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BS: I Read it in the Newspaper
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Amos Date: 11 Jul 07 - 10:38 AM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 11 Jul 07 - 11:24 AM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 11 Jul 07 - 12:08 PM 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." |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Amos Date: 11 Jul 07 - 02:45 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: JohnInKansas Date: 11 Jul 07 - 03:11 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: frogprince Date: 11 Jul 07 - 03:18 PM Try tenderizing salt; they're really stringy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Amos Date: 11 Jul 07 - 04:19 PM Some people get married just so they can fork each other. Now they're making it illegal??? ;>D A |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: JohnInKansas Date: 11 Jul 07 - 07:49 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 12 Jul 07 - 03:47 PM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: JohnInKansas Date: 12 Jul 07 - 04:22 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Amos Date: 12 Jul 07 - 04:45 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Charley Noble Date: 13 Jul 07 - 04:04 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 14 Jul 07 - 11:11 AM 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." |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Amos Date: 16 Jul 07 - 09:58 AM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Alice Date: 18 Jul 07 - 09:36 AM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 18 Jul 07 - 01:17 PM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Wesley S Date: 18 Jul 07 - 02:20 PM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Amos Date: 18 Jul 07 - 02:40 PM "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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Wesley S Date: 18 Jul 07 - 02:52 PM I believe it's also known as "liquid courage". |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: JohnInKansas Date: 18 Jul 07 - 04:56 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 19 Jul 07 - 01:25 PM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Donuel Date: 19 Jul 07 - 09:17 PM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 19 Jul 07 - 10:25 PM Before I read that long post, tell us where it comes from, please? A citation is usually helpful. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 19 Jul 07 - 10:28 PM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: JohnInKansas Date: 19 Jul 07 - 10:34 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Amos Date: 21 Jul 07 - 02:28 PM 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." |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 21 Jul 07 - 03:51 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 23 Jul 07 - 11:40 AM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: JohnInKansas Date: 23 Jul 07 - 06:58 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: JohnInKansas Date: 23 Jul 07 - 09:23 PM 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 |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Amos Date: 23 Jul 07 - 10:29 PM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: Stilly River Sage Date: 24 Jul 07 - 12:34 AM 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. |
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Subject: RE: BS: I Read it in the Newspaper From: JohnInKansas Date: 27 Jul 07 - 08:21 AM 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
Thanks. -Joe Offer- Click for continuation thread |