email from the moms..

"Dear Lord: Thank you for bringing me to Timmy's house and not to Michael Vick's -- AMEN!"

pretenders quote of awesome.

"I was hanging out with this guy who was in a motorcycle club. One day while visiting their "clubhouse," he took me into this room and bolted the door shut. He wanted to play me his favorite record, but he didn’t want any of his "brothers" to hear it.... It was Sam Cooke singing "The Great Pretender." I looked at this white supremacist lowlife, with his hand on his heart and his eyes shut, swaying to that clear, black voice, and I thought, "I’ll have some of that." -Chrissie Hynde, of the Pretenders, on how her band got their name

HOLY SHIT, BATMAN, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

Natural disasters have quadrupled in two decades

More than four times the number of natural disasters are occurring now than did two decades ago, British charity Oxfam said in a study Sunday that largely blamed global warming.
"Oxfam... says that rising green house gas emissions are the major cause of weather-related disasters and must be tackled," the organisation said, adding that the world's poorest people were being hit the hardest.

The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per year in the early 1980s, which compared with the current figure of about 500 per year, according to the report.

"This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people," noted Oxfam director Barbara Stocking.

"This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people."

She added: "Action is needed now to prepare for more disasters otherwise humanitarian assistance will be overwhelmed and recent advances in human development will go into reverse."

The number of people affected by extreme natural disasters, meanwhile, has surged by almost 70 percent, from 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994, to 254 million people a year between 1995 to 2004, Oxfam said.

Floods and wind-storms have increased from 60 events in 1980 to 240 last year, with flooding itself up six-fold.
But the number of geothermal events, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, has barely changed.
Oxfam urged Western governments to push hard for a deal on climate change at a key international meeting that runs December 3-14 on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Rich Western nations and the United Nations must act to "make humanitarian aid faster, fairer and more flexible and to improve ways to prepare for and reduce the risk of disasters," it said.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Bali aims to see countries agree to launch a roadmap for negotiating cuts in climate-changing carbon emissions from 2012.

The Oxfam study was compiled using data from the Red Cross, the United Nations and specialist researchers at Louvain University in Belgium.

cougars ON THE PROWL

Older white women join Kenya's sex tourists
MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64.

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls."
Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.

Allie and Bethan -- who both declined to give their full names -- said they planned to spend a whole month touring Kenya's palm-fringed beaches. They would do well to avoid the country's tourism officials.

"It's not evil," said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, when asked about the practice of older rich women traveling for sex with young Kenyan men.
"But it's certainly something we frown upon."

Also, the health risks are stark in a country with an AIDS prevalence of 6.9 percent. Although condom use can only be guessed at, Julia Davidson, an academic at Nottingham University who writes on sex tourism, said that in the course of her research she had met women who shunned condoms -- finding them too "businesslike" for their exotic fantasies.

The white beaches of the Indian Ocean coast stretched before the friends as they both walked arm-in-arm with young African men, Allie resting her white haired-head on the shoulder of her companion, a six-foot-four 23-year-old from the Maasai tribe.

He wore new sunglasses he said were a gift from her.
"We both get something we want -- where's the negative?" Allie asked in a bar later, nursing a strong, golden cocktail.

She was still wearing her bikini top, having just pulled on a pair of jeans and a necklace of traditional African beads.
Bethan sipped the same local drink: a powerful mix of honey, fresh limes and vodka known locally as "Dawa," or "medicine."

She kept one eye on her date -- a 20-year-old playing pool, a red bandana tying back dreadlocks and new-looking sports shoes on his feet.
He looked up and came to join her at the table, kissing her, then collecting more coins for the pool game.

"JUST UNWHOLESOME"

Grieves-Cook and many hotel managers say they are doing all they can to discourage the practice of older women picking up local boys, arguing it is far from the type of tourism they want to encourage in the east African nation.

"The head of a local hoteliers' association told me they have begun taking measures -- like refusing guests who want to change from a single to a double room," Grieves-Cook said.

"It's about trying to make those guests feel as uncomfortable as possible ... But it's a fine line. We are 100 percent against anything illegal, such as prostitution. But it's different with something like this -- it's just unwholesome."

"PREYING ON POVERTY?"

Emerging alongside this black market trade -- and obvious in the bars and on the sand once the sun goes down -- are thousands of elderly white women hoping for romantic, and legal, encounters with much younger Kenyan men.

They go dining at fine restaurants, then dancing, and back to expensive hotel rooms overlooking the coast.

"One type of sex tourist attracted the other," said one manager at a shorefront bar on Mombasa's Bamburi beach.

"Old white guys have always come for the younger girls and boys, preying on their poverty ... But these old women followed ... they never push the legal age limits, they seem happy just doing what is sneered at in their countries."

Experts say some thrive on the social status and financial power that comes from taking much poorer, younger lovers.
"This is what is sold to tourists by tourism companies -- a kind of return to a colonial past, where white women are served, serviced, and pampered by black minions," said Nottinghan University's Davidson.

"LIVE LIKE THE RICH"

Many of the visitors are on the lookout for men like Joseph.
Flashing a dazzling smile and built like an Olympic basketball star, the 22-year-old said he has slept with more than 100 white women, most of them 30 years his senior.

"When I go into the clubs, those are the only women I look for now," he told Reuters. "I get to live like the rich mzungus (white people) who come here from rich countries, staying in the best hotels and just having my fun."

At one club, a group of about 25 dancing men -- most of them Joseph look-alikes -- edge closer and closer to a crowd of more than a dozen white women, all in their autumn years.

"It's not love, obviously. I didn't come here looking for a husband," Bethan said over a pounding beat from the speakers.

"It's a social arrangement. I buy him a nice shirt and we go out for dinner. For as long as he stays with me he doesn't pay for anything, and I get what I want -- a good time. How is that different from a man buying a young girl dinner?"

wtf?!?

where did they FIND this baby?

some quotes i found...

...on little scraps of paper, while i was cleaning the tsunami of my desk.

Love is like a minefield.
You take a step, get blown to pieces, put yourself back together and stupidly take another step. I guess that's human nature though. It hurts so much to be alone, we'd rather blow up.

Be quick to love, and make haste to be kind.

and on a lighter note,

Gene mutation linked to cognition is found only in humans

The human and chimpanzee genomes vary by just 1.2 percent, yet there is a considerable difference in the mental and linguistic capabilities between the two species. A new study showed that a certain form of neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory, is expressed only in the central nervous systems of humans and that it originated less than 5 million years ago. The study, which also demonstrated the molecular mechanism that creates this novel protein, will be published online in Human Mutation, the official journal of the Human Genome Variation Society.

Led by Dr. Bing Su of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Kunming, China, researchers analyzed the DNA of humans and several species of apes and monkeys. Their previous work had shown that type II neuropsin, a longer form of the protein, is not expressed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of lesser apes and Old World monkeys. In the current study, they tested the expression of type II in the PFC of two great ape species, chimpanzees and orangutans, and found that it was not present. Since these two species diverged most recently from human ancestors (about 5 and 14 million years ago respectively), this finding demonstrates that type II is a human-specific form that originated relatively recently, less than 5 million years ago.

Gene sequencing revealed a mutation specific to humans that triggers a change in the splicing pattern of the neuropsin gene, creating a new splicing site and a longer protein. Introducing this mutation into chimpanzee DNA resulted in the creation of type II neuropsin. "Hence, the human-specific mutation is not only necessary but also sufficient in creating the novel splice form," the authors state.

