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Superman's debut comic book sells for super-record price.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100222/ap_en_ot/us_superman_first_issue
Wall in Jerusalem excavated in support of the bible accounts
It would be cool to be an archeologist.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_israel_ancient_wall
Loveless marriage ban. Funny from the onion...
http://video.yahoo.com/network/100284668?v=7031105&l=4418225
What it takes to keep Oasis afloat
http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr257/lionoflionsman/Picture3-1.png
The ship is five times the size of Titanic.
More...
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/109001/what-it-takes-to-keep-a-city-afloat?mod=family-travel
Raining Fish (http://www.news.com.au/national/its-raining-fish-in-the-northern-territory-report/story-e6frfkvr-1225835295781)
Deep Sea Creature Surfaces, Causes Stir
Includes link to pictures, wow.
Think sharks are scary? They're downright cuddly compared to the Bathynomus giganteus, a very terrifying (and very real) sea creature that recently surfaced from the deep. More.....
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93524?fp=1
Apocalipstic
03-31-2010, 04:49 PM
Deep Sea Creature Surfaces, Causes Stir
Includes link to pictures, wow.
Think sharks are scary? They're downright cuddly compared to the Bathynomus giganteus, a very terrifying (and very real) sea creature that recently surfaced from the deep. More.....
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93524?fp=1
It looks like the love child of an armadillo and a cockroach.
The Vanishing Aral Sea; Shocking Disaster
The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the planet's most shocking environmental disasters, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday as he urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem.
More....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100404/ap_on_re_as/as_un_central_asia
Surgery scheduled for boy with extra fingers and toes
http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr257/lionoflionsman/Picture2-6.png
GLOBAL WARMING GREAT FOR TREES
http://news.yahoo.com/video/environment-15749659/19147410
A New Look at the Sun
New footage of the sun may help scientists better understand climate change.
Video of incredible pictures of the sun as it really looks close-up.....
http://news.yahoo.com/video/environment-15749659/19271005
Endangered pre-historic sturgeon fish make a comeback
It's been a tough fight for the whisker-snouted sturgeon.
The fish survived whatever killed the dinosaurs and have struggled against habitat destruction and overfishing.
Now many of its 25 species are endangered, but a small pocket in upper Wisconsin boasts
of having one of the world's largest concentrations of the fish.
More....video and pics
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_saving_sturgeon
Cyclopea
04-23-2010, 03:30 PM
From The Idaho Statesman:
Death of 'Caveman' ends an era in Idaho
Richard Zimmerman, known to all as Dugout Dick, succumbs at 94
BY TIM WOODWARD 04/23/10
Born Richard Zimmerman, he was the last of Idaho's legendary loners. Zimmerman died Wednesday.
Known as the "Salmon River Caveman," Richard Zimmerman lived an essentially 19th century lifestyle, a digital-age anachronism who never owned a telephone or a television and lived almost entirely off the land.
"He was in his home at the caves at the end, and it was his wish to die there," said Connie Fitte, who lived across the river. "He was the epitome of the free spirit."
Richard Zimmerman had been in declining health when he died Wednesday.
Few knew him by his given name. To friends and visitors to his jumble of cave-like homes scrabbled from a rocky shoulder of the Salmon River, he was Dugout Dick.
He was the last of Idaho's river-canyon loners that date back to Territorial days. They are a unique group that until the 1980s included canyon contemporaries with names like Beaver Dick, Cougar Dave and Wheelbarrow Annie, "Buckskin Bill" (real name Sylvan Hart) and "Free Press Frances" Wisner. Fiercely independent loners, they lived eccentric lives on their own terms and made the state more interesting just by being here.
Most, like Zimmerman, came from someplace else. Drawn by Idaho's remoteness and wild places removed from social pressures, they came and spent their lives here, leaving only in death.
Some became reluctant celebrities, interviewed about their unusual lifestyles and courted by media heavyweights. Zimmerman was featured in National Geographic magazine and spurned repeated invitations to appear on the "Tonight Show."
"I ride Greyhounds, not airplanes," he said in a 1993 Statesman interview. "Besides, the show isn't in California. The show is here."
Cort Conley, who included Zimmerman in his 1994 book "Idaho Loners", said that "like Thoreau, he often must have smiled at how much he didn't need. É What gave him uncommon grace and dignity for me were his spiritual life, his musical artistry, his unperturbed acceptance of life as it is, and being a WWII veteran who had served his country and harbored no expectations in return."
His metamorphisis to Dugout Dick began when he crossed a wooden bridge over the Salmon River in 1947 and built a makeshift home on the side of a hill. He spent the rest of his life there, fashioning one cavelike dwelling after another, furnishing them with castoff doors, car windows, old tires and other leavings.
"I have everything here," he said. "I got lots of rocks and rubber tires. I have plenty of straw and fruit and vegetables, my dog and my cats and my guitars. I make wine to cook with. There's nothing I really need."
Some of his caves were 60 feet deep. Though he "never meant to build an apartment house," he earned spending money by renting them for $2 a night. Some renters spent one night; others chose the $25 monthly rate and stayed for months or years.
He lived in a cave by choice. Moved by a friend to a care center in Salmon at age 93 because he was in failing health, he walked out and hitchhiked home.
Bruce Long, who rented one of his caves and looked after him, said the care center "had bingo and TV, but things like that held no interest for him. He just wanted to live in his cave.
"People said he was the only person they'd ever known who was absolutely self-sufficient. He didn't work for anybody. He worked for himself."
Born in Indiana in 1916, Zimmerman grew up on farms in Indiana and Michigan, the son of a moonshiner with a mean streak. He rebelled against his domineering father and ran away at a young age, riding the rails west and learning the hobo songs he later would play on a battered guitar for guests at his caves.
He punched cows and worked as a farmhand, settling in Idaho's Lemhi Valley in 1937 and making ends meet by cutting firewood and herding sheep. In 1942, he joined the Army and served as a truck driver in the Pacific during World War II. When his service ended, he returned to Idaho and never left.
He raised goats and chickens, tended a bountiful vegetable garden and orchard and stored what he couldn't eat or sell in a root cellar. A lifelong victim of a quarrelsome stomach, he survived largely on what he could grow or make. Homemade yogurt ranked among his proudest achievements.
He was married once, briefly, to a pen-pal bride from Mexico. The other woman in his life, Bonnie Trositt, tired of life in a cave, left him for a job as a potato sorter and was murdered by her roommate. He claimed to see her spirit in the flickering light of a kerosene lamp on the cave walls.
He rarely went to church, but read and quoted continually from the Bible.
Services are pending. A brother, Raymond Zimmerman, has requested that his remains be sent to Illinois.
Read more: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/04/23/1164899/death-of-caveman-ends-an-era-in.html#ixzz0lxcew600
KD53LVjXIHs
The country's most polluted cities in 2010
http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/americas-most-polluted-cities-2010
betenoire
04-30-2010, 11:19 PM
Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)
Nicholas Cage buys himself a pyramid...amid.....financial woes....
Full story....
http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/a-line/nicolas-cage-buys-himself-a-pyramid/462/?nc
MissItalianDiva
05-01-2010, 05:53 PM
Jet I love reading these ty! I just finished reading this on Yahoo...smh I am not sure what has gotten into Cage...he must have lost it somewhere along the line.
Mister Bent
05-01-2010, 05:56 PM
Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)
He's a Jehovah's Witless?
SuperFemme
05-01-2010, 06:42 PM
Weird News: Stephen Hawking Says Aliens Would Eat Us
http://www.tv.com/weird-news-stephen-hawking-says-aliens-would-eat-us/webnews/71336.html
WATERPERRY, England (AFP) - Britain's iconic red phone boxes have become obsolete in the age of the mobile -- but villages across the country are stepping in to save them, with creative flair.
Whether as a place to exhibit art, poetry, or even as a tiny library, hundreds of kiosks have been given a new lease of life by local communities determined to preserve a quintessential part of British life.
In Waterperry, a small village near Oxford, the 120 residents have filled the phone box next to the old manor house with a pot of hyacinths, piles of gardening and cooking magazines, and plastered poems on the walls.
They took control of the kiosk when telecoms operator BT said it was going to pull it down, an announcement that sparked such uproar that one local woman threatened to chain herself to the box to save it.
"I'd have done it," insisted Kendall Turner. "It would have been heartbreaking for the village."
Local councillor Tricia Hallam, who came up with the idea for the phone box's makeover, said "quite a few people" would have joined her, adding: "We couldn't let it go because it's a landmark, it's part of our heritage.
"We need to keep it here, it's an iconic thing, a British icon."
Only three feet (90 centimetres) by three feet wide, and standing eight foot three inches (2.51 metres) tall, the kiosks were designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1936 for the 25th anniversary of the reign of King George V.
Painted in "Post Office red" to match the post boxes, they were once a defining image of England and the backdrop to millions of tourist photographs.
Eight years ago there were about 17,000 across Britain, but today, in a country where almost everybody has a mobile phone, 58 percent are no longer profitable and ten percent are only used once a month.
"On average, maintaining them costs 800 pounds a year per kiosk," said John Lumb, general manager for BT Payphones -- about 44 million pounds annually.
Some phone boxes have been converted into kitsch showers or mini-bars, available online for between 1,300 and 3,500 pounds (2,000 and 5,400 dollars, 1,500 and 3,900 euros).
But BT needed a bigger solution and, two years ago, wrote to local authorities to inform them the boxes were going to be dismantled.
"We probably had 100 letters back from the councils asking if they could keep the red kiosk... There were just so many people saying that in small villages, it had been part of their landscape for years," Lumb told AFP.
"The red kiosk is just well recognised within the UK, just like the black taxis. There are quite strong feelings about it in many picturesque villages."
In response, BT launched the "Adopt A Kiosk" programme, allowing local authorities to buy their box for a symbolic one pound.
Since August 2008, 1,118 have been taken over, with a further 4,000 scrapped, and such was the enthusiasm that a competition was launched for the "best adoptive parent".
Last year's winner was the village of Great Shelford near Cambridge in eastern England, whose box is located in a conservation zone between a cemetery and centuries-old thatched cottages.
A mannequin created by the local primary school stands guard inside, changing each month. This month's occupant is the Greek goddess Hera.
Westbury-sub-Mendip, in the southwestern county of Somerset, has also lavished attention on its local phone box, turning it into a library -- "the smallest in the world", according to the 800 proud residents.
"The concept is delightfully simple," says parish councillor Bob Dolby, explaining how residents use it to swap books any time of the day or night.
The box "now houses a different form of communication having moved from the spoken word to the written word", he said.
"In this way the kiosk, which has served the community well for many years, will continue to serve it for years to come."
http://ca.rss.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/100427/oddities/britain_communications_offbeat
Ligers, tigons and grolar bears, oh my! Take a look at some of these otherworldly hybrid animals and you'll realize the possibilities are endless.
Though they rarely occur in nature, individuals from different but closely related species do occasionally mate, and the result is a biological hybrid — an offspring that shares traits from both parent species. You may have heard of the mysterious sheep-pig creature, but it turns out that one isn't a true hybrid.
Here are six bizarre, but truly unique half-breeds.
http://a323.yahoofs.com/ymg/guest_bloggers/guest_bloggers-74629605-1272318290.jpg?ymS15CDDtNz7P7_l
Zebroids
A zebroid is the offspring of a cross between a zebra and any other equine, usually a horse or a donkey. There are zorses, zonkeys, zonies, and a host of other combinations.
Zebroids are an interesting example of hybrids bred from species that have a radically different number of chromosomes. For instance, horses have 64 chromosomes and zebra have between 32 and 44 (depending on species). Even so, nature finds a way.
http://a323.yahoofs.com/ymg/guest_bloggers/guest_bloggers-455778734-1272318460.jpg?ym835CDDISY0UrMq
Savannah cats
Savannah cats are the name given to the offspring of a domestic cat and a serval — a medium-sized, large-eared wild African cat. The unusual cross became popular among breeders at the end of the 20th century, and in 2001 the International Cat Association accepted it as a new registered breed.
Interestingly, savannahs are much more social than typical domestic cats, and they are often compared to dogs in their loyalty. They can be trained to walk on a leash and even taught to play fetch.
http://a323.yahoofs.com/ymg/guest_bloggers/guest_bloggers-34664595-1272318576.jpg?ymw55CDDOZGAK.IA
Ligers
Ligers are the cross of a male lion and a female tiger, and they are the largest of all living cats and felines. Their massive size may be a result of imprinted genes which are not fully expressed in their parents, but are left unchecked when the two different species mate. Some female ligers can grow to 10 feet in length and weigh more than 700 pounds.
Ligers are distinct from tigons, which come from a female lion and male tiger. Various other big cat hybrids have been created too, including leopons (a leopard and a lion mix), jaguleps (a jaguar and leopard mix), and even lijaguleps (a lion and jagulep mix).
http://a323.yahoofs.com/ymg/guest_bloggers/guest_bloggers-184335442-1272318655.jpg?ym_65CDDFqc0nbO9
Wholphins
A cross between a false killer whale and an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin, wholphins are hybrids that have been reported to exist in the wild. There are currently two in captivity, both at Sea Life Park in Hawaii.
The wholphin's size, color, and shape are intermediate between the parent species. Even their number of teeth is mixed; a bottlenose has 88 teeth, a false killer whale has 44 teeth, and a wholphin has 66.
http://a323.yahoofs.com/ymg/guest_bloggers/guest_bloggers-527898822-1272318722.jpg?ymC85CDDZf0BpKp5
Grolar bears
The offspring of a grizzly bear and a polar bear, a grolar bear is one beast you don't want to meet in the woods. Interestingly, unlike many hybrid animals on this list, grolar bears are known to occur naturally in the wild.
Some experts predict that polar bears may be driven to breed with grizzly bears at an increased frequency due to global warming, and the fact that polar bears are being forced from their natural habitats on the polar ice.
http://a323.yahoofs.com/ymg/guest_bloggers/guest_bloggers-70770543-1272318830.jpg?ymu95CDDjpArs7ty
Beefalo
Beefalo are the fertile offspring of domestic cattle and American bison. Crosses also exist between domestic cattle and European bison (zubrons) and yaks (yakows). The name given to beefalo might be the most suggestive, since the breed was purposely created to combine the best characteristics of both animals with an eye towards beef production.
