments in a local corruption case that implicated Democrats—contacts that Iglesias has alleged were improper. Those contacts prompted Iglesias to brand his firing "a political hit."
Iglesias suspects that the Justice complaints about his absences were cooked up as an ex post facto rationale to justify a dismissal that was really made for political reasons. That's why, in filing his complaint with OSC, he is also alleging that his firing may have been a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal officials from using their offices to interfere with an election.

But it is his claim under USERRA that may raise the most interesting legal issues—especially in light of the Bush administration's strong stand on enforcement of the law. The OSC's Bloch, a Bush appointee whose lawyers interviewed Iglesias by phone last week, has made "aggressive" USERRA enforcement a top priority. The agency has handled more than 300 complaints since 2004 and routinely seeks internal documents from other agencies—under threats of subpoena—to complete its investigations. In about a half dozen cases, the OSC has actually brought suit against federal agencies for USERRA violations before the Merit Systems Protection Board. (OSC lawyers say they have been able to resolve many other cases through negotiations with the agencies.) The OSC has also taken an expansive view of the reach of USERRA, contending that high-level political appointees are protected by the act, not just midlevel civil servants. "Our view is that USERRA is required to be construed liberally," said one OSC lawyer, who asked not to be publicly identified talking about internal matters. "It's very broad. There is no exclusion for political appointees."

Wright, who co-wrote the USERRA law when he worked at the Labor Department in 1994, agreed that the reach of USERRA is unusually broad. But he said it's still an "open question" about whether the law could be used to protect the jobs of U.S. attorneys—Senate-confirmed appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president.
If the question is whether U.S. attorneys, like all other citizens, have rights under USERRA, "the answer is clearly yes," said Wright. "The harder question is whether there is any remedy."

John

05 Apr 07 - 01:02 AM (#2016947)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Woman gets DUI — for horseback ride
Alabama resident allegedly used animal to ram a police car at midnight
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:21 p.m. CT April 4, 2007
SYLVANIA, Ala. - A woman who went for a horseback ride through town at midnight and allegedly used the horse to ram a police car was charged with driving under the influence and drug offenses, police said Tuesday.
"Cars were passing by having to avoid it, and almost hitting the horse," said Police Chief Brad Gregg.
He said DUI charges can apply even when the vehicle has four legs instead of wheels.
Police in the northeast Alabama town received a call around midnight Saturday about someone riding a horse on a city street, Gregg said.
Officer John Seals found Melissa Byrum York, 40, of Henagar, on horseback on a nearby road and attempted to stop her. Seals asked the woman repeatedly to get off the horse, but she kept trying to kick the animal to make it run, the chief said.
"She wouldn't stop. She kept riding the horse and going on," Gregg said.
After ramming the police car with the horse and riding away, the woman tried to jump off but caught her foot in a stirrup, Gregg said. The officer took the woman into custody and discovered that she had crystal methamphetamine, a small amount of marijuana, pills and a small pipe, the chief said.
Horse not 'in the best of health'
York was charged with DUI for allegedly riding the horse under the influence of a controlled substance. She was also charged with drug possession, possession of drug paraphernalia, resisting arrest, assault, attempting to elude police and cruelty to animals.
Gregg said the horse, which belonged to York, "wasn't in the best of health, but it's still alive."
York was released from the DeKalb County Jail on $4,000 bond and was being transferred to the jail in Jackson County, where authorities had a warrant for her arrest on unrelated charges, Gregg said.
Jackson County officials said Tuesday that York had yet to be booked, and there were no records indicating whether she had a lawyer.
© 2007 The Associated Press

05 Apr 07 - 01:06 AM (#2016948)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

March 30, 2007
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - An inmate was jailed as a man for more than a week on a statutory rape charge before a shower revealed the prisoner was a woman.

Alexander David Cross, also known as Elaine Ann Cross, had been in the Hamilton County Jail awaiting a court appearance Wednesday. Cross pleaded guilty to the charge in a deal with prosecutors.

The charge stems from an alleged sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl. Prosecutors allege Cross, 42, and the teenager had sexual contact at least three times during June and July 2006.

Officials said Cross' gender was revealed when jail authorities forced the inmate to take a shower.

"After about 10 days in jail, they figure out Alex Cross is a female," prosecutor Boyd Patterson said in court.

The plea means no jail time will be required if Cross stays out of trouble for six years. Cross must register as a convicted sex offender and have no contact with the teen. The gender designation also must be changed to female on Cross' driver's license.

Cross couldn't immediately be located for comment.

© 2007 The Associated Press

05 Apr 07 - 01:10 AM (#2016952)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

OOPS!

LOS ANGELES - An Air Force veteran has filed a federal claim after an operation at a Veterans Administration hospital in which a healthy testicle was removed instead of a potentially cancerous one.

Benjamin Houghton, 47, was to have had his left testicle removed June 14 at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center because there was a chance it could harbor cancer cells. It also was atrophied and painful.

But doctors mistakenly removed the right testicle, according to medical records and the claim, which seeks $200,000 for future care and unspecified damages. He still hasn't had the other testicle removed.

"At first I thought it was a joke," Houghton told the Los Angeles Times. "Then I was shocked. I told them, 'What do I do now?"'

Houghton, his wife, Monica, and their attorney, Dr. Susan Friery, said they hoped to get the VA's attention by going public with the situation.

Dr. Dean Norman, chief of staff for the Greater Los Angeles VA system, has formally apologized to Houghton and his wife.

"We are making every attempt that we can to care for Mr. Houghton, but it's in litigation, and that's all we can tell you," he said. The hospital changed practices as a result of the case, he added.
© 2007 The Associated Press.

05 Apr 07 - 11:00 AM (#2017290)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: beardedbruce

Australian: Technology may fuel recorded assaults
POSTED: 1:43 a.m. EDT, April 5, 2007
Adjust font size:
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Recent shocking cases of Australian teenagers raping girls then sharing images of their crimes via cell phones and the Internet will become more prevalent with the spread of technology, a criminologist said Thursday.

Five private school students, aged 17 and 18, were arrested in Sydney on Wednesday for allegedly raping a 17-year-old girl, then distributing digital footage of the attack taken with a cell phone camera to the phones of friends.

Police, who described the images as harrowing, were attempting to track down all the forwarded images, and warned the public that passing them on constitutes a crime, punishable by three years in prison.

The case has attracted national media attention, as well as comparisons to an incident last year when images of a sexual assault on a mentally disabled 17-year-old girl by a gang of teenagers near the southern city of Melbourne were posted on the online video Web site YouTube.

Bond University criminologist Prof. Paul Wilson said Thursday sex crimes and the sharing of recorded attacks will become more widespread. He said young males were motivated to distribute photographic evidence of themselves committing serious crimes because of their desire for peer group approval.

"The technology allows people to show off their exploits now, and clearly we're going to see more of these occur," Wilson said. "There are those who are still stupid enough to record memories of illegal acts like they were holiday snaps."

Wilson said one of the most disturbing aspects of the recent cases was the victims were "being harmed twice," as others were watching the rape scene after the attack.

"But the most worrying aspect ... is that there are young males who think sexual aggression is OK," he said.

The five Sydney teenagers charged with aggravated sexual assault of the girl in January were refused bail when they appeared in courts late Wednesday and Thursday. The charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Police have yet to make any arrests in last year's assault near Melbourne.

05 Apr 07 - 11:29 AM (#2017308)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

I think we have an answer -- we send those youths to the testicle doctor...

A

06 Apr 07 - 11:40 AM (#2018284)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

NEW CASTLE, Ind. (AP) - A cat helped spare a family from death by carbon monoxide poisoning by jumping on the bed and meowing wildly as fumes filled the home, the owners said.

Eric and Cathy Keesling said their 14-year-old cat, Winnie, played a crucial role in saving their lives March 24 after a gasoline-powered water pump in their basement caused the odourless but deadly gas to build up.

About 1 a.m., the domestic shorthair began nudging Cathy's ear and meowing loudly.

"It was a crazy meow, almost like she was screaming," said Cathy, who hesitated to get up until Winnie's caterwauling and jumping persisted.

When she finally climbed from bed, she realized she was nauseous and dizzy and couldn't awaken her husband. Because he had undergone minor neck surgery the previous day, she decided to call 911 but was so disoriented she had trouble dialling.

Paramedics found the couple's 14-year-old son, Michael, unconscious on the floor near his bedroom. The Keeslings were taken from the home in oxygen masks, treated for carbon monoxide poisoning and soon recovered.

07 Apr 07 - 01:14 AM (#2018889)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

That doesn't explain the noise my old cat has been making at night lately--there is no source of carbon monoxide in the house. (Usually it's just a matter that his food dish is empty, but not always).

07 Apr 07 - 01:50 AM (#2018895)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Hmmm. Mebbe send him testicle doctor also?

Hmmmm?

A

07 Apr 07 - 03:14 PM (#2019262)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Long gone.

09 Apr 07 - 11:05 AM (#2020473)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

It seems to me that with some embellishment this might be an interesting song challenge. But I'll post the story here and let Amos stumble upon it and decide if it merits its own thread for such a challenge:

Cabby, Follow That Horse!
April 09, 2007

INDIANAPOLIS - A runaway horse pulled a carriage with two out-of-town tourists on a wild ride through downtown streets, until a teenager rode to the rescue in a pursuing taxi, leaped out and grabbed the horse's reins.

The driver of the Yellow Rose Carriage was thrown from her seat when a van crashed into the buggy Sunday afternoon. "The carriage driver lady just flew off the carriage," said William Basler, 19.

Basler ran after the carriage to try to stop it. A taxi driver saw what was happening, slowed and told Basler to jump in. The cab chased and passed the carriage, and Basler jumped out, grabbed the reins and stopped the horse. "It was just instinct," Basler said. "I was just worried about the people inside of it." He needed instinct, since he said his only experience with horses was riding one once when he was 15.

Police said carriage driver Kathleen Moriarty, 53, was briefly knocked unconscious but was not seriously hurt.

The passengers complained of some pain and were examined at a hospital, said police Sgt. Matthew Mount. The horse was not injured.

Police said the van driver, Timothy D. Carlson, 46, of Indianapolis, faces several preliminary charges including felony possession of a controlled substance, misdemeanor counts of driving under the influence, public intoxication and operating a vehicle without a license.

Here is a Google search on the story for some of the modified versions of the story.

09 Apr 07 - 11:54 AM (#2020498)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Holy Moly, what a ride for the tourists -- they'll be dining out for months on the tale. The van driver will be in the pokey while they are tucking white linen napkins around their necks and sipping bubbly; meanwhile, the horse gets rubbed down, put back inthe stable, maybe some lineament for his ankles, and back to the same old drag next day. Hope the buggy driver was okay!

A

09 Apr 07 - 07:16 PM (#2020841)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

EXPLANATION FOUND FOR VA SURGEON'S ERROR!!!!

Art classes hone med students' visual skills

Courses help aspiring doctors see more details, make better diagnoses
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:11 p.m. CT March 20, 2007

PHILADELPHIA - Modern medicine provides doctors with an array of sophisticated machines that collect and present data about their patients, but the human eye is an invaluable yet often under-appreciated diagnostic tool.

To address that, a new collaboration of Jefferson Medical College and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has been created to teach aspiring doctors to closely observe, describe and interpret the subtlest details with the eye of an artist.

The art-and-medicine program kicked off its first workshop last week with a group of 18 white-coated medical students visiting the academy's museum and a dynamic representation of their chosen profession: Thomas Eakins' masterwork "The Gross Clinic," which depicts an operation in progress.

The first- and second-year med students heard how to take a "visual inventory" — paying attention to overall elements of the painting, such as texture and brightness, and specifics, such as body language and facial expressions.

"This collaboration with our art colleagues is a wonderful augmentation to what we're already doing," said Dr. Charles Pohl, a professor of pediatrics at Jefferson and co-instructor at Friday's workshop. "We can learn from the masters to really fine-tune our attention to detail."

Besides the two-hour Visual Perception workshop, others slated for the 2007-2008 school year are Accuracy and Perception, Hand-Eye Coordination, Art in Healing, and Sculpture and Surgery. The courses are a mix of demonstrations, lectures and hands-on art lessons.

Adding humanities to curricula
A 2001 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that medical students in a similar Yale University program acquired more astute observational skills than their colleagues who didn't take the courses. Besides assessing a patient's well-being during an office visit, finely honed visual abilities can also allow doctors to spot subtle changes in a patient's X-rays over time, for example.

"When they can take a better look at the person in front of them, it helps them make better diagnoses and leads to improved sensitivity to the patient," said the academy's painting department chair, Al Gury, workshop co-instructor. "That's a critical area that many feel is needed in the medical profession."

Medical schools nationwide are increasingly adding humanities courses to their curricula.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, 89 of the country's 125 medical schools have humanities as an educational element included in a required course and 66 have it as an elective. (There's overlap because some schools have both.) The figures include all humanities, not just visual arts, spokeswoman Nicole Buckley said. Other humanities studied in medical schools include literature, performing arts and music.

The Medical College of Wisconsin has a one-month medical humanities elective for fourth-year medical students, and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City established a program in conjunction with the Frick Museum.

While fine art may be unexplored territory for some Jefferson medical students, many of their artistic contemporaries at the academy are no strangers to the world of science.

"Our students go to the gross anatomy labs in their upper-level anatomy study," Gury said. "But this is the first time we've hosted the medical students."

© 2007 The Associated Press.

THEY STUDIED PICASSO THAT DAY!!!

John

09 Apr 07 - 07:20 PM (#2020844)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Jolly good show, I must say. I guess Picasso, though, depends on the "period". Some Picasso lessons would be on the lines of "how to see things as though you are still drunk after three days"...

A

09 Apr 07 - 07:28 PM (#2020850)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

From New Scietist.com a lesson of profound and elegant importance:

"We know them as the most highly sexed of all the apes. Now it appears that the easy-going social life enjoyed by bonobos makes them better at cooperating than their more aggressive chimp cousins.

Brian Hare of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues tested how well chimps and bonobos coped with challenging social situations. Bonobos, they found, were more likely to share a plate of food, using play or sex to defuse social tensions. In contrast, chimps' more limited social skills meant one individual was more likely to take all the food.

The researchers gave pairs of each species a task that required them to work together to retrieve a food reward that neither could reach alone. When the food was easily shared, both species quickly learned to do this. But when the food was in a single bowl - making it easy to monopolise - chimps were less willing to work together (Current Biology, vol 17, p 619).

"It's so simple and obvious that no one's ever demonstrated it," says Hare. "You can't cooperate if you can't share the spoils." The flexibility that allows humans to work together evolved more from social adeptness than high-powered reasoning, he suggests."

Seems to me this would be a good fable for the White House gang to study up on.

A

09 Apr 07 - 07:50 PM (#2020876)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Seems to me this would be a good fable for the White House gang to study up on.

But the White House gang gets too much of their support from Fundies who refuse to admit the possibility of a matriarchal social order like the Bonobos.

The VA doc could have used this course?

Training docs to examine private parts

Mannequins help give medical students a hands-on education
Reuters: Updated: 8:51 a.m. CT March 19, 2007

CHICAGO - Dr. Carla Pugh seems an unlikely patron of porn shops. But that's exactly where Pugh, an assistant professor of surgery at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, procured some of the male body parts she uses to train medical students about human anatomy.

Pugh, 41, has patented technology that combines portions of fully formed anatomical mannequins with computers to teach medical students to do exams on the body's most private and sensitive areas — genitalia, breasts and rectums.

These are the exams, she said, that students are often most afraid of and that many medical school instructors, themselves often long-time practicing physicians, still find to be a source of embarrassment. "We've got big issues in the U.S. with sexuality," Pugh said in an interview during a break from teaching first-year medical students. "These guys have to be able to do it and act professional, so that adds a lot of pressure."

Getting supplies to build the models was no easy task. Medical education has largely glossed over such training, limiting demand for products in the industry. In some cases, erotica was the only option, she said.

The simulators are a far cry from the flesh and bones of a living, breathing person. But they are close enough to the real thing to let students know whether their touch is too rough, too soft or if they've missed a key spot entirely.

In traditional medical training, students often go straight from textbook to exam room with live patients, where they observe skilled doctors in action. Questions are asked later.

"Guess what?" said Pugh. "They're sweating bullets because they haven't had a scenario where they can talk about it comfortably, safely and with someone who is more knowledgeable."

During the Northwestern class, training is hands-on. Simulators are arranged at various stations according to exam type. At the prostate station, for example, several models of the male posterior are arranged on a table in various positions.

Inside each plastic model — yes, they have a fully formed anus and rectum — are paper-thin sensors that measure a student's touch and send individual readings to an attached computer monitor.

Students show up at the station for a brief overview from an instructing physician and then moments later, fingers are inserted, line readings from sensors go up and down on the computer screen, questions are asked and answered.

Scatological humor is inevitable. An instructor assures a student that, yes, you can tell a patient it's OK to pass wind if necessary during the exam and ask for a warning first.

Time is called and students move on to the next station. On another table, several examples of the penis, circumcised and not, limp and erect, await another round of students, who smile nervously.

Dr. Sudha Rao, a pediatrician, prepares to give an overview of the proper methods for performing an examination of the penis. "It's very helpful," said Rao of the anatomical models. "I think they're fantastic to be able to show a young student who is starting out."

Pugh began performing "surgery" on her dolls as a child, transplanting eyes and limbs with a sewing kit borrowed from her mother. Since then, she said she has always maintained a hands-on approach to medicine. She was disappointed with the level of feedback she received while doing her own surgical training in medical school at Howard University in Washington.

"It frustrated me because I was unsure," said Pugh, one of fewer than 400 black women surgeons in the United States. "I didn't have the level of access to the human body that I wanted."

She came up with the idea for the technology while working on a doctorate in education at Stanford University and obtained a patent for the sensors and data accumulation technology in 2001.
Pugh formed a licensing agreement with Medical Education Technologies Inc., a company specializing in medical training products, in early 2003.
Her pelvic exam simulators are already on the market at prices ranging from $16,000 to $20,000 each, and are used by more than 60 medical and nursing schools around the country. The prostate exam simulators used in the class as well as those for breast exams are still in prototype form.

Any help in these often taboo topics will make the first clinical encounters with a patient's private parts a little easier for medical students like 28-year-old Meredith Hirshfeld at Northwestern University in Chicago.

"It's the first time we're doing something invasive," she said. "It's nerve-racking."

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited

John

18 Apr 07 - 02:51 PM (#2029150)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Norway faults fish farms for 1.2 million escapes

18 Apr 2007 16:03:19 GMT
Source: Reuters

OSLO, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Norway faulted about 50 fish farming companies on Wednesday for escapes by 1.2 million salmon, cod and trout last year in a new bid to put pressure on firms to tighten their nets.

Environmentalists, who say that escaped farmed fish threaten wild stocks because of inter-breeding, welcomed the detailed list of breakouts from farms in the Nordic nation, the world's biggest producer of farmed Atlantic salmon.

The list showed escapes from major companies such as Marine Harvest , the world's number one salmon farmer, Cermaq and dozens of smaller operators. Norway has previously published figures for escapes but without where they came from.

"Allowing fish to escape in itself is not illegal, but escapes can be a sign of irresponsible management," Jens Christian Holm, of the Directorate of Fisheries, said in a statement with the list showing 1.2 million fish escaped.

It was the highest number of fish escapes in statistics back to 2001 -- 935,000 fish escaped in 2005. And 169,000 fish escaped in the first three months of 2007, according to the Directorate.

Holm said the figures had to be treated with caution because they do not indicate the reason for breakouts. The number of escapees is a tiny percentage of the total produced.

Fish firms say that the data do not distinguish between nets that are ripped because of mismanagement or, for instance, sabotage or accidents beyond the control of operators such as rips caused by boat propellers.

"Our goal is to have no escapes," said Marit Solberg, managing director of Marine Harvest's Norwegian unit. The company accounted for 10 of 60 breakouts in Norway in 2006, although the number of fish that slipped the company's nets was just 80,000. ...

19 Apr 07 - 10:35 AM (#2029974)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Chimps more evolved than humans

Study says more chimp genes changed in beneficial ways than human genes

By Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience
Updated: 8:04 p.m. CT April 17, 2007

Since the human-chimp split about 6 million years ago, chimpanzee genes can be said to have evolved more than human genes, a new study suggests.

The results, detailed online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradict the conventional wisdom that humans are the result of a high degree of genetic selection, evidenced by our relatively large brains, cognitive abilities and bipedalism.

Jianzhi Zhang of the University of Michigan and his colleagues analyzed strings of DNA from nearly 14,000 protein-coding genes shared by chimps and humans. They looked for differences gene by gene and whether they caused changes in the generated proteins.

Genes act as instructions that organisms use to make proteins and thus are integral to carrying out biological functions, such as transporting oxygen to the body's cells. Different versions of the same gene are called alleles.

Changes in DNA that affect the making of proteins are considered functional changes, while "silent" changes do not affect the proteins. "If we see an excess of functional changes (compared to silent changes) the inference is these functional changes occurred because they were positively selected, because they were useful in some way to the organism," said study team member Margaret Bakewell, also of UM.

Bakewell, Zhang and a colleague found that substantially more genes in chimps evolved in ways that were beneficial than was the case with human genes.

The results could be due to the fact that over the long term humans have had a smaller effective population size compared with chimps.
"Although there are now many more humans than chimps, in the past, human populations were much smaller, and may have been fragmented into even smaller groups," Bakewell told LiveScience. So random events would play a more dominant role than natural selection in humans.

Here is why: Under the process of natural selection, gene variants that are beneficial get selected for and become more common in a population over time. But genetic drift, a random process in which chance "decides" which alleles survive, also occurs. In smaller populations, a fortuitous break for one or two alleles can have a disproportionately greater impact on the overall genes of that population compared with a larger one.

Chance events could also explain why the scientists found more gene variants that were either neutral and had no functional impact or negative changes that are involved in diseases.

There is still much to learn, the scientists say, about human and chimp evolution. "There are possibly a lot of differences between human and chimps that we don't know about, [perhaps] because there are differences in chimps that nobody has studied; a lot of studies tend to focus on humans," Bakewell said.

© 2007 LiveScience.com

19 Apr 07 - 10:37 AM (#2029976)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Before Chongo gets too excited, he should consider whether he really wants to be "more studied."

John

19 Apr 07 - 10:51 AM (#2029995)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Chongo is a backwater in that chimp gene pool, just a tad stagnant. It comes from hanging out with that Blind Drunk gang.

19 Apr 07 - 11:34 AM (#2030055)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

You're saying there's more ~~deviation~~ variation in the shallow end of the (gene) pool?

John

21 Apr 07 - 10:03 PM (#2032340)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST

Hye, that's on my street. I know that girl. She is whack-o!

24 Apr 07 - 01:18 AM (#2034047)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

From the BBC:

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat's owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

"We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together," Mr Alifi said.

Mr Alifi, of Hai Malakal in Upper Nile State, told the Juba Post newspaper that he heard a loud noise around midnight on 13 February and immediately rushed outside to find Mr Tombe with his goat.

"When I asked him: 'What are you doing there?', he fell off the back of the goat, so I captured and tied him up."

Mr Alifi then called elders to decide how to deal with the case.

"They said I should not take him to the police, but rather let him pay a dowry for my goat because he used it as his wife," Mr Alifi told the newspaper.

24 Apr 07 - 05:21 PM (#2034738)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

That old joke has gone around for ages, Amos. Are you telling me you're only seeing it just now?

24 Apr 07 - 06:39 PM (#2034801)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

John, due to the narrowness of human gene expression some geneticists think that the human family could have been smaller than 20 surviving human families world wide.

It musta been quite a ********* storm.

Next time only Repblican bunker people will survive.

24 Apr 07 - 07:48 PM (#2034856)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Obvously many people think that the human line began with only a very few.

So far as I've seen, there's little to indicate a near-extinction episode after the line became identifiably "human," although it might be that I just didn't notice the headlines when it was reported. Another recent thread discussed the MRCE/MRCA theories, which have been misinterpreted by quite a number of people as meaning that the population dwindled to very small numbers at some recent point. That is NOT a correct understanding of the MRCE/MRCA arguments, but you really have to do the math to understand why, and how, it's wrong.

One of the narrowest genetic lines appears, according to some reports, to be among orangutans, and is attributed to their near extinction sometime after "being orang" was an established thing, by the HIV virus (quite recently on evolutionaly time scales). The survivors were only those resistant to the virus, and orangs remain nearly unique as one of the only known animals that (a) does not harbor the virus and is unlikely to pass it around and (b) is almost completely immune to it and can't be infected with it.

Other critters that seem immune (or at least tolerant) normally are "carriers," and/or "hosts" and have "learned" to live with the infection, rather than by developing an immunity that rids them of it.

Some estimates have placed the low point of the orang population at as few as 20 to 40 individuals who survived from a much larger earlier population. The most believable reports I've seen place the time of this event less than about 16 million years back, and a few "plausible" estimates would have it much more recent.

The orang's narrow genetic base is fairly often cited in passing, but most of the good reports were quite a while back, and I'm sorry but I don't have citations for any. Most of what I think I remember of the more rigorous discussions dates back to when early HIV researchers were looking for host animals for lab use, and had difficulty figuring out why testing on orangs didn't work. (1960 - 1980 era perhaps?) [It would have been convenient for the victims among us if orangs could be infected, as they're genetically very close to humans; but it's obvously fortunate for the orangs that they're immune.]

John

24 Apr 07 - 10:21 PM (#2034953)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

HIV didn't become an event in human health that was recognized until the early 1980s. At least this is my recollection. I lived in NYC from 1978 to late 1980, and I don't think they were closing down the bathhouses quite yet, as they dealt with a general public health problem in the gay population. I think it acquired a name sometime later.

26 Apr 07 - 08:56 AM (#2036199)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

070424_InternetSpeedRecord

Consortium sent data over 20,000-mile path at 9.08 gigabits a second
By Anick Jesdanun
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:56 p.m. CT April 24, 2007

NEW YORK - A group of researchers led by the University of Tokyo has broken Internet speed records — twice in two days.

Operators of the high-speed Internet2 network announced Tuesday that the researchers on Dec. 30 sent data at 7.67 gigabits per second, using standard communications protocols. The next day, using modified protocols, the team broke the record again by sending data over the same 20,000-mile path at 9.08 Gbps.