The results also showed a weakening effect of a different, type I-specific splicing site and a significant reduction in type I neuropsin expression in human and chimpanzee when compared with the rhesus macaque, an Old World monkey. This pattern suggests that before the emergence of the type II splice form in human, the weakening of the type I splicing site already existed in the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, implying a multi-step process that led to the dramatic change of splicing pattern in humans, the authors note. They identified a region of the chimpanzee sequence that has a weakening effect on the splicing site that also probably applies to humans. "It is likely that both the creation of novel splice form and the weakening of the constitutive splicing contribute to the splicing pattern changes during primate evolution, suggesting a multi-step process eventually leading to the origin of the type II form in human," the authors state.

They note that further studies should probe the biological function of type II neuropsin in humans, as the extra 45 amino acids in this form may cause protein structural and functional changes. They note that in order to understand the genetic basis that underlies the traits that set humans apart from nonhuman primates, recent studies have focused on identifying genes that have been positively selected during human evolution. They conclude, "The present results underscore the potential importance of the creation of novel splicing forms in the central nervous system in the emergence of human cognition."

Research confirms theory that all modern humans descended from the same small group of people

Researchers have produced new DNA evidence that almost certainly confirms the theory that all modern humans have a common ancestry.
The genetic survey, produced by a collaborative team led by scholars at Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin Universities, shows that Australia's aboriginal population sprang from the same tiny group of colonists, along with their New Guinean neighbours.

The research confirms the “Out Of Africa” hypothesis that all modern humans stem from a single group of Homo sapiens who emigrated from Africa 2,000 generations ago and spread throughout Eurasia over thousands of years. These settlers replaced other early humans (such as Neanderthals), rather than interbreeding with them.

Academics analysed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome DNA of Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians from New Guinea. This data was compared with the various DNA patterns associated with early humans. The research was an international effort, with researchers from Tartu in Estonia, Oxford, and Stanford in California all contributing key data and expertise.

The results showed that both the Aborigines and Melanesians share the genetic features that have been linked to the exodus of modern humans from Africa 50,000 years ago.

Until now, one of the main reasons for doubting the “Out Of Africa” theory was the existence of inconsistent evidence in Australia. The skeletal and tool remains that have been found there are strikingly different from those elsewhere on the “coastal expressway” – the route through South Asia taken by the early settlers.

Some scholars argue that these discrepancies exist either because the early colonists interbred with the local Homo erectus population, or because there was a subsequent, secondary migration from Africa. Both explanations would undermine the theory of a single, common origin for modern-day humans.

But in the latest research there was no evidence of a genetic inheritance from Homo erectus, indicating that the settlers did not mix and that these people therefore share the same direct ancestry as the other Eurasian peoples.

Geneticist Dr Peter Forster, who led the research, said: “Although it has been speculated that the populations of Australia and New Guinea came from the same ancestors, the fossil record differs so significantly it has been difficult to prove. For the first time, this evidence gives us a genetic link showing that the Australian Aboriginal and New Guinean populations are descended directly from the same specific group of people who emerged from the African migration.”

At the time of the migration, 50,000 years ago, Australia and New Guinea were joined by a land bridge and the region was also only separated from the main Eurasian land mass by narrow straits such as Wallace's Line in Indonesia. The land bridge was submerged about 8,000 years ago.

Australia's archaeological record provides several apparent inconsistencies with the “Out Of Africa” theory. In particular, the earliest known Australian skeletons, from Lake Mungo, are relatively slender and gracile in form, whereas younger skeletal finds are much more robust. This robustness, which remains, for example, in the brow ridge structure of modern Aborigines, would suggest either interbreeding between homo sapiens and homo erectus or multiple migrations into Australia, followed by interbreeding. The archaeological data also indicates an intensification of the density and complexity of different stone tools in Australia during the Holocene period (beginning around 10,000 years BP), in particular the emergence of backed-blade stone technology. The first dingos arrived at around the same time, and it is thought both were brought to the continent by new human arrivals – leading to theories of a secondary migration that has resulted in disputes regarding the single point of origin theory.

And the real Lotto winner is … that man at the cash register

When backpackers Caroline Day and Mei-Yin Lee discovered they had won Lotto they rang home from the newsagency. It was after one in the morning in Britain but Ms Day wanted to share the news with her mother.

During that joyous phone call, they calculated they had won about £220,000.

But three weeks later when Dr Lee rang NSW Lotteries to inquire about the money, a "bold" fraud by an employee at the newsagency came to light - and it would be another 27 months before the pair saw their money.

In an email to the Herald from her home in Britain, Dr Lee - an Australian citizen from Perth - said she was "over the moon" that their long legal battle with NSW Lotteries had been settled and that changes had been made to the way claims were processed.

On January 4, 2005 Dr Lee and Ms Day presented their Lotto ticket at the World Square Newsagency Bookshop. A friend took their photo with the ticket before they handed it in and filled in a claim form.

After the transaction, the employee who had served them, Chrishartato Ongkoputra, known as Chris Ong, substituted their claim form for one of his own. He then sent his form, and their winning ticket, to NSW Lotteries.

"The stars really aligned for him," said the barrister James Stevenson, SC, who is representing newsagents Michael Pavellis and his partner Sheila Urech-Tan.

Mr Ong knew that NSW Lotteries would not pay out for 14 days. He told his boss he was having visa problems and needed to return temporarily to Indonesia. He gambled that the backpackers would not chase up their win until after he had left the country.

"The [newsagents] have been betrayed by a person they had no reason to doubt. They now find themselves in the position of being sued for half a million dollars plus costs by an agency of the government," Mr Stevenson said.

At the time of Mr Ong's fraud, NSW Lotteries was already reviewing its security following a similar fraud at an agency in Croydon. A report by NSW Lotteries, tendered in evidence, said it needed to address the problem with unregistered tickets to protect the corporate image and customer confidence.

Dr Lee is just happy the matter has been settled.

Judge targets no-snitching culture

The 12 middle school students had just finished watching an instructional video produced to help break down the "no snitching" culture in Boston when a court volunteer asked them a series of questions.

How many have heard shootings at night?
Every hand went up.

How many knew someone who had been shot?
At least seven raised their hands.

Finally, how many have ever reported gunfire to police?
This time, no one raised an arm.

The children's response is why court officials have been showing the video "You Be the Judge" to hundreds of fifth- and sixth-graders since January. The video, filmed by the Huntington Theatre Company, tells the fictional story of a Boston teenager named Bobby Wilson who is left holding a gun his friend used to shoot another teenager after a drug deal gone wrong. Bobby is arrested when his girlfriend, who had urged him to go to the police, refuses to hide the gun for him. His fear of "snitching" leads to a first-degree murder charge and he is left sitting morosely in a courtroom, filled with regret, as a jury decides his fate.

On Monday, the 12 students - sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from the McCormack Middle School in Dorchester - gathered in West Roxbury District Court for a viewing.

The children were older than most of the students who have watched the video, and some had already had brushes with the law. Court officials were worried they would react cynically to the video.

As it played, the children did snicker occasionally, mocking the sometimes stiff acting and melodramatic courtroom scenes. But they paid attention and stayed quiet for most of the film.

"It was good," said Shawn Rowe, a serious, hazel-eyed 15-year-old, afterward. "It seemed like something that could happen."

For others, the video lacked credibility.

"That video wasn't real. It was made by adults," said one 14-year-old eighth-grader who declined to give his name. "If it had been done by kids, it would have been way different."

Asked what he meant, he said that for one thing, most girls he knows would have hidden their boyfriend's gun.

"My girl would take that hammy," he said, referring to the slang word for gun. WHAT?!?!? YOURE 14!!!"I wouldn't," retorted Myiesha, a 14-year-old girl who asked that her last name be withheld.