A USDA study showed that beefalo meat, like bison meat, tends to be lower in fat and cholesterol. They are also thought to produce less damage to range-land than cattle.
Introducing the "liger" one of six new Hybrid animals.
Pictures and story of the results of different but closely related species occasionally mating....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ygreen/20100427/sc_ygreen/sixamazinghybridanimals
SuperFemme
05-02-2010, 11:22 AM
Mom turns in son for stealing drugs from her bra
The Associated Press
MEMPHIS, Tenn. --A Memphis woman called police after she found her son stealing her prescription sedatives from her bra. The Commercial Appeal reported that police found a 28-year-old man hiding under a neighbor's sport utility vehicle Wednesday morning. The mother, whose name police didn't release, told officer she awakened before dawn to find her son filching Xanax from her bra, where she kept it to prevent him from stealing it.
Police said the man had 22 Xanax pills, 15 of them wrapped in toilet paper and hidden in his sock. Officer said a search of the man's room turned up more pills and various drug paraphernalia.
He was in jail Thursday with bond set at $40,000.
Read more: http://www.bnd.com/2010/04/30/1237576/mom-turns-in-son-for-stealing.html#ixzz0mnGUEWzs
Spanish man with face transplant discharged from hospital
SEVILLE, Spain (AFP) – A Spanish man who received a new face in a transplant this year checked out of hospital on Tuesday, thanking doctors and the donor's family for making the groundbreaking surgery possible.
More.....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/healthsurgeryfacetransplantspain
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Police in Columbus are looking for a man they say robbed a bank near downtown, then handed two $100 bills to passers-by as he ran away. FBI Special Agent Harry Trombitas said the man robbed a Huntington Bank branch early Monday afternoon after showing a teller a gun in his waistband. Trombitas said the man was running up the street when he encountered a mother and daughter window-shopping.
The robber stopped and gave them each a $100 bill, assured them it was real, then kept running.
Trombitas said the mother and daughter from the Cleveland area were in town for a visit to Ohio State.
They took the money to the nearest bank which turned out to be the Huntington branch that was just robbed, and there told police what happened.
How come this shit doesn't happen to me??? I need 100 $ too !!!
:mohawk: :blink:
Modern marvels: 18 of the world's strangest bridges
Just wow!
Gallery
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/architecture/4335705?src=syn&dom=yah_buzz&mag=pop&ha=1&kw=ist
World's largest herring caught of swedish shores
12 footer with pics
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100512/ap_on_fe_st/eu_odd_sweden_giant_herring
Why Snakebites Are About to Get a Lot More Deadly
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/snakebites-about-to-get-more-deadly?src=syn&dom=yah_buzz&mag=pop&ha=1&kw=ist
Divers explore sunken ruins of Cleopatra's palace
wow
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt_sunken_treasures_2
dark_crystal
05-26-2010, 11:39 AM
Divers explore sunken ruins of Cleopatra's palace
wow
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt_sunken_treasures_2
The finds from along the Egyptian coast will go on display at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute from June 5 to Jan. 2 in an exhibition titled "Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt."
tryna think if i know anyone in Philadelphia- i would love to see this...maybe they'll come to Houston
Medusa
05-26-2010, 12:18 PM
The "Amityville Horror" house is up for sale:
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/26/amityville-horror-house-on-the-market-2/
Hawaii first in nation to ban shark fins
By AUDREY McAVOY, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 33 mins ago
HONOLULU – Hawaii has become the first state in the nation to ban shark fins. Gov. Linda Lingle on Friday signed a bill prohibiting the possession, sale, trade or distribution of shark fins, which are used in pricey Chinese dishes.
Exceptions will be made for researchers who have obtained a permit from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. Lawmakers hope the new law will help prevent overfishing and extinction of sharks harvested for their fins.
Many Chinese consider shark fins to be a delicacy, served in high-end Chinese restaurants in soup and as fillets in gravy.
The bill passed the state Legislature earlier this year with broad support.
Enigma
06-02-2010, 04:46 PM
First human 'infected with computer virus'
By Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent, BBC News
Thursday, 27 May 2010
A British scientist says he is the first man in the world to become infected with a computer virus.
Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading had a chip inserted in his hand which was then infected with a virus.
The device, which enables him to pass through security doors and activate his mobile phone, is a sophisticated version of ID chips used to tag pets.
In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems.
If other implanted chips had then connected to the system they too would have been corrupted, he said.
Medical alert
Dr Gasson admits that the test is a proof of principle but he thinks it has important implications for a future where medical devices such as pacemakers and cochlear implants become more sophisticated, and risk being contaminated by other human implants.
"With the benefits of this type of technology come risks. We may improve ourselves in some way but much like the improvements with other technologies, mobile phones for example, they become vulnerable to risks, such as security problems and computer viruses."
He also added: "Many people with medical implants also consider them to be integrated into their concept of their body, and so in this context it is appropriate to talk in terms of people themselves being infected by computer viruses."
However, Dr Gasson predicts that wider use will be made of implanted technology.
"This type of technology has been commercialised in the United States as a type of medical alert bracelet, so that if you're found unconscious you can be scanned and your medical history brought up."
Professor Rafael Capurro of the Steinbeis-Transfer-Institute of Information Ethics in Germany told BBC News that the research was "interesting".
"If someone can get online access to your implant, it could be serious," he said.
Video at BBC News Link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10158517.stm)
'Gaydar' may actually exist: study shows gay people to be more detail-oriented, discerning
link (http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/05/28/2010-05-28_gaydar_may_actually_exist_study_shows_gay_peopl e_to_be_more_detailoriented_disce.html#ixzz0ploNRt fi)
"Gaydar," that innate ability gay people supposedly have to zero in on other gays even in a crowd, may really exist.
When Dutch scientists examined how heterosexual and homosexual people focus their attention, they discovered gays are much more detail-oriented.
For the research, 42 gay and straight volunteers were presented with photos of outlines of large squares and rectangles. Each shape was packed with smaller shapes. Generally, the human brain is programmed to take in the larger picture, so when people see a rectangle-filled square, they're likely to say it is filled with squares.
When the men and women were presented with similar questions about the pictures they had been shown, the straight volunteers answered faster but were less accurate. The gay men and women, on the other hand, were slower to answer but were right more of the time, especially when they were asked about the smaller shapes.
This suggests they are able to hone in on even very small details as well as the bigger picture, according to the research, which appeared in the journal Frontiers in Cognition. In gays' daily routine, researchers believe, this close attention to detail could help them to detect others' sexual preferences.
"This is the first time that scientific proof has been found for the existence of a gaydar mechanism amongst homosexuals," researcher Dr. Lorenza Colzato of Leiden University in the Netherlands told the Daily Mail. "This perceptual skill allows homosexuals to recognize other gay people faster and we think it's because they are much more analytic than heterosexuals."
People who are naturally more perceptive and detail-oriented may have a greater chance of picking up on subtle clues in other people that they may be homosexual, which makes it easier for them to search out gay friends and sexual partners, the study found.
Gay-Friendly McDonald's Ad Goes Viral
Story and video...
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93724?fp=1
Oldest leather shoe steps out after 5,500 years
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer – Wed Jun 9, 7:11 pm ET
WASHINGTON – About 5,500 years ago someone in the mountains of Armenia put his best foot forward in what is now the oldest leather shoe ever found.
It'll never be confused with a penny loafer or a track shoe, but the well-preserved footwear was made of a single piece of leather, laced up the front and back, researchers reported Wednesday in PLoS One, a journal of the Public Library of Science.
Worn and shaped by the wearer's right foot, the shoe was found in a cave along with other evidence of human occupation. The shoe had been stuffed with grass, which dated to the same time as the leather of the shoe — between 5,637 and 5,387 years ago.
"This is great luck," enthused archaeologist Ron Pinhasi of University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, who led the research team.
"We normally only find broken pots, but we have very little information about the day-to-day activity" of these ancient people. "What did they eat? What did they do? What did they wear? This is a chance to see this ... it gives us a real glimpse into society," he said in a telephone interview.
Previously the oldest leather shoe discovered in Europe or Asia was on the famous Otzi, the "Iceman" found frozen in the Alps a few years ago and now preserved in Italy. Otzi has been dated to 5,375 and 5,128 years ago, a few hundred years more recent than the Armenian shoe.
Otzi's shoes were made of deer and bear leather held together by a leather strap. The Armenian shoe appears to be made of cowhide, Pinhasi said. Older sandals have been found in a cave in Missouri, but those were made of fiber rather than leather.
The shoe found in what is now Armenia was found in a pit, along with a broken pot and some wild goat horns. But Pinhasi doesn't think it was thrown away. There was discarded material that had been tossed outside the cave, while this pit was inside in the living area. And while the shoe had been worn, it wasn't worn out. It's not clear if the grass that filled the shoe was intended as a lining or insulation, or to maintain the shape of the shoe when it was stored, according to the researchers.
The Armenian shoe was small by current standards — European size 37 or U.S. women's size 7 — but might have fit a man of that era, according to Pinhasi.He described the shoe as a single piece of leather cut to fit the foot. The back of the shoe was closed by a lace passing through four sets of eyelets. In the front, 15 pairs of eyelets were used to lace from toe to top.
There was no reinforcement in the sole, just the one layer of soft leather. "I don't know how long it would last in rocky terrain," Pinhasi said.
He noted that the shoe is similar to a type of footwear common in the Aran Islands, west of Ireland, up until the 1950s. The Irish version, known as "pampooties" reportedly didn't last long, he said. "In fact, enormous similarities exist between the manufacturing technique and style of this (Armenian) shoe and those found across Europe at later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn for thousands of years across a large and environmentally diverse region," Pinhasi said.
While the Armenian shoe was soft when unearthed, the leather has begun to harden now that it is exposed to air, Pinhasi said.
Oh, and unlike a lot of very old shoes, it didn't smell. Pinhasi said the shoe is currently at the Institute of Archaeology in Yerevan, but he hopes it will be sent to laboratories in either Switzerland or Germany where it can be treated for preservation and then returned to Armenia for display in a museum.Pinhasi, meanwhile, is heading back to Armenia this week, hoping the other shoe will drop.
The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Chitjian Foundation, the Gfoeller Foundation, the Steinmetz Family Foundation, the Boochever Foundation and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA.
Rare photo of slave children found in NC attic
By NICOLE NORFLEET, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jun 10, 4:22 pm ET
RALEIGH, N.C. – A haunting 150-year-old photo found in a North Carolina attic shows a young black child named John, barefoot and wearing ragged clothes, perched on a barrel next to another unidentified young boy.
http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr257/lionoflionsman/Picture10-3.png
Art historians believe it's an extremely rare Civil War-era photograph of children who were either slaves at the time or recently emancipated.
The photo, which may have been taken in the early 1860s, was a testament to a dark part of American history, said Will Stapp, a photographic historian and founding curator of the National Portrait Gallery's photographs department at the Smithsonian Institution.
"It's a very difficult and poignant piece of American history," he said. "What you are looking at when you look at this photo are two boys who were victims of that history."
In April, the photo was found at a moving sale in Charlotte, accompanied by a document detailing the sale of John for $1,150, not a small sum in 1854.
New York collector Keya Morgan said he paid $30,000 for the photo album including the photo of the young boys and several family pictures and $20,000 for the sale document. Morgan said the deceased owner of the home where the photo was found was thought to be a descendant of John.
A portrait of slave children is rare, Morgan said.
"I buy stuff all the time, but this shocked me," he said.
What makes the picture an even more compelling find is that several art experts said it was created by the photography studio of Mathew Brady, a famous 19th-century photographer known for his portraits of historical figures such as President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Stapp said the photo was probably not taken by Brady himself but by Timothy O'Sullivan, one of Brady's apprentices. O'Sullivan took a multitude of photos depicting the carnage of the Civil War. In 1862, O'Sullivan famously photographed a group of some of the first slaves liberated after Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
Such photos were circulated in the North by abolitionists to garner support for the Union during the Civil War, said Harold Holzer, an author of several books about Lincoln. Holzer works as an administrator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most of the photos depicted adult slaves who had been beaten or whipped, he said.
The photo of the two boys is more subtle, Holzer said, which may be why it wasn't widely circulated and remained unpublished for so long.
"To me, it's such a moving and astonishing picture," he said.
Ron Soodalter, an author and member of the board of directors at the Abraham Lincoln Institute in Washington, D.C., said the photo depicts the reality of slavery.
"I think this picture shows that the institution of slavery didn't pick or choose," said Soodalter, who has written several books on historic and modern slavery. "This was a generic horror. It victimized the old, the young."
For now, Morgan said, he is keeping the photo in his personal collection, but he said he has had an inquiry to sell the photo to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He said he is considering participating in the creation of a video documentary about John.
"This kid was abused and mistreated and people forgot about him," Morgan said. "He doesn't even exist in history. And to know that there were a million children who were like him. I've never seen another photo like that that speaks so much for children."
Little Dog, Large Estate
by Mark Maremont and Leslie Scism
Friday, June 18, 2010
provided by The Wall Street Journal
A chihuahua is at the center of a fight over the will of the late Miami heiress Gail Posner, a daughter of the corporate takeover artist Victor Posner.'.
Her name is Conchita, a thin, spa-loving, diamond-draped heiress, and she's at the center of one of America's nastiest estate battles.
When Ms. Posner died in March at age 67, Conchita and two other dogs inherited the right to live in her seven-bedroom, $8.3 million Miami Beach mansion, their comfort ensured by a $3 million trust fund.
The canines weren't the only ones who benefited from Ms. Posner's munificence. Seven of her bodyguards, housekeepers and other personal aides were left a total of $26 million under her will, and some also were allowed to live, rent-free, in the mansion to care for the dogs.
Now, in an attempt to revoke the will, Ms. Posner's only living child, Bret Carr, has filed a lawsuit against a bevy of his mother's former staff members and advisers alleging a dark intrigue.