That likely represents the current network's final record because rules require a 10 percent improvement for recognition, a percentage that would bring the next record right at the Internet2's current theoretical limit of 10 Gbps.

However, the Internet2 consortium is planning to build a new network with a capacity of 100 Gbps. With the 10-fold increase, a high-quality version of the movie "The Matrix" could be sent in a few seconds rather than half a minute over the current Internet2 and two days over a typical home broadband line.

Researchers used the newer Internet addressing system, called IPv6, to break the records in December. Data started in Tokyo and went to Chicago, Amsterdam and Seattle before returning to Tokyo. The previous high of 6.96 Gbps was set in November 2005.

Speed records under the older addressing system, IPv4, are in a separate category and stand at 8.8 Gbps, set in February 2006.
The Internet2 is run by a consortium of more than 200 U.S. university. It is currently working to merge with another ultrahigh-speed, next-generation network, National LambdaRail.

The announcement of the new record was made at the Internet2 consortium's spring meeting, which ends Wednesday in Arlington, Va.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

My net tracker showed a burst at 2.3 KB/sec the other day, but it only stayed up there for a couple of seconds.

9.08*10⁹/2.3*10³ = 3,974,026 times as fast as me. I could download all of Mickey's WinXP patches in less than a day.

wow!

I might even be able to look at YouTube.

John

26 Apr 07 - 10:45 AM (#2036277)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I have the most marginal DSL around, hovering at speeds only slightly better than dial-up for some operations. Until they replace the old lines and switches, I see no improvement. There is building going on near us, so maybe they'll upgrade everything when they put in new houses.

Good news for some folks, though. I foresee another round of equipment upgrades (good for those who invest in computer stock) as it becomes available.

SRS

26 Apr 07 - 12:26 PM (#2036377)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

SRS -

Your comment on the orang bit a couple of hits back is of course more accurate than my first offhand (and rather casual) recollections.

The first articles I recall that related to what is now known as HIV were possibly around 1981 - 1984, but could have been a bit earlier. Recollection is that there was a series of two or three articles in Scientific American(?) that brought some public attention to "a mysterious degeneration of immunity in gays."

I did make an unsuccessful attempt at finding those first-I-saw articles some years ago when people were claiming to have identified the airline employee they were blaming for starting it all, since they reported the existence of what obviously was the same thing several years before the purported "first appearance." At that time it was not known whether there was a particular infective agent, or whether it was just a "normal reaction" to higher than usual repeated infections of ordinary kinds. (One article subtitle was something like "can your immune system be worn out by overuse.")

The first articles I recall about the orang genetics were prior to the discovery of the virus, and before a name was given to the infection. On reflection, I'd put them somewhere around 1985 - give or take a few years (+/- maybe 5 years?).

The articles at the time noted a mysterious "inability to infect" orangs, which implies that an infectious agent was fairly well accepted but it probably had not been identified; and while they commented on the "close relationship" between orangs and humans, they also were a few years prior to the major recent developments in genetic sequencing. The "explanation," based on a presumed HIV epidemic among orangs came at least a couple of years later. (That suggestion probably came after the virus had been identifed.) So far as I've noticed there's been little past the "postulation," since research moved on to other test methods and test subjects.

I'm afraid the new Internet record speeds will remain out of reach for most of us, at least for now. Almost certainly they were using the very best fiber optic connections, and selective routing/addressing to pick the fastest relays possible. Both these are a bit out of reach in my neighborhood, and will likely remain so for some time (unless we can find someone who can make a lot of money off of the upgrades).

John

26 Apr 07 - 12:32 PM (#2036381)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

This one really shouldn't surprise anyone. No link as my local rag never posts anything for more than three days so I didn't bother even to look. (It's possible that too much of the local news is simply too embarrassing?)

8A THE WICHITA EAGLE THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007

Japan opened brothels for GIs after World War II

TOKYO — Japan's abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender —with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities —Japan set up a similar "comfort women" system for American Gis.

An Associated Press review of historical documents and records — some never before translated into English — shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan's atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war.

Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down.

John

26 Apr 07 - 12:44 PM (#2036393)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

WANTED - COMPATIBLE MALE WITH GOOD TRACTOR. SEND PICTURE OF TRACTOR.

8A THE WICHITA EAGLE THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007

Teen's proud to take his Deere to the prom

NEW ROCKFORD, N.D. —Forget taking a limousine to the prom. One high school senior drove his date in a 1992 green John Deere 8760 tractor.

"A few people made bets with me that Iwouldn't do it," said Levi Rue, a senior at New Rockford-Sheyenne High SchooL

"I guess I won them." Rue's date wasn't sure, worried about her dress getting dirty. But after Rue showed her pictures of the tractor and promised to make sure it was immaculate, she agreed. "I deaned it up pretty good," he said.

Bachmeier wore a lime green prom dress that nearly matched the tractor.

John Deere 8760 (I think this is a 1998 model, but there's not a lot of difference.)

John

26 Apr 07 - 01:26 PM (#2036424)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

John,

The most detailed article I first read about AIDS, including information about that flight attendant, came from a surprising source. It was in Vanity Fair magazine, and it was a long one, and came out in the 1980s. They should have won a Pulitzer for that one (if they didn't). I'll see if I can figure out when it was written. I may have the author tracked down, but I'll send the whole citation when I get it.

SRS

26 Apr 07 - 02:37 PM (#2036471)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Alex Shoumatoff, "In Search of the Source of AIDS." It was the longest study of the disease I'd seen at the time, and was comprehensive in its examination of the evidence. I don't have the exact date, but the Vanity Fair was volume 51 (the citation peters out after that in Google, and the actual page is through a full-text journal I don't have access to, but it was in about 1986 of 1987). The essay was apparently reprinted in his 1990 collection African Madness .

The Amazon review is mixed, and I think this reviewer doesn't like Shoumatoff in general. I remember reading his Dian Fosse article also (I subscribed to Vanity Fair back in the 1980s, before I had kids so I still had time to read it!) and thinking it was very good. I've posted a new review over at Amazon to rebut, somewhat, the first review.

SRS

26 Apr 07 - 04:19 PM (#2036561)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Vanity Fair has come up with some excellent articles on occasion. I can believe they'd have had something to say about it all. The earliest articles I remember, however, were long before it was even agreed that an infectious agent was involved; and were well before the names AIDS and HIV were invented.

The references to the genetically ancient orang epidemic, when that was proposed much later, didn't cause much of a flap; so it must be assumed that by the time that theory was proposed it was fairly well accepted that the virus had been around for a rather long time, and probably that it had affected humans in some isolated areas long before it was recognized as a serious public health issue.

My main interest, at the time, for looking for the original article was that it totally refuted the nut cases who were claiming it was a newly minted "God's punishment," specially created (last week or the week before according to some) as retribution for a "moral crime."

I suppose, by now, it doesn't much matter except as a matter of curiosity.

John

26 Apr 07 - 04:49 PM (#2036590)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I remember that other primates were discussed in the Vanity Fair article. That's one reason I mentioned it. He looked into the crossover theory.

03 May 07 - 10:57 AM (#2042292)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST,saulgoldie

And you think YOU've got it bad!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=450995&in_page_id=1879

03 May 07 - 11:15 PM (#2042885)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I'll see your article and raise you some research here.

There are also sensitivities to all sorts of modern smells and chemicals. A recent lecture at my university included the discussion of a 1995 film called Safe.

SRS

05 May 07 - 01:11 AM (#2043676)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Activists want chimp declared a person

Activists seek designation for Austrian chimp after sanctuary goes bankrupt

The Associated Press
Updated: 10:02 p.m. CT May 4, 2007

VIENNA, Austria - In some ways, Hiasl is like any other Viennese: He indulges a weakness for pastry, likes to paint and enjoys chilling out watching TV. But he doesn't care for coffee, and he isn't actually a person — at least not yet.

In a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting basic rights to apes, animal rights advocates are seeking to get the 26-year-old male chimpanzee legally declared a "person."

Hiasl's supporters argue he needs that status to become a legal entity that can receive donations and get a guardian to look out for his interests.

"Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights," said Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories, a Vienna animal rights group.

"We mean the right to life, the right to not be tortured, the right to freedom under certain conditions," Theuer said.

"We're not talking about the right to vote here."

The campaign began after the animal sanctuary where Hiasl (pronounced HEE-zul) and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years went bankrupt.

Activists want to ensure the apes don't wind up homeless if the shelter closes. Both have already suffered: They were captured as babies in Sierra Leone in 1982 and smuggled in a crate to Austria for use in pharmaceutical experiments. Customs officers intercepted the shipment and turned the chimps over to the shelter.

Their food and veterinary bills run about $6,800 a month. Donors have offered to help, but there's a catch: Under Austrian law, only a person can receive personal donations.

Organizers could set up a foundation to collect cash for Hiasl, whose life expectancy in captivity is about 60 years. But without basic rights, they contend, he could be sold to someone outside Austria, where the chimp is protected by strict animal cruelty laws.

"If we can get Hiasl declared a person, he would have the right to own property. Then, if people wanted to donate something to him, he'd have the right to receive it," said Theuer, who has vowed to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.

Other efforts of rights for apes

Austria isn't the only country where primate rights are being debated. Spain's parliament is considering a bill that would endorse the Great Ape Project, a Seattle-based international initiative to extend "fundamental moral and legal protections" to apes.

If Hiasl gets a guardian, "it will be the first time the species barrier will have been crossed for legal 'personhood,'" said Jan Creamer, chief executive of Animal Defenders International, which is working to end the use of primates in research.

Paula Stibbe, a Briton who teaches English in Vienna, petitioned a district court to be Hiasl's legal trustee. On April 24, Judge Barbara Bart rejected her request, ruling Hiasl didn't meet two key tests: He is neither mentally impaired nor in an emergency.

Although Bart expressed concern that awarding Hiasl a guardian could create the impression that animals enjoy the same legal status as humans, she didn't rule that he could never be considered a person.
Martin Balluch, who heads the Association Against Animal Factories, has asked a federal court for a ruling on the guardianship issue.
"Chimps share 99.4 percent of their DNA with humans," he said. "OK, they're not homo sapiens. But they're obviously also not things — the only other option the law provides."

'I'm not about to make myself look like a fool'

Not all Austrian animal rights activists back the legal challenge. Michael Antolini, president of the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said he thinks it's absurd.

"I'm not about to make myself look like a fool" by getting involved, said Antolini, who worries that chimpanzees could gain broader rights, such as copyright protections on their photographs.

But Stibbe, who brings Hiasl sweets and yogurt and watches him draw and clown around by dressing up in knee-high rubber boots, insists he deserves more legal rights "than bricks or apples or potatoes."
"He can be very playful but also thoughtful," she said. "Being with him is like playing with someone who can't talk."

A date for the appeal hasn't been set, but Hiasl's legal team has lined up expert witnesses, including Jane Goodall, the world's foremost observer of chimpanzee behavior.

"When you see Hiasl, he really comes across as a person," Theuer said.
"He has a real personality. It strikes you immediately: This is an individual. You just have to look him in the eye to see that."

© 2007 The Associated Press.

John

05 May 07 - 12:38 PM (#2043974)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Animal Rights is an interesting topic. But since "rights" of all sorts are perceived by and assigned by humans, it isn't going to happen.

05 May 07 - 01:29 PM (#2043991)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

The problem in part is the nature of our categories, a legacy from white-supreme Victorian science, which in turn goes back to Aristotle's hierarchies.

The anecdotal evidence for what most people think of as personhood in dolphins, apes, whales, and some dogs -- a sense of individual being and self-determination above the simple biological ipulses of the body -- is quite strong. Ask anyone who has looked into the eye of a big cetacean.

If we had some metric by which to assess this "individual life force" attribute, we might have some grounds for assigning personhood. But unfortunately, we might find ourselves granting person-rights to some vultures, or eagles, or individual bears, and actually finding some humans didn't measure up. :D

Intriguing theme for a sci-fi book, isn't it? Some kind of elan-meter whch rings loud tones in the presence of enough life-energy to constitute competent personhood.

Take it to the Republican National COnvention and see if it breaks.

A

05 May 07 - 02:27 PM (#2044023)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

So Stilly, you haven't read the contributions by the eminent legal scholar Guest,Natural Guest?

And a judge has already ruled: Judge Barbara Bart rejected her request, ruling Hiasl didn't meet two key tests: He is neither mentally impaired nor in an emergency.

Couldn't "not mentally impaired" be presumed in this case to imply that the opinion was "relative to the abilities of an ordinary person?" - already implying acceptance by that court ... .

John

05 May 07 - 03:19 PM (#2044059)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I skimmed the article--it was late and I probably should have turned off the computer earlier. I saw a few keywords and went from there. I looked at that other thread one time, and made this remark:

The web citations so far are entirely iffy. Angelfire, for example, sends red flags for me. This is lunatic fringe stuff, an ass-backwards interpretation of law and individual rights. This capital letter versus lower-case stuff is nonsense.

I'll go with my first assessment of his "contributions."

05 May 07 - 05:10 PM (#2044123)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

I can't comment on whether Austria might be inclined toward unusual interpretations of the law, but the concept of a "person" is deeply imbedded in US legal tradition, and can have many different meanings.

The early US Supreme Court, under John Marshal as Chief Justice beginning in 1801, is credited with establishing and intrenching the concepts, that I'll state somewhat tritely:

1. Only a person can have rights (and be subject to the law).

2. An organization or association of persons can be a "person" in and of itself, if such an association is recognized by the law.

i.e. John Marshal "formalized" the US concept of corporations (and partnerships) in the form that they usually are observed in US law.

(Too bad he's been so thoroughly forgotten by the current lawmakers and administrators.)

Bernard Schwartz, A History of the Supreme Court is a good (albeit perhaps somewhat boring) summary, particularly of John Marshall's years.

John

05 May 07 - 08:00 PM (#2044237)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

You're right, I didn't mention the rights of institutions (corporations, primarily) because I thought your eyes might glaze over if I went that far in my answer. There's an interesting book that came out many years ago. In 1972 Christopher Stone wrote Do Trees Have Standing? to discuss the rights of large trees to exist separate from human use. They still don't have rights. The fact that corporations have rights, a form of "personhood," is actually an early political coup on the part of wealthy business owners. Another book to consider is Arran Gare's Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis.

05 May 07 - 11:09 PM (#2044348)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Now that the numbers are back on track, it looks like I left my thread hanging out there for poachers. So . . .

05 May 07 - 11:09 PM (#2044349)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

700

06 May 07 - 05:03 PM (#2044783)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

CENSORSHIP IN BRAZIL!!!

Brazil orders online ad be removed

The Associated Press
Updated: 3:22 p.m. CT May 5, 2007

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The government has ordered an Internet auction site to remove an advertisement in which a Brazilian man offered to sell his wife for about $50.

The Secretariat of Public Policies for Women announced late Friday it had ordered Mercado Livre, partially owned by eBay Inc., to remove the ad and warned it was violating a law banning the offer or sale of "human organs, people, blood, bones or skin."

The advertisement was no longer visible on the site Saturday.
It was posted by a man who gave his name as Breno and said: "I sell my wife for reasons I prefer to keep short ... I really need the money."

The described his wife physically and listed her qualities as a homemaker and companion. He reportedly said she was 35 and "worth her weight in gold."

The Estado news agency said it wasn't clear if the ad was meant as a joke. It said Mercado Livre told it the ad hadn't been noticed earlier because of the large number of products offered on the site — nearly 1 million.

There was no answer Saturday at phone numbers for Mercado Livre or its public relations agency.

© 2007 The Associated Press

It's gettin' really hard to make a buck anymore - almost everywhere.

John

07 May 07 - 06:12 PM (#2045547)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Not from a paper, but from YouTube:

Snake coughs up a whole small hippotamus.

Musta hurt sompn awful.

A

07 May 07 - 09:17 PM (#2045678)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

ALMOST material for a song challenge, perhaps; but I just couldn't bring myself to punt it too far out in the open.

Serial sock snatcher refuses to toe the line

Illinois man with long history of sock-related offenses charged again
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:56 p.m. CT May 7, 2007

BELLEVILLE, Ill. - James Dowdy has admitted his hankering for women's hosiery has been his undoing, earning him three stints in prison and repeated scoldings from judges over the years. So police say it's no surprise the 36-year-old man is knee deep in trouble again because of his lust for leggings.

St. Clair County prosecutors charged Dowdy on Friday with felony attempted burglary for his uninvited visit to a parked car and with misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge for dropping stolen socks "in an unreasonable manner, as to alarm and disturb."

"He's obviously got some problems," Belleville police Capt. Don Sax said Monday of Dowdy, who remains jailed on $50,000 bond. "We can't crawl into his head and come up with a particular answer to why he does this. We have to assume it's part of his sexual deviation."

Authorities have no evidence that Dowdy has ever threatened anyone. "To the best of our knowledge, he's just after the socks," Sax said. "Generally, they are almost always female socks."

In the weeks leading to his latest arrest, Sax said, witnesses in Dowdy's neighborhood reported seeing a suspicious person slinking about, at times peeking through windows. Often, Sax says, socks were left behind, though it's unclear whether the culprit dropped them clumsily or as a calling card.

Police responding to one of the reports saw Dowdy — who fit the description of the man reported by neighbors — trying to crawl into his house through a basement window, socks in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Witnesses picked Dowdy from a photo lineup, Sax said, but he wasn't arrested at the time.

Dowdy was arrested April 28, after someone reported seeing him near or in a parked car — and after a woman's sock was found in a backyard near where witnesses claimed Dowdy had been.

His troubles stretch back at least 13 years.

In 2004, Dowdy was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted residential burglary, a felony reportedly tied to his strolling into a female neighbor's home for her socks.

Seven years earlier, Dowdy got a six-year sentence for breaking into another woman's home and stealing socks.

And in 1994, Dowdy was sentenced to three years for trying to burglarize a home, ultimately getting caught by police with a bag of socks.

"I know what I did was wrong," he told the judge back then during sentencing. "And the thing with the socks, I would like to get help with it so I can get over it, get it out of my life and get on with my life."

Messages left Monday for some of his relatives in Belleville were not immediately returned.

Dowdy has been assigned to be represented by the county public defender's office, though no specific counselor there has yet been assigned to him, officials said Monday.

"Obviously, our hope is that he either be incarcerated in jail or a hospital someplace where this can be dealt with," Sax said. "Sneaking around a house in today's society, at some point, someone is going to get hurt."

© 2007 The Associated Press

John

07 May 07 - 11:54 PM (#2045782)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Did you ever ask yourself, seriously now, what eighteen thousand nude Mexicans kneeling would look like??

Tell the truth....

A

08 May 07 - 12:53 AM (#2045815)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Pierce County man first in state charged under new bestiality law

Seattle Times link

A Spanaway, Pierce County, man has become the first person charged under the state's new felony bestiality law. Michael Patrick McPhail, 26, was charged Thursday with one count of first-degree animal cruelty after his wife allegedly caught him having sex with the family's pit bull, according to charging papers filed in Pierce County Superior Court. The woman snapped two photos with her cellphone camera, then dialed 911, authorities said.

McPhail was bailed out of jail on Friday, two days after the alleged incident.

According to Rita Morgan, national cruelty coordinator for Pasado's Safe Haven, McPhail is the first person in the state charged under the new law, which makes bestiality a Class C felony, punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The law was spurred by the case of a Seattle man who died last year after having sex with a horse at an Enumclaw farm.

Because the Enumclaw case involved filming the sex acts, the law also says that anyone videotaping could be convicted under animal-cruelty laws. People who allow bestiality on their property might also face prosecution.

Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, who sponsored the bestiality law, said she hopes McPhail's case sends the message that anyone who "abuses animals in this way" deserves to be punished.

Neither McPhail, who was released on $20,000 bail Friday morning, nor his wife, could be reached for comment. A condition of McPhail's release is that he can't have contact with animals, said Deputy Prosecutor Karen Watson.

Morgan said she was trying to reach the family to offer safe housing for the 4-year-old dog. The tan-colored dog was left with McPhail's wife after his arrest, deputies said. "We see this as a case of animal cruelty; this man is subjecting this animal to intentional cruel behavior," Morgan said. "He's certainly in need of counseling."

09 May 07 - 10:58 AM (#2047028)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Bear Kills Moose in Alaska Driveway

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 9, 2007
Filed at 12:10 a.m. ET

HOMER, Alaska (AP) -- Odd sounds outside their home woke Gary and Terri Lyon early Sunday morning, so Gary got up to check it out. He looked outside and saw a 500-pound grizzly bear killing an adult moose in their driveway.

''I saw this wildlife spectacle of a full-grown brown bear on a moose and the moose fighting for its life,'' Gary said.

The couple put their dog inside, grabbed their cameras and started filming the attack as the grizzly battled the moose down the driveway, finally killing it. They posted the video on YouTube.

''She tore apart the chest cavity, ripped out the heart and ate it,'' Gary said. ''It was like she knew that's what kept it alive.''

Only a few mouthfuls later, the bear left the carcass and ran into the woods.

The Lyons contacted authorities, who sent state wildlife biologist Thomas McDonough to remove the dead moose. He brought it a half-mile down the road and contacted a chartity to harvest the meat. But he suspected the bear would return.

The prediction was right. The bear returned later that night, judging by the fresh tracks found Monday morning. The Lyons are now locking their doors, trying to avoid a more dangerous confrontation.

''I've lived here for almost 30 years, and I've never had to shoot anything out of defense of property,'' Gary said. ''It was just doing its own thing that the species has done forever. Unfortunately, it was in our yard.''

09 May 07 - 07:58 PM (#2047444)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Two from a WaPo blog:

1) How To Fail Your Driving Test In 1 Easy Step
Step one, show up drunk. A German man in the western town of Bendorf flunked his driving test for "attempting the examination while three times over the legal alcohol limit." Despite reeking of booze, the 27-year-old assured his examiner that he was sober and got behind the wheel. However his performance was so bad that "the examiner directed him to toward the police station," whereupon he was forced to take a sobriety test -- he then failed his second examination of the day.

2) The Art of Roadkill
If, when the Lord gives you lemons you're supposed to make lemonade, then I suppose when He gives you roadkill you should do this: Southern Illinois University graduate art student Jessica May has dressed, manicured and gilded a numerous array animals killed by automobiles around Edwardsville. The 24-year-old from West Lafayette, Indiana, has positioned the made-over corpses along a highway, in order to find out if people will give more thought to "animals if they were somehow given human attributes."

10 May 07 - 11:48 AM (#2048127)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Well now, the Texas governer wasn't able to sustain legislation that would make in mandatory for girls to receive Gardasil to protect them from cervical cancer. I wonder of those overstuffed-male legislators will think twice now that their throats and equipment come into the picture?

Oral sex can lead to throat cancer
Globe and Mail

May 10, 2007
The same virus that causes cervical cancer is the principal cause of throat cancer, according to a new study. The research also suggests that unprotected oral sex is a major reason people are contracting throat cancer - not just smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, as previously believed. "It's the human papillomavirus that drives the cancer," said Maura Gillison, assistant professor of oncology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., and lead author of the study.

She said the more oral-sex partners a person has, the greater the risk of contracting oral cancers (located in the tonsils, back of the tongue and throat). The good news is that the risk remains low over all. "People should be reassured that oropharyngeal cancer is relatively uncommon, and the overwhelming majority of people with an oral HPV infection probably will not get throat cancer," Dr. Gillison said. A new vaccine protects against infection by several strains of HPV, including the one associated with oral cancer, HPV-16. However, Dr. Gillison said it has not been specifically tested for its effectiveness against oral cancer.

The new research is published in today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, which features several articles about HPV and the effectiveness of the vaccine. Sold by Merck Frosst Canada Ltd. under the brand name Gardasil, the vaccine prevents infection by four strains of human papillomavirus that account for roughly 70 per cent of cases of cervical cancer.

Gardasil offers protection that lasts for at least three years, according to newly published data in the New England Journal of Medicine. Another study, published today in the journal, suggests the vaccine protects against cancer of the vulva and cancer of the vagina, which are principally caused by HPV. (Penile cancer is also caused largely by the virus, although the effectiveness of the vaccine in men has not yet been demonstrated.)

In the most recent federal budget, the Conservative government set aside $300-million for an HPV vaccination program, which would target girls aged 9 to 11. Health groups are divided on the wisdom of an immunization program, given the cost of the vaccine (more than $400 for the required three doses) and the limited data on its long-term effectiveness. There is also debate about whether vaccination should be limited to girls, and whether the vaccine should be offered to older teens who are already sexually active.

The new research should help assuage fears a bit, and broaden the appeal of the vaccine because of its effectiveness against other types of cancer. About 1,350 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2007, and an estimated 390 will die. By contrast, approximately 3,200 Canadians will be diagnosed with oral cancer this year, and 1,100 will die, according to the Canadian Cancer Society. Dr. Gillison's study involved 100 men and women who were newly diagnosed with oral cancer. They were compared to 200 similar people without cancer.

Dr. Gillison and her team found that those with HPV infection were 32 times more likely to have developed cancer. By comparison, the risk increased threefold for smokers and twofold for drinkers. Study participants who reported having oral sex - be it fellatio or cunnilingus - with six or more partners were at greatest risk of contracting oropharyngeal cancer. There is no screening test for oral cancer; it is usually detected when there is a sore in the mouth that does not heal.

11 May 07 - 06:13 PM (#2049520)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Turkey Poop Powers Electric Plant
Jackie Crosby - Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune

Greg Langmo likes to say he was just a "fat, dumb and happy turkey farmer" until the summer of 1998. That's when he walked into a meeting of the Meeker County Board and got blindsided by a courthouse full of riled-up residents.

The mounds of manure he and other turkey growers were stockpiling on their farms to sell as fertilizer had become a nuisance, seemingly overnight.

"They said, 'It smells, it creates runoff, it collects flies,' " said Langmo, 48, who raises about a million turkeys a year on his farms near Litchfield. "The commissioners told me to solve the problem or they'd solve it for me."

Langmo placed an S.O.S. call to a British company he'd read about that was turning poultry litter into electricity. Nine years later, his solution has arrived: a $225 million plant an hour away in Benson that will turn poop into power.