The video unleashed a torrent of discussion inside the judges lobby, where Kathleen Coffey, the first justice of the West Roxbury court, had invited them to view the film with probation and police officers.

The children debated whether Wilson should be found guilty and if his girlfriend did the right thing - most of them believed she did. They then peppered Coffey and the officers with questions about mandatory gun sentences, why juveniles are sometimes charged as adults, and why police shoot to kill. In turn, the officials asked the children why they do not turn to authority figures when they witness an assault or are the victims of one.

"If you go to the principal, that's going to make things worse," Rowe said. "Because they're going to come after you even more."

The video, which features police officers, court officials, and teenagers from across the city, is part of Reinventing Justice, a volunteer program of police officers, lawyers, and others run by Coffey and designed to make the courts more accessible to the community.

Coffey said they decided to show the film to middle school students because they are more likely influenced by its message than high school students, who have formed firmer opinions about cooperating with police.

Middle school students are at "the turning point," she said. "You still have their attention."

As the students prepared to leave her conference room for a tour of the courthouse, Coffey told them she hoped they would reflect on what they discussed that morning. They would be heading into her courtroom to watch defendants plead their cases. Many of them, Coffey told them, are good people who made "bad decisions."

"What we're talking about is serious," she said. "I pray every night and I'm sure your parents pray every night that you will make good decisions."

Marvin Bell's collection of poetry, "Mars Being Red" (Copper Canyon Press).

In the poem "The Campus in Wartime," Bell writes:
Three thousand of ours and thousands of theirs
are too many body bags to bury in the mind,
so while the gas of rotting bodies seeps up
from the ramshackle coffins and folded flags,
the young seek books or booze to soften the ache."

uhhh...what?

who let fluffy in the ring?

a great f*ing editorial

SEVERAL YEARS back, I went to Maui to spend a few days with my brother and soak up some midwinter sun.
He had moved to Maui from the Midwest two decades ago, he said, and since then, he had left the island paradise only a handful of times.

Coming from icy New England, I couldn't help feel a pang of envy.

Are you a surfer, I asked?
No.
A sailor?
No.
A snorkeler?
No.
Well, you must love the water, anyway, I said.
Not really.
So what do you do to pass the time, I asked?

"I used to watch a lot of cable TV," he said. "But now I'm on the Internet quite a bit."
And not just as an idle browser. He frequently posted under a nom de plume on a leading conservative site, whose readers, if you run afoul of their cherished tenets, will take you to task in the sort of language an 18th-century squire might have employed in challenging you to a duel. Yet I would count that transition from passive TV viewer to active Web poster as distinct progress.
He - and his pre-Internet years as tropical-climate couch potato - came to mind recently as I read about the hardships the television writers' strike could visit upon us.

As I understand it, if the strikes drags on, our cultural swamp may become an arid national desert. Things could get so bad that, once the current shows have run their pre-scripted course, a crop of (previously produced) marginal offerings may sprout up like weeds to replace them.

I can't imagine how we'll endure.
Or how we'll tell the difference.

The one show my wife and I watch with some regularity is "Grey's Anatomy," in which young surgical interns assist with the occasional high-risk operation in between the frantic pursuit of their sex lives.

Epic drama? Hardly. Rather, it's a silly Thursday night diversion.
But when I sometimes scan the channels at other times, aside from news, the only things I find myself settling on for more than a couple of minutes are wildlife shows like Animal Planet's "Meerkat Manor." The adventures of those furry little beasts are far more captivating than any human reality TV show I've sampled.

That's why I'm continually amazed at the statistics about the long hours the average American spends watching TV. A new National Endowment for the Arts study pegs it at 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day for the average person between the ages of 15 and 24, compared with a paltry seven minutes spent reading.

When I see those statistics, I always silently thank my father for breaking my siblings and me of our TV habit when we were young. One day when I was 6 or 7, our television gave up the ghost. Fed up with the time we were spending in front of the set, my dad, a devoted reader, decided not to replace it.

Life without TV, and particularly "Lost in Space," seemed almost unthinkable. Yet my father was confident we would survive, and time proved him right. We eventually came to see that there's very little on TV that can compare with the pleasures of a good book, or time devoted to a hobby, or stimulating conversation or doing something active.

Over the years, my wife and I have entertained loads of friends and their children at our cottage in Maine, where the tiny TV is only for can't-be-missed news events. Camp is for swimming and canoeing and boating during the day, for board games or cribbage or conversation at night. That's a change for some kids, but just as it did for us all those years ago, the allure of TV soon fades in the face of something more active and engaging.

Keep it off, and you almost forget it's there. I was on leave from July to October, and save for General David Petraeus's congressional testimony and a presidential debate or two, I doubt I saw 10 minutes of TV the entire time.

And now, the writers' strike is a perfect excuse to kick the habit.

So try it for a week. Or even just for a couple of nights.

Switch the set off. Stop watching. Start living.

Trust me. Or rather, my father. You'll survive.

-Scot Lehigh

‘Playful’ lion chases after traffic in Ohio

WAKEFIELD, Ohio - That was no dog chasing cars in southern Ohio earlier this week. It was all cat - big cat.

Cops responded to a 911 call of a lion “attacking” vehicles on U.S. Route 23 Monday and found a man trying to capture a 550-pound feline near Wakefield.

Terry Brumfield told officers that his lion - Lambert the lion - had broken out of his pen in nearby Piketon, about 90 miles east of Cincinnati. The owner was able to get the animal back into the cage without anyone getting hurt.

Brumfield and his wife have two lions. Vicki Brumfield said raising them has helped her husband through a bout of depression. She said they are tame, like great big house cats. Ohio doesn’t require permits for exotic animals, but that would change under an Ohio House bill now in committee.


uhh...what? take prozac, ya freak.

They may be young, but they’re not stupid

WASHINGTON - Even babies can tell who’s a pint-sized jerk ... and who they’d rather play with.

A recent Yale study found babies as young as 6 to 10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk.

Researchers at Yale University’s Infant Cognition Center had their test infants watch a googly eyed wooden toy trying to climb roller-coaster hills. Then another googly eyed toy would come by and either help the first one over the mountain or push it backward. The babies then were presented with the toys to see which they would play with.

Nearly every baby picked the helpful toy over the bad one.

The babies also chose neutral toys - ones that didn’t help or hinder - over the naughty ones. And the babies chose the helping toys over the neutral ones.

“It’s incredibly impressive that babies can do this,” said study lead author Kiley Hamlin, a Yale psychology researcher. “We know that they’re very, very social beings from very, very early on.”

A study last year out of Germany showed that babies as young as 18 months old overwhelmingly helped out when they could, such as by picking up toys that researchers dropped.


because really, who wants to be friends with the fat kid?[or the bully]

Former Culture Club singer Boy George will stand trial in February charged with falsely imprisoning a male escort by chaining him to a wall, a court ruled Thursday.
Thames Magistrate Court in London set a date of February 25 for the trial after the 1980s pop star was indicted last week over an alleged incident at his flat in the trendy Shoreditch area of east London.

Boy George -- famous for 1980s hits such as "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" and "Karma Chameleon" -- spoke during the minute-long hearing only to confirm his real name, George O'Dowd.

It is alleged that the 47-year-old singer-turned DJ falsely imprisoned a 28-year-old at his home in Ravey Street, Hackney, east London, on April 28.

The musician, who was released on conditional bail, made no comment to reporters before leaving court in a blacked-out silver estate car. His trial will be held at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

Last August, he raded his microphone for a broom to complete a week of community service in New York after admitting that he falsely reported a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment.