Household aides, he claims, drugged his sick mother with pain medications and conspired to steal her assets by inducing her to change her will and trust arrangements in 2008. Others, including his mother's trust attorney, he alleges, used their influence to bend her wishes. Mr. Carr, who was bequeathed a relatively paltry $1 million in his mother's will, makes the claims in a lawsuit filed last week in probate court in Miami-Dade County.
Among Mr. Carr's claims is that the aides directed a "deeply disturbed" Ms. Posner to hire a publicist to promote Conchita as "one of the world's most spoiled dogs" -- complete with a four-season wardrobe, full-time staff and diamond jewelry. Mr. Carr's lawyer, Bruce Katzen, says he believes the publicity campaign was part of a "ruse" to explain why a large trust fund was needed to care for the dogs.
It's too early to predict the outcome of the case. But Ray Madoff, a Boston College law professor and co-author of an estate-planning guide, says wills that leave little or nothing to legitimate heirs but millions to caretakers are usually thrown out by courts, as likely to have been written with "undue influence" by the caretakers.
The case has echoes of the late Leona Helmsley. In 2007, the New York real estate magnate left a $12 million trust fund to Trouble, her pet Maltese. A judge later cut that down to $2 million and directed the rest go to charity. Under the terms of Ms. Posner's trust, the mansion is to be sold after her dogs die, and the proceeds donated to charity.
But the Posner dispute has a grimmer backdrop. The clan has long been haunted by drug and alcohol addiction, claims of sexual abuse allegedly committed by Victor Posner and prior legal battles over the spoils of Mr. Posner's 1980s-era checkered career.
A master of the hostile takeover who became one of America's highest-paid executives, Mr. Posner pleaded no contest to tax evasion charges in 1987 and was later barred from involvement with public companies.
Mr. Carr, a Hollywood screenwriter and filmmaker, has his own troubled past. He was arrested in 1992, charged with counterfeiting traveler's checks. He received probation, and told The Wall Street Journal in 1994 that his grandfather severed all contact with him after the incident.
Mr. Carr also names as a defendant BNY Mellon, which helped oversee a trust that Mr. Posner established for his daughter in 1965. According to the complaint, the trust at one point was worth more than $100 million. It was terminated in 2008 and its remaining assets distributed to Ms. Posner.
A BNY Mellon spokeswoman said the bank "acted appropriately" as trustee, and plans to "vigorously defend" against the lawsuit. Martin Rosen, an attorney who was a trustee for the trust until shortly after Victor Posner's death in 2002, said that it held "in the area of $6 million" when he left his post and "never had $100 million or anything like it."
Mr. Carr's relationship with his mother is portrayed in the lawsuit as rocky, but he says they had a close relationship during "the sober phases of her life." He also says she variously told him that he would inherit her entire estate; half of her inheritance from Victor Posner; and a house next door to hers, also owned by the family.
According to the complaint, Ms. Posner had a "long history of paranoia" and was concerned about her security. She eventually hired several bodyguards. The lawsuit contends that these people, along with other domestic staff, allegedly conspired to isolate Ms. Posner from family members, proceeding to "brainwash" her into believing her son was out to kill her and only the staff could be trusted.
Ms. Posner allegedly told her son she was "being kidnapped by the staff who was trying to kill her."
Around this same period, Ms. Posner began publicizing her pampered pooch. In an interview with the Miami Herald in 2007, she said the dog's most precious possession was a Cartier necklace worth $15,000, but the dog choked on it and was refusing to wear it.
"Conchita is the only girl I know who doesn't consider diamonds her best friend," Ms. Posner was quoted as saying.
In a 2009 interview with a blogger for browardpalmbeach.com, Ms. Posner said Conchita typically accompanied her on lunch dates and then shopping. Ms. Posner said she at one point considered getting the dog her own Range Rover, for transportation to the animal's weekly spa appointments for manicures and pedicures, but Ms. Posner decided to get herself a new car and gave the dog her gold Cadillac Escalade, she told the blogger.
In 2008, already sick with cancer, Ms. Posner executed a new will and trust agreement, overseen by a New York lawyer, Sanford Schlesinger, who is named a defendant in the suit. Under the new arrangement, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Posner left $10 million to one bodyguard, $5 million to another and $2 million to a personal trainer.
A housekeeper and personal assistant, Queen Elizabeth Beckford, would receive $5 million if she agreed to care for Conchita and two other dogs, April Maria and Lucia, at the mansion "with the same degree of care" they received while Ms. Posner was alive, according to the trust established to distribute Ms. Posner's assets. Ms. Beckford also was given permission to live, rent-free, in Ms. Posner's Miami Beach mansion, along with her mother. Ms. Beckford's daughter, another assistant, received $1 million.
Reached at the Miami Beach mansion, Ms. Beckford declined to comment, saying "everything is confidential" before hanging up. Hernando Quintero, the bodyguard who inherited $10 million, could not be reached for comment. Orion Sewell, who was bequeathed $5 million, declined to comment.
An attorney representing Mr. Schlesinger and Gail Posner's trust declined to comment.
Ms. Posner left the remainder of her estate to charity, with one-quarter directed to animal shelters and the rest to breast cancer and suicide-prevention causes. She also left another request: that the canine-care staff also look after her pet turtles.
-- James Oberman contributed to this article.
Gay Men Better at Recognizing Faces than Straight Men
http://m.torontosun.com/14475171.1
Gay men recognize faces faster and more precisely than their heterosexual counterparts because, like women, they use both sides of their brains, according to a new study.
York University researchers found that when homosexual men were asked to memorize and differentiate between faces, they showed patterns of bilaterality similar to those of heterosexual women.
"Our results suggest that both gay men and heterosexual women code faces bilaterally," associate professor of psychology Jennifer Steeves said in a release. "That allows for faster retrieval of stored information." Participants in the study, which looked into the effects gender, sexual orientation and hand dominance have on face recognition, were asked to memorize 10 faces and distinguish them from 50 others.
Researchers found hand dominance affected performance. Left-handed heterosexual participants were better at recognizing faces than left-and right-handed homosexuals.
Hand dominance is generally thought to be linked to both sexual orientation and brain hemispheric functioning.
The study is published in the journal Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition.
112 Year Old Shipwreck Found in Lake Michigan
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_re_us/us_shipwreck_discovered_wis_5
Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans
Heartbreaking... Our whales are contaminated and could spell danger for marine life and humans who depend on seafood.
More....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_sc/whaling
Press and members outside IWC meeting
The IWC, the international body that regulates whaling, will gather for its 62 annual meeting next week in Agadir. The meeting is expected to seek a compromise between pro- and anti-whaling countries, which may include allowing commercial whaling on a limited scale.
MsDemeanor
06-25-2010, 02:01 AM
study shows gay people to be more detail-oriented, discerning
Oh crap, I'm straight. Now they tell me.
:wtf:
Oh crap, I'm straight. Now they tell me.
:wtf:
haha by those standards so am i. at least way straighter than my straight best friend.
Tiny turtle causes taxiing plane to return to gate
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Tiny-turtle-causes-taxiing-apf-1122992999.html?x=0
Glenn
06-25-2010, 01:41 PM
Yuck.. Puke... I'll have nightmares tonight!
Andrew, Jr.
06-25-2010, 02:45 PM
The turtle is 10 yo that Jet is referring too. All the turtles I have found, I released to the wild. I want one now. The problem is Dino, and the 3 cats. I don't think they could take on anything else right now.
The turtle is 10 yo that Jet is referring too. All the turtles I have found, I released to the wild. I want one now. The problem is Dino, and the 3 cats. I don't think they could take on anything else right now.
My mom has a bunch of 3 toed box turtle babies. :) she's not planning on re-homing any, but she may be looking for homes in the future for any more who spring up.
Cowboi
07-01-2010, 05:32 PM
I thought this was interesting....
Content provided by WENN.com
06/28/2010,
The four year old was Angelina Jolie's first biological child with her partner Brad Pitt, and in recent months has been seen sporting a cropped haircut in place of her long blonde locks, and wearing more masculine outfits.
Shiloh's new look won the couple praise from parenting coaches, who applauded them for allowing the youngster to express herself.
Jolie admits her daughter is completely obsessed with her boyish appearance, telling Vanity Fair magazine, "(Shiloh dresses) like a little dude. Shiloh, we feel, has Montenegro style. It's how people dress there. She likes tracksuits, she likes (regular) suits. She likes to dress like a boy. She wants to be a boy. So we had to cut her hair. She likes to wear boys' everything. She thinks she's one of the brothers."
But the actress isn't worried about the youngster, insisting she was much the same when she was Shiloh's age.
She adds, "(She's) goofy and verbal, the early signs of a performer... I used to get dressed up in costumes and jump around. But at some point, I got closed off, darker. I don't remember anything happening. I think you just get hit with the realities of certain things in life, think too much, start to realize the world isn't as you wished it would be, so you deepen. Then, as I had kids and got older -- being goofy, lighter -- it all came back."
Woman wins multi-million dollar lottery four times defying astronomical odds
Maybe the odds of winning the lottery would be a lot better if Joan Ginther would stop buying all the good tickets.
By now you may have heard of the Las Vegas resident, who you probably want sitting next to you when an asteroid, slungshot by aliens, is aimed at your plane. She recently cashed in a winning $10 million scratch-off ticket, making the lucky woman a four-time lottery winner.
More...
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93820?fp=1
Restaurant Bans Screaming Babies
In the latest burst of anti-kids-in-public news, a North Carolina restaurant is making headlines with signage that does not quibble. “Screaming Children Will NOT Be Tolerated!” read signs at the the Olde Salty restaurant in Carolina Beach, N.C. And while some parents have expressed concern that they are singling out disabled kids, most patrons have responded well.....
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/message-to-parents-getting-louder-no-screaming-babies-allowed-2388887/
Gemme
09-12-2010, 09:30 PM
Restaurant Bans Screaming Babies
In the latest burst of anti-kids-in-public news, a North Carolina restaurant is making headlines with signage that does not quibble. “Screaming Children Will NOT Be Tolerated!” read signs at the the Olde Salty restaurant in Carolina Beach, N.C. And while some parents have expressed concern that they are singling out disabled kids, most patrons have responded well.....
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/message-to-parents-getting-louder-no-screaming-babies-allowed-2388887/
I heard about this on the radio earlier in the week. Interesting.
Arlington opens graves, finds 2 misplaced bodies
AP
WASHINGTON – Two people were buried in the wrong graves at Arlington National Cemetery, the Army said Wednesday, as it followed up an investigation into bookkeeping problems and burial mix-ups at one of the nation's most hallowed sites...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_arlington_cemetery
pajama
09-15-2010, 06:22 PM
Restaurant Bans Screaming Babies
In the latest burst of anti-kids-in-public news, a North Carolina restaurant is making headlines with signage that does not quibble. “Screaming Children Will NOT Be Tolerated!” read signs at the the Olde Salty restaurant in Carolina Beach, N.C. And while some parents have expressed concern that they are singling out disabled kids, most patrons have responded well.....
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/message-to-parents-getting-louder-no-screaming-babies-allowed-2388887/
My kind of place.
Gemme
09-16-2010, 08:24 PM
Arlington opens graves, finds 2 misplaced bodies
AP
WASHINGTON – Two people were buried in the wrong graves at Arlington National Cemetery, the Army said Wednesday, as it followed up an investigation into bookkeeping problems and burial mix-ups at one of the nation's most hallowed sites...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_arlington_cemetery
Oy vey. :blink:
Facelift Planned for US Currency
The American dollar is in bad need of a makeover. Thanks to the Dollar ReDe$ign Project, we may now have some options. More from the Huffington Post
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/721294
Gemme
09-18-2010, 01:20 PM
Facelift Planned for US Currency
The American dollar is in bad need of a makeover. Thanks to the Dollar ReDe$ign Project, we may now have some options. More from the Huffington Post
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/721294
Of all the cockamamie things to waste money on. :blink:
betenoire
09-18-2010, 02:45 PM
Of all the cockamamie things to waste money on. :blink:
the idea that a "redesign and rebranding" of the US dollar will help the economy is simply ludicrous.
OH so that's why the economy is fucked! Unattractive money! *headdesk*
Bed Bug infestation at Nike et. al. forces closures across America
ABC News....
http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/bedbugs-attack-niketown-21990658
Greyson
09-20-2010, 01:26 PM
The Canadian who invented basketball
By Sian Griffiths
BBC News, Ottawa
When Dr James Naismith invented basketball in 1891, he couldn't have dreamed that the game would become the world's second most popular sport, played in more than 200 countries, and a multi-billion dollar industry. Now his Canadian hometown is set to honour him with a statue.
The monument in the city where James Naismith invented basketball, in Springfield, Massachusetts, is the 40,000 sq ft Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Continue reading the main story “Start QuoteIn Canada, we seem to be understated as a nation in terms of our heroes”
End Quote Allen Rae Dr James Naismith Basketball Foundation
The museum in his hometown of Almonte, Ontario, is, well, rather more compact.
A large boulder - the "Rock" - stands like an altar at the heart of the museum.
It's a tribute to the inspiration for James Naismith's invention - "Duck on a Rock" - a game he played growing up.
Nine-year-old Warner Giles demonstrates the game by lobbing a rock in a familiar overhand arcing motion - knocking a stone, or "duck", off the boulder.
This was the type of throw that brought the world basketball.
Born in 1861, Dr Naismith's early life was marked by tragedy. His farmer parents died of typhoid, and he and his siblings were raised by an uncle who instilled in them the values of hard work, self reliance and determination.
Athletic prowess
A high school drop-out who worked as a lumberjack, Dr Naismith later embraced education with enthusiasm. He obtained a degree in physical education from Montreal's McGill University, a diploma in theology and - after moving to the US - qualified as a medical doctor.
He demonstrated great athletic prowess as a star football player and gymnast while at McGill, rising to became the university's first director of athletics. He was even credited later, by some, with having invented the forerunner of the football helmet.