The plant, in the heart of west-central Minnesota's turkey farming region, is scheduled to begin operating June 25. It'll be the nation's first large-scale power plant fueled by poultry manure.

More important, supporters say, it will be an important step in the country's quest to develop more sources of renewable energy. About half a million tons of turkey litter will be burned each year, generating enough energy for an estimated 50,000 households.

But the plant comes with controversy. Even in an era when renewable energy has moved from environmental wish lists to mainstream discussions embraced by President Bush, Gov. Tim Pawlenty and labor unions, the business of burning poultry manure has ruffled some feathers.

And not because of the smell, of which there promises to be none.

Turkey litter is a mixture of manure and bedding material, such as wood chips, straw, sunflower shells and feathers. It has provided a low-cost fertilizer to farmers for decades. Some of them now worry that their costs will go up and that there won't be enough litter for their fields if turkey growers can get a better price at the Fibrominn plant.

And although turkey litter may be a renewable source of energy - an estimated 2 million tons of it is generated each year statewide - it takes a lot of poop to make electricity. The mixture doesn't burn as hot as wood, which makes it a labor-intensive and expensive fuel source, critics say. They charge that the "gee-whiz" factor has discouraged research into more creative and economical renewable-energy solutions.

"Being green means being informed and being sophisticated," said David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an energy expert and longtime critic of the litter-burning project. "Simply because you're taking a renewable resource and turning it into something else does not mean that it's environmentally benign or economically worthwhile."

But the technology, which applies to turkey and chicken litter, appears to be catching on. As cities expand into farming areas, residents' concerns over disease and run-off pollution from manure are mounting.

Fibrowatt, which built three smaller litter-fired plants in England, has sold them and moved its headquarters to Newtown, Pa. The company has plans for five projects in the poultry-rich states of Arkansas and North Carolina in the next two years, and is looking at sites in Maryland and Mississippi, said Carl Strickler, the chief operating officer.

In Benson, a prairie town of about 3,300 about three hours west of the Twin Cities, many residents consider the litter-burning plant a sign of hope and pride, despite some early fears - and snickers.

Benson Mayor Paul Kittleson admits that he considered the litter-burning plant a featherbrained idea at first. But after giving the sniff test to a plant in Thetford, England, he warmed to the idea.

"Believe me, if it had stunk, they wouldn't be here," he said.

Copyright Scripps Howard News Service 2007

12 May 07 - 11:25 AM (#2049971)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Teen becomes Indiana's youngest coroner
[coroner = death scene investigator, not medical examiner with scalpel ~WYS]

PORTLAND, Ind. (AP) -- With her father as a role model and a love of the television show "CSI," a high school senior has become Indiana's youngest certified death investigator.

Amanda Barnett, 18, was certified last month and is one of four deputy coroners working for her father, Jay County Coroner Mark Barnett.

"It's kind of weird to (my friends)," she said. "To other people it's disgusting, but I think it's interesting, and somebody's got to do it."

Amanda Barnett said her goal has been to follow in her father's footsteps since his first campaign for coroner 15 years ago, and she has attended numerous coroner conventions with him. Her father accompanied her on some of her first calls.

"I'll ask her what she's doing and why," Mark Barnett said. "She might catch something that I don't think of."

She had to receive special permission to attend a certification class given by the Indiana State Coroners Training Board because she was only 17 when it began. She scored 97 percent on the test, submitted four case reports and attended an autopsy.

"I think it's great that someone her age is interested in the field," said Lisa Barker, executive director of the state training board. "She was a very good student."

Barnett will soon graduate from high school, and she said she plans to attend Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in the fall to become a forensic nurse examiner.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

16 May 07 - 05:49 PM (#2053947)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Rog Peek

GERMANS NOT AMUSED
LONDON (AFP). British tourists have left the residents of one charming Austrian village 'effing' and 'blinding' by constantly stealing the signs for their oddly named village.
While British visitors are finding it hilarious, the residents of Fucking are failing to see the funny side.
Only one kind of criminal stalks the sleepy 32 house village near Salzburg on the German border – cheeky British tourists with a sense of mumour and a screwdriver.
But the local authorities are hitting back with the signs now set in concrete, police chief Kommandant Schmidtberger is on the lookout.
"We will not stand for the Fucking signs being moved" the officer said.
"It may be very amusing for you British, but Fucking is simply Fucking to us. What is this big Fucking joke? It is puerile."
Local tourist guide Andreas Behmueiller said it was only the British that had a fixation with Fucking.
"The Germans all wanted to see the Mozart house in Salzberg" he explained.
"Every American seems to care only about The Sound of Music (the 1955 film shot around Salzberg). The occasional Japanese wants to see Hitler's birth place in Braunan. But for the British, it's all about Fucking."
Guesthouse manager Augustina Lindbauer described the village's breathtaking lakes, forests and vistas.
"Yet still there is this obsession with Fucking" she said.
Just this morning, I had to tell an English lady that there were no Fucking postcards."

16 May 07 - 07:38 PM (#2054049)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Judge to prosecutor: 'So what's a Web site?'

During Internet terrorism trial, judge asks attorneys to keep it simple

By Mark Trevelyan
Reuters
Updated: 2:05 p.m. CT May 16, 2007

LONDON - A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like "Web site" in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet.

Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.

"The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is," he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.

Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms "Web site" and "forum." An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: "I haven't quite grasped the concepts."

Violent Islamist material posted on the Internet, including beheadings of Western hostages, is central to the case.

Concluding Wednesday's session and looking ahead to testimony on Thursday by a computer expert, the judge told Ellison: "Will you ask him to keep it simple, we've got to start from basics."

Younes Tsouli, 23, Waseem Mughal, 24, and Tariq al-Daour, 21, deny a range of charges under Britain's Terrorism Act, including inciting another person to commit an act of terrorism "wholly or partly" outside Britain.

Tsouli and Mughal also deny conspiracy to murder. Al-Daour has pleaded not guilty to conspiring with others to defraud banks, credit card and charge card companies.

Prosecutors have told the jury at Woolwich Crown Court, east London, that the defendants kept car-bomb-making manuals and videos of how to wire suicide vests as part of a campaign to promote global jihad, or holy war.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

I'm not really surprised, even if he hadn't been the judge. And at least he asked for some explanation.

John

16 May 07 - 07:51 PM (#2054057)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

How does he feel about triple-expansion steam? Cotton gins? The morality of interchangeable parts for mass production?

Gee.

A

17 May 07 - 10:32 AM (#2054637)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

From a New York Times Editorial concerning the disposition of a relic of the Emperor Bonaparte, whos eowner recently died, this classic remark:

"Whether the object prized by Dr. Lattimer was actually once attached to Napoleon may never be resolved. Some historians doubt that the priest could have managed the organ heist when so many people were passing in and out of the emperor's death chamber. Others suggest he may have removed only a partial sample. If enough people believe in a possibly spurious penis, does it become real?

The pathos of Napoleon's penis — bandied about over the decades, barely recognizable as a human body part — conjures up the seamier side of the collecting impulse. If, as Freud suggested, the collector is a sexually maladjusted misanthrope, then the emperor's phallus is a collector's object nonpareil, the epitome of male potency and dominance. The ranks of Napoleon enthusiasts, it should be noted, include many alpha males: Bill Gates, Newt Gingrich, Stanley Kubrick, Winston Churchill, Augusto Pinochet. Nevertheless, the Freudian paradigm has never accounted for women collectors, nor does it explain the appeal of collections for artists like Lisa Milroy, whose paintings of cabinet handles or shoes, arrayed in series, animate these common objects.

It's time to let Napoleon's penis rest in peace. (emphasis added).

Museums are quietly de-accessioning the human remains of indigenous peoples so that body parts can be given proper burial rites. Napoleon's penis, too, should be allowed to go home and rejoin the rest of his captivating body. "

17 May 07 - 10:39 AM (#2054646)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=850

Washington, DC — The Bush administration has declared itself immune from whistleblower complaints filed by federal workers under the Superfund law and the Safe Drinking Water Act, according to legal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a result, federal workers will lose protection against official retaliation for reporting cleanup failures, enforcement breakdowns or manipulation of science relating to contamination of water supplies or toxic pollution.

This latest action was buried in a footnote of a legal ruling issued by the U.S. Labor Department on March 30, 2007 in a whistleblower case involving a scientist from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It expands upon a ruling last year that federal employees may no longer pursue whistleblower claims under the Clean Water Act – a ruling based upon an unpublished Administration legal opinion.

The Bush administration legal stance is rooted in the doctrine of sovereign immunity based on the old English maxim that "The King Can Do No Wrong." Sovereign immunity is an absolute defense to any legal action.

17 May 07 - 10:49 AM (#2054649)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

The Bush administration legal stance is rooted in the doctrine of sovereign immunity based on the old English maxim that "The King Can Do No Wrong."

This is exactly the kind of thing I expect from the 152 lawyers in the Bush administration that were hired straight out of Pat Robertson's Regent law school.

17 May 07 - 02:56 PM (#2054831)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

{From my personal archives}
[quote, via OCR from print]

THE WICHITA EAGLE 7A
TUESDAY, JUNE 6, 2006

Whistle-blowers may have no choice but to go public
BY KENNETH F. BUNTING
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

In a peculiarly parsed 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said last week that the nation's 21 million public employees do not have the protection of the First Amendment when they raise concerns about wrongdoing as part of their job duties.

The decision, supported by the Bush administration and at odds with precedents from two judicial circuits, makes it easier for government employers to punish, and even retaliate against, government employees who air concerns about wrongdoing through internal grievance, complaint and communications channels.

Critics, including civil libertarians and attorneys for whistle-blowers, said the impact of the ruling, which drew three dissenting opinions, could be sweeping, silencing conscientious public employees and endangering public health and safety.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority decision, said public employees aren't acting as citizens, and therefore are not entitled to First Amendment protection, when they report perceived wrongdoing as part of their ordinary job responsibilities. But "employees who make public statements outside the course of performing their official duties retain some possibility of First Amendment protection because that is the kind of activity engaged in by citizens who do not work for the government."

The Bush administration is viewing the ruling as a victory of sorts. But it would be poetic justice for this excessively secretive, leak-phobic and cover-up-prone administration if the ruling's long-range impact was to inspire more whistle-blowers to go public instead of bringing complaints internally.

Justice David Souter sounded more in line with previous court precedents and common sense when he remarked in his dissenting opinion that "a government paycheck does nothing to eliminate the value to an individual of speaking on public matters. And there is no good reason for categorically discounting a speaker's interest in commenting on a matter of public concern just because the government employs him."

Kenneth F. Bunting writes for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

[endquote]

As government employees are not citizens, and doubting that many of them are authorized to work in the US under any existing US statutes, it is hereby moved that they all must immediately be extradited to whatever nation demonstrates the immediate desire - or grudging willingnes - to take them in.

It is suggested that the extraditions shall start ~~with the most rank~~ at the highest ranks and proceed downward, approximately in order of authority, so that those most likely to be harmful to the nation shall be removed first.

Is an offer of assylum heard from Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan?

John

18 May 07 - 09:22 AM (#2055455)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

A brilliant remedy, but it would be short lived, I am afraid; a replacement crop would be in place faster than you could turn around.

The notion that citizenhood, with its concomitant rights, is in some way subordinate, junior, lesser than one's employment is noxious, blind, and sadly, a bit fascistic.

Being the agent of a free nation should make one MORE conscious of the fine balance that brings about individual freedom--not less.

Grrrrr.

A

18 May 07 - 04:01 PM (#2055819)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

So the remedy to problems in the government workplace is to hold a press conference.

After that shit hits the fan a few times someone may write a bill or bring another case to adjust this ruling. It is ludicrous as it stands.

SRS

18 May 07 - 04:16 PM (#2055834)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: GUEST

"Okay first I'm going to let the military side of me rant:

It's not a clip! Its a magazine! For goodness sake if you're going to do a story about hand guns lets get the terminology right!"

The article said: "The pastor of Ruth Street Baptist Church told WJRT-TV that one of the handguns had a bullet in the chamber, and the other handgun's clip had bullets in it."

The paper was merely paraphrasing what the pastor said. It is not the paper's job to correct people's mis-statements, it's the paper's job to report the story.

The moral to the story is: Get the facts/quotes from law enforcement/military when you're talking about guns.

And Little Hawk -- "Well, perhaps we should engage in nation-wide Easter Egg Hunts (by the adult population). Could turn up all kinds of significant results...perhaps even hidden WMD's."

I laughed so hard at this post milk would have shot out my nose had I been drinking.

18 May 07 - 05:57 PM (#2055906)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

GUEST, there are no articles in the proximity of your post resembling what you're discussing. If you're responding to another thread or an article somewhere, post a link so we can see what you're talking about.

SRS

18 May 07 - 06:05 PM (#2055914)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I picked this up from the Earthlink home page, but their's isn't a durable link. I googled the story and find the same author has a slightly different version at the Washington Post.

Bear Wanders Into N.M. Medical Clinic
May 18, 2007

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A young black bear ambled through a medical clinic's automatic door early Friday and into a gastroenterology lab, the perfect place for a tranquilizer.

"I think the person in the waiting room was pretty surprised," said Todd Sandman, director of public relations for Presbyterian Health Care Services, which runs the lab in Rio Rancho, on the outskirts of Albuquerque.

It was shortly before 7:30 a.m., and there weren't many people in the lab when the bear showed up, Sandman said. All the humans evacuated while animal control officers were called in to figure out what to do with the bear.

"Apparently, the bear was very calm and retreated into a side room and then further into a bathroom," said Dan Williams, a New Mexico Department of Game and Fish spokesman.

The department's officers used a tranquilizer gun to sedate the bear, believed to be 2 or 3 years old and about 125 pounds. Then they loaded it into a bear trap - essentially a big steel cylinder on wheels - and took it to the Manzano Mountains, where the bear was released, Williams said.

Williams said the bear likely wandered in from the Manzano Mountains, about 20 miles to the southeast; the Jemez Mountains, about 35 miles to the north; or the Sandia Mountains, about 10 miles to the east.

Bears occasionally show up in the Albuquerque area. Williams said the one in the clinic appeared to be a bit skinny and may have recently come out of hibernation looking for food.

Officials tagged the bear on an ear before releasing it - "so we'll recognize him if we see him again," Williams said. "Visiting hours are over for that bear."

18 May 07 - 07:52 PM (#2056001)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Australian Drought Gets SERIOUS!!!

X-rated nude car wash gets go-ahead

Australian officials say despite complaints, topless business within law

Reuters
Updated: 9:34 a.m. CT May 18, 2007

CANBERRA, Australia - A nude car wash offering an X-rated sideshow and topless cleaning in Australia's tropical Queensland state has been given the all-clear after police and officials said they were powerless to scrub it.

The Bubbles 'n' Babes car wash in Brisbane prompted a flood of complaints with a topless car wash for $45 and a nude car wash with X-rated lap-dance service for $82.

"If it was approved for a car wash then I can't imagine how we can stop them," Lord Mayor Campbell Newman told a council meeting with worried local lawmakers.

Professional car washes have boomed in most cities with drought-stricken Australians banned from washing their own cars due to tough water restrictions.

Queensland police denied any cover-up in a state where their image has been dented by past accusations of police corruption and involvement with organized crime.

The raunchy wash, set up by a strip-club owner, was screened from the public and used recycled water to avoid breaching water use restrictions, they said.

"We don't want any traffic accidents caused by people looking at the girls instead of looking at the road," Superintendent Colin Campbell told local media.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited

John

18 May 07 - 10:41 PM (#2056112)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: frogprince

"Queensland police denied any cover-up"
What's to deny? nothing covered-up about it.

20 May 07 - 05:22 PM (#2057179)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Personally, I think it should be set up so people have to opt-in, not opt-out.

To our readers: Bible delivery will be optional
Star-Telegram
As many of you may know, a Christian group called the International Bible Society has contracted with the Star-Telegram to deliver a copy of the New Testament with an edition of the paper to all subscribers in December. Because some readers have let us know they do not want it, the Star-Telegram will provide the opportunity to opt out.

The International Bible Society, founded in 1809 in New York City, translates and distributes Christian Scripture. It publishes the New International Version of the Bible and has contracted with several other newspapers around the country to deliver it. The book will arrive in a pocket on the plastic newspaper bag.

But subscribers will be able to request delivery of the paper without the Bible. We'll publicize a special e-mail address and phone number to call in December when the delivery date is confirmed.

20 May 07 - 10:13 PM (#2057339)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Convicted bigamist jailed again in Ga.

Man says he has divorced some of 8 wives,

but can't remember which ones.

The Associated Press
Updated: 7:29 p.m. CT May 20, 2007

ATLANTA - A traveling minister who served two years in prison on bigamy charges has been jailed again after at least four women said he proposed to them.

Officials also say there is no evidence that Bishop Anthony Owens, 35, divorced the eight wives he had married before going to prison.
A judge will decide whether Owens should go back to prison. Owens, who turned himself into the Gwinnett County jail April 30, declined to be interviewed.

But his new fiancees aren't keeping quiet.

Betty Dixon, 38, met him last March in a casino near Memphis.
"He was a slick talker," the nurse said. "He told me God had sent him to me and I needed help."

Nurse Cheryl Selmon, 48, says Owens proposed to her last October. A month later, he proposed to Darlene Keeler, 42, a manager of a gospel group.

Then he met 43-year-old Karen Ward, a mother of two young children, and proposed to her.

"He said God gave him a message that he was going to move my family to California for a better life," Ward said. "I gave up my apartment. I took my children out of school. He said he is a real man of the Lord. But he is just a mess. I hate the day that I met him."

According to police reports, Owens' first marriage was in 1990 in Memphis, Tenn., Owens' birthplace. At the age of 18, he married 43-year-old Joanna Hill.

He said the marriage was troubled from the start and that a misunderstanding of Mormon teachings led him to marry 41-year-old Earleen Mabien in 1992, even though he was still married to his first wife.

After Earleen, Owens married six other women from 1995 to 2002 in South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. The last of those wives learned about the others and called police. Owens has said he did divorce some of the wives, but he can't remember which ones.

© 2007 The Associated Press

20 May 07 - 11:08 PM (#2057351)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Tech: How the Hatto Hoax Was Revealed

The inside story of the digital sleuthing that exposed Britain's greatest pianist as a fraud.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Brian Braiker
Newsweek

May 20, 2007 - By the time Joyce Hatto died of ovarian cancer at age 77, she had released 119 albums. Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin—every one of them had been mastered. She was called the greatest pianist that no one had ever heard of. Fame finally came posthumously, but not for her virtuosity at the ivories. In February it was discovered that each of her brilliant records was very likely to have been plagiarized. Put on a Joyce Hatto CD and you'll really hear Yefim Bronfman, John O'Conor, Vladimir Ashkenazy and dozens more, but not Joyce Hatto. Fittingly, the Hatto myth unraveled much in the same way it was created: with a little enterprising digital tinkering.
When New York financial analyst Brian Ventura loaded Hatto's alleged version of Liszt's Etudes into his computer, the iTunes' Gracenote database recognized it as Laszlo Simon's 1987 recording of the same piece. But how? In 1980, when Philips and Sony established the standard technical specifications for audio compact discs (which were subsequently adopted by the international body governing such specifications), there was no need to include anything other than music on CDs. There was no call for, say, encoding song titles and artists names into the disc because back in 1980 nobody was playing CDs on their laptops. These same standards still govern audio CD manufacturing today.

So what did Gracenote see that had eluded the expertly trained ears of critics who had showered Hatto's recordings with nothing but praise? Every CD is composed of tiny chunks of audio, 1/75th of a second each, according to Ty Roberts, Gracenote cofounder and chief technology officer. When a CD is placed into a stereo or a computer, all the player can tell is how many tracks live on the disc and where they begin and end. Say track 2 of a CD starts at 3 minutes and 30 seconds into the CD. By the time the song begins, 15,750 blocks of audio, each 1/75th of a second in duration, have ticked by. (Do the math yourself: three and a half minutes is 210 seconds. Multiply that by 75 and you get 15,750 of those mini chunks of audio, called frames.). By the time you get to the 10th track, hundreds of thousands, often more than a million, of frames have ticked by. These are the numbers Gracenote reads.

"It's like we're creating a phone number for the CD," says Roberts. When you stick a CD into your laptop and iTunes tells you that it's checking in with Gracenote, what it's doing is reading how many tracks and frames are on your disc and searching the 6-million-strong CD database for a match. "If you only have three or five tracks, it's very hard for someone else to have a recording that is exactly the same length to 75th of a second. The chance you have 13 tracks that have exactly the same starting position is something like 10 to the negative 13th power." So when Gracenote told Ventura that he had loaded a Laszlo Simon disc, it was very likely something fishy was afoot. "It's a little murder-mystery thing: a shoe print in the show," says Roberts. "The shoe print doesn't fit the woman."

Ventura e-mailed the composer and pianist Jed Distler, who had reviewed numerous Hatto discs. Distler then e-mailed Gramophone magazine editor James Inverne, who in turn commissioned France-based sonic expert Andrew Rose on Valentine's Day to analyze the Hatto recording—just three days before the magazine's February deadline. The alleged Hatto tracks were uploaded onto the Internet for Rose, who bought the Laszlo Simon recording at eMusic. He opened both tracks on his computer with Adobe Audition, editing software that displays sound as waves on his monitor. "The program allows me to position the tracks to play simultaneously. You can see the wave patterns," says Rose. He could tell Hatto was a fraud before he even pressed play. "I recognized immediately they were rather too similar to be recordings by different people. We had a match."

What Rose discovered next was that someone—most likely Hatto's husband and producer William Barrington-Coupe, who runs the Concert Artist label she recorded for—had digitally manipulated the tonal quality of the track to make it sound different from the original. The culprit boosted the bass and reduced the treble, altering the timbre of the piano. Other songs were suspicious, as well. Another track on the CD was clearly not Laszlo Simon's playing. But was it Hatto's? Rose went online to hunt down matches.

He used the 30-second sound clips shoppers hear at Amazon.com and on iTunes to find a matching Liszt performance. He found one that was close, but not quite exact, on a disc by Japanese pianist Minoru Nojima, released in 1993. Played simultaneously, the tracks sound quite similar, but then gradually slide out of synch. The one attributed to Hatto is played impossibly, almost blindingly, fast—no wonder critics raved. The waveforms on Rose's monitor, however, looked undeniably similar; Nojima's was just slightly longer. So Rose compressed it to see if it would line up perfectly with Hatto's. Naturally, it did. Someone had gone to the trouble of digitally speeding up the Nojima recording—while managing to maintain the piano's original pitch—in order to hide the origin of the "Hatto" disc. "I am really astonished at how much they had been able to get away with without making it immediately apparent," he says.

Further investigating revealed plagiarism, of varying degrees of sophistication, on other discs, as well. Gramophone had its story a hair before deadline. The British media, always in love with a good hoax, leapt on board. More plagiarized discs were uncovered by passionate amateurs. ("It became a great parlor game: Spot the Joyce Hatto," says Rose.) After initial denials, Barrington-Coupe ultimately made a confession of sorts, which appeared first on the Gramophone Web site. What remains unknown is the extent to which Hatto was aware that she was part of a great swindle. To Rose, given the amount of sophisticated digital manipulation involved, it seems "inconceivable" that she didn't know. "All the evidence points to her being part and parcel of the whole thing: the interviews that she gave, the letters she wrote. I can't see how she wasn't aware of what was going on. The question is really was anyone [other than Barrington-Coupe] ever involved in handling the technical aspects of the things?" We may never know—Hatto certainly isn't talking.

Indeed, she may have been "fortunate," in Rose's words, to die before her unmasking. But her story does have one last excellent ironic twist. Large portions of Gramophone had already gone to press by the time the hoax story had finally been written. Included in the pages that had been irrevocably printed in the issue that exposed Joyce Hatto: a glowing review of a Joyce Hatto CD.

22 May 07 - 06:17 AM (#2058246)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Targeted marketing by drugmakers under fire

Pharmaceutical industry data-mining raises doctor, patient privacy concerns

By Christopher Lee
The Washington Post
Updated: 10:04 p.m. CT May 21, 2007

Seattle pediatrician Rupin Thakkar's first inkling that the pharmaceutical industry was peering over his shoulder and into his prescription pad came in a letter from a drug representative about the generic drops Thakkar prescribes to treat infectious pinkeye.
In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories.

"My initial thought was 'How does she know what I'm prescribing?' " Thakkar said. "It feels intrusive. . . . I just feel strongly that medical encounters need to be private."

He is not alone. Many doctors object to drugmakers' common practice of contracting with data-mining companies to track exactly which medicines physicians prescribe and in what quantities -- information marketers and salespeople use to fine-tune their efforts. The industry defends the practice as a way of better educating physicians about new drugs.

Now the issue is bubbling up in the political arena. Last year, New Hampshire became the first state to try to curtail the practice, but a federal district judge three weeks ago ruled the law unconstitutional.

This year, more than a dozen states have considered similar legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. They include Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Nevada, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont and Washington, although the results so far have been limited. Bills are stalled in some states, and in others, such as Maryland and West Virginia, they did not pass at the committee level.

The concerns are not merely about privacy. Proponents say using such detailed data for drug marketing serves mainly to influence physicians to prescribe more expensive medicines, not necessarily to provide the best treatment.

"We don't like the practice, and we want it to stop," said Jean Silver-Isenstadt, executive director of the National Physicians Alliance, a two-year-old group with 10,000 members, most of them young doctors in training. (Thakkar is on the group's board of directors.) "We think it's a contaminant to the doctor-patient relationship, and it's driving up costs."

The American Medical Association, a larger and far more established group, makes millions of dollars each year by helping data-mining companies link prescribing data to individual physicians. It does so by licensing access to the AMA Physician Masterfile, a database containing names, birth dates, educational background, specialties and addresses for more than 800,000 doctors.

After complaints from some members, the AMA last year began allowing doctors to "opt out" and shield their individual prescribing information from salespeople, although drug companies can still get it. So far 7,476 doctors have opted out, AMA officials said.
"That gives the physician the choice," said Jeremy A. Lazarus, a Denver psychiatrist and high-ranking AMA official.

Some critics, however, contend that the AMA's opt-out is not well publicized or tough enough, noting that doctors must renew it every three years.