Police who responded to the call found a stash of cocaine.

Boy George left Culture Club in 1987 and embarked on a brief solo career before reinventing himself as a club DJ and launching a fashion label, B-Rude.

Holy crap Batman!......WTF?

Very occasionally, I understand the right-wing cries of "loony lefties."
This is one of those times.

im all in for this little guy.

Consequently, you can't tell the players in "I'm Not There" without a scorecard. The movie begins by audaciously offering a portrait of the artist as a young black child (Marcus Carl Franklin), already telling tall tales of living the blues and crisscrossing America by freight train. The kid calls himself "Woody Guthrie" and like his Depression-era namesake carries a guitar case painted with the words "This machine kills fascists." A black southern housewife takes one look at him and says, "It's 1959. Find your own time, child."

Holocaust hero accused of swindling 93-year-old neighbor in Florida

...truly awful...
PALM BEACH, Fla. - In Eastern Europe during World War II, young Aron Bielski and his three older brothers mounted what was, by most accounts, the biggest armed rescue of Jews by Jews during the Holocaust.

The Bielski brothers were acclaimed as heroes, and their exploits were chronicled in books, a documentary and a Hollywood movie coming out next year.

But now, the sole surviving Bielski brother is being called something far different — a con man.

Now 80 and known as Aron Bell, he has been arrested on charges of swindling a 93-year-old woman, a Catholic survivor of the Holocaust. Bell and his wife, Henryka, 58, are accused of tricking the old woman into giving them control of more than $250,000 in various bank accounts.

According to police, the couple then convinced the woman they were taking her on a vacation to her native Poland, and instead put her in a nursing home there, returned to Palm Beach and spent her money, nearly every penny.

The charges against the couple carry up to 90 years in prison.

Bell’s attorney has strongly denied the allegations and said the old woman was going senile.

———

Nude man accused of causing I-95 crashes

BRANDYWINE HUNDRED, Del. - Delaware State Police have arrested a Chester, Pennsylvania, man who they said was running naked and drunk on Interstate-95 and caused three accidents.

Police said Ardonas Gilbert, 26, was running along the southbound lanes near Marsh Road about 10 p.m. Monday. He is charged with two counts of assault and a single count of being drunk on the highway.

Two citizens tried to help Gilbert, but police say he began to assault them. Then police said he ran back into traffic and caused three accidents when cars tried to avoid hitting him.

No one was seriously injured.

Gilbert is being held at the Howard Young Correctional Institute in Wilmington.

Bush pardons Thanksgiving Turkey

...why does this happen?
WASHINGTON - The turkey at the White House really draws a crowd. When President Bush stepped into the Rose Garden on Tuesday, he found visitors in every coveted seat, reporters standing three rows deep and staff members craning for just one good glimpse. They came for one of those signature White House moments: Bush saving the life of a huge, white, gobbling bird.

Bush granted his yearly pardon to the national Thanksgiving turkey, named "May," and a backup turkey who went unseen, who goes by "Flower."

The names were chosen in an online poll that drew more than 28,000 votes. It was close; people also liked "Wish and Bone," and "Wing and Prayer."

"They’re certainly better than the names the vice president suggested, which was ‘lunch’ and ‘dinner,’" Bush said.

Bush and the bird coexisted peacefully, although the turkey interrupted the president three times with gobbles, much to the delight of the audience.

After the pardon, the president petted the bird gently and then encouraged some young children to gather around him and do the same.

The White House made clear that the national turkey and its alternate were raised under "normal feeding" conditions. The one exception is when the birds were given some extra interaction with people so that they would be ready for their big moment at the White House.

The popular pardon ceremony, now in its 60th year, dates to Harry Truman’s days as president.

May and Flower are now headed to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., to be honorary grand marshals at Disney’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

"May they live the rest of their lives in blissful gobbling," Bush said.

The president and first lady Laura Bush, meanwhile, flew off to the presidential retreat in Camp David, Md., for the holiday week.

Man accused of pimping his child support

EVERETT, Wash. - A man who owes seven women more than $70,000 for child support apparently made some payments using proceeds from an Internet-based prostitution ring he ran, investigators say.

According to Snohomish County Superior Court records, authorities believe the man controlled at least two women through intimidation and violence, rented motel rooms for them and took their prostitution earnings after advertising on Craigslist.org, The (Everett) Herald reported Tuesday.

Detectives wrote that the man came to their attention in March after a woman said she saw her daughter’s picture on the popular free advertising Web site with what appeared to be an advertisement for sex. The mother said her daughter was being "pimped out" by a man who assaulted the younger woman and refused to let her visit her family, according to a search warrant.

Police found the man had several women working for him and may have earned as much as $300,000 in the past two years, using some of the funds to make support payments for his eight children, all younger than 5. Classy. Hella Classy.

The man was arrested last month for investigation of first-degree promoting prostitution but posted bail a few hours after being booked. In court documents he described himself as a "private caregiver" who sometimes has trouble collecting from clients.

Police also searched two apartments and seized computers, drug paraphernalia and about $2,300 in cash.

Detectives found the man was on probation for bank fraud in the 1990s and didn’t have any employment history, but always seemed to have money and often arrived at the probation office in an expensive vehicle driven by different women.

from the Reliable Source girls...

Bill Nye, "The Science Guy," has a restraining order against his former fiancee, who poured weedkiller on his L.A. garden, potentially poisoning his homegrown veggies. Ex Blair Tindall acknowledged the act was "poor judgment" but accused Nye of "emotional cruelty." A hearing is set for next month.

Our friend Larry, Evangelical Iowan.

"I say we have to go vote because if we don't vote, then all the women will vote and we'll have a woman in the White House and then we got problems," bellows Larry Timmons, who is in the construction business, from the back of the room. This gets a huge laugh. But he's serious.

"God," he notes, "did not plan for a woman to run everything."

PLEASE, DONT squeeze the Charmin

Dick Wilson, the actor who played Mr. Whipple in more than 500 Charmin commercials from 1964 to 1985, died Monday at age 91, at a hospital for ailing movie and television actors, way out in the San Fernando Valley. He'd done other parts, in sitcoms, but showbiz can only be counted on to give a guy one sure thing, if he's lucky, and Wilson got to be Mr. Whipple, forever.

Wilson died on what just happened to be World Toilet Day, in which global health advocates and public bathroom accessibility proponents annually remind us that not even 20 percent of the planet's population enjoys daily access to a clean, working toilet -- to say nothing of "squeezably soft" rolls of tissue.

In other words, Americans are an incalculably comfortable (and comfort-seeking) people, and we would probably be horrified to re-encounter whatever toilet paper must have felt like in 1964. Mr. Whipple patrolled one of those supermarkets no one would go to anymore unless he had to, the medium-size IGA that knew not of eco-aware branding. Mr. Whipple loved to catch customers in the act of (egad!) touching things. Mr. Whipple would not do well in today's world of the Customer Is Always Right.

Lately toilet paper ads have been about pastel-hued cartoon bears who have a toilet paper dispenser mounted on a nearby tree. The bears make Mr. Whipple seem that much more real, and so much less weird. Of all the things we have no shame in discussing in 2007 -- where Oprah Winfrey routinely tells Dr. Mehmet Oz about the current shape of her excrement -- we seem to be getting more distant from Mr. Whipple's fussy intrusions, his fastidious way of changing the subject. Don't squeeze the Charmin, he said, which of course meant do.

So long, Mr. Whipple, master of reverse psychology. Thanks to you, we squeezed it like nobody's business.

mike rowe you dirty dog!