The first basketball team made their bow in 1891
A deeply religious man, Dr Naismith believed that sport "could be used to lead young men to a good end".
In the winter of 1891 after moving to Springfield, Dr Naismith was faced with a challenging class of "incorrigibles". This antagonistic group had to be kept fit indoors through a harsh New England winter.
After failing to occupy the men with popular indoor sports of the day, he turned to "duck on the rock" for inspiration.
Instead of a rock, the players would throw a soccer ball at two peach baskets nailed high up at each end of the gymnasium. The janitor later punched holes in the bottom of the baskets after he became tired of climbing up to retrieve balls.
The first game - comprising two teams of nine - took place on 21 December 1891. The final score was 1-0.
As Dr Naismith later recalled: "It was the start of the first basketball game and the finish of trouble with that class."
Olympic moment
From there, the game grew. There were suggestions that the new game be called "Naismith ball" - but the modest inventor settled on "basketball" instead.
Dr Naismith lived just long enough to see basketball introduced as a new sport at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. He died in 1939.
Dr James Naismith's hometown recognises his genius
But basketball aficionados might accuse Almonte of hiding its light under a bushel.
"We should be shouting it from the rooftops," says Stephanie Kolsters, curator of the Naismith Museum.
The museum is funded by the Dr James Naismith Basketball Foundation. President Allen Rae, a referee during several Olympic basketball games, thinks the low-key remembrance might be characteristically Canadian.
"In Canada, we seem to be understated as a nation in terms of our heroes," says Mr Rae.
Even now Almonte is honouring Naismith "big in a small way", according to Al Lunney, the mayor of Mississippi Mills, which today includes Almonte.
"It's long overdue," admits the mayor.
A larger-than-life bronze statue depicting Naismith with a ball and a peach basket will soon be dedicated in the town square.
Special VIP
Kansas Sculptor Eldon Teft produced three identical versions from the same mould - one for Almonte, one for Springfield and one for Kansas, where Dr Naismith coached the University of Kansas basketball team.
While organisers planto invite Dr Naismith's descendants, as well as the Canadian prime minister, to the dedication, Mr Rae has his eyes on a special VIP.
"We could invite President Obama, too," he says of the basketball-loving US leader.
Mayor Lunney doubts that Almonte will become the new epicentre of basketball heritage. A large themed shrine is just not Almonte's style.
He wants to "keep Almonte the way is: a nice quiet town where Naismith grew up".
"It won't be like Springfield," says a doubtful Mayor Lunney.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11348053?print=true
Millionaires collect unemployment
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/110930/millionaires-collecting-unemployment?mod=career-worklife_balance
McDonald’s Happy Meal resists decomposition for six months
Story and more...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101012/bs_yblog_upshot/mcdonalds-happy-meal-resists-decomposition-for-six-months
Greyson
10-12-2010, 03:16 PM
Israeli Rabbi Blesses Honeytrap Sex For Female Spies
Mossad Agents Can Trade Sex for National Security
By RICHARD ESPOSITO
Oct. 11, 2010
An Israeli rabbi has blessed the use of
female spies in "honeytrap" or "honeypot"
stings against terrorists, according to a study
called "Illicit Sex for the Sake of National
Security."
The ruling by Rabbi Ari Schvat, contained in
a study published by the Zomet Institute,
was first reported by the news agency DPA
and published by Haaretz.com.
Israeli officials confirmed the rabbinical
ruling and the gist of the study for ABC
News.
The Zomet Institute studies the intersection
of religion and modernity. It examined
whether it was acceptable for female agents
of Israel's foreign secret service, Mossad, to
have sex with the enemy in so-called
"honeypot" or "honeytrap" sting missions.
Israeli intelligence has made repeated use of
honeytraps. In 1966, a female Israeli spy
convinced an Iraqi pilot to defect to Israel
with his MIG. Twenty years later, a female M
ossad agent lured Mordechai Vanunu, a
nuclear technician who had revealed details
of Israel's nuclear program, from England to
Italy, where he was abducted and brought
back to Israel.
But according to Haaretz.com, Rabbi Schvat
wrote that honeypot missions are "not just a
thing of modern-day espionage."
In fact, honeypot missions are rooted in
Biblical lore, according to the report. "Queen
Esther, who was Jewish, slept with the
Persian king [Ahasuerus] around 500 BC to
save her people," Schvat noted.
And, the report noted, Yael, wife of Hever,
slept with the enemy chief of staff Sisra to
tire him and cut off his head.
However there is a catch for married
honeypots. "If it is necessary to use a
married woman, it would be best [for] her
husband to divorce her. ... After the [sex]
act, he would be entitled to bring her back,"
Schvat wrote.
"Naturally, a job of that sort could be given
advertisement Israeli Rabbi Blesses Honeytrap Sex For Female Spies
Mossad Agents Can Trade Sex for National Security
to a woman who in any event is licentious in
her ways."
Rules for male Mossad agents were not
mentioned in the writings.
Schvat's study was praised by Zomet's
director, Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, according to
Haaretz, though Rosen conceded that
"women employees of the Mossad are
probably not going to come consult with a
rabbi" before their missions.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/israeli-rabbi-blesses-honeytrap-sex-female-spies/story?id=11834845&page=1
ATM Skimmers; Please Read
One in 5 people hit....
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/111006/watch-out-for-atm-skimming?mod=family-kids_parents
Solid Gold Monopoly Set
Video..
http://news.yahoo.com/video/odd-15749658/first-person-a-monopoly-game-made-out-of-gold-22465763
'Leave It to Beaver' mom dead at 94
http://omg.yahoo.com/news/barbara-billingsley-beaver-cleavers-tv-mom-dies/49082?nc
its news... its offbeat.... and i want a whole shitload of ppl to see it
0TMTrpugT0E
Glenn
10-26-2010, 06:44 AM
Do you think it will last?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39827228/
Greyson
10-27-2010, 11:53 AM
Russian bears treat graveyards as 'giant refrigerators'A shortage of bears' traditional food near the Arctic Circle has forced the animals to eat human corpses, say locals
Luke Harding in Moscow guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 26 October 2010
Bears are reported to be raiding graveyards in search of food in Russia's Arctic Circle republic of Komi. Photograph: Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images
From a distance it resembled a rather large man in a fur coat, leaning tenderly over the grave of a loved one. But when the two women in the Russian village of Vezhnya Tchova came closer they realised there was a bear in the cemetery eating a body.
Russian bears have grown so desperate after a scorching summer they have started digging up and eating corpses in municipal cemetries, alarmed officials said today. Bears' traditional food – mushrooms, berries and the odd frog – has disappeared, they added.
The Vezhnya Tchova incident took place on Saturday in the northern republic of Komi, near the Arctic Circle. The shocked women cried in panic, frightening the bear back into the woods, before they discovered a ghoulish scene with the clothes of the bear's already-dead victim chucked over adjacent tombstones, the Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomelets reported.
Local people said that bears had resorted to scavenging in towns and villages - rummaging through bins, stealing garden carrots and raiding tips. A young man had been mauled in the centre of Syktyvkar, Komi's capital. "They are really hungry this year. It's a big problem. Many of them are not going to survive," said Simion Razmislov, the vice-president of Komi's hunting and fishing society.
World Wildlife Fund Russia said there had been a similar case two years ago in the town of Kandalaksha, in the northern Karelia republic. "You have to remember that bears are natural scavengers. In the US and Canada you can't leave any food in tents in national parks," said Masha Vorontsova, Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) in Russia.
"In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others," she added, suggesting: "They are pretty quick learners."
The only way to get rid of the bears would be to frighten them with something noisy like a firework or shoot them, she said.
According to Vorontsova, the omnivorous bears had "plenty to eat" this autumn, with foods such as fish and ants at normal levels. The bears raided graveyards because they offered a supply of easy food, she said, a bit like a giant refrigerator. "The story is horrible. Nobody wants to think about having a much loved member of their family eaten by a bear."
The bear population in Russia is relatively stable with numbers between 120,000 and 140,000. The biggest threat isn't starvation but hunting - with VIP sportsmen and wealthy gun enthusiasts wiping out most of the large male bears in Kamchatka, in Russia's Far East. Chinese poachers have killed many black bears near the border, selling their claws and other parts in markets.
The Russian government is drafting legislation to ban the killing of bears during the winter breeding season.
• This article was amended on 27 October 2010. The original referred to Masha Vorontsova of WWF Russia. This has been corrected.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/26/russia-bears-eat-corpses-graveyards
Please excuse this man's gender language ignorance, but I wanted to post this because it's interesting for other reasons:
Y6a4T2tJaSU
There appears to be a lady talking on a cell phone in some old charlie chaplain video.
this is pretty cool....
go KY!
http://www.365gay.com/news/lexington-ky-voters-elect-1st-openly-gay-mayor/
San Francisco's Happy Meal Ban
San Francisco fast food restaurants will be forbidden from offering free toys with meals that exceed certain limits on calories, fat, and sugar and do not include fruits or vegetables. More.....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/theweek/20101104/cm_theweek/208946_20101104144500
'Wheel of Fortune' Contestant Solves 27-Letter Puzzle
With Just One Letter as a Clue
Amazing or suspicious? Story and clip:
http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/wheel-of-fortune-contestant-solves-27letter-puzzle-with-just-one-letter-as-a-clue--1717
1PlayfulFemme
11-08-2010, 06:51 PM
*laughing* Well, I've started to respond 3 times and am at a loss!! I consider myself good at the game and would have NEVER managed that!! Thus, I conclude...Amazing AND Suspicious! ;)
Zimmeh
11-08-2010, 07:27 PM
What a shame...
http://www.wesh.com/news/25674878/detail.html
Ga. Workers Search For Slave Cemetery
WSBTV
City officials have hired a company to use ground-penetrating radar to find a possible slave cemetery in Columbus.
Officials contacted Brockington and Associates after determining through historians and records that the suspected area was designated as a burial ground for blacks from 1828, before the Civil War.
City Manager Isaiah Hugley says they hope to preserve the knowledge for future generations.
The property, which is near an apartment building on Sixth Avenue, is controlled by Nofolk Southern Railway Company. It also contains an active Georgia Southwestern Railroad track and a parcel of land that's owned by the city.
The Norcross-based company specializes in identifying archaeological sites.
Sidebar:
I hope they find it, pay homage and document the burials through historical accounts, if any, and remind us, yet again, the atrocity of slavery. I don't like the south because of its nasty history and its ongoing prejudices. Today, I spoke with a friend who visits a 19-year old black woman in prison. The woman is in dire need of medical attention; the pen won't attend to her needs and her condition is getting more severe daily. I told him to call her attorney to ride up their ass and get her to a hospital. Prisoner or not, her civil rights are being violated. Two days ago, another black female inmate was sick, fell down the stairs and cracked her head open on the cement. She died 5 hours later, in a pool of blood, because no one would respond. The pen called it a suicide.
Ga. Workers Search For Slave Cemetery
WSBTV
City officials have hired a company to use ground-penetrating radar to find a possible slave cemetery in Columbus.
Officials contacted Brockington and Associates after determining through historians and records that the suspected area was designated as a burial ground for blacks from 1828, before the Civil War.
City Manager Isaiah Hugley says they hope to preserve the knowledge for future generations.
The property, which is near an apartment building on Sixth Avenue, is controlled by Nofolk Southern Railway Company. It also contains an active Georgia Southwestern Railroad track and a parcel of land that's owned by the city.
The Norcross-based company specializes in identifying archaeological sites.
Sidebar:
I hope they find it, pay homage and document the burials through historical accounts, if any, and remind us, yet again, the atrocity of slavery. I don't like the south because of its nasty history and its ongoing prejudices. Today, I spoke with a friend who visits a 19-year old black woman in prison. The woman is in dire need of medical attention; the pen won't attend to her needs and her condition is getting more severe daily. I told him to call her attorney to ride up their ass and get her to a hospital. Prisoner or not, her civil rights are being violated. Two days ago, another black female inmate was sick, fell down the stairs and cracked her head open on the cement. She died 5 hours later, in a pool of blood, because no one would respond. The pen called it a suicide.
Scenes of enslavement, slaves building the White House and a brilliant discourse before the Supreme Court in defense of slaves by John Quincy Adams played by Anthony Hopkins. These scenes are from Stephen Spielberg's Amistad, which is probably the best movie ever made about slavery. Take a history lesson....
Vo-JejTp7O4
B0PE_kC-3EY
6SZFZ3Lg2JI
Refusal of Calif airport screening is Internet hit
Associated Press
SAN DIEGO – A man who refused a body scan and pat-down search at a San Diego airport has become an Internet sensation in the debate weighing fliers' security versus their privacy.
John Tyner posted a cell phone audio recording of his half-hour encounter Saturday at Lindbergh Field.
The software engineer couldn't board a flight after refusing a full-body scan that reveals an image of what's under his clothes. He also wouldn't allow a Transportation Security Administration worker to conduct a groin check.
Tyner tells the worker, "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested."
Tyner's blog says he left the airport — but only after being threatened with a lawsuit and fine for failing to complete security screening.
A TSA statement Sunday said body scans and pat-downs make flying safer.
John Tyner's blog account: http://johnnyedge.blogspot.com/2010/11/these-events-took-place-roughly-between.html
America's Meanest Airlines
By Hamooda Shami, Yahoo Travel
Simply put, flying can be a stressful activity.
A lot of the time it begins with the airports: dizzying parking garages, overpriced food and a series of long lines have a way of making even the most serene travelers a little bit agitated. And that's even before the airplane leaves the ground. So it's easy to see how poor service from an airline can put the finishing touches on a ruined day -- long check-in lines, flight delays, lost luggage, baggage fees and general rudeness have a way of doing that. Not to mention the scary food (at least it used to be free scary food).
Based on the Airline Quality Rating (AQR) Report, which covers 18 domestic carriers, here is a list of the airlines that could stand to do the most work on making their customers happy. The report's conclusions are based on surveys of airline industry experts, with positive and negative values assigned to different elements in airline quality. Several common complaint areas were factored in -- including on-time arrival, mishandled baggage, delays and involuntary denied boardings -- the scores of which were then calculated to produce an overall quality score. We also took a look at a number of other sources, including the American Customer Satisfaction Index and the Air Travel Consumer Reports by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Regional airlines are ranked separately because of their tendency to score lower.