The New Hampshire court ruling has raised new doubts about how effective legislative efforts to curb the use of prescribing data will be, but the state attorney general has promised to appeal. And state Rep. Cindy Rosenwald (D), the law's chief sponsor, vowed not to give up the fight.

"In this case commercial interests took precedence over the interests of the private citizens of New Hampshire," Rosenwald said. "This is like letting a drug rep into an exam room and having them eavesdrop on a private conversation between a physician and a patient."
The April 30 ruling by U.S. District Judge Paul Barbadoro, nominated to the federal bench in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush, called the state's pioneering law an unconstitutional restriction on commercial speech.

Prescription patterns documented

Since at least the early 1990s, drug companies have used the data to identify doctors who write the most prescriptions and go after them the way publishers court people who subscribe to lots of magazines. They zero in on physicians who prescribe a competitors' drug and target them with campaigns touting their own products. Salespeople chart the changes in a doctor's prescribing patterns to see whether their visits and offers of free meals and gifts are having the desired effect.

"It's a key weapon in determining how we want to tailor our sales pitch," said Shahram Ahari, a former drug detailer for Eli Lilly who is now a researcher at the University of California at San Francisco's School of Pharmacy. "The programs give them [doctors] a score of 1 to 10 based on how much they write. Once we have that, we know who our primary targets are. We focus our time on the big [prescription] writers -- the 10s, the 9s, and then less so on the 8s and 7s. . . . We're dealing with individual physicians who might give us the biggest dividend for our investment."

Ahari said he used the data to tout the virtues of Eli Lilly's antidepressant Prozac to doctors who favored the rival drug Effexor, noting, for example, that its longer half-life meant that if patients missed a dose over a weekend, they would experience less severe agitation and other withdrawal symptoms that might prompt them to call their doctor. He did not mention the rival drug by name or disclose that he knew the physician's prescribing habits, he said.
Data-mining companies and the pharmaceutical industry argue that the practice has value far beyond the corporate bottom line. The information helps companies, federal health agencies and others educate physicians about drugs, track whether prescribing habits change in response to continuing medical education programs, and promote higher-quality care, they say. They stress that patient names are encrypted early in the process and cannot be accessed, even by the data-mining companies.

A drug company might use the database to help determine whether physicians prescribing a particular high-risk drug have undergone required training about the medicine, said Marjorie E. Powell, senior assistant general counsel for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade association.

"If you don't have that information, then you are in a very difficult situation," Powell said. "There is no way you can implement the risk-management plan that the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] is requiring you to implement in order to allow the drug to be on the market."

The prescribing data also let "the company do more targeted marketing, which lowers the total costs of its marketing," she said.
Randolph Frankel, a vice president at IMS Health Inc., the Connecticut-based health-data-mining company that challenged the New Hampshire law, said the more a drug representative knows about a physician, the easier it is to provide information that meets the needs of the doctor's practice.

"We are about more information and more education, and not less," said Frankel, whose company had operating revenue of $1.75 billion in 2005, not all of it from sales to drugmakers. "The vast majority of physicians welcome these people as part of the overall educational process about drugs and their use. And any doctor in the country can close the door to these sales reps. It doesn't require legislation to do that."

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

[Your drug dealers are watching you ... ... ... too.]

John

22 May 07 - 01:15 PM (#2058466)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

From Times OnlineMay 22, 2007

Mars rover finds evidence of water

Mark Henderson, Science Editor of The Times

A broken wheel on one of the Nasa rovers that has been roaming Mars for three and a half years has helped scientists to find strong new evidence that the Red Planet was once wetter and possibly capable of supporting life.

Analysis of a patch of soil that was churned up by the stuck wheel on the the Spirit rover has revealed it is composed of about 90 per cent pure silica — a mineral that would have required the presence of water to form.

The find has surprised and delighted researchers, who said it is among the most significant discoveries made by Spirit since it landed on Mars in January 2003.

It adds to growing evidence, amassed by the Nasa rovers and orbiting spacecraft such as Europe's Mars Express in recent years, that suggest Mars was once much warmer and wetter than it is today, and that it may have harboured life.

Steve Squyres of Cornell University in New York state, who leads the rover team, said: "You could hear people gasp in astonishment.

"This is a remarkable discovery. And the fact that we found something this new and different after nearly 1,200 days on Mars makes it even more remarkable. It makes you wonder what else is still out there."

Man strives and plans and calculates to the sixth decimal; and finds something this significant because a single wheel broke. "For want of a horseshoe nail, the battle was won... " :D

A

23 May 07 - 10:23 AM (#2059022)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Shark's virgin birth stuns scientists

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/05/2007

Birds do it. Bees do it. Now it seems that sharks are the latest, and largest, creatures that are able to reproduce without having sex, a finding that could have important implications for conserving these endangered fish.

A female hammerhead shark has given birth without the help of a male, after genetic tests revealed that its baby shark had no paternal DNA.

An international team reports that the shark's "virgin birth" was down to an unusual method of reproduction known as "parthenogenesis", where an egg starts to divide without being fertilised.

This is the first scientific report of male free asexual reproduction in sharks.

The study is reported in the journal Biology Letters by a team from the Queen's University Belfast, the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University, Florida and the Henry Doorly Zoo, Nebraska.

Head of the Queen's team, Dr Paulo Prodöhl, said: "The findings were really surprising because as far as anyone knew, all sharks reproduced only sexually by a male and female mating, requiring the embryo to get DNA from both parents for full development, just like in mammals."

Maybe God decided it was time to move on to a more promising candidate species, ya think???

:D

A

24 May 07 - 02:04 PM (#2060029)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Scientists Measure Spontaneity in Drosophila.

From Innovations Report

Free will and true spontaneity exist … in fruit flies. This is what scientists report in a groundbreaking study in the May 16, 2007 issue of the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

"Animals and especially insects are usually seen as complex robots which only respond to external stimuli," says senior author Björn Brembs from the Free University Berlin. They are assumed to be input-output devices. "When scientists observe animals responding differently even to the same external stimuli, they attribute this variability to random errors in a complex brain." Using a combination of automated behavior recording and sophisticated mathematical analyses, the international team of researchers showed for the first time that such variability cannot be due to simple random events but is generated spontaneously and non-randomly by the brain. These results caught computer scientist and lead author Alexander Maye from the University of Hamburg by surprise: "I would have never guessed that simple flies who otherwise keep bouncing off the same window have the capacity for nonrandom spontaneity if given the chance."

Oh, ye of little faith!! :D

A

24 May 07 - 03:55 PM (#2060124)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Useful information for us all. From YouTube.

25 May 07 - 10:00 AM (#2060644)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

From the Chronicle for Higher Education:

Term Papers for Sale -- New Google policy

Term-paper and essay-writing services join prostitutes, firearms dealers, and hacking sites in Google's forbidden-advertising zone, the company announced on Tuesday.

Academic paper-writing services, or "paper mills," will no longer be able to buy search terms in the Google AdWords program, and thus their ads will no longer pop up in the "sponsored links" sections of a Google search-results page. (Links to those sites could still be found among the results on the main part of the page, however.)

"It's a new Google policy, just announced," said a saleswoman from Google's AdWords who did not want to give her name because she was not authorized to speak to reporters. "We're not going to be taking ads from essay services anymore."

Diana Adair, a Google spokeswoman, confirmed in an e-mail message that the ban would go into effect "in the coming weeks," though she did not give a precise date.

The paper mills, which offer buyers papers written to order for a fee, have been the subject of sharp complaints from universities, which view them as sources of plagiarism.

The companies themselves have a different view. "We're not doing anything wrong here," said Sandra Brown, a spokeswoman for Term Paper Relief, a site that shows up as a sponsored link on Google after a search using the phrase "term paper."

For $9.95 per page, the company offers "A-grade term papers" that, it says, are custom-written and completely nonplagiarized. "We've been working as a company for eight years, and we've never had a complaint from a customer," Ms. Brown said. She added that she had not heard about the new Google policy.

Term Paper Relief's site notes that its papers are "for assistance purposes only" and "should be used with proper reference."

That kind of disclaimer probably won't get a company past the new Google ban, though the AdWords saleswoman said she did not have the exact wording of the policy or know how it would be enforced.

"We'll look at individual sites," she said. "It's going to be a work in progress."

26 May 07 - 03:33 PM (#2061433)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

link

Lost log finds its owner

A carved log swept by floods from the yard of a Granite Falls man turns up six months later and 20 miles away - at his workplace.

SNOHOMISH - Byron Petit hadn't bought lottery tickets for years. He didn't think he stood a chance of winning. A week ago, Petit bought 20 lottery tickets. He feels lucky. Petit, 48, has good reason to believe in his good fortune, given what happened to him on May 18.

On that Friday afternoon, he was at Reliable Hardware & Equipment in Snohomish, where he works as general manager. He was strolling around near the Snohomish River. He happened to look at a bundle of brush, branches and garbage - all brought by last year's floods. A log amid the mess caught his eye. It was about 7 feet long and had two carved seats. Someone lost a sitting log, Petit thought.

He kept looking at the log. It looked familiar. He kept looking. And it dawned upon him: It was his sitting log. "It's a miracle," he said.

In 2003, floodwaters originally delivered the log to his property in Granite Falls near the Pilchuck River. He carved two seats on the log with a chainsaw. His family and friends used to sit on it around a campfire. During the Election Day flood in 2006, the river rose fast, swallowed part of his property and washed away the sitting log.

The flood left a jumble of debris as it caused millions of dollars in damage around Snohomish County. To date, Snohomish County residents have reported to the county $8.8 million in flood damage to homes and property, said Mark Murphy, program manager for response and recovery at the county's Emergency Management Department.

Of that damage claim, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved about $1.2 million for housing assistance and about $382,000 for other assistance, Murphy said.

Businesses in the county also have filed damage claims, estimated at $4.4 million, Murphy said. The U.S. Small Business Administration has approved more than $11 million in low-interest disaster loans to people and businesses in the state.

Flood damage repair projects are submitted to the federal government by the county, the PUD and diking districts, said John Pennington, director of the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management.

"I think it's very probable that more money is coming," he said. "It just filters out over a period of time."

Petit said he has yet to clean up a mess left by the flood at his property. As time passed, he forgot about the sitting log. Yet more than six months after the disaster, about 20 miles away from his home, near his office, Petit spotted the log. It sat on the bank of the Snohomish River just like it used to at his property, he said. "I'm not superstitious," he said. "I'm a see-and-believe-things kind of guy. But this got me rethinking about things."

So, Petit spent $20 buying 20 lotto tickets right after the reunion with his sitting log. He plans to haul the log back to his property and chain it to a tree so that another flood won't wash it away. He plans to check to see whether he's won the lottery this weekend.

26 May 07 - 08:14 PM (#2061563)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Misspelling on sign could haunt cause
Star-Telegram

Let's just say that for the Fort Worth school district, it wasn't a good day. Paul Harvey, the nationally syndicated radio newsman known for his twice-daily show, News and Comment, mentioned the district Friday in his lunchtime program in an item about a small protest outside the administration building.

About a dozen students, parents and supporters had picketed the building Thursday in protest of a board decision this week. The board upheld a district policy prohibiting 617 students who failed one or more parts of the TAKS exit-level exam from participating in graduation ceremonies.

Harvey had received a photo of the protest.

"Several students who expected to be walking across the stage are instead walking on a picket line," Harvey said in his broadcast. "They are carrying protest signs. One of the signs said, 'Let our kids walk.'"

But it wasn't spelled correctly, Harvey noted.

"Our, as in 'our kids,' is spelled A-R-E," he said. "Let are kids walk."

Then, quickly moving on with a catchphrase, Harvey said, "Page 3!"

The protester in question would probably want to turn the page on that one, too.

28 May 07 - 07:29 PM (#2062670)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Coffee may cut risk of gout
Four or more cups a day can stop painful joint disorder
Reuters
Updated: 12:24 p.m. CT May 25, 2007

CHICAGO - If men ever needed a reason to justify that extra cup of coffee, here it is: four or more cups of coffee a day appear to reduce the risk of gout, Canadian researchers said on Friday.
Gout is a painful joint disorder caused by a buildup of uric acid in the blood. It affects about 6 million people in the United States, and tends to be a bigger problem for men than women.

In the past, patients at risk for gout were advised to avoid coffee, but Dr. Hyon Choi of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston wanted to see just what effect coffee might have on the condition.

Choi and colleagues analyzed data from a U.S. health and nutrition survey between 1988 and 1994.

The study is based on a survey of about 50,000 men aged 40 to 75 with no history of gout. They filled out detailed questionnaires about dietary habits, including what they drank.

Over the 12 years of the study, during which 757 men developed gout, the risk was lower for those who drank more coffee, Choi reported in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

"We found that when they are drinking four to five cups of coffee, there was a 40-percent reduction. Drinking six or more cups resulted in a 50- to 60-percent reduction (in the risk for gout)," Choi said in a telephone interview.

Men who drank decaffeinated coffee also benefited, Choi said, but tea appeared to have no effect.

The researchers found significantly lower levels of uric acid in the blood of those who consumed large quantities of coffee. Uric acid is the compound that causes gout. Choi said the findings appear to suggest that something in the coffee other than caffeine -- such as a strong antioxidant — may be helping to reduce uric acid levels.
Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. More than half of Americans drink about two cups a day.

Choi said people should not rush out to the corner coffee shop to treat their gout. But "if you are drinking coffee already and have gout or are at higher risk of developing gout ... there is no need to reduce or stop coffee consumption," he said.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited

John

29 May 07 - 02:33 PM (#2063346)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Alabama Boy Kills 1,051-Pound Monster Pig, Bigger Than 'Hogzilla'

An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog that just may be the biggest pig ever found.

Jamison Stone's father says the hog his son killed weighed a 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.

If the claims are accurate, Jamison's trophy boar would be bigger than Hogzilla, the famed wild hog that grew to seemingly mythical proportions after being killed in south Georgia in 2004.

(Full story here.)

That is one awesome pig.

A

29 May 07 - 02:55 PM (#2063368)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Your Money And Your Phone Number

Give me all the cash — and your number, baby!

Thief hits on employee-victim after he and accomplice rob Milwaukee store
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:46 a.m. CT May 29, 2007

MILWAUKEE - A thief found out the hard way that robbing a woman isn't the best way to capture her heart.

Two men robbed a U-Haul truck rental store around 3 p.m. Sunday, taking an unspecified amount of cash, according the store's owner. But instead of fleeing, one man lingered and tried to strike up a conversation with the woman he had just robbed.

"He stuck around and was trying to get the female employee's number," U-Haul store general manager Patrick Sobocinski said. "She said he was just saying, 'Hey, baby, you're pretty fine.'"

According to Sobocinski, one robber went behind the counter, put his hands around both employees' waists and demanded money.

The robber forced one employee to open the register and grabbed cash. Then he forced the workers to the ground and fled, but his accomplice waited for a few moments and then asked one clerk whether she'd go out with him, he said.

"She said he was saying, 'Can I get your number and go out sometime?'" Sobocinski said.

No surprise ending here — the woman turned him down, and he fled.

© 2007 The Associated Press

John

29 May 07 - 03:15 PM (#2063383)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

JERUSALEM — A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.

"This kind of thing doesn't happen every day," said 49-year-old Arthur Du Mosch, a nature guide. "I don't know why I did it. I wasn't thinking, I just acted."

Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, said a half dozen leopards have been spotted recently near Du Mosch's small community of Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert in southern Israel, although they rarely threaten humans.

Shapira said it was probably food that lured the big cat. Leopards living near humans are usually too old to hunt in the wild and resort to chasing down domestic dogs and cats for food, he added.

Du Mosch's cat was in the bed with him at the time, along with his young daughter who had been frightened by a mosquito in her own room.

Shapira said the leopard was very weak when park rangers arrived at Du Mosch's home after the surprise late-night visit. He said nature officials would likely release it back into the wild.

30 May 07 - 12:25 AM (#2063750)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Prisons offer sweat lodges to Indian inmates

Many permit ceremonial saunas; for some, security remains a major worry

The Associated Press
Updated: 5:57 p.m. CT May 29, 2007
ESTANCIA, N.M. - Melvin Martin was once seething behind bars. But the Navajo inmate says these days he is feeling relaxed, respectful and reconnected to his culture — all because of weekly sessions in a traditional Indian sweat lodge.

Many prisons around the country are allowing ceremonial saunas for American Indian inmates, just as they offer religious services for prisoners of other faiths.

Prison officials have learned that sweat lodges — which are supposed to cleanse the body, mind and soul — can have a calming influence on inmates and help keep order behind bars.

Martin, 40, is serving a federal sentence for assault at the privately run Torrance County Detention Center, which has a canvas-and-willow-branch sweat lodge.

"We look beyond these wires," he said, pointing to the fences and razor wire that separate the prison from the prairie. "Me and the brothers here, we look beyond all that, even though we know we're within. Once we get the ceremony going, our minds go back home, they go back to the places of our people, our land. We can get away from this place."

It has been three decades since the first sweat lodge was built in a Nebraska prison, but native prisoners in some states only recently won access to such religious ceremonies, and others are still fighting for it.

The chief objections are usually security-related. Prison officials worry, for example, that the tobacco used in the sweat lodges will find its way back into the general prison population. Also, colored beads are used in some ceremonies, and the colors could be associated with certain gangs.

In Maine, a group of prisoners is suing for access to sweat lodges or ceremonial music and food. In New Jersey, Indian inmates are pursuing an 8-year-old lawsuit over religious rights.

Lenny Foster, a Navajo spiritual adviser and head of the tribally funded Navajo Nation Corrections Project, built his first sweat lodge for inmates at Arizona State Prison in 1980 and said he has seen the positive effects.

"The intense heat or the steam, what we call grandfather's breath, opens up not only the pores, the physical aspect, but it opens up the mind and the spirit, and there's a real purification and a cleansing of the soul that takes place," he said.

He noted that a lot of the inmates are locked up because of problems with drugs, alcohol and anger.

"They need to detox and purify themselves so they have a clarity of mind and realize the mistake that they made that led them into prison," he said.

To prison officials in Torrance County, the sweat lodge is both a right and a privilege for prisoners. As long as they behave, prisoners can look forward to sweating on the weekend.

"Having an inmate spiritually look within themselves and leave their services a different person, even for a while, that's helpful to us security-wise," said prison spokeswoman Ivonne Riley. "Security is the No. 1 thing, but anything to help anybody to make it a little better, we look forward to that."

Riley said a few inmates take advantage of the sweat lodge as a way to spend time outside and smoke tobacco, which is otherwise forbidden in prison. But she said most Indian prisoners take the lodge seriously and won't do anything to jeopardize their participation.

On a recent day on the prison grounds, inmates tended to a fire surrounded with lava rocks, while others draped blankets and canvas tarps over a frame of willow branches to form the lodge. They rolled and smoked tobacco, using their free hand to catch the smoke and let it wash over themselves as they prayed.

Then they disappeared into the canvas dome, not to be seen again for about an hour, as the prison guards waited in the hot sun. The silence was eventually broken by a drum beat and chanting, after which the men crawled out of the lodge, smiling and laughing and jumping in puddles left from the rain the night before.

"We tell them that they're free when they're out here," Foster said. "They join the sunlight, the fresh air, the wind."

Martin, who is from Crownpoint, N.M., on the Navajo reservation, said the sweat lodge "keeps me with a sound mind."

© 2007 The Associated Press.

31 May 07 - 08:03 AM (#2064799)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

GOOD NEWS!!

SpammerArrested

1 of world's top 10 spammers arrested

Feds say computer users will notice decrease in junk e-mail following arrest

The Associated Press
Updated: 5:55 a.m. CT May 31, 2007

SEATTLE - A 27-year-old man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail.

Robert Alan Soloway is accused of using networks of compromised "zombie" computers to send out millions upon millions of spam e-mails.

"He's one of the top 10 spammers in the world," said Tim Cranton, a Microsoft Corp. lawyer who is senior director of the company's Worldwide Internet Safety Programs. "He's a huge problem for our customers. This is a very good day."

A federal grand jury last week returned a 35-count indictment against Soloway charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

Soloway pleaded not guilty Wednesday afternoon to all charges after a judge determined that — even with four bank accounts seized by the government — he was sufficiently well off to pay for his own lawyer. He has been living in a ritzy apartment and drives an expensive Mercedes convertible, said prosecutor Kathryn Warma. Prosecutors are seeking to have him forfeit $773,000 they say he made from his business, Newport Internet Marketing Corp.

A public defender who represented him for Wednesday's hearing declined to comment.

Prosecutors say Soloway used computers infected with malicious code to send out millions of junk e-mails since 2003. The computers are called "zombies" because owners typically have no idea their machines have been infected.

He continued his activities even after Microsoft won a $7 million civil judgment against him in 2005 and the operator of a small Internet service provider in Oklahoma won a $10 million judgment, prosecutors said.

U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan said Wednesday that the case is the first in the country in which federal prosecutors have used identity theft statutes to prosecute a spammer for taking over someone else's Internet domain name. Soloway could face decades in prison, though prosecutors said they have not calculated what guideline sentencing range he might face.

... ... ...

Soloway used the networks of compromised computers to send out unsolicited bulk e-mails urging people to use his Internet marketing company to advertise their products, authorities said.

People who clicked on a link in the e-mail were directed to his Web site. There, Soloway advertised his ability to send out as many as 20 million e-mail advertisements over 15 days for $495, the indictment said.

... ... ...

[some more at the link]

John

31 May 07 - 09:41 AM (#2064860)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I bet this just gives a little more elbow room for the other 9 top offenders.

31 May 07 - 10:47 AM (#2064919)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

The prior civil lawsuits didn't seem to have much effect on this one.

It remains to be seen whether a conviction and appropriate sentencing will come out of this, but at least there seems to be some recognition that criminal charges can be applied.

If criminal convictions result, and a precedent is established that the activity is criminally antisocial, it may be a lot easier for governments to be more effectively involved. Until now, the only legal actions have been civil suits that have been enormously expensive to pursue and with virtually no ability to enforce the judgements obtained.

These suits may be a fairly significant step forward(?)

- or maybe not.

John

31 May 07 - 12:27 PM (#2064991)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

I sincerely hope so; pirating anothers CPU cycles should be as much a crime as, for example, tapping in to a water line paid on someone else's bill, running up another's phone charges for personal use, or draining another's electricity. It is more deeply criminal to deny others the fruitful use of a viable communication line by glutting it with irrelevancy and offensive, deceptive material, but that may be beyond legal definitions at present.

A

31 May 07 - 03:51 PM (#2065158)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: MMario

Be nice if they could cut back on it; in recent days up to 95% of internet traffic is spam. Overall I believe it is about 87% of all internet traffic.

People don't realize that the amount *seen* is only the teensiest tip of the iceberg.

31 May 07 - 06:01 PM (#2065259)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

EVERY month, the International Crisis Group makes predictions it hopes won't come true. The non-profit organisation, which has its base in Brussels, Belgium, monitors regions where conflict is brewing. By tracking precursors of armed struggle, such as political instability, it raises awareness about looming wars in the hope of stopping conflicts before they begin. And as of this month, it will start talking about whether to include another variable in its analyses: climate change.

The discussions come after a wave of interest in the link between climate change and conflict. Last month, a group of retired US admirals and generals said global warming would act as a "threat multiplier", with events such as droughts toppling unstable governments and unleashing conflict. The UN Security Council has devoted time to the matter, and media reports have described the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, as the first "climate change war", due to the decades of droughts that preceded the conflict.

"Global warming could act as a 'threat multiplier', with events such as droughts toppling unstable governments"

Marc Levy at Columbia University in New York, who is working with the ICG, is one of the few researchers who have been able to support these speculations with data. In a forthcoming paper, he and colleagues combine databases on civil wars and water availability to show that when rainfall is significantly below normal, the risk of a low-level conflict escalating to a full-scale civil war approximately doubles in the following year.

Parts of Nepal that witnessed fighting during the 2002 Maoist insurgency, for example, had suffered worse droughts in preceding years than regions that were conflict-free. Although Levy is not sure why the link should exist in this case, studies of other conflicts suggest explanations. Drought can cause food shortages, generating anger against governments, for example. "Semi-retired" armed groups may return to conflict in these situtations. ...

Article here.

A

01 Jun 07 - 12:32 PM (#2065810)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

This one really turns my stomach.

Police: Man tried to buy 9-year-old for sex
Star-Telegram link

DALLAS -- Kevin Russell Moake was having a difficult time deciding whether he wanted to "rent" a 9-year-old girl for sex or buy her, police said. His main concern? Where he would stash his underage acquisition, police said.

The 49-year-old Flower Mound man was arrested on the spot at a fast-food restaurant after he gave an undercover Dallas police officer $100 to spend the night with the nonexistent Mexican child Wednesday, police said. The cash was a down payment in a "rent-to-own" scheme, said Lt. C.L. Williams, head of the Dallas Police Department's child exploitation unit. Moake could not be reached for comment. The sting has left police officers horrified.

"It really speaks volumes about what these criminals think," Williams said. "For him to take a cold call from someone and think he could buy sex with a child is almost mind-boggling."

Moake was in the Dallas County Jail late Thursday on suspicion of attempting to traffic in humans and attempting sexual performance with a child -- second- and third-degree felonies. His bail was set at $100,000.

Dallas police said Moake did not have a criminal history in Dallas County, and public records do not reflect a criminal history in Tarrant County. Moake has worked for several communications companies. He was married as of 2003 and has at least four children ages 11 to 19, public records indicate. The operation began after police learned about noon Wednesday that Moake was trying to buy a child for sex, Williams said.

An undercover officer telephoned Moake and told him that a girl from Mexico was available, Williams said. Initially, Moake was going to buy the girl for about $2,000, but he became indecisive because he did not have a place to keep her, Williams said. Moake decided to "rent-to-own" the girl, Williams said.

During the negotiations, Moake asked the undercover officer at the other end of the phone line, "You aren't police, are you?" and laughed, Williams said.

The deal went down less than 12 hours after police began investigating. Moake initially agreed to meet the undercover officer at a hotel on Walnut Hill Lane but changed his mind. Instead, he met the undercover officer about 11:45 p.m. in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant near Love Field, Williams said. Moake handed the undercover officer five $20 bills and officers took him into custody.