Lush has plush lust: Accused thief found with stuffed dog used for sex

A Winnipeg man who turned an East Kildonan garage into an impromptu passion pit paid a stiff price yesterday for his heavy petting session with a stuffed toy dog.

The 27-year-old man pleaded guilty to mischief and break, enter and theft and was sentenced to six months in jail.

Court heard Winnipeg police were called shortly before 6 p.m. on March 26 after a Chelsea Avenue resident spotted the man breaking into her garage. The man exited the garage a short time later and moved on to a neighbour's garage, where he stole a lawn mower, a mountain bike, a blanket and a stuffed toy dog.

The man eventually returned to the first garage, where police found him nearly two hours later passed out inside a boat.

"He was lying there with his genitalia exposed next to the stuffed dog," said Crown attorney John Peden. "While the police report doesn't describe it this way, the dog might be appropriately characterized as now being anatomically correct, as opposed to its condition before he removed it."

Defence lawyer Chris McCoy said his client, who has a history of domestic violence offences and court breaches, gets himself into trouble when he has been drinking.
"All (his offences) involve being drunk, usually drunk as a skunk," he said.

A Winnipeg psychologist said sex acts involving stuffed animals are not entirely uncommon.

"There are people who have a variety of sexual predilections, some have to do with plush animals," said Toby Rutner. "There are some people who will even dress up in animal costumes."

He added a plush fetish would be akin to a leather or plastic fetish.

As many people are reluctant to admit to fetishes, Rutner wouldn't hazard a guess as to how common it is to be attracted to plush animals.

Mama said check yo'self!

Boy, 10, finds a tooth in his sausage

David Walker, ten, was eating dinner with his family when he felt something hard as he chewed.
He spat it out and realised it was a tooth.


His father Andrew, a writer, said: "It was a pretty gross moment. David ran upstairs and cleaned his teeth because he was so upset. Nobody else finished their meal."

Mr Walker, 41, took it to environmental health officials who confirmed that it was a milk tooth.

"If it was a pen or a 50p piece I could perhaps understand that it fell out of a worker's pocket but a tooth is different," he added.

The £1.02 pack of 24 Tesco Value sausages had been delivered to the Walkers, from Cheltenham, by Tesco's online store.

On Tuesday, David's parents, who have four children, cooked the sausages with chips.

Tesco apologised and said: "We do take such incidents very seriously and would welcome the opportunity to carry out our own investigation with our supplier."

David's mother Helen, 41, said: "I can't imagine David will eat sausages again."

uhhh...gross? WRONG. AWESOME!!!

Ice-cream shaped like faeces is ready to be served at the Modern Toilet diner in the Shilin district in Taipei November 9, 2007. All 100 seats in the crowded diner are made from toilet bowls, not chairs. Sink faucets and gender-coded "WC" signs appear throughout the three-storey facility, one of 12 in an island-wide chain of eateries with a toilet theme.

Woman, 73, proceeds with hair appointment after crashing into salon in Alaska

SOLDOTNA, Alaska - A woman on her way to hair appointment crashed her car through the hair salon.

Della Miller, 73, crashed into the Tina’s Hair Pros’s windows Wednesday, knocking one customer six feet across the room, Soldotna police officer Marvin Towle said. The parking area in front of the salon was snow-covered.

Miranda Nelson, a stylist, said she was in the back room when she heard the crash.


"I thought a bomb had gone off," Nelson said.

Two large plate-glass windows were destroyed, walls were damaged, and the stonework front outside the salon was smashed, police said. Towle estimated damage to the building to be at least $15,000, and the car at another $2,500.

Miller, who was not injured, was not cited for the crash.

She proceeded with her hair appointment.

Sting targets newspaper selling escort ads

ORLANDO, Fla. - For years, the back pages of the Orlando Weekly were filled with ads for naughty nurses, sultry coeds and girls with come-hither names like “Rush” and “Roxie.”

But the saucy escort-service advertising came to a halt last month.

Vice squad officers arrested three of the paper’s advertising sales reps in a sting operation and secured an extraordinary racketeering indictment against the Weekly, accusing it of knowingly profiting from prostitution.


The free alternative paper is calling the arrests an assault on the First Amendment - an argument that might not fly in court, given that investigators say they videotaped Weekly employees selling ad space to undercover officers who openly claimed to be prostitutes.

“We couldn’t believe how easy it was to say, ‘We’re a prostitute. I want to put out an ad,’ ” said Paul Zambouros, commander of the vice and organized crime section at the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation.IDIOTS. How are these people, these little ones who have such a strong grasp on the english language, our law enforcers?.

Escort-service ads are common in the nation’s alternative newspapers and bring in big money. Richard Karpel, executive director of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, said he has heard of only one other similar case, and it involved only one employee and no charges against the newspaper.

Bike sex man placed on probation

A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation.
Robert Stewart, 51, admitted a sexually aggravated breach of the peace by conducting himself in a disorderly manner and simulating sex.
Sheriff Colin Miller also placed Stewart on the Sex Offenders Register for three years.

Mr Stewart was caught in the act with his bicycle by cleaners in his bedroom at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr.
Gail Davidson, prosecuting, told Ayr Sheriff Court: "They knocked on the door several times and there was no reply.
"They used a master key to unlock the door and they then observed the accused wearing only a white t-shirt, naked from the waist down.
"The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex."

Both cleaners, who were "extremely shocked", told the hostel manager who called police.
Sheriff Colin Miller told Stewart: "In almost four decades in the law I thought I had come across every perversion known to mankind, but this is a new one on me. I have never heard of a 'cycle-sexualist'."

Stewart had denied the offence, claiming it was caused by a misunderstanding after he had too much to drink.
The bachelor had been living in the hostel since October 2006 after moving from his council house in Girvan.
He now lives in Ayr.

Cops put the cuffs on slimy suspect

THORNTOWN, Ind. - Authorities used vegetable oil to free a slippery customer who said he became trapped in the vent shaft of a grocery store when he tried to rob it.

Adam F. Cooper, 19, was being held on $10,000 bail yesterday on charges including burglary and criminal mischief.

Authorities said Cooper was found Tuesday night in the shaft between the ceiling and the roof of the store after someone heard him screaming for help.


Emergency workers cut Cooper’s sweatshirt away, poured vegetable oil taken from a store shelf down the shaft and handed him a rope. Four men on the roof then pulled him out, said Thorntown Deputy Marshal Chad Clendening. He was trapped for at least an hour.

“He’s really lucky someone heard him yelling,” Clendening said. “Otherwise, we probably would have been removing a corpse the next morning.”

Earlier that day, Cooper had been on a team that cleaned the store’s vent, authorities said. He reportedly told police he was able to move through the vent while he was working, so he figured he could use it to rob the store.

A message was left yesterday seeking comment from Cooper’s attorney.

dude this is seriously fucked up....Court deals blow to Islamic charity’s wiretapping case

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal appeals court dealt a near-fatal blow today to an Islamic charity’s lawsuit alleging it was illegally wiretapped by federal investigators, saying that a key piece of evidence the charity planned to use is a protected state secret.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that a top secret call log accidentally turned over to the now-defunct U.S. arm of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation’s lawyers by the U.S. Treasury Department can’t be used as evidence.

Al-Haramain, which was labeled by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, alleged it had been illegally wiretapped by the Bush administration without a warrant. But without the document, the court said, the foundation has little proof it was wiretapped.

The charity’s lawyers voluntarily turned over the document to FBI agents after it was given to them. But a lower court ruled that the lawyers couldn’t use the actual document to support their lawsuit but could use their memories of its contents to go forward.