Worst Major Airlines
5. US Airways
2009 AQR Score: -1.19
While US Airways improved five percent in passenger satisfaction according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, they were one of three airlines cited as having the rudest flight attendants and serving the worst food, in a survey conducted by SeatGuru last year. Additionally, US Airways received a below-average score in the J.D. Power 2010 North America Airline Satisfaction Study.
Domestic Baggage Fees:
1st Bag: $25
2nd Bag: $35 3rd Bag: $100
Overweight Bags: $50 Extra (51 - 70 lbs) $100 Extra (71 - 100 lbs)
Oversized Bags: $100 Extra (larger than 62")
4. American Airlines
2009 AQR Score: -1.25
American Airlines has an Airline Quality Rating (AQR) of -1.25 -- which isn't awful, but where its reputation takes the hardest hit is with its regional airline, American Eagle (more on it later).
This year AA has had frequent incidents of mishandled baggage with an average of 4.07 reports per 1,000 passengers, according to the Air Travel Consumer Reports (this is the worst rating among the major airlines in the study). SeatGuru's survey named American Airlines as one of the three airlines that have the rudest flight attendants and the worst food.
Domestic Baggage Fees:
1st Bag: $25
2nd Bag: $35
3rd Bag: $100
Overweight Bags: $50 (51 - 70 lbs) $100 (71 - 100 lbs)
Oversized Bags: $150 (larger than 62")
3. Alaska Airlines
2009 AQR Score: -1.39
Alaska Airlines has an Airline Quality Rating (AQR) of -1.39, which can be partially attributed to the airline's high number of mishandled baggage reports. According to Air Travel Consumer Reports, the airline averaged 3.98 incidents per 1,000 passengers last year. However, Alaska Airlines did a stellar job when it came to delays, with 88 percent of its flights having on-time arrivals (in the 12-month period ending August 2010).
Domestic Baggage Fees:
1st Bag: $20
2nd Bag: $20
3rd Bag: $20
Overweight Bags: $50 (51 - 100 lbs)
Oversized Bags: $50 (63 - 80") $75 (81 - 115")
2. United Airlines
2009 AQR Score: -1.43
Now that the merger with Continental Airlines is official, United can turn its attention to improving customer service. United received a score of "about average" in the J.D. Power 2010 North America Airline Satisfaction Study but it placed last in passenger satisfaction in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. According to the SeatGuru survey, United joins American Airlines and US Airways as one of the three worst airlines for meals and rude flight attendants. In addition, the Air Travel Consumer Reports places this airline second in consumer complaints (behind Delta), averaging 1.82 per 100,000 enplanements in 2010.
Domestic Baggage Fees:
v1st Bag: $25
2nd Bag: $35
3rd Bag: $100
Overweight Bags: $100 (51 - 100 lbs)
Oversized Bags: $100 (larger than 62")
1. Delta
2009 AQR Score: -1.73
Delta had the worst AQR among major airlines with a -1.73, and a couple of its regional airlines did even worse (see Comair and Atlantic Southeast below). It also had the largest drop in passenger satisfaction in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. According to the Air Travel Consumer Reports, Delta was number one in delays for major airlines (78 percent of flights arriving on time in the 12-month period ending August 2010) and first in consumer complaints (averaging 2.23 per 100,000 enplanements in 2010). Also, make sure to note Delta's baggage fees below, as they can get quite painful for those hauling heavy and/or large cargo.
Domestic Baggage Fees:
1st Bag: $25 ($23 if checked online)
2nd Bag: $35 ($32 if checked online)
3rd Bag: $125
Overweight Bags: $90 (51 - 70 lbs) $175 (71 - 100 lbs)
Oversized Bags: $175 (larger than 63 - 80") $300 (larger than 81 - 115")
Worst Regional Airlines
Please note that the regional airlines follow the baggage fee structure of whichever major airline you happen to be flying under.
4. SkyWest
2009 AQR Score: -1.57
SkyWest Airlines has several hubs throughout the United States, including Chicago and Los Angeles. SkyWest received a -1.57 AQR, which is the fifth worst score overall among the airlines covered in the 2010 Airline Quality Ratings. One area that contributed to this score was mishandled baggage, where they averaged 5.69 incidents per 1,000 passengers last year. It acts as a regional airline for AirTran, Delta Connection and United Express.
3. Comair
2009 AQR Score: -2.22
With a -2.22 AQR, Comair got the third worst score overall among the airlines surveyed in the 2010 Airline Quality Ratings. Mishandled baggage was an issue, with an average of 6.04 incidents per 1,000 passengers last year. Comair was also number one in delays overall, with only 73 percent of flights arriving on time in the 12-month period ending August 2010, according to the Air Travel Consumer Reports. Comair is a regional for Delta Connection, with its main hubs at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky and JFK airports.
2. Atlantic Southeast
2009 AQR Score: -2.49
Atlantic Southeast serves as a regional airline for Delta Connection and United Express with several hubs in the States, including Memphis and Chicago. It has the second most incidents of mishandled baggage (6.67 reports per 1,000 passengers on average in 2010 so far) according to the Air Travel Consumer Reports. Atlantic Southeast received a -2.49 AQR, which is the second worst score overall among the airlines covered in the 2010 Airline Quality Ratings.
1. American Eagle
2009 AQR Score: -2.83
With a -2.83 AQR score, American Eagle has the unwelcome distinction of having the worst score overall among the airlines covered in the 2010 Airline Quality Ratings. According to the Air Travel Consumer Reports, it also had the most incidents of mishandled baggage (7.41 reports per 1,000 passengers on average in 2010 so far) and was number two in delays, with only 76 percent of flights arriving on time in the 12-month period ending August 2010. American Eagle is the main regional for American Airlines. American Eagle operates out of a number of hubs in the United States, including Boston and Dallas.
Fake doctor jailed for giving breast exams in bars (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AH0YE20101118?feedName=OutloudFeed&feedType=RSS&rpc=1120)
Kristina Ross, 37, remains in Ada County Jail in Boise on two felony counts of practicing medicine without a license.
Police say Ross introduced herself to victims -- one at a downtown Boise bar and the other at a nightclub in a Boise suburb -- as a plastic surgeon named Berlyn Aussieahshowna, a name that turned out to be bogus.
The two women told Boise officers they believed Ross was a physician because of her apparent medical knowledge, and they agreed to undergo what they thought were breast exams, which happened at the bars.
As part of her ruse, Ross gave the women the telephone number of a real licensed plastic surgeon in Boise, the state capital, authorities said.
Zimmeh
11-19-2010, 06:14 PM
Enjoy!!!
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AE3Z320101117?asid=26ada452
MsTinkerbelly
11-23-2010, 05:35 PM
Vatican: Condom use less evil than spreading HIV
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON and NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Victor L. Simpson And Nicole Winfield, Associated Press – 12 mins ago
VATICAN CITY – In a seismic shift on one of the most profound — and profoundly contentious — Roman Catholic teachings, the Vatican said Tuesday that condoms are the lesser of two evils when used to curb the spread of AIDS, even if their use prevents a pregnancy.
The position was an acknowledgment that the church's long-held anti-birth control stance against condoms doesn't justify putting lives at risk.
"This is a game-changer," declared the Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit writer and editor.
The new stance was staked out as the Vatican explained Pope Benedict XVI's comments on condoms and HIV in a book that came out Tuesday based on his interview with a German journalist.
The Vatican still holds that condom use is immoral and that church doctrine forbidding artificial birth control remains unchanged. Still, the reassessment on condom use to help prevent disease carries profound significance, particularly in Africa where AIDS is rampant.
"By acknowledging that condoms help prevent the spread of HIV between people in sexual relationships, the pope has completely changed the Catholic discussion on condoms," said Martin, a liberal-leaning author of several books about spirituality and Catholic teaching.
The development came on a day when U.N. AIDS officials announced that the number of new HIV cases has fallen significantly — thanks to condom use — and a U.S. medical journal published a study showing that a daily pill could help prevent spread of the virus among gay men.
"This is a great day in the fight against AIDS ... a major milestone," said Mitchell Warren, head of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.
Theologians have debated for years whether it could be morally acceptable for HIV-infected people to use condoms to avoid infecting their partners. The Vatican years ago was reportedly preparing a document on the subject, but it never came out.
The groundbreaking shift, coming as it does from the deeply conservative pontiff, would appear likely to restrain any public criticism from Catholic conservatives, who insisted Tuesday that the pope was merely reaffirming the church's moral teaching.
Conservatives have feared that a comment like this would give support to Catholics who want to challenge the church's ban on artificial contraception in an environment where they feel they are under siege from a secular, anti-Catholic culture.
George Weigel, a conservative Catholic writer, said the Vatican was by no means endorsing condom use as a method of contraception or a means of AIDS prevention.
"This is admittedly a difficult distinction to grasp," he told The Associated Press in an e-mail. What the pontiff is saying is "that someone determined to do something wrong may be showing a glimmer of moral common sense by not doing that wrong thing in the worst possible way — which is not an endorsement of anything."
Benedict's comments come at a time when bishops in the United States are intensely focused on upholding the strictest views of Catholic orthodoxy, emphasizing traditional marriage, natural family planning based on a woman's menstrual cycle and making abortion the most important issue.
In the book, "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times," Benedict was quoted as saying that condom use by people such as male prostitutes indicated they were moving toward a more moral and responsible sexuality by aiming to protect their partner from a deadly infection.
His comments implied that he was referring primarily to homosexual sex, when condoms aren't being used as a form of contraception.
However, questions arose immediately about the pope's intent because the Italian translation of the book used the feminine for prostitute, whereas the original German used the masculine.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters Tuesday that he asked the pope whether he intended his comments to apply only to men. Benedict replied that it really didn't matter, the important thing was that the person took into consideration the life of another.
"I personally asked the pope if there was a serious, important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine," Lombardi said. "He told me no. The problem is this: ... It's the first step of taking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk of the life of another with whom you have a relationship."
"This is if you're a man, a woman, or a transsexual. ... The point is it's a first step of taking responsibility, of avoiding passing a grave risk onto another," Lombardi said.
Those comments concluded the press conference, and Lombardi took no further questions about how broadly this interpretation could be applied.
The clarification is significant.
UNAIDS estimates that 22.4 million people in Africa are infected with HIV, and that 54 percent — or 12.1 million — are women. Heterosexual transmission of HIV and multiple, heterosexual partners are believed to be the major cause of the high infection rates.
Benedict drew harsh criticism when, en route to Africa in 2009, he told reporters that the AIDS problem couldn't be resolved by distributing condoms. "On the contrary, it increases the problem," he said then.
In Africa on Tuesday, AIDS activists, clerics and ordinary Africans applauded the pope's revised comments.
"I say, hurrah for Pope Benedict," exclaimed Linda-Gail Bekker, chief executive of South Africa's Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. She said the pope's statement may prompt many people to "adopt a simple lifestyle strategy to protect themselves."
In Sierra Leone, the director of the National AIDS Secretariat predicted condom use would now increase, lowering the number of new infections.
"Once the pope has made a pronouncement, his priests will be in the forefront in advocating for their perceived use of condoms," said the official, Dr. Brima Kargbo.
Lombardi said Benedict knew full well that his comments would provoke intense debate. Conservative Catholics have been trying to minimize what he said since excerpts were published this weekend in the Vatican newspaper.
The Rev. Tim Finnegan, a conservative British blogger, said he thought the pope's comments were unwise. "I'm sorry. I love the Holy Father very much; he is a deeply holy man and has done a great deal for the church," Finnegan said on his blog. "On this particular issue, I disagree with him."
Lombardi praised Benedict for his "courage" in confronting the problem.
"He did it because he believed that it was a serious, important question in the world of today," Lombardi said, adding that the pope wanted to give his perspective on the need for greater humanized, responsible sexuality.
Luigi Accatoli, a veteran Vatican journalist who was on the Vatican panel that launched the book, put it this way:
"He spoke with caution and courage of a pragmatic way through which missionaries and other ecclesial workers can help to defeat the pandemic of AIDS without approving, but also without excluding — in particular cases — the use of a condom," Accatoli said.
The launch of the book, which includes wide-ranging comments on subjects from the sex abuse crisis to Benedict's belief that popes should resign if physically unable to carry out their mission, drew a packed audience. Making a rare appearance, Benedict's secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, sat in the front row — an indication of the event's significance.
In the book, the pope reaffirms Vatican opposition to homosexual acts and artificial contraception, as well as the inviolability of marriage between man and woman.
But by broadening the condom comments to also apply to women, the pope was saying that condom use is a lesser evil than passing HIV onto a partner, even when pregnancy is possible.
"We're not just talking about an encounter between two men, which has little to do with procreation. We're now introducing relationships that could lead to childbirth," Martin said.
Individual bishops and theologians have applied the lesser evil theory to the condom-HIV issue, but it had previously been rejected at the highest levels of the Vatican, Martin said.
Monsignor Jacques Suaudeau, an expert on the Vatican's bioethics advisory board, said the pope was articulating the theological idea that there are degrees of evil.
"Contraception is not the worst evil. The church does not see it as good, but the church does not see it as the worst," he told the AP. "Abortion is far worse. Passing on HIV is criminal. That is absolute irresponsibility."
He said the pope broached the topic because questions about condoms and AIDS persisted, and the church's teaching hadn't been clear. There is no official Vatican policy about condoms and HIV, and Vatican officials in the past have insisted that condoms not only don't help fight HIV transmission but make it worse because it gives users a false sense of security.
"This pope gave this interview. He was not foolish. It was intentional," Suaudeau said. "He thought that this was a way of bringing up many questions. Why? Because it's true that the church sometimes has not been too clear."
Lombardi said the pope didn't use the technical terminology "lesser evil" in his comments because he wanted his words to be understood by the general public. Vatican officials, however, said that was what he meant.