"This really says something about what motivates people," Williams said. "They'll risk their family, home, job and reputation just because they are so blinded by their one desire. It's a scary thought."

02 Jun 07 - 08:31 AM (#2066443)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

A little bit lengthy to post the entire article, but it really should be read completely before getting too far afield with snap comments:

WP: Does virtual reality need a sheriff?

[extracted]

Reach of law enforcement is tested when online fantasy games turn sordid

By Alan Sipress
The Washington Post
Updated: 1:30 a.m. CT June 2, 2007

UNITED NATIONS - Earlier this year, one animated character in Second Life, a popular online fantasy world, allegedly raped another character.

Some Internet bloggers dismissed the simulated attack as nothing more than digital fiction. But police in Belgium, according to newspapers there, opened an investigation into whether a crime had been committed. No one has yet been charged.

Then last month, authorities in Germany announced that they were looking into a separate incident involving virtual abuse in Second Life after receiving pictures of an animated child character engaging in simulated sex with an animated adult figure. Though both characters were created by adults, the activity could run afoul of German laws against child pornography, prosecutors said.

[end extract]

Japanese authorities have already tried and convicted one "virtual criminal" for muggings in a "virtual world." (He was selling the "virtual property" he stole in the real world.)

The FBI, at the invitation of "Second Life" created "investigator avatars" and toured the virtual casinos to make sure no laws were being broken.

etc.

Yes, they really are serious, and concerned, about all this. ... I think ... maybe ... or ... ?????

John

04 Jun 07 - 11:32 AM (#2068195)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Hustler offers $1 million for sex scandal

Flynt seeks evidence of illicit encounter with high-ranking official

The Associated Press
Updated: 8:32 p.m. CT June 3, 2007

WASHINGTON - Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt offered $1 million Sunday to anyone who could provide proof of an illicit sexual encounter with a high-ranking government official.

In a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post, Flynt asked for "documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder." He said he would pay up to $1 million for material that could be verified and published in Hustler.

Flynt ran a similar ad in October 1998, during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to the impeachment of President Clinton.

The publisher took credit for the demise of Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., who admitted he had had extramarital affairs after word got out that Flynt was investigating him. Livingston announced his resignation in December 1998, days before he had been expected to become speaker of the House.

© 2007 The Associated Press

Allright folks. Time to get acquainted with your public officials, and keep those recorders and cameras charged up.

John

05 Jun 07 - 01:56 AM (#2068815)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Drought Uncovers Artifacts in Florida Lake
June 04, 2007
link
MIAMI - A drought that has bared parts of the bed of Florida's largest lake has exposed human bone fragments, pottery and even boats - and archaeologists are trying to evaluate the artifacts before water levels rise again.

Archaeologists said there have been no large-scale digs in Lake Okeechobee; most of the finds have been easily spotted along the surface, some by passers-by who called in what they found.

Palm Beach County Archaeologist Chris Davenport said scores of bone fragments ranging from only a few inches to 8 inches long have been spotted in Lake Okeechobee, the second-largest freshwater lake in the continental U.S., behind Lake Michigan. The lake is at its lowest level since record keeping began in 1932, at about 8.96 feet deep on Monday. That's about 4 to 5 feet below normal, exposing many areas for the first time in years.

"Right now, it's just a rush to identify things before they go back under water," said Chris Davenport, the archaeologist for Palm Beach County.

More than 17 sites have been identified in Palm Beach County's part of the lake in the last three months. They are scattered over miles of terrain. The drought has bared a rim around the lake up to a mile and a half wide at some points.

"It looks like it's part of one of the American Indian settlements that were there - people that were intentionally interred at some point," said State Archaeologist Ryan Wheeler.

The state has alerted the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes of the bones, but no decision has been made on their fate. No studies have been done on the human remains, but Wheeler said they likely were 500 to 1,000 years old, or possibly older.

Further examination will be necessary to more accurately pinpoint the bones' age, though he noted they show extensive wear, he said.

An examination of the style of pottery found in the lake bed might do more to tell of the tribes who lived in the area than the bones themselves, because the human remains are so fragmented, Davenport said. No complete skeletons, skulls or other large fragments have been found.

However, the boats uncovered are relatively intact. They include a steam-powered dredge believed to have been used to dig a canal; the remnants of a steam ship scattered across a mile and a half; a wooden, motorized canoe; an early 1900s fishing boat with a large one-cylinder engine; and a fifth boat so badly decayed its purpose has yet to be determined.

Wheeler said one of the vessels is 50 to 60 feet long.

Archaeologists have left most of the discoveries where they were found, though an anchor, bottles, tools and some pottery have been excavated from the huge lake.

It's probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience to examine the dry lake bed, Davenport said. But with thieves also interested his discoveries, he is yearning for the lake to rise again.

"I'm hoping that the rains come back," he said. "Once it's covered, it's protected."

11 Jun 07 - 02:44 PM (#2073886)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

SOWETO, South Africa (Reuters Life!) - Jesus wants you to drive a brand new Nissan Navara 4x4. He'd also like you to live in a classy house, use the latest cell phone and wear the snappiest designer clothes.

That was the message from a recent Sunday sermon at the new Soweto branch of Brazil's huge Pentecostal-style Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG).

UCKG is expanding fast in Africa and bills its gleaming new cathedral in Soweto -- which seats 8,000 and has room for hundreds of plush cars in its vast underground car park -- as the biggest church on the continent.

UCKG's "prosperity gospel" message, which tells members to expect financial blessings from God as long as they give "sacrificially" when the collection plate comes around, is proving a hit in the world's poorest continent.

And it holds special resonance for the faithful of Soweto -- a sprawling township once gripped by violence and poverty and now home to a burgeoning black middle class.

"God doesn't want you to be poor and ashamed -- he wants you to drive a new car," the preacher at the new Soweto church yelled into a microphone, to delighted whoops from thousands.

12 Jun 07 - 12:18 AM (#2074387)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

What Would Jesus Drive?

12 Jun 07 - 07:31 AM (#2074587)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

The following appeared yesterday at MSNBC but is no longer there. It also does not appear to be at the Washington Post site where it originally appeared, and is not included in a search on the writer's articles. It may be applicable to discussion in another thread here, so:

Originally at WP: U.S. unit allies with ex-insurgents [link dead as of this posting]

Soldiers in Baghdad give police powers, guns to former insurgents
By Joshua Partlow
The Washington Post
Updated: 11:22 p.m. CT June 8, 2007

BAGHDAD, June 8 - The worst month of Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl's deployment in western Baghdad was finally drawing to a close. The insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq had unleashed bombings that killed 14 of his soldiers in May, a shocking escalation of violence for a battalion that had lost three soldiers in the previous six months while patrolling the Sunni enclave of Amiriyah. On top of that, the 41-year-old battalion commander was doubled up with a stomach flu when, late on May 29, he received a cellphone call that would change everything.
"We're going after al-Qaeda," a leading local imam said, Kuehl recalled. "What we want you to do is stay out of the way."
"Sheik, I can't do that. I can't just leave Amiriyah and let you go at it."
"Well, we're going to go."

Embracing one-time enemies

The week that followed revolutionized Kuehl's approach to fighting the insurgency and serves as a vivid example of a risky, and expanding, new American strategy of looking beyond the Iraqi police and army for help in controlling violent neighborhoods. The American soldiers in Amiriyah have allied themselves with dozens of Sunni militiamen who call themselves the Baghdad Patriots -- a group that American soldiers believe includes insurgents who have attacked them in the past -- in an attempt to drive out al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Americans have granted these gunmen the power of arrest, allowed the Iraqi army to supply them with ammunition, and fought alongside them in chaotic street battles.

To many American soldiers in Amiriyah, this nascent allegiance stands out as an encouraging development after months of grinding struggle. They liken the fighters to the minutemen of the American Revolution, painting them as neighbors taking the initiative to protect their families in the vacuum left by a failing Iraqi security force. In their first week of collaboration, the Baghdad Patriots and the Americans killed roughly 10 suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq members and captured 15, according to Kuehl, who said those numbers rivaled totals for the previous six months combined. He is now working to fashion the group into the beginnings of an Amiriyah police force, since the mainly Shiite police force refuses to work in the area.

"This is a defining moment for us," said Kuehl, who commands the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, attached to the 1st Infantry Division.

'A deal with the devil'

But aligning Americans with fighters whose long-term agenda remains unclear -- with regard to either Americans or the Shiite-led government -- is also a strategy born of desperation. It contradicts repeated declarations by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that no groups besides the Iraqi and American security forces are allowed to bear arms. And some American soldiers worry that standing up a Sunni militia could have dire consequences if the group turns on its U.S. partners.

"We have made a deal with the devil," said an intelligence officer in the battalion.

The U.S. effort to recruit indigenous forces to defend local communities has been taken furthest in Anbar province, where tribal leaders have encouraged thousands of their kinsmen to join the police. In the Abu Ghraib area, west of Baghdad, about 2,000 people unaffiliated with security forces are now working with Americans at village checkpoints and gun positions.

Kuehl said he recognizes the risks in dealing with an unofficial force but decided the intelligence that the gunmen provided on al-Qaeda in Iraq was too valuable to pass up.

"Hell, nothing else has worked in Amiriyah," he said.

Taking on al-Qaeda

It was about 2 a.m. on May 30 when Capt. Andy Wilbraham, a 33-year-old company commander, first heard military chatter on his tank radio about rumors that local gunmen would take on al-Qaeda. Later that morning, a noncommissioned officer turned to him with the news: "They're uprising."

"It was just a shock it happened so fast," Wilbraham said.
By noon, loudspeakers in mosques throughout Amiriyah were broadcasting a call to war: "It is time to stand up and fight" al-Qaeda. Groups of men, some in black ski masks carrying AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, descended on the area around the Maluki mosque, a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq base of operations, and launched an attack. For the most part, Kuehl's soldiers stood back, trying to contain the violence and secure other mosques, and let the gunmen do their work.

The next day, a Thursday, al-Qaeda counterattacked. Using machine guns and grenades, its fighters drove the militiamen south across several city blocks until they were holed up in the Firdas mosque, soldiers said. "I was getting reports every 10 minutes from one of the imams: 'They're at this point. We're surrounded. We're getting attacked. They're at the mosque,' " Kuehl recalled. He dispatched Stryker attack vehicles to protect the militiamen.

"We basically pushed that one back just by force," said Capt. Kevin Salge, 31, who led the Stryker team of about 60 men to the mosque. "We got in there. Our guns are much bigger guns. Then freedom fighters, Baghdad Patriot guys, started firing."

Spec. Chadrick Domino, 23, was with a Stryker unit that drove north of the mosque to set up a perimeter to prevent others from joining the fight. About noon, he was the first member of his team to walk into a residential courtyard. He may not have had time to see the machine gunner who killed him.

'We need them and they need us'

To the Americans, the fighters on both sides appeared nearly identical. They wore similar sweat suits and carried the same kind of machine guns. "Now we've got kind of a mess on our hands," Salge remembered thinking. "Because we've got a lot of armed guys running all over the place, and it's making it very hard for us to identify which side is which."

By afternoon, the Americans had secured the Firdas mosque and were helping treat the wounded who lay in the courtyard. Kuehl drove out from his headquarters to meet with the leaders of the militiamen and work out the terms that would guide their collaboration in coming days. Kuehl agreed to help if the militiamen did not torture their captives or kill people who were not affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq. The militiamen agreed to hold prisoners for no more than 24 hours before releasing them or handing them over to the Americans. They in turn wanted the Americans not to interfere and to provide weapons.

"We need them and they need us," Kuehl said. "Al-Qaeda's stronger than them. We provide capabilities that they don't have. And the locals know who belongs and who doesn't. It doesn't matter how long we're here, I'll never know. And we'll never fit in."

Experience in the ranks

The militiamen, who call themselves freedom fighters, are led by a 35-year-old former Iraqi army captain and used-car salesman who goes by Saif or Abu Abed. In an interview, he said he had devoted the past five months to collecting intelligence on al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters in Amiriyah, whose ranks have grown as they have fled to Baghdad and away from the new tribal policemen in Anbar province. He has said his own group numbers over 100 people, but American soldiers estimate it has closer to 40. At least six were killed and more than 10 wounded in the first week of collaboration with Americans.

"These guys looked like a military unit, the way they moved," Wilbraham said. "Hand and arm signals. Stop. Take a knee. Weapons up."
Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, a leader of the Sunni Dulaimi tribe who works in Anbar and Baghdad, said many of the fighters in Amiriyah belong to the Islamic Army, which includes former officers from Saddam Hussein's military and is more secular than other insurgent groups. The fighters have been organized and encouraged by local imams.
"Let's be honest, the enemy now is not the Americans, for the time being," Suleiman said. "It's al-Qaeda and the [Shiite] militias. Those are our enemies."

Equipping the new troops

The American soldiers initially asked their new allies to wear white headbands and ride around in the Strykers to point out al-Qaeda households. But the joint patrols didn't work because the local fighters were disoriented after riding in the enclosed Strykers and couldn't find the right houses, Salge said.

Before long, he added, "people everywhere were wearing headbands, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of them were al-Qaeda."

The Americans then supplied reflective armbands that could be seen from their vehicle scopes, and had the fighters ride in Iraqi army Humvees instead of Strykers. They also gave the fighters plastic flex cuffs, to subdue captives, and flares -- red to use if they are in trouble and green to signal when a raid is over.

On June 1, a Friday, the fighters directed the soldiers to a large weapons cache. Sniper rifles, Russian machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and thousands of rounds of ammunition were stashed in a secret room, accessible only by removing a circuit-breaker box and crawling through a hole. While the Americans were tallying the haul, an explosive detonated outside, wounding several soldiers, including one whose feet were blown off.

Lingering suspicion

In return for their services, the militiamen had one request: Give us the weapons in the cache.
"Who are these guys really?" Salge remembered worrying. He told them to talk to the battalion commander.
Kuehl said later that he would probably supply weapons to the militiamen, but in limited amounts. The fighters have given the Americans identification, including fingerprints, addresses and retinal scans, so the soldiers believe they could track down anyone who betrayed them. "What I don't want them to do is wither on the vine," Kuehl said.

On Wednesday, a week after the fighting broke out, the Islamic Army issued a statement declaring a cease-fire with al-Qaeda in Iraq because the groups did not want to spill more Muslim blood or impede "the project of jihad." American soldiers played down the statement and suggested it did not reflect the sentiments of the men they are working with in Amiriyah.

Later that night, Wilbraham led his tank unit on an overnight mission to allow the militiamen to arrest seven al-Qaeda in Iraq members. The raids were to begin at 1 a.m., but two hours later the tanks were waiting on deserted streets, with no sign of the group. Then Wilbraham was told the militiamen had called off the raids.
The tank driver, Spec. Estevan Altamirano, 25, expressed skepticism about his new partners.
"Pretty soon they run out of al-Qaeda, and then they're going to turn on us," he said. "I don't want to get used to them and then I have an AK behind my back. I'm not going to trust them at all."

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

John

12 Jun 07 - 07:46 AM (#2074601)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Preceding post linked at:

BS: Arming Select Sunnis

for those curious.

John

12 Jun 07 - 11:40 AM (#2074828)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I wonder who pulled strings to have it removed?

Thanks, John.

SRS

12 Jun 07 - 03:05 PM (#2074996)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Check the other thread?

It appears that there has been a whole lot of bear-baiting about "giving weapons to the enemy" elsewhere around the world.

This one article is the only thing I've seen thus far in "US" press about it, so one would suspect that we're just "not supposed to know?"

John

12 Jun 07 - 03:26 PM (#2075012)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I did, John. I don't see a statement that says "Rice asked that this be removed" or "Gates follows in Rumsfeld's footsteps, tampers with media," etc.

It was more rhetorical, anyway. We know who had it removed.

SRS

12 Jun 07 - 04:51 PM (#2075108)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Ah but Stilly, with MSNBC one really doesn't know.

It may have been removed "for political reasons" or merely to make room for another popup/insert/Flash Ad from a paying entrepreneur.

[Another rhetorical comment, mainly because some of these "pages" are getting incredibly long and we need to break them up with a few short posts occasionally.]

John

14 Jun 07 - 10:00 AM (#2076795)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

PETERBOROUGH, Ontario -- A judge has ruled that a 24-year-old Canadian man is not allowed to have a girlfriend for the next three years.

The ruling came after Steven Cranley pleaded guilty on Tuesday to several charges stemming from an assault on a former girlfriend.

Cranley, who has been diagnosed with a dependent personality disorder, attacked his girlfriend in an argument after their breakup.

He tried to prevent her from phoning the police by cutting her phone cord and punched and kicked her. He finally stabbed himself with a butcher knife when police did arrive, puncturing his aorta.

Doctors say Cranley has difficulty coping with rejection and runs a high risk to re-offend if he becomes involved in another intimate relationship.

Justice Rhys Morgan said Cranley "cannot form a romantic relationship of an intimate nature with a female person.

"That is the only way I can see the protection of the public is in place until you get the counseling you need."

Cranley had already served 146 days in pre-trail custody, which Morgan said was enough jail time in this case.

His lawyer says the no girlfriend order is the first of its kind that he has encountered.

14 Jun 07 - 10:29 AM (#2076829)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Bork versus Bork

Published: June 14, 2007

There are many versions of the cliché that "a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged," and Robert Bork has just given rise to another. A tort plaintiff, it turns out, is a critic of tort lawsuits who has slipped and fallen at the Yale Club.

Mr. Bork, of course, is the former federal appeals court judge who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987 but not confirmed by the Senate. He has long been famous for his lack of sympathy for people who go to court with claims of race or sex discrimination, or other injustices. He has gotten particularly exercised about accident victims driving up the cost of business by filing lawsuits. In an op-ed article, he once complained that "juries dispense lottery-like windfalls," and compared the civil justice system to "Barbary pirates."

That was before Mr. Bork spoke at the Yale Club last year, and fell on his way to the dais, injuring his leg and bumping his head. Mr. Bork is not merely suing the club for failing to provide a set of stairs and a handrail between the floor and the dais. He has filed a suit that is so aggressive about the law that, if he had not filed it himself, we suspect he might regard it as, well, piratical.

Mr. Bork puts the actual damages for his apparently non-life-threatening injuries (after his fall, he was reportedly able to go on and deliver his speech) at "in excess of $1,000,000." He is also claiming punitive damages. And he is demanding that the Yale Club pay his attorney's fees.
(NY Times)

14 Jun 07 - 12:31 PM (#2076981)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Mexico City plans to legalize prostitution

Leftist lawmakers' bill is the latest in a string of liberal changes
Reuters: Updated: 9:57 p.m. CT June 13, 2007

Mexico City's leftist lawmakers plan to legalize prostitution, the latest step toward making the sprawling capital the most liberal in Latin America, following laws allowing abortion and same-sex unions.
Juan Bustos, a legislator with the leftist party that holds a majority in the city assembly, presented a bill this week to legalize sex work in the capital.

"This activity must be regulated, it can't just take place without control, without health support for the users or the workers," he said Wednesday.

Prostitution is widespread both on seedy street corners and in swanky brothels in Mexico, and authorities frequently turn a blind eye to it. The lack of control has allowed child prostitution to flourish in the city, Bustos said.

The legislator, who heads the assembly's human rights commission, said he hoped the bill would be voted on within a month. He said there were no clear estimates about the number of sex workers in the city, but that it could be as high as 50,000.

The left-wing Party of Democratic Revolution runs Mexico City's government and has a majority in the city assembly.

Controversial changes

Since the new legislative period began last year, the assembly has pushed through laws approving same-sex unions and abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The changes have outraged the Roman Catholic Church and conservative sectors of society and provoked Pope Benedict to threaten politicians with excommunication if they supported abortion. The abortion law has been challenged by the federal government in Mexico's Supreme Court.
Most of Latin America is strongly Catholic and while many people disagree with the church on issues like contraception, few places in the region have gone as far as to legalize abortion, considered by the church to be a grave sin.

Hugo Valdemar, spokesman for the Mexico City archdiocese, said the Catholic Church was concerned the city government was spending time passing laws that affected minorities rather than resolving issues like crime and water shortages.

"We have problems of drug dealers in front of schools and churches, and they do nothing to stop it. We have problems of family violence, a whole series of truly urgent situations," he said.

He said the church also disagreed with language in the bill describing prostitution as "dignified work."

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

John

14 Jun 07 - 10:58 PM (#2077473)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

HONEST GUYS, I DIDN'T MEAN IT THAT WAY!

F-16s stop 'hostile takeover' pilot

Turns out he was talking about business, not terrorism

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:05 p.m. CT June 13, 2007

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - F-16s intercepted a small plane after officials misinterpreted a phrase uttered by the pilot as his aircraft flew over military airspace: "hostile takeover."

The pilot was talking about business, the plane's owner said. But a frantic air traffic controller couldn't confirm that because the pilot had turned off his radio, said Maj. Roger Yates of the Clay County Sheriff's Department.

Within minutes, federal aviation authorities scrambled the fighter jets to intercept the plane Monday evening just outside of Oklahoma City and escort it to the Clay County airport near Mosby.

Once it was on the ground, more than a dozen armed federal agents and tactical deputies surrounded the plane. Federal authorities, who interviewed the pilot for two hours, said Tuesday that there was no threat to anyone and no charges would be filed.

"People should be very careful in this heightened state of security about comments they make regarding airplanes and air traffic," said FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza.

The plane's owner, Dr. Kenneth E. Mann, said the pilot was heading back to Kansas City after dropping him off in Oklahoma, where Mann regularly travels to provide treatment at several hospitals. Neither he nor authorities would identify the pilot.

Authorities said the pilot was flying over Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma on his way back to the Kansas City area when he notified the air traffic tower at the air base that he was entering the base's airspace.

When asked what his destination was, the pilot said he preferred not to say because competitors could use such information to steal clients. He was not required to give a destination, Mann said. He said the pilot was concerned because he worked "in a hostile business environment."

The pilot was speaking about a "hostile takeover" of a company, Yates said.

Mann said FBI agents were at his home less than an hour after the incident.

"Mistakes happen," he said, "and in the times we live in after 9/11, it's better to overreact than not react at all."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

John

18 Jun 07 - 09:09 PM (#2080564)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Britain, U.S. smash pedophile ring

700 investigated; 31 children rescued as authorities shut global operation

The Associated Press
Updated: 11:11 a.m. CT June 18, 2007

LONDON - British police, aided by U.S. authorities, have smashed a global Internet pedophile ring that broadcast live-streamed videos of children being abused, investigating more than 700 suspects worldwide and rescuing 31 children in a 10-month probe, officials said Monday.

Some 200 suspects are based in Britain, said the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center, a government agency. Of the 31 children, some only a few months old, more than 15 were in Britain, the center said. British authorities would not give a breakdown of where the other suspects or children came from, but said more than half the suspects in Britain were already being prosecuted.

The ring was traced to an Internet chat room called "Kids the Light of Our Lives" that featured images of children being subjected to horrific sexual abuse, including the streaming live videos.
Authorities said they used surveillance tactics normally used against terrorism suspects and drug traffickers to infiltrate the pedophile ring at its highest level.

Officials said the United States, Canada and Australia were Britain's main partners in the investigation, which involved agencies from 35 countries. The international investigation dated back to August 2006 until the ringleader's sentencing Monday.

The international probe began after Canadian officials — conducting their own long-running pedophile investigation — tipped off authorities in London about a possible British link.

A Canadian official said authorities there have arrested 24 Canadians and rescued seven Canadian children since late 2005.

[I'll omit the rest of the article, as MSNBC should keep the article up for a reasonable time. I just don't care to read it again to proof the post...]

John

19 Jun 07 - 12:00 PM (#2081159)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

CDC warns that antiques, such as clocks and thermometers, can pose mercury hazard
June 19, 2007 link

ALBANY, New York - Careful with that antique clock. It could pose a mercury hazard. The silvery, skittering, and toxic liquid can be found in some antiques. Mirrors can be backed with mercury and tin; Clock pendulums might be weighted with embedded vials of mercury; and barometers, thermometers and lamps may have mercury in their bases for ballast.

The problem is that mercury in old items can leak, particularly as seals age or when the items are moved, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ask Ann Smith, whose heirloom clock's pendulum leaked mercury onto the carpet of her gift store in rural Delhi, New York, as a cleaner moved it. An attempt to vacuum the tiny silver balls off the carpet only made things worse, requiring a hazardous materials team to be dispatched to Parker House Gifts and Accessories last summer. "I didn't really think it was the hazard that it became," Smith said. "I grew up in the days when you played with the mercury that spilled out of a thermometer and nobody knew it was a problem."

Exposure to high levels of mercury can cause damage to the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs and immune system. Even the few ounces found in some antiques can be dangerous. Aptly nicknamed quicksilver, it's hard to clean up, and can become an inhalation hazard if it vaporizes.

Dr. Wanda Lizak Wells of the New York state Department of Health, co-author of the study, suggests getting professional help if even a few ounces spill from an old barometer.

And never use a vacuum. "That is one of the worst things that people can do," she said. The mercury can be heated up by the vacuum motor and vaporize. That was the mistake Smith's clock cleaner made at her shop near the Catskill Mountains. The vacuum was discarded as hazardous waste.

The amount of mercury in a fever thermometer, however, can be safely cleaned without expert assistance as long as proper steps are taken, like wearing old clothes and rubber gloves, according to Wells.

The study highlighted five other cases from 2000 through 2006 in New York state, which collects hazardous response data in a way that allowed researchers to identify cases involving antiques.

Among other examples in the report: A house in Long Island was cleared after two cups of mercury spilled onto a carpet from an antique clock that tipped over. Four workers at a New York City antique store were sent to the hospital for evaluation when mercury spilled from an antique clock column. A hazardous materials team was called to clean up more than an ounce of mercury from a Syracuse road after a spill involving an antique lamp.

Researchers said none of the incidents caused acute health problems. The CDC report noted that about a dozen states restrict the sale of products with mercury. Antiques experts say there are relatively few items that still contain it.

Among those that do are old barometers and thermometers, which account for only a small slice of the market.

Donald R. McLaughlin, a veteran antiques dealer in Ohio and president of the World Antique Dealers Association, said many such pendulum vials broke decades ago.

"There aren't many left," he said. "I rarely see them anymore, and I'm out every day."