The appeals court said that ruling was "a commendable effort to thread the needle," but still ran counter to the state secrets law, which precludes the disclosure of sensitive information in court that could jeopardize national security.

"Such an approach countenances a back door around the privilege and would eviscerate the state secret itself," Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel.

give me half of your christ love!!!

Pastor’s unhappy wife wants church, too

MINEOLA, N.Y. - The estranged wife of a pastor claims her husband blended his professional and personal finances so thoroughly that his church should be counted as an asset in their divorce.

A judge agreed in a decision published this week to hear arguments on the claim, and he ordered a financial appraisal of the church. Lawyers said it could represent the first time anyone in New York state has tried to treat a religious institution as a marital asset.

The wife argues that her husband of 31 years used his Brooklyn church as a “personal piggy bank,” setting his own income, spending the congregation’s tithes as he pleased and running a catering business from the building, according to the decision by state Supreme Court Judge Arthur M. Diamond. The couple’s names were redacted from the decision.


The wife said $50,000 of the couple’s money went into starting the church, and that the church property is partly hers.

“That church is no different than any other business he might have opened,” said the wife’s lawyer, Robert Pollack.

The pastor maintains he is simply a church employee, and the institution’s funds should not be considered his, according to Diamond’s decision.

“My client can’t own the church,” said the minister’s lawyer, Eleanor Gery.

thank you mom and dad, for loving each other.

-Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.

-Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.

-Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University.

Musician Claims Music Notes Coded Into Da Vinci's 'Last Supper'

ROME — It's a new Da Vinci code, but this time it could be for real.
An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper," raising the possibility that the Renaissance genius might have left behind a somber composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting.

"It sounds like a requiem," Giovanni Maria Pala said. "It's like a soundtrack that emphasizes the passion of Jesus."
Painted from 1494 to 1498 in Milan's Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the "Last Supper" vividly depicts a key moment in the Gospel narrative: Jesus' last meal with the 12 Apostles before his arrest and crucifixion, and the shock of Christ's followers as they learn that one of them is about to betray him.

Pala, a 45-year-old musician who lives near the southern Italian city of Lecce, began studying Leonardo's painting in 2003, after hearing on a news program that researchers believed the artist and inventor had hidden a musical composition in the work.
"Afterward, I didn't hear anything more about it," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "As a musician, I wanted to dig deeper."
In a book released Friday in Italy, Pala explains how he took elements of the painting that have symbolic value in Christian theology and interpreted them as musical clues.

Pala first saw that by drawing the five lines of a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of bread on the table as well as the hands of Jesus and the Apostles could each represent a musical note.

This fit the relation in Christian symbolism between the bread, representing the body of Christ, and the hands, which are used to bless the food, he said. But the notes made no sense musically until Pala realized that the score had to be read from right to left, following Leonardo's particular writing style.

In his book — "La Musica Celata" ("The Hidden Music") — Pala also describes how he found what he says are other clues in the painting that reveal the slow rhythm of the composition and the duration of each note.

The result is a 40-second "hymn to God" that Pala said sounds best on a pipe organ, the instrument most commonly used in Leonardo's time for spiritual music.

Alessandro Vezzosi, a Leonardo expert and the director of a museum dedicated to the artist in his hometown of Vinci, said he had not seen Pala's research but that the musician's hypothesis "is plausible."

Vezzosi said previous research has indicated the hands of the Apostles in the painting can be substituted with the notes of a Gregorian chant, though so far no one had tried to work in the bread loaves.

"There's always a risk of seeing something that is not there, but it's certain that the spaces (in the painting) are divided harmonically," he told the AP. "Where you have harmonic proportions, you can find music."

Vezzosi also noted that though Leonardo was more noted for his paintings, sculptures and visionary inventions, he was also a musician. Da Vinci played the lyre and designed various instruments. His writings include some musical riddles, which must be read from right to left.
Reinterpretations of the "Last Supper" have popped up ever since "The Da Vinci Code" fascinated readers and movie-goers with suggestions that one of the apostles sitting on Jesus' right is Mary Magdalene, that the two had a child and that their bloodline continues.

Pala stressed that his discovery does not reveal any supposed dark secrets of the Catholic Church or of Leonardo, but instead shows the artist in a light far removed from the conspiratorial descriptions found in fiction.
"A new figure emerges — he wasn't a heretic like some believe," Pala said. "What emerges is a man who believes, a man who really believes in God."

A Look Inside the World's Only Toilet House

Toilet times, they are a changing.
While most look at the porcelain bowl as the receptacle of all things foul and malodorous, a South Korean man nicknamed Mr. Toilet sees hope.

Sim Jae-duck, the chairman of the organizing committee of the World Toilet Association General Assembly, gave reporters their first look Friday inside the world's only "toilet house," Haewoojae, in the city of Suwon, south of Seoul, South Korea.
Built for the Nov. 21 inaugural meeting of the association, the two-story toilet house is set to be completed on Sunday as a monument to the porcelain god — as well as a symbol for the need for better sanitation worldwide.


"The toilet should no longer be left on the sidelines," Sim said this spring, presenting his lavatory platform to an assembly in Bali. "It must become the center of our attention.
"The toilet is not merely a place for excretion — it can save humankind from diseases," he continued. "A place of relaxation and purging, the toilet is a place for introspection. The toilet is also a central living place that possesses culture."

The 4,508-square-foot house has two bedrooms, two guestrooms and three deluxe toilets, according to reports.

Haewoojae roughly translates to "a place of sanctuary where one can solve one's worries."
The structure was built in Suwon, a city of 1 million known for its "exemplary toilets" and the home of South Korea's modern toilet movement. No wonder why; Mr. Toilet himself used to be its mayor.

Thank you, Ms. Seidel-Fleishmann

Goat-free roads made me speed

Police said goats had not been reported on eastern Ontario's roads
A Swiss man caught speeding on a Canadian highway has blamed his actions on the absence of goats on the roads.
The man was caught driving at 161 km/h (100mph) in a 100 km/h (60mph) zone.

A traffic officer's notes said the Swiss driver had said he was taking advantage "of the ability to go faster without risking hitting a goat".

Canadian police spokesman Joel Doiron said he had never found a goat on the highways of eastern Ontario in his 20 years of service.


"Nobody's ever used the lack of goats here as an excuse for speeding," Mr Doiron told the AFP news agency.

"I've never been to Switzerland, but I guess there must be a lot of goats there," he said.

The driver was ordered to pay a fine of C$360 ($330; £175) for speeding.

Not the uber-conservative I thought...

AND he hates fatties! I HEART HUCKABEE!

Though a conservative, Huckabee is an outspoken advocate of spending government money on education, and healthcare for poor children.


And he told students at NIU that US schools had focused too narrowly on mathematics and science -- demanding the launch of "weapons of mass instruction" -- music and art.

"Math and science without music and art, is like trying to fly an airplane with a wing on the left, but without one on the right," he warned.

She is beautiful, girl looks beautiful...Toddler with eight limbs branded 'reincarnation of Hindu god' to undergo life-saving operation

A toddler born with eight limbs and believed by some to be the reincarnation of the multi-limbed Hindu goddess Vishnu, is set to undergo a 40-hour operation to remove half of her limbs.

Lakshmi Tatma was born joined to a 'parasitic twin' and will go under the knife at the hands of 30 surgeons to remove two of her useless arms and legs.