"The contribution the pope wanted to give is not a technical discussion with scientific language on moral problems," Lombardi said. "This is not the job of a book of this type."
___
Associated Press reporters Rachel Zoll in New York, Jason Straziuso in Nairobi and AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione contributed to this report
Vatican: Condom use less evil than spreading HIV
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON and NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Victor L. Simpson And Nicole Winfield, Associated Press – 12 mins ago
VATICAN CITY – In a seismic shift on one of the most profound — and profoundly contentious — Roman Catholic teachings, the Vatican said Tuesday that condoms are the lesser of two evils when used to curb the spread of AIDS, even if their use prevents a pregnancy.
The position was an acknowledgment that the church's long-held anti-birth control stance against condoms doesn't justify putting lives at risk.
"This is a game-changer," declared the Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit writer and editor.
The new stance was staked out as the Vatican explained Pope Benedict XVI's comments on condoms and HIV in a book that came out Tuesday based on his interview with a German journalist.
The Vatican still holds that condom use is immoral and that church doctrine forbidding artificial birth control remains unchanged. Still, the reassessment on condom use to help prevent disease carries profound significance, particularly in Africa where AIDS is rampant.
"By acknowledging that condoms help prevent the spread of HIV between people in sexual relationships, the pope has completely changed the Catholic discussion on condoms," said Martin, a liberal-leaning author of several books about spirituality and Catholic teaching.
The development came on a day when U.N. AIDS officials announced that the number of new HIV cases has fallen significantly — thanks to condom use — and a U.S. medical journal published a study showing that a daily pill could help prevent spread of the virus among gay men.
"This is a great day in the fight against AIDS ... a major milestone," said Mitchell Warren, head of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.
Theologians have debated for years whether it could be morally acceptable for HIV-infected people to use condoms to avoid infecting their partners. The Vatican years ago was reportedly preparing a document on the subject, but it never came out.
The groundbreaking shift, coming as it does from the deeply conservative pontiff, would appear likely to restrain any public criticism from Catholic conservatives, who insisted Tuesday that the pope was merely reaffirming the church's moral teaching.
Conservatives have feared that a comment like this would give support to Catholics who want to challenge the church's ban on artificial contraception in an environment where they feel they are under siege from a secular, anti-Catholic culture.
George Weigel, a conservative Catholic writer, said the Vatican was by no means endorsing condom use as a method of contraception or a means of AIDS prevention.
"This is admittedly a difficult distinction to grasp," he told The Associated Press in an e-mail. What the pontiff is saying is "that someone determined to do something wrong may be showing a glimmer of moral common sense by not doing that wrong thing in the worst possible way — which is not an endorsement of anything."
Benedict's comments come at a time when bishops in the United States are intensely focused on upholding the strictest views of Catholic orthodoxy, emphasizing traditional marriage, natural family planning based on a woman's menstrual cycle and making abortion the most important issue.
In the book, "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times," Benedict was quoted as saying that condom use by people such as male prostitutes indicated they were moving toward a more moral and responsible sexuality by aiming to protect their partner from a deadly infection.
His comments implied that he was referring primarily to homosexual sex, when condoms aren't being used as a form of contraception.
However, questions arose immediately about the pope's intent because the Italian translation of the book used the feminine for prostitute, whereas the original German used the masculine.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters Tuesday that he asked the pope whether he intended his comments to apply only to men. Benedict replied that it really didn't matter, the important thing was that the person took into consideration the life of another.
"I personally asked the pope if there was a serious, important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine," Lombardi said. "He told me no. The problem is this: ... It's the first step of taking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk of the life of another with whom you have a relationship."
"This is if you're a man, a woman, or a transsexual. ... The point is it's a first step of taking responsibility, of avoiding passing a grave risk onto another," Lombardi said.
Those comments concluded the press conference, and Lombardi took no further questions about how broadly this interpretation could be applied.
The clarification is significant.
UNAIDS estimates that 22.4 million people in Africa are infected with HIV, and that 54 percent — or 12.1 million — are women. Heterosexual transmission of HIV and multiple, heterosexual partners are believed to be the major cause of the high infection rates.
Benedict drew harsh criticism when, en route to Africa in 2009, he told reporters that the AIDS problem couldn't be resolved by distributing condoms. "On the contrary, it increases the problem," he said then.
In Africa on Tuesday, AIDS activists, clerics and ordinary Africans applauded the pope's revised comments.
"I say, hurrah for Pope Benedict," exclaimed Linda-Gail Bekker, chief executive of South Africa's Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. She said the pope's statement may prompt many people to "adopt a simple lifestyle strategy to protect themselves."
In Sierra Leone, the director of the National AIDS Secretariat predicted condom use would now increase, lowering the number of new infections.
"Once the pope has made a pronouncement, his priests will be in the forefront in advocating for their perceived use of condoms," said the official, Dr. Brima Kargbo.
Lombardi said Benedict knew full well that his comments would provoke intense debate. Conservative Catholics have been trying to minimize what he said since excerpts were published this weekend in the Vatican newspaper.
The Rev. Tim Finnegan, a conservative British blogger, said he thought the pope's comments were unwise. "I'm sorry. I love the Holy Father very much; he is a deeply holy man and has done a great deal for the church," Finnegan said on his blog. "On this particular issue, I disagree with him."
Lombardi praised Benedict for his "courage" in confronting the problem.
"He did it because he believed that it was a serious, important question in the world of today," Lombardi said, adding that the pope wanted to give his perspective on the need for greater humanized, responsible sexuality.
Luigi Accatoli, a veteran Vatican journalist who was on the Vatican panel that launched the book, put it this way:
"He spoke with caution and courage of a pragmatic way through which missionaries and other ecclesial workers can help to defeat the pandemic of AIDS without approving, but also without excluding — in particular cases — the use of a condom," Accatoli said.
The launch of the book, which includes wide-ranging comments on subjects from the sex abuse crisis to Benedict's belief that popes should resign if physically unable to carry out their mission, drew a packed audience. Making a rare appearance, Benedict's secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, sat in the front row — an indication of the event's significance.
In the book, the pope reaffirms Vatican opposition to homosexual acts and artificial contraception, as well as the inviolability of marriage between man and woman.
But by broadening the condom comments to also apply to women, the pope was saying that condom use is a lesser evil than passing HIV onto a partner, even when pregnancy is possible.
"We're not just talking about an encounter between two men, which has little to do with procreation. We're now introducing relationships that could lead to childbirth," Martin said.
Individual bishops and theologians have applied the lesser evil theory to the condom-HIV issue, but it had previously been rejected at the highest levels of the Vatican, Martin said.
Monsignor Jacques Suaudeau, an expert on the Vatican's bioethics advisory board, said the pope was articulating the theological idea that there are degrees of evil.
"Contraception is not the worst evil. The church does not see it as good, but the church does not see it as the worst," he told the AP. "Abortion is far worse. Passing on HIV is criminal. That is absolute irresponsibility."
He said the pope broached the topic because questions about condoms and AIDS persisted, and the church's teaching hadn't been clear. There is no official Vatican policy about condoms and HIV, and Vatican officials in the past have insisted that condoms not only don't help fight HIV transmission but make it worse because it gives users a false sense of security.
"This pope gave this interview. He was not foolish. It was intentional," Suaudeau said. "He thought that this was a way of bringing up many questions. Why? Because it's true that the church sometimes has not been too clear."
Lombardi said the pope didn't use the technical terminology "lesser evil" in his comments because he wanted his words to be understood by the general public. Vatican officials, however, said that was what he meant.
"The contribution the pope wanted to give is not a technical discussion with scientific language on moral problems," Lombardi said. "This is not the job of a book of this type."
___
Associated Press reporters Rachel Zoll in New York, Jason Straziuso in Nairobi and AP Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione contributed to this report
Thanks for posting this darlin'. Pope Benedict is causing a stir because of his stance and, since the condom story has broke, has reversed something to make heads spin. I'll have to read up on it. Good post.
Gay groups protest forced separation of gay avian couple. (http://www.dallasvoice.com/exgay-treatment-vultures-gay-groups-protest-forced-separation-gay-avian-couple-1053475.html)
Gay groups in Germany are upset that officials at the Allwetter Zoo in Munster, Germany, have separated two male vultures who had set up nest-keeping together and were obviously a couple.
The two Griffon vultures, Guido and Detlef, have been a couple since March, according to U.K. news site The Register. They build a nest together, defended it from the other vultures, and spent most of their time together grooming each other.
But zoo curator Dirk Wewers apparently believed Detlef and Guido’s relationship was what I call situational homosexuality, like men in prison who have sex with other men because no women are available. Wewers said: “A suitable female was missing and in such a case vultures look for companionship from the next best thing, even if it is a male. Detlef looked for a bird of the opposite sex but settled with Guido.”
So the zoo decided to give the two other options by breaking up their happy home and sending Guido to a zoo in Ostrava, Czech Republic, where he would have access to female Griffon vultures. Meanwhile, Detlef, back in Munster, has been set up with a mail-order bride from the Czech Republic.
According to reports, Detlef’s “ex-gay therapy” appears to be working. But over in Ostrava, Guido is having none of it. Reports are he won’t have anything to do with the female vultures.
Both male vultures are 14 years old, which means both are still relative youngsters, since their lifespan in the wild is estimated at 50 to 70 years old. The oldest known Griffon vulture — or Great Vulture — in captivity died at the age of 118.
According to Wikipedia, Griffon vultures are on the brink of dying out, although there have been resurgent populations in some areas of Europe. In Germany, Griffon vultures in the wild died out in the mid-18th century, but, “Some 200 vagrant birds, probably from the Pyrenees, were sighted in 2006, and several dozen of the vagrants sighted in Belgium the following year crossed into Germany in search for food.”
So, OK — the idea of creating breeding pairs and replenishing the Griffon vulture population has merit. But still, it just doesn’t seem right to me to separate what was obviously a loving couple for the sake of making some baby vultures. I am sure there are plenty of other hetero male Griffon vultures available more than willing to take care of the breeding needs.
Either way, it gives new meaning to the old saying, “Birds of a feather flock together,” huh?
Nation's Obesity Epidemic Threatens Pets
THURSDAY, Nov. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Before sharing your Thanksgiving leftovers with your pampered pets, take note: The obesity epidemic in the United States is enlarging cats and dogs, not just their over-fed owners. Overweight pets are a serious health issue today, experts say. About half of the nation's companion animals -- some 90 million cats and ogs -- are tipping the scales, according to the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention.
"As a practicing veterinarian for almost 20 years, I've never seen this many overweight pets," said Dr. Ernie Ward, author of Chow Hounds: Why Our Dogs Are Getting Fatter -- A Vet's Plan to Save Their Lives. "We're witnessing the super-sizing of America's pets before our very eyes." The cause of obesity in people and pets is the same, added veterinarian Dr. Joe Wakshlag, assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "The Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] says that America has become 'obesogenic,' meaning that we live in a world that promotes increased food intake, unhealthy food choices and reduced physical activity," he said. "Our pets live in the same world and are suffering the same consequences of obesity."
Like their owners, portly pets are at risk for developing diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, kidney and heart disease, high blood pressure and many forms of cancer.
The result: high medical bills. In 2009, the Veterinary Pet Insurance Co. said its policyholders filed more than $17 million in claims for conditions and diseases that can be caused by excess weight. Making matters worse is the normalization of excess weight. Ward calls it the "fat gap" -- where pet owners view an overweight or obese pet as normal.
If a thick layer of fat prevents you from easily feeling your pet's ribs, your dog or cat is too heavy.
Cutting out high-calorie treats -- especially those filled with fat and sugar -- is an easy first step to help a pet shed excess weight. If you must give a snack, opt for healthy, low-calorie alternatives such as baby carrots, broccoli, and celery for dogs; salmon or tuna flakes for cats.
"If I could wave a magic wand, I would eliminate all of the unhealthy treats for pets and people," said Ward. "This single act would greatly reduce obesity rates and decrease many chronic debilitating diseases."
Keeping pets trim also requires regular exercise, said Ward, who practices veterinary medicine in Calabash, N.C. In general, he recommends that dogs get at least 20 to 30 minutes of sustained aerobic activity each day. That can be achieved by a brisk one to three mile walk or, depending on where you live, going to a dog park, agility course, or even heated swimming pool for pooches. Businesses geared toward keeping dogs fit are found in many major U.S. cities.
For cats, as little as five to 15 minutes of play -- chasing a laser beam, feather toy or crumpled ball of paper -- is all they need each day, he said.
Keeping pets at a healthy weight also requires knowing how much to feed them. But the amounts suggested on food packages are formulated for active, unaltered adult dogs and cats, said Ward. "That means if you have an older, spayed or neutered indoor lap potato, you'll probably be feeding 20 to 30 percent too much if you follow the food's instructions," he said.
Instructions on diet pet foods aren't much better. Researchers at Tufts University's Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine recently examined nearly 100 foods claiming to aid weight management and found that most would actually cause weight gain if owners followed the label's feeding directions.
"As this study shows, packaging might not always be a reliable source of information," said veterinarian Dr. Lisa Freeman, study co-author and professor of nutrition at Tufts University.
Efforts are under way to require manufacturers to include calories on all pet food packaging in coming years, but Wakshlag said listing the calorie content won't help pet owners much. "There's really no way, based on how the label is structured now, to accurately give the calories," he said. Unless a company has done a pricey and lengthy digestibility study of their food, "they really don't know how many calories are in a can," he said.
Pets don't need many calories to maintain a healthy weight. Ward said an adult 10-pound, indoor, spayed cat only needs 180 to 200 calories per day while an older 20-pound, neutered dog needs 340 to 380.
To figure out your pet's daily caloric needs, Ward suggests this formula as a starting point: Divide your pet's weight by 2.2. Multiply this figure by 30, then add 70, and you'll have an idea of how many calories to feed a typical, inactive spayed or neutered pet. "Of course, each pet's metabolism is different, so be sure to consult your veterinarian before starting a diet," he said.