Still, researchers urge people to inspect old items containing mercury to make sure the seals are tight. They recommend removing or replacing mercury components when possible, though they warn never to drain the mercury. When moving a piece containing mercury, researchers suggest placing it in a leak-proof container. And moving slowly.

21 Jun 07 - 09:32 AM (#2083037)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Naked couple die from S.C. rooftop fall

June 20, 2007

COLUMBIA, S.C. --Police on Wednesday were investigating how a naked couple fell 50 feet from the roof of a downtown office building to their deaths.

The bodies were found on the road by a passing cabdriver around 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Clothing was discovered on the roof, leading authorities to suspect the man and woman, in their early 20s, may have been having sex. Their identities were not released.

"It's too early to rule out anything," Columbia police Sgt. Florence McCants said, but McCants said a preliminary investigation didn't show any sign of foul play.

21 Jun 07 - 10:23 AM (#2083077)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: frogprince

"I can't help,
falling in love, with, you..."

21 Jun 07 - 12:34 PM (#2083187)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Tokyo - Japan has returned to using the prewar name for the island of Iwo Jima - site of one of World War II's most horrific battles - at the urging of its original inhabitants, who want to reclaim an identity they say has been hijacked by high-profile movies like Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima." The new name, Iwo To, was adopted Monday by the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute in consultation with Japan's coast guard.

Surviving islanders evacuated during the war praised the move, but others said it cheapens the memory of a brutal campaign that today is inextricably linked to the words Iwo Jima.

Back in 1945, the small, volcanic island was the vortex of the fierce World War II battle immortalized by the famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal of The Associated Press showing Marines raising the American flag on the islet's Mount Suribachi.

Retired Marine Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes, who was a 24-year-old captain in the regiment that raised the flag on Mount Suribachi, was surprised and upset by the news.

"Frankly, I don't like it. That name is so much a part of our tradition, our legacy," said Haynes.

Haynes, 87, heads the Combat Veterans of Iwo Jima, a group of about 600 veterans that travels to the island every year for a reunion. He is working on a book about the battle called "We Walk by Faith: The Story of Combat Team 28 and the Battle of Iwo Jima." He doesn't plan to change the name.

"It was Iwo Jima to us when we took it," said Haynes. "We'll recognize whatever the Japanese want to call it but we'll stick to Iwo Jima." Before the war, the isolated spit of land was called Iwo To - pronounced "ee-woh-toh" - by the 1,000 or so people who lived there. In Japanese, that name looks and means the same as Iwo Jima - Sulfur Island - but it has a different sound.

The civilians were evacuated in 1944 as U.S. forces advanced across the Pacific. Some Japanese navy officers who moved in to fortify the island mistakenly called it Iwo Jima, and the name stuck. After the war, civilians weren't allowed to return and the island was put to exclusive military use by both the U.S. and Japan, cementing its identity.

Locals were never happy the name Iwo Jima took root. But the last straw came this year with the release of Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flags of Our Fathers," war films that only reinforced the misnomer.

In March, Ogasawara, the municipality that administers Iwo To and neighboring islands, responded by adopting a resolution making Iwo To the official name. Ogasawara residents and descendants of Iwo To evacuees petitioned the central government to follow suit.

22 Jun 07 - 12:45 AM (#2083710)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Not fiction? Herman Munster's identity stolen

Thieves apparently didn't realize he is a fictional 1960s TV character

By Ted Bridis
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:51 p.m. CT June 20, 2007

WASHINGTON - Did Internet thieves steal Herman Munster's MasterCard number? Crooks in an underground chat room for selling stolen credit card numbers and personal consumer information offered pilfered data purportedly about Herman Munster, the 1960s Frankenstein-like character from "The Munsters" TV sitcom.

The thieves apparently didn't realize Munster was a fictional TV character and dutifully offered to sell Munster's personal details — accurately listing his home address from the television series as 1313 Mocking Bird Lane — and what appeared to be his MasterCard number. Munster's birth date was listed as Aug. 15, 1964, suspiciously close to the TV series' original air date in September 1964.

CardCops Inc., the Malibu, Calif., Internet security company that quietly recorded details of the illicit but wayward transaction, surmised that a Munsters fan knowledgeable about the show deliberately provided the bogus data.

"The identity thief thought it was good data," said Dan Clements, the company's president.

Clements said evidence indicates the thief, known online as "Supra," was operating overseas. "They really stumble over our culture. He's probably not watching any reruns of 'The Munsters' on TV Land."

Herman Munster was portrayed by Fred Gwynne, who died in July 1993.
"Phishing" thieves often trick consumers into revealing financial secrets by sending e-mail requests that appear to originate from banks. A consumer's financial details can be worth $4 and $40 among online thieves, who can use the information to open fraudulent credit accounts.

CardCops eavesdrops on conversations among thieves in underground Internet chat rooms to monitor for stolen credit card numbers being sold or traded. It offers monitoring services to alert consumers whose information is compromised by hackers.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

John

22 Jun 07 - 12:56 AM (#2083714)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

What you want to be the Herman Munster story makes it onto Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me! this week?

SRS

22 Jun 07 - 01:10 AM (#2083722)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

WP: CIA to air decades of dirty laundry

Assassination attempts, domestic spying among the abuses

By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
Updated: 10:52 p.m. CT June 21, 2007

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.

In anticipation of the CIA's release, the National Security Archive at George Washington University yesterday published a separate set of documents from January 1975 detailing internal government deliberations of the abuses. Those documents portray a rising sense of panic within the administration of President Gerald R. Ford that what then-CIA Director William E. Colby called "skeletons" in the CIA's closet had begun to be revealed in news accounts.

An article about the CIA's infiltration of antiwar groups, published by New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh in December 1974, was "just the tip of the iceberg," then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger warned Ford, according to a Jan. 3 memorandum of their conversation.
Kissinger warned that if other operations were divulged, "blood will flow. For example, Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro." Kennedy was the attorney general from 1961 to 1964.

Worried that the disclosures could lead to criminal prosecutions, Kissinger added that "when the FBI has a hunting license into the CIA, this could end up worse for the country than Watergate," the scandal that led to the fall of the Nixon administration the previous year.

In a meeting at which Colby detailed the worst abuses -- after telling the president "we have a 25-year old institution which has done some things it shouldn't have" -- Ford said he would appoint a presidential commission to look into the matter. "We don't want to destroy but to preserve the CIA. But we want to make sure that illegal operations and those outside the [CIA] charter don't happen," Ford said.

Treasure-trove of documents

Most of the major incidents and operations in the reports to be released next week were revealed in varying detail during congressional investigations that led to widespread intelligence reforms and increased oversight. But the treasure-trove of CIA documents, generated as the Vietnam War wound down and agency involvement in Nixon's "dirty tricks" political campaign began to be revealed, is expected to provide far more comprehensive accounts, written by the agency itself.

The reports, known collectively by historians and CIA officials as the "family jewels," were initially produced in response to a 1973 request by then-CIA Director James R. Schlesinger. Alarmed by press accounts of CIA involvement in Watergate under his predecessor, Schlesinger asked the agency's employees to inform him of all operations that were "outside" the agency's legal charter.

This process was unprecedented at the agency, where only a few officials had previously been privy to the scope of its illegal activities. Schlesinger collected the reports, some of which dated to the 1950s, in a folder that was inherited by his successor, Colby, in September of that year.

But it was not until Hersh's article that Colby took the file to the White House. The National Security Archive release included a six-page summary of a conversation on Jan. 3, 1975, in which Colby briefed the Justice Department for the first time on the extent of the "skeletons."

Operations listed in the report began in 1953, when the CIA's counterintelligence staff started a 20-year program to screen and in some cases open mail between the United States and the Soviet Union passing through a New York airport. A similar program in San Francisco intercepted mail to and from China from 1969 to 1972. Under its charter, the CIA is prohibited from domestic operations.
Colby told Ford that the program had collected four letters to actress and antiwar activist Jane Fonda and said the entire effort was "illegal, and we stopped it in 1973."

Among several new details, the summary document reveals a 1969 program about CIA efforts against "the international activities of radicals and black militants." Undercover CIA agents were placed inside U.S. peace groups and sent abroad as credentialed members to identify any foreign contacts. This came at a time when the Soviet Union was suspected of financing and influencing U.S. domestic organizations.

The program included "information on the domestic activities" of the organizations and led to the accumulation of 10,000 American names, which Colby told Silberman were retained "as a result of the tendency of bureaucrats to retain paper whether they needed it or acted on it or not," according to the summary memo.

CIA surveillance of Michael Getler, then The Washington Post's national security reporter, was conducted between October 1971 and April 1972 under direct authorization by then-Director Richard Helms, the memo said. Getler had written a story published on Oct. 18, 1971, sparked by what Colby called "an obvious intelligence leak," headlined "Soviet Subs Are Reported Cuba-Bound."

Getler, who is now the ombudsman for the Public Broadcasting Service, said yesterday that he learned of the surveillance in 1975, when The Post published an article based on a secret report by congressional investigators. The story said that the CIA used physical surveillance against "five Americans" and listed Getler, the late columnist Jack Anderson and Victor Marchetti, then a former CIA employee who had just written a book critical of the agency.

"I never knew about it at the time, although it was a full 24 hours a day with teams of people following me, looking for my sources," Getler said. He said he went to see Colby afterward, with Washington lawyer Joseph Califano. Getler recalled, "Colby said it happened under Helms and apologized and said it wouldn't happen again."
Personal surveillance was conducted on Anderson and three of his staff members, including Britt Hume, now with Fox News, for two months in 1972 after Anderson wrote of the administration's "tilt toward Pakistan." The 1972 surveillance of Marchetti was carried out "to determine contacts with CIA employees," the summary said.

'A very different time'

CIA monitoring and infiltration of antiwar dissident groups took place between 1967 and 1971 at a time when the public was turning against the Vietnam War. Agency officials "covertly monitored" groups in the Washington area "who were considered to pose a threat to CIA installations." Some of the information "might have been distributed to the FBI," the summary said. Other "skeletons" listed in the summary included:

The confinement by the CIA of a Russian defector, suspected by the CIA as a possible "fake," in Maryland and Virginia safe houses for two years, beginning in 1964. Colby speculated that this might be "a violation of the kidnapping laws." The "very productive" 1963 wiretapping of two columnists -- Robert Allen and Paul Scott -- whose conversations included talks with 12 senators and six congressmen. Break-ins by the CIA's office of security at the homes of one current and one former CIA official suspected of retaining classified documents. CIA-funded testing of American citizens, "including reactions to certain drugs."

The CIA documents scheduled for release next week, Hayden said yesterday, "provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency."

Barred by secrecy restrictions from correcting "misinformation," he said, the CIA is at the mercy of the press. "Unfortunately, there seems to be an instinct among some in the media today to take a few pieces of information, which may or may not be accurate, and run with them to the darkest corner of the room," Hayden said.
Hayden's speech and some questions that followed evoked more recent criticism of the intelligence community, which has been accused illegal wiretapping, infiltration of antiwar groups, and kidnapping and torturing terrorism suspects.

"It's surely part of [Hayden's] program now to draw a bright line with the past," said National Security Archive Director Thomas S. Blanton. "But it's uncanny how the government keeps dipping into the black bag." Newly revealed details of ancient CIA operations, Blanton said, "are pretty resonant today."

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

Check frequently as the information is published, to see if your name's there.

John

22 Jun 07 - 01:13 AM (#2083724)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

The CIA release obviously is going to cause a lot of commotion amongst the media.

My question is:

What are they doing that merits a distraction of this magnitude at this time.?

What are we supposed to not notice while everyone's pointing fingers over this release?

John

22 Jun 07 - 11:41 PM (#2084580)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

That's the question of the hour, all right, John!

A

23 Jun 07 - 01:33 AM (#2084610)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Thus far, MSNBC thinks the big news of the day is:

1. Paris Hilton gets out of jail on Tuesday.

2. The Vatican revoked the annulment of Joe Kennedy's first marriage.

I can't see that either of these needs a big diversion(?).

Or maybe they're part of the diversion.

John

23 Jun 07 - 08:51 AM (#2084791)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Bee-dubya-ell

Hell, I was really confused for a few seconds over the Joe Kennedy annulment thing. I immediately thought of clan patriarch Joe, father of JFK, RFK and Ted. Was wondering if the Pope was planning on excommunicating the old bootlegger post mortem. But I'm awake now and it's all better.

23 Jun 07 - 04:17 PM (#2085054)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Bee-dubya-ell

From: The Register

Man Diagnosed With Heavy Metal Addiction

By Jan Libbenga → Published Wednesday 20th June 2007 12:52 GMT

The lifestyle of 42-year-old dishwasher Roger Tullgren from Hässleholm in southern Sweden has been classified as a disability by the Swedish Employment Service, which has agreed to pay part of Tullgren's salary, and his new boss has given him special dispensation to play loud music at work.

According to Swedish online newspaper The Local, Tullgren first developed an interest in heavy metal when his older brother bought a Black Sabbath album in 1971. Since then, Tullgren is a classic (albeit softly spoken) heavy metal head with tattoos and skull and crossbones jewellery. Last year he attended almost 300 heavy metal shows, while playing bass and guitar in two rock bands, including Silverland.

Tullgren says he has always had difficulty holding down a job, mainly because he is absent most of the time.

Psychologists decided Tullgren's obsession is nothing less than an addiction, which puts him in a difficult situation in the labour market. Tullgren said he has been fighting for recognition for a long time.

Many occupational psychologists in Sweden, however, are totally baffled by the decision. "If somebody has a gambling addiction, we don't send them down to the racetrack. We try to cure the addiction," deputy employment director Henrietta Stein for the Skåne region told The Local. ®

29 Jun 07 - 03:47 AM (#2089764)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

The previously announced [see post here at 22 Jun 07 - 01:10 AM] release of the CIA "Family Jewels" has occured. Various reports and editorials are online, including at:

CIA opens the book on a shady past

Declassified 'family jewels' detail assassination plots, break-ins, wiretaps
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 3:25 p.m. CT June 26, 2007

As this and other articles editorialize mildly but don't report much that's very specific, after extensive research (i.e. I read my local newsrag yesterday) I found that the important thing to know is that you can view the actual released pages at:

http://www.foia.cia.gov/

Actually, at this last link, you can view a couple of CIA FOI releases, and lots of propaganda about how "citizen friendly" the CIA is.

The glitch is that apparently the most recent release can only be viewed one page at a time, and there reportedly are about 700 (one report said 670?) pages. There is an input box where you can skip to a specific page, so if someone finds something that actually is interesting - PLEASE REPORT A PAGE NUMBER so the rest of us lazy b...ds can go look.

John

29 Jun 07 - 01:34 PM (#2090203)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: wysiwyg

Fake Priest Arrested At Baptism

A Portugese baptism was disrupted when police stormed in to seize the fake priest conducting the service.

Just as the imposter was conducting his blessing police entered and arrested him, a member of the church was quoted by local daily Jornal de Noticias as saying.

A spokeswoman for the Portuguese police said the 34-year-old man was arrested on June 16th suspicion of impersonating a priest and had several similar arrest warrants to his name.

Spokeswoman Amelia Moutinho said, "We had to interrupt the religious ceremony to identify the suspect." The baby was later baptized by a real priest.

01 Jul 07 - 11:38 AM (#2091602)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Photo ID not needed to fly

Star-Telegram link

Nobody looked me in the eye. Nobody asked me any questions. I was standing at Philadelphia International Airport last week waiting to fly home after a conference. I had lost my wallet and all my photo identification cards, including my Texas driver's license.

Aside from losing my wallet, I also lost sleep. Worrying. I couldn't return home on a commercial airline without proper identification. Or could I?

The answer might surprise you as much as it did me. What I learned also raises questions about whether, in the name of security, we are being misled by the government. But according to a former presidential adviser I talked to later, it's not a security mat ter as much as a question of fairness to all paying travelers. We aren't being told what we need to know.

Here's what happened:

At the airport, I stepped up to the U.S. Airways counter, not knowing whether they would let me on the plane. I presented my boarding pass to the employee and announced: "I don't have a photo ID."

Without looking up, she replied, "You can still fly."

She scribbled with a red marker on my boarding pass the following notation: "SSSS."

I walked to the security line and presented my boarding pass to the woman inspecting photo IDs and boarding passes. The woman, a non-TSA contract employee, didn't look at me either as she sent me into a glass holding area.

A Transportation Security Administration employee took me into a corner area where the SSSS travelers go.

SSSS, according to Internet sites, apparently stands for "Secondary Security Screening Selection." But you can't be sure, as the TSA won't tell you.

"We don't go into detail about what that signifies," TSA spokeswoman Andrea McCauley told me later.

The secondary screeners gathered around, but again, nobody looked me in the eye or asked any questions.

One man waved a security wand around my upper torso. Then he patted me down.

Two others went through the electronic equipment in my carry-on bag. They used an Ionscan machine to test swabs for traces of explosives on my BlackBerry, cellphone, iPod and other items.

"You can fly now," a TSA screener announced, again without looking at me.

Before I flew, I had called the airline and asked what to do. I was told that I needed to file a missing wallet report with the Philadelphia police so I could get an incident number. I did, but at the airport, nobody asked me anything.

Turns out there is no requirement that you produce a photo ID when you travel on a commercial airplane.

Originally, the TSA's Web site stated, "You must present a Boarding Pass and a Photo ID to get to the checkpoint and to your gate."

The latest TSA Web site language, however, states: "We encourage each adult traveler to keep his/her airline boarding pass and government-issued photo ID available until exiting the security checkpoint [children are not required to show identification]. The absence of proper identification will result in additional screening."

The TSA spokeswoman confirms: "If a passenger doesn't have one, like yourself, because it was lost, which does happen, then we do subject them to additional screening."

The change came after an unsuccessful lawsuit filed by John Gilmore, a millionaire founder of Sun Microsystems who is now a civic activist. On July 4, 2002, Gilmore tried to fly without presenting a photo ID. He was refused and filed suit against the government.

As his case traveled through federal courts, Gilmore kept losing his quest for information on the government's actual policy.

The federal government stated in court papers that the policy was secret and could not be divulged.

In Gilmore's pleading to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case, his lawyers wrote that keeping the policy secret "purposely or inadvertently causes transportation security officials to mislead the public. Passengers are consistently advised that federal law requires them to show identification. That representation is false, however."

Now the policy's intent is clearer, but the actual written policy is considered secret and is still not publicly available.

I turned to Ohio State University law professor Peter Swire, an expert on privacy matters, for further explanation. He served as President Clinton's chief counselor for privacy.

Gilmore's case was important to travelers for two reasons, he said. But neither has to do with security, because secondary screenings should keep passengers secure, he said.

"It's important for the government to tell us the law before they punish us," he says. "What if you drive to the airport and forget your driver's license and say, 'Oh, I can't visit Grandma,' or, 'I can't go to my business meeting'? A lot of people turn back from travel because they thought they didn't have a choice, when they really did have a choice.

"So there's a basic principle that citizens should know what the law is. But there's also the practical matter: Did people change their behavior and suffer harm because they didn't know what the rules were?"

What kind of harm? Some, he said, may skip their flight or buy a more expensive ticket to fly later after they fetched their ID. None of this applies to foreign travel where passports are always required. And travelers' names are still checked against the government's No-Fly list, the TSA says.

The TSA spokeswoman told me that our personal security is not harmed by those, like me, who fly without an ID. Bags are screened. Bodies are checked for weapons.

So actually, it's all about knowing what the requirements are when you fly. And now you do.

01 Jul 07 - 11:59 AM (#2091625)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

U-Haul's practices found to raise risk of accidents

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Marissa Sternberg sits in her wheelchair, barely able to move or speak. Caregivers are always at her side. Progress is measured in tiny steps: an unclenched fist, a look of recognition, a smile for her father.

Nearly four years ago, Sternberg was a high-spirited 19-year-old bound for school in Denver. She rented a U-Haul trailer to move her belongings, hitched it to her Toyota Land Cruiser and hit the road with her two dogs and a friend.

That evening, as the Land Cruiser descended a hill in the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico, the trailer began to swing from side to side, pushing the SUV as if trying to muscle it off the road.

"I knew something bad was going to happen," recalled Corina Maya Hollander, who was taking a turn behind the wheel. "We both knew."

The Land Cruiser flipped and bounced along Interstate 25. The trailer broke free and careened off the road. Hollander crawled from the wreckage, her head throbbing.

Sternberg, thrown from the SUV, lay sprawled on the highway, unable to move. "Where are my dogs?" she screamed. "Somebody go find my dogs!"

Sternberg fell victim to a peril long familiar to U-Haul International: "trailer sway," a leading cause of severe towing accidents.

Traveling downhill or shaken by a sharp turn or a gust of wind, a trailer can begin swinging so violently that only the most experienced -- or fortunate -- drivers can regain control and avoid catastrophe.

U-Haul, the nation's largest provider of rental trailers, says it is "highly conservative" about safety. But a yearlong Los Angeles Times investigation, which included more than 200 interviews and a review of thousands of pages of court records, police reports, consumer complaints and other documents, found that company practices have heightened the risk of towing accidents. Among the findings:

The safest way to tow is with a vehicle that weighs much more than the trailer. Yet U-Haul allows customers to pull trailers as heavy as or heavier than their own vehicles.

It often allows trailers to stay on the road for months without a thorough safety inspection, in violation of its own policies.

Bad brakes have been a recurring problem with its large trailers. The one Sternberg rented lacked working brakes.

Its small and midsize trailers have no brakes at all, a policy that conflicts with the laws of at least 14 states.

It relaxed a key safety rule as it pushed to increase rentals of one type of trailer, used to haul vehicles, and then failed to enforce even the weakened standard. Customers were killed or maimed in ensuing crashes that might have been avoided.

The company's approach to mitigating the risks of towing relies heavily on customers, many of them novices, some as young as 18. They are expected to grasp and carry out detailed instructions for loading and towing trailers, and to respond coolly in a crisis. But many renters never see those instructions -- distribution of U-Haul's user guide is spotty.

To those who receive and read it, the guide offers this advice for coping with a swinging trailer: Stay off the car's brakes and hold the wheel straight. Many drivers will reflexively do the opposite, which can make the swaying worse.

Yet when accidents occur, U-Haul almost always blames the customer.

[snip]

This is a long article. Find the rest of it here. (I read it in the Star-Telegram but the L.A. Times originated it and their version has photos).

SRS

03 Jul 07 - 06:18 PM (#2093437)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I've been watching this story with interest. The first excavator was lost and I figured that was the end of the story. But no, there are some intrepid sorts who don't seem to understand that if you look up "quagmire" in the dictionary there is a photo of the Ebby Slough area. :)

Ebey Island mud pit sucks in second excavator

link (and a nice photo)

An unforgiving mud pit on Ebey Island swallowed its second excavator Sunday, leaving a contractor scrambling to retrieve not one but two expensive pieces of heavy equipment. "About the best way to describe this is a case of bad luck and a bottomless pit," said Fred Gossler, one of the workers for Pacific Reign, which is based in Grays Harbor.

The company came to Everett after it agreed to pay RSC Equipment Rental of Arizona $38,000 for salvaging rights to the stuck 2006 John Deere 200. A similar excavator would fetch as much as $200,000 new. A four-man crew expected to spend just a few days extracting the excavator and walk away with a sweet deal. Then things began to sour.

"It's definitely an attraction," Gossler said of the stuck excavators, which resemble mechanical mastodons sinking into a primordial tar pit. Gossler said a number of "onlookers and tourists" stopped by and hiked past tall weeds for a closer look at the ill-fated rescue Monday and to wish the crew good luck in finding a way out of the mess. The highly visible scene is situated north of the U.S. 2 trestle, just west of an environmentally sensitive wetland preserve.

Jeff Emery, one of the partners who owns Pacific Reign, was operating the second excavator when it, too started sinking into the pit. He said he underestimated the weakness of the soil. His machine, resting on heavy wood pads, was tethered to the stuck yellow excavator with steel cables.

At first, Emery was able to budge the 20-metric-ton yellow excavator a bit from the thick mud. But it didn't take long for his orange Hitachi to start sliding off the boards and into the muck. "That stuff out there's got no mercy for nobody," said Emery, who worked until 3 a.m. Monday trying to free his rig. "I went out there blind and should've never went."

Gerry Stajcar, Emery's business partner, said a third excavator narrowly escaped getting mired. Stajcar described Emery as one of the most skilled heavy equipment operators he has ever met, good enough to guide an excavator to gracefully lift a hat off someone's head without touching a hair. But Emery apparently was no match for the mud pit of Ebey Island.

The story began when Jim Clemetson, 48, of Everett, tried to cut a road to land that his mother recently bought on the island for $65,000. Clemetson wanted to use the 4.5 acres to store trees and equipment for his landscaping business. His dreams were dashed, however, when he learned that the state Department of Transportation would not allow him to get to his land by crossing under the trestle.

Clemetson negotiated an easement with his neighbor, and began cutting a driveway with a practically new, rented yellow excavator. When it got stuck, he called for help. But the help split with his $15,000 before getting the job done and actually made things worse, Clemetson said. The Department of Ecology is investigating the case and said Clemetson did not have proper permits to operate in the wetlands.

As far as he knows, he is still responsible for replacing the excavator and has turned to an attorney to learn about his options. Clemetson, who said getting stuck was humiliating, found some comfort in knowing that he is not alone in slipping into the mud."Do I feel less stupid? Yes," he said.

Bruce King, Clemetson's neighbor, said it is fortunate that no one has been injured. So far, it's just equipment, he said. "Swamp: 2. Excavators: 0."

04 Jul 07 - 02:06 AM (#2093685)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Unfortunately, SRS, that's not a very rare kind of incident.

Recovery of a wimpy little thing like a John Deere 200 series excavator shouldn't really be that much of a problem, but skill in conventional use of heavy equipment does not necessarily qualify anyone for the specialized task of recovery of one that's gotten into the muck.

Rule number 1: Don't try to drive up close to the one that's stuck.

Obviously violated here.

A cousin fresh out of college was assigned recovery, under somewhat similar conditions, of one more similar to this one, only bigger as his first job with his new employer. It took them about three months. It was about 30 yards out into the lake (it slide down the slope for a ways after the driver bailed out), with a full bucket of mud. Part of the problem was finding anything big enough to move it.