The headless 'twin' is joined to Lakshmi at the pelvis and has its own spinal column and kidney.
Without the operation the little girl would never be able to walk or crawl and would be unlikely to live past her early teens, doctors said.
The extraordinary eight-limbed baby was born in a poverty-stricken region of Bihar, India - on the day devoted to the celebration of the four-armed Hindu deity Vishnu.
Her mother Poonam Tatma said she believed her daughter was "a miracle, a reincarnation" of Vishnu.

Dr Sharan Patil, who will be leading the surgery at the country's Narayana Health City, in Bangalore, said: "Fortunately, Lakshmi has one complete body with a near perfect set of organs.

"Her skeletal system involves two bodies which are fused together at the level of the pelvis.

"The operation itself, although presents several challenges, is not the most complex in the world. What is highly unusual in Lakshmi's case is precisely how her bodies are fused, almost mirroring each other."

The Hindu god Vishnu is the preserver and protector of creation

a few quick picks...

After suffering a brain hemorrhage, a 35-year-old Englishwoman went into a coma for about 10 days. When she awoke, her personality changed, and she began demanding sex from her husband seven times a night. Soon, she went elsewhere to fulfill her needs, and, at last count, has had sexual relations with 50 men. Her husband is making her stay home.

I’LL JUST TURN THIS ON - OH, HOLD ON, SOMEONE’S AT THE DOOR . . . A man burglarized a technology company in Mount Ommaney, Australia, and stole tens of thousands of dollars worth of cutting edge computer equipment including a state-of-the-art satellite navigation system which pinpoints your location. When the thief got it home, he plugged it in to see if it worked. It did. It told the police exactly where he was.

BREATHALYZER TEST? ME? BUT WHY, OFFICER? . . . A man was arrested for drunken driving in Ypsilanti, Mich., with his young son in the car. When the mother came to pick the boy up, police discovered that she was drunker than her husband. She was arrested, too.

THIS ISN’T WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE, DARLING . . . Suspicious that his wife was cheating on him, a 70-year-old man broke into her paramour’s home in South Wales where he found his unfaithful spouse eating Chinese food and wearing only a towel. She explained that she had taken off her clothes so they wouldn’t get greasy from the chow mein. His attorney said, “There will be no reconciliation.”

YES, I WOULD SAY WE HAVE A PRETTY GOOD IDEA WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR . . . A man took his own picture with a display camera at a store in Milford, Conn., apparently to see how it worked, then placed it back on the shelf and stole another camera. Store officials have turned the man’s picture over to police. They are looking for him.

THAT’S STRANGE, I’VE BEEN LEAVING HIM MESSAGES . . . After dating a man for less than a year, a Salt Lake City woman agreed to sell her condo and belongings and fly to Florida, where he said he would bring his car and join her in a few days. Instead, he withdrew $110,000 from her account, went to Mexico, bought a boat, sailed for Ireland, and did not return her phone calls.

I FEEL PRETTY, OH SO PRETTY . . . Employees of a department store in Joplin, Mo., found a 52-year-old homeless man walking through the aisles dressed in items he took from the ladies lingerie section, including pink panties and a pink camisole.

Cops Probe Needham Slay.

This guy? Really? You thought THIS UN Watch employee beat an old man to death?
Come on!


...In the midst of the Needham manhunt, a worker at a pizza shop in Needham Center called 911 to report that a man inside Stone Hearth Pizza was acting suspiciously and witnesses believed he had a gun.

The man, Hillel Neuer, 37, turned out to be the executive director of U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based group. Neuer was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. He was not carrying a gun. He spoke yesterday at a pre-planned event organized by the American Jewish Committee, which is affiliated with U.N. Watch. Neuer declined several requests for an interview.

An AJC spokesman told the Herald on Saturday that Neuer was the “unfortunate victim of a profound mistake.”

Alright Fattie McFat's, listen up: Mama's got somethin to tell you.

A. IF your fucking kid is going to school on the T, disrupting my ride with his annoying little voice and holding a McDonald's bag, HES GONNA BE A FATTIE.
what mother thinks that mcD's is an acceptable school day breakfast?
moving on to the research....

Fat chance sleepy kids will stay slimBy Associated Press
CHICAGO - Here’s another reason to get the kids to bed early: More sleep may lower their risk of becoming obese. ROCK ON, FAT KIDS. STAY UP PLAYING HALO.

Researchers have found that every additional hour per night a third-grader spends sleeping reduces the child’s chances of being obese in sixth grade by 40 percent.

The less sleep they got, the more likely the children were to be obese in sixth grade, no matter what the child’s weight was in third grade, said Dr. Julie Lumeng of the University of Michigan, who led the research.

If there was a magic number for the third-graders, it was nine hours, 45 minutes of sleep. Sleeping more than that lowered the risk significantly.

The study gives parents one more reason to enforce bedtimes, restrict caffeine and yank the TV from the bedroom. The study appears in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Lack of sleep plays havoc with two hormones that are the “yin and yang of appetite regulation,” said endocrinologist Eve Van Cauter of the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the new study.

In experiments, sleep-deprived adults produced more ghrelin, a hormone that promotes hunger, and less leptin, a hormone that signals fullness.

Judges favoring unusual sentences

Dear Gd,
I wish for the opportunity to see one of these "punishees," so that I can tug his/hair and giggle furiously until I am forcibly removed.
Also, I hope that you have all the obese white trash say racy things to these Wal-Mart theives. You really have to feel bad for you when the trailer trash rolls away in disgust.
Love,
Rachel

PALATKA, Fla. - Reshane Lewis wasn’t happy, parading outside the courthouse for two hours with a sign reading: “I stole from a local store.”

“It is better than going to jail, but it’s not fair,” complained Lewis, who was arrested in a Wal-Mart last year for acting as lookout for a shoplifter.

Judge Peter Miller has sentenced more than 600 shoplifters to carry signs over the past dozen years. He is one of several judges nationwide who favor unusual sentences. So far, only three sign carriers have reoffended.

“If you see someone marching up and down in front of a store, you may think twice before stealing,” said Miller, who gives the thieves a choice of a 30- or 60-day jail sentence or two hours of humiliation. Miller isn’t the only one trying creative sentences:

Teens who yelled “Pigs” at cops in Ohio were forced by Judge Michael A. Cicconetti to stand on a street corner with a pig and a sign reading, “This is not a police officer.” He made three johns wear chicken suits near the area where they were arrested and carry a sign that referred to a notorious brothel: “There is no chicken ranch in Painesville.”

Texas Judge Larry Standley ordered a man who had slapped his wife to take yoga classes to help him lessen his anger.

Public Defender Mack Brunton, who represents defendants before Miller, said, “We don’t like it, but what he does is legal.” But he added, “It seems to work fairly well.” He said defendants “cringe” when given Miller’s option of jail or sign.

Wedgie-proof underwear sure to anger bullies

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The bane of schoolboys everywhere - the wedgie - has finally met its match.
It is the “Rip Away 1000.”

Invented by experts - 8-year-old twin boys - the wedgie-proof underwear uses rigged boxers and fabric fasteners to hold together seams.
“When the person tries to grab you - like the bully or the person tries to give you a wedgie - they just rip away,” explained Justin Serovich, who invented the underwear with his brother Jared.

It’s such a breakthrough that the boys were featured on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”

The third-graders from Gables Elementary School began brainstorming one day after they were horsing around, giving each other the treatment. Their mother’s partner sarcastically said someone ought to invent wedgie-proof underwear.

The project got the boys to the finals of a central Ohio invention competition earlier this year, followed by the appearance on national TV.

Park Slope Candy Shortage Ends In Violent Melee!

First they came for the strippers—and now Park Slope has apparently turned
ed against Halloween completely and denied its precious and bright children candy itself. According to an irate reader, nearly every store along 5th Ave ran out of sweets before the sun had even set!