ATM Fraud Gets Even More Brazen
by Karen Blumenthal
Saturday, November 27, 2010
provided by
The Wall Street Journal
Until recently, skimming equipment was relatively crude and clunky, attached to card-readers with double-stick foam tape and relying on small cameras to record hands punching in PINs. Newer devices include equipment that fits inside card readers, pinhead-sized cameras and well-crafted attachments that sit snugly on top of ATM card readers and PIN pads, looking just like the real equipment. Bluetooth technology allows the fake card reader and PIN pad to talk to each other, and data drives or wireless technology can make downloading of stolen information quick and easy.
Avivah Litan, fraud analyst at Gartner, a research firm, estimates that fraud involving debit cards, PINs and point-of-sale equipment has surged 400% over the past five years. One tactic, she says, has been "flash attacks": Using the stolen information, gangs create thousands of counterfeit debit cards and then dispatch cronies to at least 100 ATM machines in several cities at once. Each withdraws a small dollar amount from several accounts to avoid fraud-detection software, adding up to tens of thousands of dollars in losses.
Full story and links.....
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/111407/atm-fraud-gets-even-more-brazen
betenoire
12-08-2010, 03:26 PM
Online retailer threatens and harasses customers - which drums up more business for him (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&en=b37ebefec5bd6c11&ex=1306818000&adxnnlx=1291842006-VRseuRmTvzvxMy/emflIAg)
This worked because, previously, Google couldn't tell the difference between a good review and a bad review. All that mattered to the search engine was how much mentioning this guy was getting.
And now he's in jail. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/business/07borker.html?partner=rss&emc=rss)
Oprah Winfrey: 'I'm not a lesbian' (http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20447896,00.html?cnn=yes)
The rumors have been around for years. She even made light about them recently. But Oprah Winfrey has once again stated flatly: "I'm not a lesbian."
"I'm not even kind of a lesbian," the talk-show queen, 56, tells Barbara Walters in an upcoming interview on ABC. "And the reason why [the rumor] irritates me is because it means that somebody must think I'm lying. That's number one. Number two ... why would you want to hide it? That is not the way I run my life."
The rumors have focused on Winfrey's friend Gayle King. But Winfrey says that relationship is extremely close in a whole different way.
"She is ... the mother I never had. She is ... the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don't know a better person. I don't know a better person," Winfrey says while choking up.
"It's making me cry because I'm thinking about ... how much ... I probably have never told her that. Tissue, please. I now need tissue. I've never told her that."
2,400-year-old pot of soup excavated
Third age.com
A 2,400-year-old pot of soup has been exhumed near the ancient capital of Xian in China, reports said Monday. Chinese archaeologists found the ancient food sealed in a bronze cooking vessel in a tomb.
AFP reported Monday that archaeologists were in the process of excavating the tomb to clear the way for the expansion of Xian's international airport.
The discovery sheds some light on the eating habits and culture of the Warring States Period (475-221 BC).
"It's the first discovery of bone soup in Chinese archaeological history," Liu Daiyun of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology told the Global Times.
The contents of the vessel were green from oxidation of the bronze, and further tests will be required to determine the specific ingredients and confirm whether it is in fact soup.
Scientists also excavated a bronze pot that contained an odorless liquid believed to be wine. They also discovered a rotten lacquer-ware vessel.
Nearby tombs suggest the inhabitant of the mausoleum was a high-ranking officer or member of the land-owning class.
IRS audits jump by 11 percent; wealthiest targeted
Associated Press
Wed Dec 15, 3:51 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service is making it a bit riskier to cheat on your taxes. The tax agency increased the number of returns it audited by nearly 11 percent this year, statistics released Wednesday show. Wealthy taxpayers and big businesses were most likely to be targeted.
The IRS also stepped up audits of charities and other tax-exempt organizations.
In all, the IRS examined more than 1.58 million individual returns in the budget year that ended in September, up from 1.43 million the year before.
"We saw individual audits increase, reaching the highest rate in the past decade," said Steve Miller, IRS deputy commissioner for services and enforcement. "The bottom line shows enforcement revenue topped $57 billion, up almost 18 percent from last year." Overall, a little more than 1 percent of individual returns were audited, either by mail or in person. The IRS audited more than 8 percent of returns with incomes above $1 million.
Taxpayers filed nearly 143 million returns, including those from individuals and married couples. Nearly 389,000 taxpayers reported incomes of $1 million or above.
Corporate audits dropped slightly, by less than 1 percent. But there was a 7 percent increase in the number of audits of firms with $10 million or more in assets.
Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart's
Associated Press
NORMAN, Okla. – The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.
Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world.
"There's no guarantee," said Ric Gillespie, director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, a group of aviation enthusiasts in Delaware that found the pieces of bone this year while on an expedition to Nikumaroro Island, about 1,800 miles south of Hawaii.
"You only have to say you have a bone that may be human and may be linked to Earhart and people get excited. But it is true that, if they can get DNA, and if they can match it to Amelia Earhart's DNA, that's pretty good."
It could be months before scientists know for sure — and it could turn out the bones are from a turtle. The fragments were found near a hollowed-out turtle shell that might have been used to collect rain water, but there were no other turtle parts nearby.
Earhart's disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the 20th century's most enduring mysteries. Did she run out of fuel and crash at sea? Did her Lockheed Electra develop engine trouble? Did she spot the island from the sky and attempt to land on a nearby reef?
"What were her last moments like? What was she doing? What happened?" asked Robin Jensen, an associate professor of communications at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who has studied Earhart's writings and speeches.
Since 1989, Gillespie's group has made 10 trips to the island, trying each time to find clues that might help determine the fate of Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan.
Last spring, volunteers working at what seemed to be an abandoned campsite found one piece of bone that appeared to be from a neck and another unknown fragment dissimilar to bird or fish bones. A third fragment might be from a finger. The largest of the pieces is just over an inch long.
The area was near a site where native work crews found skeletal remains in 1940. Bird and fish carcasses suggested Westerners had prepared meals there.
"This site tells the story of how someone or some people attempted to live as castaways," Gillespie said Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. "These fish weren't eaten like Pacific Islanders" eat fish.
Millions of dollars have been spent in failed attempts to learn what happened to Earhart, a Kansas native declared dead by a California court in early 1939.
The official version says Earhart and Noonan ran out of fuel and crashed at sea while flying from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, which had a landing strip and fuel.
Gillespie's book "Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance," and "Amelia Earhart's Shoes," written by four volunteers from the aircraft group, suggest the pair landed on the reef and survived, perhaps for months, on scant food and rainwater.
Gillespie, a pilot, said the aviator would have needed only about 700 feet of unobstructed space to land because her plane would have been traveling only about 55 mph at touchdown. "It looks like she could have landed successfully on the reef surrounding the island. It's very flat and smooth," Gillespie said. "At low tide, it looks like this place is surrounded by a parking lot."
However, Gillespie said, the plane, even if it landed safely, would have been slowly dragged into the sea by the tides. The waters off the reef are 1,000 to 2,000 feet deep. His group needs $3 million to $5 million for a deep-sea dive.
The island is on the course Earhart planned to follow from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island, which had a landing strip and fuel. Over the last seven decades, searches of the remote atoll have been inconclusive.
After the latest find, anthropologists who had previously worked with Gillespie's group suggested that he send the bones to the University of Oklahoma's Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, which has experience extracting genetic material from old bones. Gillespie's group also has a genetic sample from an Earhart female relative for comparison with the bones.
The lab is looking for mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along only through females, so there is no need to have a Noonan sample.
Cecil Lewis, an assistant professor of anthropology at the lab, said the university received a little more than a gram of bone fragments about two weeks ago. If researchers are able to extract DNA and link it to Earhart, a sample would be sent to another lab for verification.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That's why we're trying to downplay a lot of the media attention right now," Lewis said. "For all we know, this is just a turtle bone, and a lot of people are going to be very disheartened."
Under the best circumstances, the analysis would take two weeks. If scientists have trouble with the sample, that time frame could stretch into months, Lewis said.
"Ancient DNA is incredibly unpredictable," he said.
Other material recovered this year also suggested the presence of Westerners at the isolated island site:
• Someone carried shells ashore before cutting them open and slicing out the meat. Islanders cut the meat out at sea.
• Bottles found nearby were melted on the bottom, suggesting they had been put into a fire, possibly to boil water. (A Coast Guard unit on the island during World War II would have had no need to boil water.)
• Bits of makeup were found. The group is checking to see which products Earhart endorsed and whether an inventory lists specific types of makeup carried on her final trip.
• A glass bottle with remnants of lanolin and oil, possibly hand lotion.
In 2007, the group found a piece of a pocket knife but didn't know whether it was left by the Coast Guard or castaways. This year, it found the shattered remains of the knife, suggesting someone had smashed it to extract the blades. Gillespie speculated a castaway used a blade to make a spear to stab shallow-water fish like those found at the campsite.
Following Earhart's disappearance, distress signals picked up by distant ships pointed back to the area of Nikumaroro Island, but while pilots passing over saw signs of recent habitation, the island was crossed off the list as having been searched, Gillespie said.
In 1940, a British overseer on the island recovered a partial human skeleton, a woman's shoe and an empty sextant box at what appeared to be a former campsite, littered with turtle, clamshell and bird remains.
Thinking of Earhart, the overseer sent the items to Fiji, where a British doctor decided they belonged to a stocky European or mixed-blood male, ruling out any Earhart connection.
The bones later vanished, but in 1998, Gillespie's group located the doctor's notes in London. Two other forensic specialists reviewed the doctor's bone measurements and agreed they were more "consistent with" a female of northern European descent, about Earhart's age and height. On their own visits to the island, volunteers recovered an aluminum panel that could be from an Electra, another piece of a woman's shoe and a "cat's paw" heel dating from the 1930s; another shoe heel, possibly a man's, and an oddly cut piece of clear Plexiglas.
The sextant box might have been Noonan's. The woman's shoe and heel resemble a blucher-style oxford seen in a pre-takeoff photo of Earhart. The plastic shard is the exact thickness and curvature of an Electra's side window.
The body of evidence is intriguing, but Gillespie insists the team is "constantly agonizing over whether we are being dragged down a path that isn't right."
___
Words "viral" and "epic" consigned to college trash
BOSTON (Reuters) – This story might be epic, and could even go viral, but not if Lake Superior State University has anything to do with it. Just sayin.'
The small college in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, released on Friday its annual list of "banished words" -- terms so overused, misused and hackneyed they deserve to be sent to a permanent linguistic trash can in the year ahead.
"Viral," often used to describe the rapid spreading of videos or other content over the Internet, leads the list for 2011. "This linguistic disease of a term must be quarantined," Kuahmel Allah of Los Angeles said in making a nomination. Runners-up included "epic" and "fail," often twinned to describe a blunder of monumental proportions. A total of 14 words were on the list.
Cliched terms such as "wow factor," "a-ha moment," "back story" and "BFF" (Best Friends Forever) rated highly. The very au courant use of "Facebook" and "Google" as verbs got a thumbs down as well.
As usual, election-cycle zingers and catchwords quickly look as worn out as last year's campaign posters. In that vein, voters suggested the banning of "Mama Grizzlies," used to describe right-wing female politicians in the mold of Sarah Palin, and "man up," famously used by Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharon Angle in a testy debate with Democrat Harry Reid and a favorite Palin expression as well.
"A stupid phrase when directed at men. Even more stupid when directed at a woman, as in 'Alexis, you need to man up and join that Pilates class!'" said Sherry Edwards of Clarkston, Michigan. LSSU began its popular list in 1976, when it named "at this point in time," as substituted for the concise and elegant "now," as a linguistic dud. The college now receives well over 1,000 nominations each year through its website, lssu.edu/banished.
Previous winners and nominees include the terms "shovel ready" for 2010, "battleground states" for 2005, "24/7" for 2000 and "family values" for 1995.
(Reporting by Ros Krasny; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Huck Finn Gets Some Changes
By Mike Krumboltz – Tue Jan 4, 3:34 pm ET
Yahoo Blog
Acclaimed by critics, scholars, and -- of course -- readers, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the great American novels. The book has been reprinted countless times, adapted into movies, and translated into just about every language under the sun. But should it be updated for today's times?
News that the manuscript would undergo some changes sent shockwaves through the Search box. According to Publishers Weekly, NewSouth Books plans to release a version of "Huck Finn" that cuts the "n" word and replaces it with "slave." The slur "injun," referring to Native Americans, will also be replaced.
It's important to note that in using the words, Twain was critiquing racism, not endorsing it. Also important: These changes affect just one version of the classic novel, and won't apply to all the printings. Regardless, public response has been swift. Almost immediately, Web searches on "huck finn censored" and "huckleberry finn changes" spiked into breakout status.
The reponse on Twitter has been equally thunderous. Many of the comments appear to be against the changes. One person sarcastically writes, "I love when people erase racism and pretend it never happened." Still, not everyone is outraged. One respondent writes that it is "awkward being the only black kid in class and having to read it." Another points out that the original is in the public domain and still available to anyone who wants to read it.
A popular column for Entertainment Weekly asks whether this is all such a bad thing. Is it so different, the column asks, from editing "The Godfather" so it can be shown on network television? With this new version of "Huck Finn," more people, including young readers, will be able to enjoy it. Does that make the changes worth it?
We don't know the answer, but it's a question worth thinking about. Either way, the novel will survive the controversy. "Huck Finn" was first published in 1884, and it was just a year later when people began to wonder if the book should be banned. The more things change...
dreadgeek
01-06-2011, 11:09 AM
This seems, ummmm....silly. Not to put too fine a point on the matter. Like most of you, I've read Huck Finn. I read it when I was young. Did the use of the 'n-word' bother me? Sure. But it did not keep me from reading the book or enjoying it. This idea--well meaning as it might be--that people are SO sensitive that they can never, ever, be exposed to the ways, language or mores of a different time or place has got to die. Removing the n-word from Huck Finn is not going to get a single black youth who doesn't do her homework now to do her homework. Removing the word 'injun' isn't going to improve the life of a single Native American child.