Rule number 2: The recovery vehicle should be at least twice as big as the one that's stuck.

With a really good crew, you can cheat on #2 - sometimes. But it ain't good sense if you've got a choice.

According to some 'Nam vets, equipment left in similar conditions there was often stolen by locals using hand labor only, when they went back to get it with big recovery equipment - although I think some of my friends who related such stories may have been a little influenced by the tequila.

John

04 Jul 07 - 02:37 PM (#2094131)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I bet humans scrambling over the equipment and excavating by hand are the only way to get it out, actually. This recovery job was a fool's errand by someone with dollar signs in their eyes. I'm sure it isn't a rare occurrence. This one just happened to present itself front and center where the world can pass by on the trestle and watch their progress (or lack of it).

SRS

04 Jul 07 - 03:00 PM (#2094140)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

1st time's charm for Miss Texas

Star-Telegram link

One should be Shilah Phillips' favorite number. The 25-year-old singer was crowned Miss Texas last year in her one and only try at capturing the title, which will be passed on to another young woman Saturday. The pageant is being held at Will Rogers Memorial Center Auditorium.

In an era when some young women spend years trying to achieve that goal, Phillips tried in her last year of eligibility.

"That was my only time," she said this week, flashing a bright smile at her naiveté about how pageants operate. "It was a one-shot thing."

Music is her passion, and she attended high school at the Denver School of Performing Arts. While a voice major at Collin County Community College, she was accepted to the University of North Texas' prestigious vocal jazz program, the same one where recording artist Norah Jones studied.

Phillips, an honor-roll student, worked three jobs but did not have enough money to pursue her dream.

"I was in a desperate situation," she said.

When friends suggested the Miss Texas Scholarship Pageant and the thousands of dollars it offers, she decided to enter a preliminary pageant. In borrowed clothes and a swimsuit she'd actually worn to a pool, she was named Miss Frisco, holding her shoulders as straight as her mother's friend had taught her.

Last year, as the field narrowed during the Miss Texas pageant, she said she could only concentrate on how much her scholarship fund was growing.

As she stood with only one other contestant, she remembers telling her, "Isn't this exciting? We're going to college!"

Even as she walked the runway where she was unsure what to do, she remembers, "I wasn't thinking 'I won a crown,' but 'I'm going to college.'"

Phillips' is the first African-American Miss Texas.

She is also the first rookie to win the title since 1980, said Randy Pruett, the unofficial Miss Texas historian.

Phillips went on to the Miss America Pageant where she was named first runner-up.

Her scholarship totals have reached nearly $41,000.

"This is a miracle," she said of her ability to complete her education at UNT. "This was a blessing from God. I needed this money. It's so fortunate I had this opportunity."

While serving as Miss Texas, she has spoken to more than 100,000 schoolchildren, said her business manager, Carol Fuller.

Phillips is frequently asked to give her inspirational talk.

"Every once in a while, there comes a girl with an 'it' factor," Fuller said. "I feel Shilah is the representative of that 'it' factor."

In the past year, Phillips has made her own lists of firsts: eating a homemade biscuit at Babe's Chicken Dinner House in Roanoke, tasting Dublin's Dr Pepper, meeting Dallas Cowboy veteran Emmitt Smith and riding a longhorn.

"Dreams can come true, especially when it comes to education," she said. "But there's hope. There's always hope, even when you feel like you've done all you can. You don't just quit. I didn't give up on myself."

05 Jul 07 - 06:32 AM (#2094555)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Price of machetes drops after elections

Price of machetes drops in Nigeria after elections as political violence ebbs

Reuters
Updated: 4:14 p.m. CT July 3, 2007

ABUJA, Nigeria - The price of machetes has halved in parts of Nigeria since the end of general elections in April because demand from thugs sponsored by politicians has subsided, the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria reported.

NAN surveyed prices in the northeastern state of Gombe and found that a good quality machete was now selling for 400 naira ($3) compared with 800 naira before the elections, which were marred by politically motivated violence in many states.

"A price survey on machetes, which served as a popular weapon among political thugs in the state, indicated ... a drop in the price of the implement," NAN reported over the weekend.

Machetes are primarily used as a tool for farming in Nigeria, but they are also popular among political gangsters.

"Before the conduct of the general elections, I was selling a minimum of seven machetes daily but can hardly sell one a day now," said Usman Masi, a trader quoted by NAN.

Africa's most populous country returned to civilian rule in 1999 after three decades of almost continuous army rule, but violence remains a feature of politics, especially during the build-up to elections.

European election monitors estimated that at least 200 people were killed in politically motivated violence during months of campaigning ahead of the April polls.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited

[Get yours now before the next campaign starts and prices go up again?]

John

06 Jul 07 - 12:00 PM (#2095684)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Rats influenced by the kindness of strangers
06 July 2007
NewScientist.com news service

If rats benefit from the kindness of strangers they are more likely to assist an unfamiliar rat in future. In doing so, they provide the first evidence of an unusual form of altruism that appears to violate evolutionary theory.

Claudia Rutte and Michael Taborsky of the University of Berne, Switzerland, trained rats to pull a lever that released food for their partner in the next cage. If the rats subsequently received snacks released by lever-pulling strangers in neighbouring cages, they were more likely to lever-pull and so feed another unfamiliar rat in the future. In other words, the rats became altruistic in response to a general level of cooperation in the population.

Theoretically, such "generalised reciprocity" shouldn't exist. In large groups, dirty rats will take advantage of helpful strangers and offer nothing in return.

It persists, says Taborsky, because exploited animals move away. "An animal is more likely to leave the group if it didn't receive cooperation in the past," he says. "This leads to cooperative and uncooperative groups in a population." If cooperative groups are better at exploiting the environment, generalised reciprocity remains in the population (PLoS Biology, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0050196).

08 Jul 07 - 09:45 PM (#2097356)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Cement in fillings tied to dental aids' asthma

Women with daily exposure had higher risk of respiratory issues, study says

Reuters
Updated: 4:15 p.m. CT July 6, 2007

Dental assistants who work with substances called methacrylates may be at risk of developing asthma or chronic respiratory symptoms, a study has found.

Methacrylates are used in dental filling materials and bonding agents, like those used to cement porcelain veneers, crowns and orthodontic brackets. Dental assistants are exposed to airborne methacrylate particles when mixing these materials or during placement or removal of dental restorations.

In the new study, researchers found that among 799 Finnish dental assistants, those with greater methacrylate exposure had higher risks of developing asthma or respiratory problems like chronic nasal symptoms, hoarseness and breathing difficulty.

"The results suggest that exposure to methacrylates poses an important occupational hazard for dental assistants," the study authors report in the journal Allergy.

"The risks to respiratory health are related to inhaling these substances," lead author Dr. Maritta S. Jaakkola, of the University of Birmingham in the UK, told Reuters Health.

Probably the most important protective measure is for dentists to install exhaust systems in areas where assistants work with methacrylates, Jaakkola said.

Prolonged problem

The findings are based on questionnaire responses from 799 female dental assistants. The researchers asked the women how often they performed tasks like mixing dental fillings and sealings, and whether they'd been diagnosed with asthma or frequently suffered respiratory symptoms — like a stuffy nose, cough or breathlessness.

Overall, the study found, women who'd been exposed to methacrylates every day for the past three months were nearly three times more likely than less-exposed dental assistants to report adult-onset asthma. They also showed higher risks of nasal symptoms and work-related coughing.

The risk of respiratory symptoms appeared to grow the longer women had been on the job, and those who'd suffered allergies as children seemed particularly susceptible.

In general, dental assistants who reported daily exposure to methacrylates for more than 10 years had higher risks of hoarseness, breathlessness and wheezing. Among assistants with a history of childhood allergies, those who reported daily methacrylate exposure had a fourfold increased risk of adult-onset asthma, and a twofold higher rate of nasal symptoms.

Besides exhaust systems to clear the air, gloves also offer dental assistants protection from methacrylates, Jaakkola noted. The substances can cause skin reactions, she explained, and it's also possible that sensitization to methacrylates through skin contact makes some people more susceptible to suffering respiratory effects as well.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

[One might have thought that a responsible reporter would have commented on the consumer use of these same products - as in the ubiquitous "Super Glue."(?)]

John

09 Jul 07 - 04:07 AM (#2097512)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Money doesn't grow on trees for one robber

Failed burglar, covered in leaves, 'really went out on a limb,' officer says

The Associated Press
Updated: 5:23 p.m. CT July 8, 2007

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Leaf it to New Hampshire, where a bank branch was held up by a man disguised as a tree.

Just as the Citizen Bank branch opened Saturday morning, a man walked in with leafy boughs duct-taped to his head and torso, and robbed the place.

"He really went out on a limb," police Sgt. Ernie Goodno said Sunday.

Police said the leafy man didn't saying anything about having a weapon, just demanded cash, and was given an undisclosed amount.

Although the branches and leaves obscured much of the man's face, someone who saw images from the bank's security camera recognized the robber and called police.

Officers said James Coldwell, 49, was arrested early Sunday at his Manchester home and charged with robbery. Arraignment was not expected until Monday.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

Another use for duct tape.

John

09 Jul 07 - 10:50 AM (#2097723)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Darn! I checked your link but they didn't have a shot from the survelliance camera. I wondered what species of tree he selected. :)

09 Jul 07 - 11:47 AM (#2097758)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

"If you were a bank robber, what kind of tree would you be?"...a New Age psychotherapy quiz... dang, this gets confusing. It's not as if the criminal world weren't already quite FUBAR what with Cheney out performing the Mafia anymore. But now they are hauling in identitity crises involving other species!! This is just too much. Or too many. Whoever.

A

09 Jul 07 - 11:50 AM (#2097760)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JennyO

Probably some kind of shade tree for a shady character. It must have been his local branch, because someone saw images on the security camera and twigged that it was him. I expect he'll be planted firmly in jail soon, and it will be a long time before he leaves.

09 Jul 07 - 12:23 PM (#2097789)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

SO he'll end up rooting around in the Big Houose exercise yard, looking for a nitrogen fix? Ya gotta get your fix -- if nodule die.

A

09 Jul 07 - 12:25 PM (#2097790)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Stilly just wanted to see a "woodie."

John

09 Jul 07 - 12:33 PM (#2097804)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: curmudgeon

To see the picture, look here -- Tom

09 Jul 07 - 12:37 PM (#2097810)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

He must have thought the bank was in Dunsinane.

(Raucous Stratocaster arpeggios followed by hefty stomping blues riffs, dominant--subdominant--tonic-->dominant)

I shall not ever fear of death or bane.
No, I shall not ever fear of death or bane.
'Til Burnham forest
Come to Dunsinane.

Oh, rock, Lady, rock
Rock, Lady, rock
Rock, Lady, Rock!
Down home in Dunsinane....

09 Jul 07 - 01:16 PM (#2097859)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JennyO

Oh, I thought this might have been him.

09 Jul 07 - 01:18 PM (#2097860)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: John MacKenzie

Me Thain? That's a gas man!

09 Jul 07 - 03:18 PM (#2097979)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Looks like a red oak (not of the Entish variety, however).

10 Jul 07 - 06:32 PM (#2099210)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Amazing, and absolutely unbelievable?

Former surgeon general says he was muzzled

Claims Bush administration kept him from speaking on controversial issues

Reuters
Updated: 3:51 p.m. CT July 10, 2007

WASHINGTON - The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party," Carmona added.

Carmona said Bush administration political appointees censored his speeches and kept him from talking out publicly about certain issues, including the science on embryonic stem cell research, contraceptives and his misgivings about the administration's embrace of "abstinence-only" sex education.

Carmona's comments came two days before a Senate committee is due to hold a hearing on Bush's nomination of Dr. James Holsinger as his successor. The administration allowed Carmona to finish his term as surgeon general last year without a replacement in place.

Gay rights activists and several leading Democrats have criticized Holsinger for what they see as "anti-gay" writings, but the White House has defended him as well qualified.

U.S. surgeons general in the past have issued influential reports on subjects including smoking, AIDS and mental health.

"Political interference with the work of the surgeon general appears to have reached a new level in this administration," said Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to which Carmona testified.

"The public expects that a surgeon general will be immune from political pressure and be allowed to express his or her professional views based on the best available science," he said.

Carmona said he was politically naive when he took the job, but became astounded at the partisanship and manipulation he witnessed as administration political appointees hemmed him in.

Bush in 2001 allowed federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, but only with heavy restrictions that many scientists condemn as stifling.

Carmona said the administration prevented him from voicing views on stem cell research. Many scientists see it as a promising avenue for curing many diseases. But because it involves destroying human embryos, opponents call it immoral.

Carmona said he was prevented from talking publicly even about the science underpinning the research to enable the U.S. public to have a better understanding of a complicated issue. He said most of the public debate over the matter has been driven by political, ideological or theological motivations.

"I was blocked at every turn. I was told the decision had already been made -- stand down, don't talk about it," he said.

Carmona testified with two predecessors, Dr. C. Everett Koop, who served under President Ronald Reagan, and Dr. David Satcher, named by Clinton but whose term ended under Bush.

Carmona said some of his predecessors told him, "We have never seen it as partisan, as malicious, as vindictive, as mean-spirited as it is today, and you clearly have worse than anyone's had."

©2007 Reuters Limited

John

10 Jul 07 - 09:36 PM (#2099351)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I heard an interview with him on The News Hour (PBS) this evening.

I'm not in the least bit surprised. Bush should be held criminally liable for so many of his acts as chief executive, and this is one more. Denying good health care and research because of his fundamentalist support base.

10 Jul 07 - 09:36 PM (#2099352)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

gotta do something for the big 800:

Potter Fans Beg Rowling to 'Save Harry!'

By Peter Griffiths
Reuters
Monday, July 9, 2007; 8:40 AM

LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of Harry Potter fans have signed a petition urging J.K. Rowling to keep writing novels about the boy wizard after she admitted she could "never say never" to more books.

The "Save Harry!" petition calls on Rowling to reverse her decision to end the bestselling series with the seventh and final installment, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

10 Jul 07 - 09:37 PM (#2099354)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

The Potter link is here.

11 Jul 07 - 12:47 AM (#2099459)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

(Stilly wasn't sure the count was right, so she saved a bit to get one more post in just in case?)

John

11 Jul 07 - 10:38 AM (#2099801)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Filed at 10:24 p.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- Scottish bride Teresa Brown's dream of a perfect wedding day probably did not include attacking the groom with her stiletto shoe and spending the weekend in a cell.

Police arrested the 33-year-old in the couple's hotel room in April while her wedding reception continued downstairs, prosecutor Alan Townsend said Tuesday at Aberdeen Sheriff Court. She spent the rest of her wedding weekend in a cell.

The distraught groom, Mark Allerton, 40, staggered to the front desk, clutching a bloody towel to his head, Townsend said.

''He indicated that his wife had struck him over the head with a stiletto heel,'' the prosecutor said.

Police found Brown, a real estate agent's assistant, sitting on the hotel room bed, surrounded by broken glass.

Brown told police she and her husband had ''been accusing each other of different things,'' the prosecutor said, without going into details. Brown said she hit him on the head because he had taken a hold of her, he added.

Brown's lawyer Stuart Beveridge said the newlyweds began throwing things at each other after an argument in their room turned physical. He said Brown had been on antidepressants at the time and had been drinking.

''She and her husband are still together although this incident has not helped,'' he said, adding she is receiving counseling.

11 Jul 07 - 11:24 AM (#2099832)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

No, I knew the count was right, but that 799 was perched on the edge and who knew which Mudcatter might decide this was the time to go poaching? So I didn't pause to add the link.

Moonglow went to the new movie last night. I haven't finished reading that book so we won't be able to talk about it for a little while longer.

SRS

11 Jul 07 - 12:08 PM (#2099878)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I hesitate to take the word of the attorney of this sleezy woman who appropriated a classmate's name to launch her porn career. Character assassination may hold up in court. --SRS

Woman sues porn star over name

HOUSTON -- A Houston woman has sued a former high school classmate who took her name and starred in pornographic movies.

Kristen Syvette Wimberly, 25, filed the lawsuit in Harris County District Court on June 26, asking that Lara Madden and adult-film distributor Vivid Entertainment Group stop using or publicizing her name, which Madden took as a stage name.

Madden, 25, began her adult-film career in 2004. The two met in ninth grade at Kingwood High School. According to the lawsuit, the girls "were friends but eventually that friendship ended due to conflict."

Madden has appeared in about a dozen adult films using the name Syvette Wimberly. As a result, the lawsuit says, Madden and the distributor have inflicted "humiliation, embarrassment, loss of enjoyment of life, emotional distress, mental anguish and anxiety."

Caj Boatright, the attorney for Wimberly, says her client started getting phone calls and e-mails from friends and acquaintances asking about her pornography career.

"The purpose of the lawsuit is to get her to stop using this name," Boatright said. "We're not out looking for millions of dollars."

Kent Schaffer, Madden's attorney, said his client did not choose the name to cause a problem for Wimberly or to get back at her for some old grievance. She just liked the sound of it, Schaffer said.

"There is no bad blood between them," Schaffer said. "Lara never meant to harm this other girl."

Schaffer said Madden no longer performs in pornographic films.

"She has no connection to the adult-entertainment business in any way, shape or form and has started her life over," he said. "She thought that was pretty much behind her. Then this lawsuit pops up."

The lawsuit asks for unspecified damages. But Schaffer said Madden will agree to stop using Wimberly's name if that's all Wimberly really wants.

"They'll never get a penny from her," he said. "She doesn't have any money, for one thing, but even if she did, this suit will never hold up in court. I'm not aware of any court that has upheld such a lawsuit. If I use your name to defraud somebody, that's different."

11 Jul 07 - 02:45 PM (#2100048)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Teacher Dave Barclay flew thousands of miles across the Atlantic to Wales to attend his friend's wedding, only to discover he was a year early.

Barclay, 34, was told about the wedding earlier in the year and assumed it was to take place in 2007.

It was only when he had flown into Cardiff from Toronto, Canada, and rang the bridegroom seeking details of the venue that he discovered the wedding was in 2008.

"I am a year early -- yeah, my mates are loving it, aren't they," he told BBC Radio Wales.

The groom, Dave Best, had emailed his friend at the start of the year.

"He just said July the 6th and I assumed it was this year because if you tell the guy July 6th, they're going to think it's this year," Barclay said.

Barclay, who has been teaching in Toronto for three years spent £500 ($1,015) on his premature flight.

"At least it's assured me a mention in the speech next year," he added

11 Jul 07 - 03:11 PM (#2100085)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Similar to the Scots bride who used a shoe a couple of posts back, another spouse "wasn't sure he was done" so she stuck a fork in him. ...

He's done: Wife charged with fork-stabbing

But husband insists she should not stand trial for restaurant food fight

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:26 p.m. CT July 10, 2007

PLYMOUTH, Mich. - Despite an 86-year-old man's objections, his wife will stand trial on accusations of stabbing him with a fork during a restaurant food fight.

Earlier charges against 47-year-old Kelly Campbell-Baumgartner were dropped when William Baumgartner denied he had been stabbed and said he had no interest in bringing charges against his wife.

But after another diner at the restaurant came forward, Canton Township Police and the Wayne County prosecutor's office decided to file new charges, and a judge agreed there was enough evidence to try the wife on a felonious assault charge.

"She was waving her fork at him and pointing it at him and yelling," Carl J. Schultz Jr. testified. "She was taking food off his plate with the fork and flinging it at him."

Schultz said Campbell-Baumgartner leaned across the table at the suburban Detroit restaurant April 22 and nicked her husband's face with the fork. He said he saw blood on Baumgartner's face.
On the witness stand Monday, the husband continued to stick by his wife, The Detroit News reported.

"If I am the complainant of this I have nothing to complain about," Baumgartner said. "If I am the victim, I have nothing to be the victim of."

After the testimony, District Judge Michael Gerou said there was enough evidence for a trial on the charge, which can carry up to four years in prison.

The couple left court holding hands.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

[What marinade do you use for an 86 year old guy?)

John

11 Jul 07 - 03:18 PM (#2100097)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: frogprince

Try tenderizing salt; they're really stringy.

11 Jul 07 - 04:19 PM (#2100158)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Some people get married just so they can fork each other. Now they're making it illegal??? ;>D

A

11 Jul 07 - 07:49 PM (#2100349)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

Running of the cows?

Women demand cow runs to balance Spain's San Fermin bull festival

The Associated Press
Updated: 11:53 a.m. CT July 10, 2007

MADRID, Spain - A group of women wants equality in Pamplona's San Fermin bull running festival — they are demanding cow runs.

"If the boys run ahead of the bulls, we (women) have to run with the cows. It's pure logic," said a tongue-in-cheek petition on a Spanish student Web site, www.estudiln.net.

The Web site said the initiative had received dozens of messages of support in recent days.

The anonymous group asked people to pass along the "Cows Want to Run" message to friends through their cell phones.

"Cows, like bulls have four legs too, and a natural instinct to run," the statement said.

No one at the Web site or at Pamplona town hall was immediately available for comment Tuesday.

The highlight of the San Fermin festival, which began June 29 and ends Saturday, are the 8 a.m. runs in which people test their mettle, stamina and daring by racing with six bulls along a 875-yard route from a corral to the city bullring. The bulls are fought by professional bullfighters each afternoon.

While most participants are men, a number of women also take part in the runs.

The festival in this northern town, renowned for its all-night street parties, dates back to the late 16th century. It gained worldwide fame in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises."

Since records began in 1924, 13 people have been killed in the runs. The last person killed was a 22-year-old American who was gored in 1995.

"A cow-run would fill a fundamental void: what do we women do at 8 in the morning when the boys are risking their lives?" the manifesto asked. "A little exercise after so much alcohol and food would do us no harm."

It said the introduction of a cow-run "would make our festival greater and place Pamplona at the vanguard of traditional fiestas with total equality between males and females, men and women."

© 2007 The Associated Press

[mooo oo oo oo o o o]

John

12 Jul 07 - 03:47 PM (#2100950)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Eeeyewww. . .

Beijing Steamed Buns Include Cardboard

July 12, 2007

BEIJING - Chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and flavored with fatty pork and powdered seasoning, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood, state television said. The report, aired late Wednesday on China Central Television, highlights the country's problems with food safety despite government efforts to improve the situation. Countless small, often illegally run operations exist across China and make money cutting corners by using inexpensive ingredients or unsavory substitutes. They are almost impossible to regulate.

State TV's undercover investigation features the shirtless, shorts-clad maker of the buns, called baozi, explaining the contents of the product sold in Beijing's sprawling Chaoyang district.

Baozi are a common snack in China, with an outer skin made from wheat or rice flour and and a filling of sliced pork. Cooked by steaming in immense bamboo baskets, they are similar to but usually much bigger than the dumplings found on dim sum menus familiar to many Americans. The hidden camera follows the man, whose face is not shown, into a ramshackle building where steamers are filled with the fluffy white buns, traditionally stuffed with minced pork.

The surroundings are filthy, with water puddles and piles of old furniture and cardboard on the ground. "What's in the recipe?" the reporter asks. "Six to four," the man says. "You mean 60 percent cardboard? What is the other 40 percent?" asks the reporter. "Fatty meat," the man replies.

The bun maker and his assistants then give a demonstration on how the product is made. Squares of cardboard picked from the ground are first soaked to a pulp in a plastic basin of caustic soda - a chemical base commonly used in manufacturing paper and soap - then chopped into tiny morsels with a cleaver. Fatty pork and powdered seasoning are stirred in.

Soon, steaming servings of the buns appear on the screen. The reporter takes a bite. "This baozi filling is kind of tough. Not much taste," he says. "Can other people taste the difference?"

"Most people can't. It fools the average person," the maker says. "I don't eat them myself."

The police eventually showed up and shut down the operation.

12 Jul 07 - 04:22 PM (#2100973)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

It was reported earlier above that the former BMFWIC who ran China's food and drug oversight agency was sentenced to be executed for taking bribes to allow internal distribution and export of defective and/or contaminated products.

The recent report, within the last few days, is that the execution has been performed.

Despite much publicity about "strong actions" being taken by China to improve food and drug quality, there is little optimism about a quick turnaround of a system that's non-existent in much of the country, and totally corrupt in the rest.

A recent "sidebar" concern is whether they can assure that athletes attending the pending Olympics can be provided with food that will not contaminate them under Olympic drug testing rules.

John

12 Jul 07 - 04:45 PM (#2100999)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

This is kind of like trying to improve the nation's sex life by executing a rapist or something. It's great they want to make things better but the causal chain seems...um...kinky to me.

A

13 Jul 07 - 04:04 PM (#2101901)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Charley Noble

Officers said James Coldwell (The leaf-covered bank robber), 49, was arrested early Sunday at his Manchester home and charged with robbery. Arraignment was not expected until Monday.

This story is beginning to make sense to me now:

The bank he robbed was a "branch office"

And he was arrested trying to "leave" his house.

No doubt, he is now "pining away" in a jail cell.

One wonders if his "bark" was as bad as his bite.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

14 Jul 07 - 11:11 AM (#2102428)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Good thing he didn't get near these guys--they'd have seen through his disguise with a couple of chews.

Goat vs. mower: UW-Bothell tries experiment
(from the Herald (Everett, WA) 7/14/07) link

BOTHELL - The brown, black and white goats didn't notice their audience Thursday as they munched the thorny blackberry bushes on the hill behind the library at the University of Washington's Bothell campus. Human visitors wandered up to the orange electric fence for a closer look at the unusual gardeners, brought in by the university and Cascadia Community College to control the pesky bushes.

The headstrong herd was up to the challenge. "They're tough little guys," said Joe Marchand, a gardener at the campus. "We're getting a lot of attention. A lot of people are coming up to check them out." The university and the community college teamed up to bring in the goats to control the blackberry bushes growing mainly behind the library.

If it works, they hope to use the goats for other lawn care projects. "We're experimenting to see how well they perform," Marchand said. "It seems like they're really knocking it back quickly."

The 60 goats are from a Vashon-based business called Rent-a-Ruminant. They arrived in Bothell on Wednesday evening and are scheduled to keep munching until Tuesday or Wednesday. Rent-A-Ruminant charges $750 a day plus a $200 fee for traveling and setting up the goats. While munching, the goats are corralled in a portable fence, which has a low-voltage charge.