"I was shopping yesterday Park Slope on 5th Avenue and almost every clothing store was out of candy at 6pm!! How is it possible for stores to sell sweaters for $400 and spend so little on candy for local kids on Halloween? I specifically remember Diane Kane had none, and the store owner two doors down from Diane Kane was complaining that she spent $25 on candy and it was all gone at 6pm. $25 is nothing! Ironically, Beacon's Closet had someone in front of the store giving away TONS of candy."
Slope children were apparently none too happy about Diana Kane ruining their Halloween. Later in the night, according to this message board posting, things went quickly south:
"does anyone happen to know why several dozen police officers and at least two ambulances -- all with sirens blaring -- converged on 5th avenue between president and carroll st. at around 8.30pm halloween night?
i overheard someone in the crowd saying that two men were fighting, the cops tried to break it up, and one of the men started fighting with the cops. but i came upon the scene about 60 seconds too late to figure it out for myself."

Children in street brawls after tony boutiques deny them Jolly Ranchers! It's no Union Square shooting, but it's yet more proof of the terrible nightmare this wretched holiday has become. Doesn't anybody know the real meaning of Halloween???

Spider bite no excuse for rape, court says

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man who kidnapped and raped a woman blamed his actions on a spider, local media reported on Thursday.

Philip Spiers pleaded guilty to the kidnap and rape, but told a court that the poison from a funnel-web spider bite had left him with a viral illness which led to his actions.

But a toxicologist told the New South Wales state District Court there was no medical evidence to suggest a spider bite could be responsible for anger and hatred.

Spiers, who kidnapped and raped the woman in 1997, was sentenced on Wednesday to eight years in jail.

uhhh...Nightmare at the dentist’s office

A dentist at Syracuse Community Health Center, dancing to the song “Car Wash” while he was extracting a patient’s tooth, lost the inch-long drill bit, which punctured her sinus cavity and came to rest by her eye socket, according to her lawsuit.
Brandy Fanning, 31, of Eastwood, filed a lawsuit in federal court last month.

She underwent emergency surgery at University Hospital after Dr. George Trusty was unable to remove the bit, her lawyer, Joseph Cote III said. Trusty would not comment.
Fanning spent three days at the hospital, with a steady drip of intravenous morphine.

Since the October 2004 surgery, Fanning has suffered facial swelling, nerve damage and has chronic infections because of the bacteria that seeped into her sinus cavity, she said.

Fanning went to the emergency dental clinic at the health center after the pain in a molar on the left side started getting worse.

An exposed nerve made it sensitive to heat and cold and a root canal had been ruled out as a possible option, the lawsuit said.
Trusty gaveher some novocaine and while he was drilling to break the molar into quadrants before the extraction, Fanning heard a snap, she said.

During the procedure, the lawsuit said, Trusty was “performing rhythmical steps and movements to the song ‘Car Wash,’” which was on the radio in the dental suite.
While Trusty was drilling, part of the tooth was pried out, but she continued to feel pressure, Fanning said.
Trusty then used a metal hook to try to pull the bit out, but that only pushed it farther up, driving it through the sinus and bone, the lawsuit says.

Trusty’s efforts to remove the bit gouged and scraped the inside of Fanning’s sinus cavity and widened the hole where the bit entered, said Cote.

When Fanningasked what was happening, Trusty told her it wasn’t a big deal and that she’d likely sneeze the drill bit out, she said.

She expressed alarm and he offered to call an oral surgeon, who was a friend, and get her an appointment for two days later, Fanning said. Trusty made the call in front of Fanning. When he got off the phone, she said, he told her she needed to get to an emergency room immediately. The dentist then gave her an extra shot of novocaine in case she had to wait to see a doctor, she said.

Trusty, 57, reached at the health center, would not comment on the case, nor would he say how long he’d been a dentist at the health center. According to the state Education Department, which handles the licensing of dentists, Trusty has no complaints against him and his license is valid.

In Trusty’s notes after the procedure, he wrote, “Informed patient surgical burr was lost in sinuses.”

Skull X-raystaken at University Hospital’s emergency room show “a 2.5 cm linear metallic object in the left maxillary sinus,” Dr. Precha Emko wrote in his hospital notes.

“People from all over the hospital were coming to look at them and they were all, like, ‘Oh, my God!’” Fanning said.

“Multiple attempts were made to try to remove this in the ER that were unsuccessful,” said the summary notes of Emko, an ear, nose and throat specialist who has since retired and could not be reached for comment. Emko, an oral surgeon and ophthalmologist all performed the surgery the following day, using the Caldwell-Luc procedure, which bores a hole in the upper gum to access the inside of the face.

They had to use a chisel to break into the sinus wall, then cauterize that part of the sinus down to the bone, according to University Hospital records.

SICK

IT will make you happy, I promise.

some red sox quotes of note.

With the parade and warm feelings out of the way, it's worth noting that winning the World Series was nice, but wasn't as special as 2004. How could it be? The 2004 win ended 86 years of frustration. It was a unique, culturally cathartic moment. There were people in these parts who literally died in peace after that.

Boston's resounding four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies in the World Series has unleashed a not-so-subtle tide of anti-Red Sox sentiment. Denver-based Frontier Airlines ran banner advertisements in both local newspapers that read: "Now you know why we don't fly to Boston."

Is that a goat’s head on my plate? EWW GROSSNESS

Credit the worldwide increase in foreign travel - and the popularity of foodie blogs and niche cookbooks like A.D. Livingston’s “Skillet Cooking for Camp and Kitchen” (with recipes for cod tongues and turtle liver). Don’t forget the publicity machinery behind TV personality/chef Anthony Bourdain and “The Year of Eating Dangerously” by Tom Parker Bowles.

What better time than Halloween to ask some of Boston’s leading gastronomes to share their extreme dining stories?


“There’s a cheese I ate in Sardinia called casu marzu, which is dialect for ‘rotten cheese,’ ” said Boston Harbor Hotel Executive Chef Daniel Bruce. “It’s filled with live maggots. It was pretty pungent; one spoonful was enough for me.”

Craigie Street Bistrot’s Tony Maws ate “roasted goat head in the main market in Marrakech: You eat the cheeks, you eat the eyes, you eat the tongue and then you crack open the skull and eat the brain. With a little Moroccan salad on the side.” Yum!

South End Formaggio Kitchen owner Valerie Gurdal learned a little something when she sampled fried duck feet in Bangkok: “(They were) a little bony and not a whole lot of meat - I wouldn’t reorder them again,” she said. “I had fried whole duck neck in New York, which was really good. It was confited first and you ate it with your fingers.”

Ken Oringer, chef-owner of Clio, was grossed out - Halloween-style - when he was served bat in the Seychelles Islands. “It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten,” he said. “It was the local specialty. We had it at an Italian restaurant, prepared by a Creole chef with white wine and lemon - it was nasty.”

On the other hand, extreme eating was delightful - and close to home - for “Limster,” one of the most prolific posters on the Boston board of www.chowhound.com, who sampled goat cassoulet at Troquet in Boston. He said it was “made from all the spare parts: fried goat brains, tongue, liver and heart. Plus patties of neck meat and apples, roasted loin and braised shank. It was delicious paired with a ’75 (Chateau) Petrus.”

Don’t tell Ellen DeGeneres, but Chris Schlesinger of the East Coast Grill & Raw Bar ate dog in Vietnam. “In a dog restaurant - we were in and out pretty quick,” he said. “It was in black bean sauce; it tasted like baby lamb.”