What's more it does violence to literature. Books are written in a particular time and place. Some books are so fantastic that they transcend their time and place and Huck Finn is certainly one of those. We *can* judge behaviors in the past and condemn, unambiguously, the blatant racism and its sanction by the society of 19th century America. The fact of the matter is is that fin de siecle America WAS a fundamentally racist place. Changing the verbiage used by Twain or any other writer from that period isn't going to change that.
Along with the violence done to literature it does violence to history. Most modern people's ONLY connection to the 19th century will be through the literature they are exposed to in grade school. It is vanishingly improbable that most people, certainly most Americans, will ever read a book of history on their own volition and so the years they are in school is the only time they will ever be exposed to how the culture they are scions of came to be. We already have a problem with revisionist history in this nation--a big problem in fact--and the left mindlessly aping the right on this subject doesn't help. My concern is that people, exposed to this sanitized version of Twain, will be lulled into believing that America has *always* been as racially sensitive as it is now. We know, however, this isn't true.
Lastly, by doing this we are stealing from students the opportunity to learn a valuable skill; deep and contextual thinking. I love movies from the 40's and 50's. Give me some b/w film about a gumshoe and I'm a happy girl. Now, using the logic deployed in this butchering of Twain, not only am I not supposed to like these movies (I'm black, I'm a lesbian and I'm a feminist--none of those are reflected in those movies) but merely being exposed to those movies is supposed to be soul-shattering to me. So much so that I must be 'protected' against such movies. Using this logic, either Casablanca should be edited to eliminate the role of Sam or I should not see it at all lest I be psychically scarred.
It's hogwash. Pure and utter hogwash based upon hokum-based theories of human psychology.
Cheers
Aj
Huck Finn Gets Some Changes
By Mike Krumboltz – Tue Jan 4, 3:34 pm ET
Yahoo Blog
Acclaimed by critics, scholars, and -- of course -- readers, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the great American novels. The book has been reprinted countless times, adapted into movies, and translated into just about every language under the sun. But should it be updated for today's times?
News that the manuscript would undergo some changes sent shockwaves through the Search box. According to Publishers Weekly, NewSouth Books plans to release a version of "Huck Finn" that cuts the "n" word and replaces it with "slave." The slur "injun," referring to Native Americans, will also be replaced.
It's important to note that in using the words, Twain was critiquing racism, not endorsing it. Also important: These changes affect just one version of the classic novel, and won't apply to all the printings. Regardless, public response has been swift. Almost immediately, Web searches on "huck finn censored" and "huckleberry finn changes" spiked into breakout status.
The reponse on Twitter has been equally thunderous. Many of the comments appear to be against the changes. One person sarcastically writes, "I love when people erase racism and pretend it never happened." Still, not everyone is outraged. One respondent writes that it is "awkward being the only black kid in class and having to read it." Another points out that the original is in the public domain and still available to anyone who wants to read it.
A popular column for Entertainment Weekly asks whether this is all such a bad thing. Is it so different, the column asks, from editing "The Godfather" so it can be shown on network television? With this new version of "Huck Finn," more people, including young readers, will be able to enjoy it. Does that make the changes worth it?
We don't know the answer, but it's a question worth thinking about. Either way, the novel will survive the controversy. "Huck Finn" was first published in 1884, and it was just a year later when people began to wonder if the book should be banned. The more things change...
betenoire
01-06-2011, 12:16 PM
"It's like it never happened!" I say that a lot after I've cleaned up a mess I've made, swept up broken glass, get enough caught up on a delinquent payment that the phonecalls stop coming. It's not a true statement, of course: the trash can is fuller, I've got one less drinking glass, my credit report is a scandal. But it's a statement that makes me feel better. It's like it never happened.
That's what's happening here. Whoever is behind the decision to edit Twain wants to feel better about the past, at the expense of honesty. I guess if they ever went ahead and edited all future printings and history books (which they totally already are doing!) and censored the hell out of the internet they could clap their tiny hands and say it's like it never happened - and 70 years from now there would be nobody left who knew that it had happened...but that doesn't undo anything.
I voted (for no revisions) w/o reading any other comments yet on this thread. I am actually really excited to read what people say! I love this type of discussion.
I took a grad course in English Lit. that solely focused on ONE novel -- Huck Finn. I couldn't believe that an ENTIRE semester would be focused on one novel! One of the best courses I ever took.
I can't imagine the discussion (in that class) with the original words and text being censored or omitted. With no more than ten people in the course, we learned so much (as Canadians) about that socio-historical context of that book and I just don't think the impact would be the same with changes.
I actually think Twain had a comment about words and changing them--but I would have to find it.
betenoire
01-06-2011, 08:03 PM
I took a grad course in English Lit. that solely focused on ONE novel -- Huck Finn. I couldn't believe that an ENTIRE semester would be focused on one novel! One of the best courses I ever took.
Wow, that's even cooler than the Philosophy course dedicated entirely to Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I had read about a few years ago! God, I should have gone to University, it sounds so much more interesting than college.
Anyway. I really should re-read Huck Finn now that I'm an adult. I was in 5th grade when I read it, and I don't think I really was in any position to "get" the novel.
Toughy
01-06-2011, 09:28 PM
One person voted to change the novel and 3 more think Gone with the Wind should be changed.
I would love to hear why.......reminds me of when former Attorney General John Ashcroft put a drape over the statue of Lady Liberty's bare breasts.........
and just so y'all know what I think.......it's a horrendously stupid idea to change words in Twain's or any other writer's work.
dixie
01-06-2011, 09:52 PM
Why stop with classic literature or textbooks? While we're at it, let's change the Bible (or any other Holy book) to take out all the "sins" that we don't think should apply to us... *insert utter sarcasm here*
betenoire
01-06-2011, 09:59 PM
And once we're done with all of the holy writings we can begin to heavily skew and filter the news!
Oh, wait...
Just my .02
I added a poll choice for Gone with The Wind as an epic and written in the context of southern history, sensibilities and dialogue in the old South. Why not start tearing an epic novel to pieces beginning by removing the word "darkies." And soon enough, someone will start removing pictures of lynch mobs in research books and chronicles. After that, add a few lies about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, which some already deny happened. We can keep going, under the guise that everything is offensive or outdated or unproven for some reason. Nonsense as far as I'm concerned. But the danger is that we can omit, change and retell until we've whitewashed history and manipulated thinking. Twain didn't intend for his books to offend, they were written in his day and, to me, they portray a pretty good picture of history and classic literature of the 1800's.
I'm sick and tired of oversensitivity to the point that nearly everything is becoming unacceptable. I don't think you get rid of racism or hate by covering it up through revision, you get rid of it by keeping the past and the changes over time up front as fact and well documented. How many times did my Jewish friends' parents always say "never forget." And they did that by contributing to books, educational materials, speeches and testimonies and making every effort to provide facts and awareness as survivors of mass manipulation and genocide. They believed that, without awareness, the Holocaust could happen again.
I'm going to read Huck Finn again and Tom Sawyer right after that.
The_Lady_Snow
01-08-2011, 01:10 PM
It's unnecessary censorship, it's an attempt to erase his country's racist history.
Censorship of Huck Finn controversy
aseI4NluHo0
New edition of 'Huckleberry Finn' to lose the N-word
CNN Debate Video
http://www.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ/01/04/new.huck.finn.ew/index.html
(EW.com) -- What is a word worth? According to Publishers Weekly, NewSouth Books' upcoming edition of Mark Twain's seminal novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" will remove all instances of the N-word -- I'll give you a hint, it's not nonesuch -- present in the text and replace it with slave.
The new book will also remove usage of the word Injun. The effort is spearheaded by Twain expert Alan Gribben, who says his PC-ified version is not an attempt to neuter the classic but rather to update it. "Race matters in these books," Gribben told PW. "It's a matter of how you express that in the 21st century."
Is editing "Huckleberry Finn" a good idea?
Unsurprisingly, there are already those who are yelling "Censorship!" as well as others with thesauruses yelling "Bowdlerization!" and "Comstockery!"
Their position is understandable: Twain's book has been one of the most often misunderstood novels of all time, continuously being accused of perpetuating the prejudiced attitudes it is criticizing, and it's a little disheartening to see a cave-in to those who would ban a book simply because it requires context.
On the other hand, if this puts the book into the hands of kids who would not otherwise be allowed to read it due to forces beyond their control (overprotective parents and the school boards they frighten), then maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge.
Teachers: Which version of "Huck Finn" would you teach?
It's unfortunate, but is it really any more catastrophic than a TBS-friendly re-edit of "The Godfather," you down-and-dirty melon farmer? The original product is changed for the benefit of those who, for one reason or another, are not mature enough to handle it, but as long as it doesn't affect the original, is there a problem?
What do you think -- unnecessary censorship or necessary evil?
Poll above closes 1/10/2011
Bump. Poll closes tomorrow
Bump Poll closes tomorrow
Bumping again. Poll closes tomorrow
HumV4me
01-09-2011, 07:19 PM
these look like rolly polly's or silver fish of the sea.
Thanks to everybody who participated in the Huck Finn poll.
Gemme
01-10-2011, 08:57 PM
these look like rolly polly's or silver fish of the sea.
???????????????????
The Da Vinci Code, Cracked?
Expert Says She Knows Where Mona Lisa Was Painted
TIME Magazine
By TARA KELLY
That smile: No, we still don't know why. But one expert claims to have solved the question of where. For centuries the enigmatic smile of Leonardo Da Vinci's 500-year old masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, has intrigued, infatuated and even befuddled academics. But now Italian art historian Carla Glori claims to have solved a real life Da Vinci Code mystery of the landscape in the painting, reports the Guardian.
She argues that the three-arched stone bridge over the Mona Lisa's left shoulder is in Bobbio, Piacenza, in northern Italy. Her theory is based on a 2010 discovery, in which art historian Silvano Vinceti unveiled the numbers 7 and 2 concealed in the bridge. Most art historians believe the background, which features valleys and mountains, is an idealized landscape drawn from Da Vinci's imagination.
But Glori is now convinced that it depicts a specific place with 7 and 2 referring to 1472, when the Bobbio bridge was almost destroyed by flooding before being rebuilt. She came to this conclusion while investigating the possibility that Bianca Giovanna Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, the 15th century duke of Milan, sat for Da Vinci, and not Lisa del Giocondo in Florence, as is widely believed.
But fellow art historians disagree."There is no Dan Brown code here, just messages that reveal his thinking," said Silvano Vinceti. "Both the numbers seven and two are very important in the Kabbalism." Vinceti's team are also studying candidates from the court of Ludovico as possible sitters for the Mona Lisa. "But we believe Bianca Giovanna Sforza is unlikely because she died at 15 and the sitter is at least 22," he said.
Glori said she believed Da Vinci may have aged Sforza's face over the years he spent finishing the painting in a bid to hide her identity following her father's downfall.
Martin Kemp, a renowned Da Vinci scholar, also said that he was not convinced. "The portrait is almost certainly of Lisa del Giocondo, however unromantic and un-mysterious that idea might be," he said, adding that he also had his doubts on Bobbio. "Leonardo is remaking an archetypal landscape on the basis of his knowledge of the 'body of the earth'."
Glori will publish further details in her new book, The Leonardo Enigma, which comes out later this year.
http://i489.photobucket.com/albums/rr257/lionoflionsman/MonaLisa-1.jpg
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New Zodiac Sign? Don't Change Your Sign Just Yet
By Alex Johnston
Epoch Times
An astronomer said that Earth’s alignment has shifted enough to warrant a change in the Zodiac dates and a new sign. However, a blogger says that you shouldn't change your sign just yet.
Astronomer Parke Kunkle told a local Minnesota NBC station that for the past several thousand years, we could have been using 13 astrology signs.
According to the station, they could look like this:
Capricorn: Jan. 20 - Feb. 16, Aquarius: Feb. 16 - March 11, Pisces: March 11- April 18, Aries: April 18- May 13, Taurus: May 13- June 21, Gemini: June 21- July 20, Cancer: July 20- Aug. 10, Leo: Aug. 10- Sept. 16, Virgo: Sept. 16- Oct. 30, Libra: Oct. 30- Nov. 23, Scorpio: Nov. 23- Nov. 29, Ophiuchus: Nov. 29- Dec. 17, and Sagittarius: Dec. 17- Jan. 20.
Don't change your horoscopes just yet, writes Washington Post blogger Melissa Bell. "Well, Kunkle is an astronomer who is not too keen on the practice of astrology. When asked by telephone if the new star locations now require us all to switch our loyalty to a new sign, he demurred. 'I can tell you what the science is, but I'm not going to tell you what your personality is based on the location of things,'" she wrote and reported.
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The new 13th sign is Ophiuchus. Earth is in a different spot from 3,000 years ago when many of the astrological signs were first drafted by astronomers in Babylon.
However, a reader wrote into The Post and said:
"The stars are markers that drift, but our main points of reference are not directly the stars. They are the equinoxes (both spring and vernal) and the solstices which altogether make the four cardinal points of the zodiac which in turn determine the signs. The stars help us locate those points which define the SIGNS of the Zodiac which remain constant in relation to the equinox point. The CONSTELLATIONS do move about and we take that into consideration when locating planets."
Kunkle said that the change in the Earth's tilt is "really over here in effect and [the] Sun is in a different constellation" than it was in ancient times.
"So in Earth's case, right now, Earth's spin axis points towards Polaris, the North Star," Kunkle told io9.com. "But in 3000 BC, the Earth's axis pointed towards a different star, Thuban. And that majestic motion takes about 26,000 years. so if you went from 3,000 B.C. and waited 26,000 years, you'd have the north star Thuban again."
He added that he never said there should be a 13th sign but that one could consider there to be 13 constellations instead of 12. "I just mentioned that it's there, and astronomers actually count it... So if you actually watch the stars in the background of the sun, it actually does go through the constellation of Ophiuchus," he told the website.
Babylonians probably used completely differnt signs regarless, he noted.
Kunkle, an astronomy teacher at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College and who is a board member on the Minnesota Planetarium Society, said the signs don't really mean anything.
"Sure, we can connect harvest to the stars," Kunkle told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. "But personality? No."
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