If the experiment is successful, the university and community college will consider using the goats for controlling weeds and lawn maintenance, Marchand said. The idea of using the goats was to reduce the amount of fuel-burning equipment used on the campus and fits in with the university's efforts to be easier on the environment. The campus has been herbicide-free since July 2006 and practices organic methods of weed removal. The campus also creates and uses its own compost.

Before the goats, workers with weed trimmers hacked away at the blackberry bushes, Marchand said. The work was intense and very time consuming. Working on an uneven slope with the trimmers also was a safety issue. And the stinging nettles and prickly blackberry bushes weren't a treat for workers either, he added. Many were thankful the goats took over the job. "We were like 'Yippee, we don't have to do it!'" Marchand said. "They're just continuous eating machines."

The herd's owner, Tammy Dunakin, started with 10 goats 21/2 years ago. Today, she has 100. Each goat has a name and a distinct personality, she said. Dunakin is even trying her hand at breeding goats specifically for vegetation management.

Goats are well suited for the work because they can continuously eat a variety of weeds. "I like to say they're just eatin', poopin' machines," she said. The invasive Himalayan blackberry growing on campus is a favorite among Dunakin's herd. "How they eat thorny stuff like blackberry is a mystery to me," Dunakin said. "Their mouths never get hurt. They literally suck down the blackberry cane like it's spaghetti."

16 Jul 07 - 09:58 AM (#2104157)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

BEIJING, July 16 (Reuters) - Live rats are being trucked from central China, suffering a plague of a reported 2 billion rodents displaced by a flooded lake, to the south to end up in restaurant dishes, Chinese media reported.

Rats had been doing a roaring trade thanks to strong supply over the last two weeks, the China News Service quoted vendors as saying.

"Recently there have been a lot of rats... Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good," it quoted a vendor as saying, referring to the capital of Guangdong province, where people are reputed to eat anything that moves.

Some vendors, who declined to reveal their names, had asked people from a village in Hunan province, near Dongting Lake, to sell them live rats, the Beijing News said on Monday.

"The buyers offered 6 yuan for a kg, but as to where they will sell the rats, they would not say," the newspaper quoted a local resident as saying, adding that villagers had to catch the rats alive.

"If we want to do that, there is no problem. We could catch 150 kg of rats in one night...but we will not do this against our conscience," the villager was quoted as saying.

Some Guangdong restaurants were promoting "rat banquets", charging 136 yuan ($18) for one kg of rat meat, the newspaper said.

18 Jul 07 - 09:36 AM (#2105879)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Alice

Singer killed while singing in bar
Suspected shooter kills self before capture

By The Associated Press
LARAMIE - A military sharpshooter accused of killing his estranged wife as she sang at a bar died Tuesday night after being found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, police said.
David Munis was found by a search team shortly before 8 p.m. and was flown to Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie, where he was pronounced dead, said Cheyenne police Lt. Mark Munari.
He apparently shot himself as searchers closed in on him, Munari said.
Authorities had been looking for Munis, 36, in a canyon area north of Laramie near where his pickup was spotted late Monday. He was found in a trailer about 15 miles north of Laramie, near where police had been searching, Munari said.

Munis' estranged wife, Robin Munis, 40, was singing with a classic-rock and country group at the Old Chicago restaurant and bar early Saturday when a bullet pierced a plate glass door and hit her in the head, killing her.
Witnesses at the hospital where Munis was taken said they saw a body covered in a tarp being taken out of a helicopter.
"We were standing outside, and we saw a helicopter come in pretty fast and land," said Evan Maurer, who was helping to install networking and telephone lines at the emergency room. "About eight guys in fatigues, looked like National Guardsman or Army, jumped out with M-16s.
"They grabbed a body out of the copter and started carrying it," Maurer said.
Munis was charged with first-degree murder earlier Tuesday.
The Munises were recently separated. Robin Munis had contacted police just hours before the shooting to complain that her husband was making harassing calls to her cell phone.
Investigators said it was unclear whether the shot that killed her came from the restaurant parking lot, about 25 yards away, or from an open green space, roughly 100 yards off.
Witnesses told police that a pickup truck matching the one owned by David Munis was seen leaving the scene.
A handwritten note of about six pages, addressed to "Everyone," was found at Munis' home, police said Tuesday. "I'm calling it a near-confession," Cheyenne police Capt. Jeff Schulz said. "He does not come out and say, 'I did it.' "
The police spokesman would not give details.
Munis had been a member of the Wyoming Army National Guard since 2003, was previously in the Army and was a 2001 graduate of the Army Sniper School at Fort Benning, Ga., according to the National Guard.
Munis was assigned to an infantry regiment at Fort Campbell, Ky., according to Lt. Col. Kevin V. Arata, public-affairs officer with the U.S. Army Human Resources Command. Arata said he couldn't determine from Munis' military records if he was ever in combat.
Dozens of law enforcement officers, some armed with automatic weapons, took part in the search for Munis. The searchers were preparing for a long manhunt.
During the search, police assumed that Munis had at least one high-powered rifle with him, as well as a handgun and two canteens. Cartridges for a .257 Weatherby - a high-powered rifle - were found scattered inside and outside the truck. Also, police found a handgun case inside the truck.
Police loaded the black and silver Dodge Dakota with National Guard plates onto a flatbed tow truck and hauled it back to Cheyenne.
A tip around 8 p.m. Monday led deputies to the truck off Roger Canyon Road, about 10 miles northeast of Laramie. The paved, two-lane road meanders past several rural homes before turning to dirt and climbing into the Laramie Range.
The search began in a five-mile radius of where the pickup was found.
Munari said about 60 police, deputies and state agents were involved. They split into four-person teams and picked their way through sagebrush and scattered ponderosa pine. They were aided by two Black Hawk helicopters that were being used to search for Munis from the air and to move searchers.
The helicopters flew in low, tight loops near a staging area. At one point, four heavily armed Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers walked down from the hills and beyond a roadblock set up on the road.
The searchers had police dogs helping them.
Robin Munis' brother, Art Werner, declined to comment on his sister's death when reached Tuesday at their parents' home in Clarksville, Tenn.
He said her funeral service had not been set.

18 Jul 07 - 01:17 PM (#2106027)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I read that last night, Alice. Is this someone you know?

Meanwhile, this one makes me feel claustrophoic just reading it:

Burglary suspect gets self caught in pipe
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

A burglary suspect who crawled into a 24-inch storm-sewer pipe with Denton police officers in pursuit Tuesday morning was dragged out hours later after water department crews dug a hole into the pipe, authorities said.

Police got a call about 9:30 a.m. from a resident in the 500 block of South Bell Street saying a burglar was inside his home, said Officer Jim Bryan, a Denton police spokesman. When officers arrived, a man jumped from a back window and led the officers on a foot chase that lasted about 10 minutes before the man climbed into the pipe in a drainage canal in the 700 block of South Locust Street, Bryan said.

"He scooted down that pipe and the last we saw of him was his backside going down the pipe," Bryan said. Officers waited for the man to come out, but when he didn't, they called the city's water department.

Water crews and Denton firefighters tried to put cameras horizontally into the pipe but were blocked by mud and debris, Bryan said. Then, they dug three holes down from the surface, cutting into the pipe and inserting the camera to look for the man. They eventually saw his feet more than 300 feet from where he entered the pipe, Bryan said.

It was night before officers pulled the man out through one of the holes, Bryan said. The man was treated at Denton Regional Medical Center and released into police custody, Bryan said. The man was in the Denton City Jail late Tuesday facing a charge of evading arrest.

18 Jul 07 - 02:20 PM (#2106094)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Wesley S

From my old hometown of Largo Florida:

CNN:

LARGO, Fla. - A 38-year-old man was arrested after he called 911 and told a dispatcher he was surrounded by police officers and needed help, authorities said.

Police officers met Dana Farrell Shelton after being called to investigate a disturbance at a bar on Sunday but had found no problems and told him to move along.

Shelton, who officers said appeared intoxicated, then called 911 to report he was "surrounded by Largo police," according to an arrest affidavit.

"Our officers were standing there scratching their heads. He called, standing there in their presence," Largo Sgt. Melanie Holley said. "It's one of our 'truth is stranger than fiction' cases."

Shelton was charged with misdemeanor misuse of 911. The charge carries maximum penalties of one year in jail and $1,000 in fines.

18 Jul 07 - 02:40 PM (#2106113)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

"Hello, I need help!! I'm surrounded by Largo policemen!!...What? YEah, sure....wha'everr...Shargeant? Here--she wantsh tuh talk to yah...".

Wodda crackup. Talk about a self-referential loop!

Isn't it wonderful what alcohol does to the human mind?

A

18 Jul 07 - 02:52 PM (#2106116)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Wesley S

I believe it's also known as "liquid courage".

18 Jul 07 - 04:56 PM (#2106198)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

The full article is too long to post (IMO) even here, but the Washington Post claims to have been given a "secret list" of meetings and appointments prior to release of the new Bush Administration's "new energy policy."

Some names are included in the article, although the commentary is pretty much a "whitewash" of the effect from meetings held in secret with "energy industry people" to the exclusion of everyone else.

And it only took six years for the "truth" to come out(?).

Energy firms' role in policy?

[quote: introductory bit]

Many meetings held with companies before environmentalists approached

By Michael Abramowitz and Steven Mufson
The Washington Post
Updated: 4:53 a.m. CT July 18, 2007

At 10 a.m. on April 4, 2001, representatives of 13 environmental groups were brought into the Old Executive Office Building for a long-anticipated meeting. Since late January, a task force headed by Vice President Cheney had been busy drawing up a new national energy policy, and the groups were getting their one chance to be heard.
Cheney was not there, but so many environmentalists were in the room that introductions took up "about half the meeting," recalled Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth. Anna Aurilio of the U.S. Public Interest Group said, "It was clear to us that they were just being nice to us."

A confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress.

Names long withheld

In all, about 300 groups and individuals met with staff members of the energy task force, including a handful who saw Cheney himself, according to the list, which was compiled in the summer of 2001. For six years, those names have been a closely guarded secret, thanks to a fierce legal battle waged by the White House. Some names have leaked out over the years, but most have remained hidden because of a 2004 Supreme Court ruling that agreed that the administration's internal deliberations ought to be shielded from outside scrutiny.

[end quote]

More at the link.

John

19 Jul 07 - 01:25 PM (#2106962)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Whoosh!

Swedish Woman Gets Superfast Internet
July 19, 2007

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg's 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said.

In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download a full-length movie on her home computer - many thousand times faster than most residential connections, said Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the Karlstad city network unit. Jonsson and Lothberg's son, Peter, worked together to install the connection.

The speed is reached using a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers placed up to 1,240 miles apart, without any transponders in between, Jonsson said. "We wanted to show that that there are no limitations to Internet speed," he said.

Peter Lothberg, who is a networking expert, said he wanted to demonstrate the new technology while providing a computer link for his mother. "She's a brand-new Internet user," Lothberg said by phone from California, where he lives. "She didn't even have a computer before."

His mother isn't exactly making the most of her high-speed connection. She only uses it to read Web-based newspapers.

19 Jul 07 - 09:17 PM (#2107305)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Donuel

Oberman

It is one of the great, dark, evil lessons, of history.

A country — a government — a military machine — can screw up a war seven ways to Sunday. It can get thousands of its people killed. It can risk the safety of its citizens. It can destroy the fabric of its nation.

But as long as it can identify a scapegoat, it can regain or even gain power.

The Bush administration has opened this Pandora's Box about Iraq. It has found its scapegoats: Hillary Clinton and us.

The lies and terror tactics with which it deluded this country into war — they had nothing to do with the abomination that Iraq has become. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.

The selection of the wrong war, in the wrong time, in the wrong place — the most disastrous geopolitical tactic since Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in 1914 and destroyed itself in the process — that had nothing to do with the overwhelming crisis Iraq has become. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.

The criminal lack of planning for the war — the total "jump-off-a-bridge-and-hope-you-can-fly" tone to the failure to anticipate what would follow the deposing of Saddam Hussein — that had nothing to do with the chaos in which Iraq has been enveloped. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.

The utter, blinkered idiocy of "staying the course," of sending Americans to Iraq and sending them a second time, and a third and a fourth, until they get killed or maimed — the utter de-prioritization of human life, simply so a politician can avoid having to admit a mistake — that had nothing to do with the tens of thousand individual tragedies darkening the lives of American families, forever. It isn't Mr. Bush's fault.

The continuing, relentless, remorseless, corrupt and cynical insistence that this conflict somehow is defeating or containing or just engaging the people who attacked us on 9/11, the total "Alice Through the Looking Glass" quality that ignores that in Iraq, we have made the world safer for al-Qaida — it isn't Mr. Bush's fault!

The fault, brought down, as if a sermon from this mount of hypocrisy and slaughter by a nearly anonymous undersecretary of defense, has tonight been laid on the doorstep of... Sen. Hillary Clinton and, by extension, at the doorstep of every American — the now-vast majority of us — who have dared to criticize this war or protest it or merely ask questions about it or simply, plaintively, innocently, honestly, plead, "Don't take my son; don't take my daughter."

Sen. Clinton has been sent — and someone has leaked to The Associated Press — a letter, sent in reply to hers asking if there exists an actual plan for evacuating U.S. troops from Iraq.

This extraordinary document was written by an undersecretary of defense named Eric Edelman.

"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq," Edelman writes, "reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia."

Edelman adds: "Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."

A spokesman for the senator says Mr. Edelman's remarks are "at once both outrageous and dangerous." Those terms are entirely appropriate and may, in fact, understate the risk the Edelman letter poses to our way of life and all that our fighting men and women are risking, have risked, and have lost, in Iraq.

After the South was defeated in our Civil War, the scapegoat was Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and the ideas of the "Lost Cause" and "Jim Crow" were born.

After the French were beaten by the Prussians in 1870 and 1871, it was the imaginary "Jewish influence" in the French Army general staff, and there was born 30 years of self-destructive anti-Semitism, culminating in the horrific Dreyfus case.

After the Germans lost the First World War, it was the "back-stabbers and profiteers" at home, on whose lives the National Socialists rose to prominence in the succeeding decades and whose accused membership eventually wound up in torture chambers and death camps.

And after the generation before ours, and leaders of both political parties, escalated and re-escalated and carpet-bombed and re-carpet-bombed Vietnam, it was the protest movement
and Jane Fonda and — as late as just three years ago — Sen. John Kerry who were assigned the kind of blame with which no rational human being could concur, and yet which still, across vast sections of our political landscape, resonates unchallenged and accepted.

And now Mr. Bush, you have picked out your own Jefferson Davis, your own Dreyfus, your own "profiteer" — your own scapegoat.

Not for the sake of this country.

Not for the sake of Iraq.

Not even for the sake of your own political party.

But for the sake of your own personal place in history.

But in reaching for that place, you have guaranteed yourself tonight not honor, but infamy.

In fact, you have condemned yourself to a place among that remarkably small group of Americans whom Americans cannot forgive: those who have sold this country out and who have willingly declared their enmity to the people at whose pleasure they supposedly serve.

A scapegoat, sir, might be forgivable, if you hadn't just happened to choose a prospective presidential nominee of the opposition party.

And the accusation of spreading "enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia" might be some day atoned for, if we all didn't know — you included, and your generals and the Iraqis — that we are leaving Iraq, and sooner rather than later, and we are doing it even if to do so requires, first, that you must be impeached and removed as president of the United States, sooner rather than later.

You have set this government at war against its own people and then blamed those very people when they say, "Enough."

And thus it crystallizes, Mr. Bush.

When Civil War Gen. Ambrose Burnside ordered a disastrous attack on Fredericksburg in which 12,000 of his men were killed, he had to be physically restrained from leading the next charge himself.

After the First Lord of the British Admiralty, Winston Churchill, authored and enabled the disastrous Gallipoli campaign that saw a quarter-million Allied soldiers cut down in the First World War, Churchill resigned his office and took a commission as a front-line officer in the trenches of France.

Those are your new role models, Mr. Bush.

Let your minions try to spread the blame to the real patriots here, who have sought only to undo the horrors you have wrought since 2002.

Let them try it, until the end of time.

Though the words might be erased from a million books and a billion memories, though the world be covered knee-deep in your lies, the truth shall prevail.

This, sir, is your war.

Sen. Clinton has reinforced enemy propaganda? Made it impossible for you to get your ego-driven, blood-steeped win in Iraq?

Then take it into your own hands, Mr. Bush.

Go to Baghdad now and fulfill, finally, your military service obligations.

Go there and fight, your war. Yourself.

19 Jul 07 - 10:25 PM (#2107320)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

Before I read that long post, tell us where it comes from, please? A citation is usually helpful.

19 Jul 07 - 10:28 PM (#2107323)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

My bad. I didn't send one on my last post (when I pick them up from the Earthlink home page the links won't live long, so I usually go find the article in some normal news source and print that.

Fast Internet service.

19 Jul 07 - 10:34 PM (#2107325)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

SPECIAL COMMENT By Keith Olbermann Anchor, 'Countdown' MSNBC

I found Donuel's even if Donuel can't spell his name right. (Has anyone noticed he makes more typos when he gets onto something good.)

John

21 Jul 07 - 02:28 PM (#2108264)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Cicada invasion overwhelms predators
5 July 2007
by Christina Zdanowicz
Cosmos Online

A remarkable plague of cicadas has been unleashed on Chicago. The insects emerge briefly once every 17 years and can reach densities of 1.5 million an acre.

Raking thousands of squirming cicadas from beneath an old ash tree in our yard, I watched my father ditch his rake for a snow shovel. He scooped hordes of the earthy-smelling insects and their vacant shells into a nearby bin, but froze when he heard me scream. My five-year-old self was terrified, because a cicada had plummeted from the tree and hit me square on the head.

Now, 17 years later, the brood of insects is back again in my home town – Glenview, near Chicago in the U.S. – but this time I'm more fascinated than frightened.

The deafening chirps of males and the clicking wings of females in the trees are choking out the sound of nature all over again. At densities of up to 150 to 200 cicadas per square metre – or 1.5 million individuals an acre – these crunchy black insects with orange wings and red eyes, provide a feeding bonanza for birds and other predators.

These countless insects burst out of their underground slumbers with one mission in mind: to mate.

Timing it just right, three species of Magicicada cicadas have been invading the greater Chicago area over the last month. They are all part of the same brood, the Northern Illinois Brood (or Brood XIII according to naming convention), and they began popping out of the soil when it reached 17.8°C in late May.

More questions than answers

While other cicadas are found worldwide from Europe to Australia, these periodical cicadas – which emerge every 17 or 13 years depending on the brood – are endemic to the east of the U.S., says biologist Gene Kritsky of the College of Mount Saint Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. Out of the 3,000 known cicada species, only seven engage in this unusual periodicity.

Though they resemble locusts in appearance and swarming behaviour, they are more closely related to aphids.

Periodical cicadas have intrigued scientists for hundreds of years, and we still understand little about them. "Why 17 years? Why not overlapping broods? Why don't they all come out the same year throughout the entire U.S.?" queries Phil Nixon, an entomologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana. "All of these things we don't know."

21 Jul 07 - 03:51 PM (#2108307)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I've been mid-summer camping in Arkansas in the Lake Ouachita area and at night when you're walking from your tent to the restrooms you can hardly hear each other talk for the incredible din of the insects all around. More than just cicadas--everything has a high-decible call. Amazing!

SRS

23 Jul 07 - 11:40 AM (#2109294)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

I think I'll pick up The Trip to Bountiful from the library. Seems to be a Texas tradition. . .

From today's Star-Telegram

95-year-old makes long journey

A 95-year-old man with cancer was reported missing Sunday morning from his home in Garland, but police learned that he journeyed nearly 200 miles to his old home in Nacogdoches where he was found Sunday night.

John Lewis was last seen 6:30 a.m. Sunday at his home in northeast Garland, said Officer Joe Harn, police spokesman.

But Lewis' relatives in Nacogdoches notified police that he turned up at his old home after a 200-mile bus trip, Harn said.

"His physical condition has been checked and he appears to be doing as well as can be expected for the condition that he is currently in with his cancer," Harn said.

23 Jul 07 - 06:58 PM (#2109609)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

You can't blame the poor guy for wanting to get out of Dallas (where Garland is a suburb).

Did anyone take him for a ride to let him see his old home town before they shipped the poor guy back home? And was his old girl friend there when he arrived? (A gentleman would never tell, of course.)

The real question is why no one knew he wanted to visit, and he wasn't offered a ride by a friend or relative.

John

23 Jul 07 - 09:23 PM (#2109700)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS(?)

Soccer players show signs of brain shrinkage

Small study suggests sport carries risk of long-term brain injury

Reuters
Updated: 2:34 p.m. CT July 23, 2007

College-age soccer players may show some degree of brain-tissue shrinkage, a small study has found — adding to evidence that the sport carries a risk of long-term brain injury.

Using high-resolution MRI brain scans, researchers found evidence of reduced gray matter in the brains of 10 male college soccer players, compared with 10 young men who had never played the sport.

Gray matter refers to the brain tissue that controls thinking and memory. The significance of the relatively smaller gray matter volume and density seen in these players is not yet clear, the researchers say.

However, some past studies have found that professional and even college-age soccer players are more likely to show problems with memory and attention than non-players.

Among players in the current study, reduced gray matter was seen in a part of the brain called the anterior temporal cortex — which is consistent with effects from repeated knocks to the front of the head, John Adams and colleagues at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Ohio report in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine.

Like many other sports, soccer carries some risk of concussion, from players colliding with each other or with the ground, for instance. Multiple concussions over time can cause brain damage.

It's still a matter of debate, though, whether the ordinary knocks involved in "heading" the soccer ball raise the risk of brain injury.
Of the 10 soccer players in the current study, only 2 said they'd suffered a mild concussion in the past, while none reported a history of serious head injury. It's impossible to tell exactly why the players showed relatively less gray matter than the comparison group.

"I'd be very reluctant to ascribe this purely to heading," said study co-author Dr. Caleb Adler, an assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
The bottom line, he told Reuters Health, is that while these findings are preliminary, they add to evidence that soccer is "not an entirely benign sport."

"Any activity is a balance of risk and benefits," Adler said.
Some youth soccer leagues ban heading before a certain age, he noted. But further safety measures, including head gear that would lessen the impact of any knock to the head, might be warranted, he said.
More research, Adler said, is needed to flesh out the potential long-term brain injury risks associated with soccer.

Copyright 2007 Reuters

23 Jul 07 - 10:29 PM (#2109725)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Amos

Station spacewalkers throw old hardware overboard
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: July 23, 2007
Perched on the end of the space station's robot arm directly below the international lab complex, astronaut Clay Anderson threw a refrigerator-size ammonia tank overboard today, pushing the 1,400-pound early ammonia servicer away behind the station to clear the way for future assembly work.

Credit: NASA TV

"We've got good downlink, we're solid here on the ground, everybody is go," astronaut Chris Cassidy radioed from mission control in Houston. "Jettison on your call."

"All right, let's give her a whirl, shall we?" Anderson replied. "All right, leaning back... here goes forward, jettison! It's (tumbling) about 180 degrees in 10 seconds and it's mostly a negative pitch with a slight right roll bias."

"Nice work," Cassidy said.

Dramatic video from the station showed the ammonia tank, clad in white insulation blankets, slowly tumbling away behind the station as the outpost sailed high above the Atlantic Ocean off the southeast coast of Brazil. Anderson's goal was to impart a departure velocity of about 1 mph. ...

Rest of story.

24 Jul 07 - 12:34 AM (#2109772)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: Stilly River Sage

You'd think, an agency on as shaky ground as they are, doesn't need to be making a big deal about littering. Know what I mean? It's like bragging about knocking out the upper story windows in abandoned house with a rock from clear across the street. Just because you CAN do it doesn't mean you should. Bad form.

27 Jul 07 - 08:21 AM (#2112520)
Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
From: JohnInKansas

U.S. fined millions over convictions

Judge finds FBI withheld evidence of 4 men's innocence in 1965 murder trial

The Associated Press
Updated: 8:52 p.m. CT July 26, 2007

BOSTON - In a stinging rebuke of the FBI, a federal judge on Thursday ordered the government to pay a record judgment of nearly $102 million because agents withheld evidence that would have kept four men from spending decades in prison for a mob murder they did not commit.

Judge Nancy Gertner told a packed courtroom that agents were trying to protect informants when they encouraged a witness to lie, then withheld evidence they knew could prove the four men were not involved in the murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan, a small-time thug shot in an alley.

Gertner said Boston FBI agents knew mob hitman Joseph "The Animal" Barboza lied when he named Joseph Salvati, Peter Limone, Henry Tameleo and Louis Greco as Deegan's killers. She said the FBI considered the four "collateral damage" in its war against the Mafia, the bureau's top priority in the 1960s.

Tameleo and Greco died behind bars, and Salvati and Li`mone spent three decades in prison before they were exonerated in 2001. Salvati, Limone and the families of the other men sued the federal government for malicious prosecution.

"Do I want the money? Yes, I want my children, my grandchildren to have things I didn't have, but nothing can compensate for what they've done," said Salvati, 75.

"It's been a long time coming," said Limone, 73. "What I've been through — I hope it never happens to anyone else."

The latest in a string

The case is only the latest to highlight the cozy relationship Boston mobsters enjoyed with FBI agents for decades. Former Boston agent John Connolly was sentenced in 2002 to 10 years in prison for his role in protecting two organized crime kingpins, including one who remains a fugitive.

Gertner said FBI agents Dennis Condon and H. Paul Rico not only withheld evidence of Barboza's lie, but told state prosecutors who were handling the Deegan murder investigation that they had checked out Barboza's story and it was true.

"The FBI's misconduct was clearly the sole cause of this conviction," the judge said.

The government had argued federal authorities had no duty to share information with state officials who prosecuted the men. Federal authorities cannot be held responsible for the results of a state prosecution, a Justice Department lawyer said.

Gertner rejected that argument.

"The government's position is, in a word, absurd," she said.

A Boston FBI spokeswoman referred calls to the Department of Justice. Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said officials would have no immediate comment.

[More at the link]

John

Thread closed because it was a target for a heavy barrage of Spam. If you'd like to continue the discussion, please start a new thread.
Thanks.
-Joe Offer-