I finally get David Sedaris.

It's 11:45. I have now been sweeping chains of ants and dead cockroach bodies ito a dustpan for one hour. And it's still a mess.
I feel like hte little gay brother fairy, whose home is not particularly clean, but cannot help but to clean *this* home.
oh my.

not bad, but not good either. any yet...here it is.

Bib FName LName City State Country Age Sex ChipTime ClockTime
3914 Rachel Paiste Boston MA 24 F 2:04:04 2:14:43

Overall SexPl DivPl AgeGrade Pace Ttlrace Ttldiv Ttlsex 5K 6Mi 10Mi
5753 2263 480 53.1% 9:28 21398 1978 13477 27:33 53:42 1:32:50

pics o le dia

see more crazy cat pics


see more crazy cat pics

rarely told: the story of what a mortar attack is like.

http://www.esquire.com/features/esquire-100/ESQ1006MIA_36-43_FINAL.rev

wow. click this linkxor.

honestly, truly, really...
the creepiest playgrounds ever.
EVER!

Klosterman's Esquire piece this month.

Anyone Seen My $4.2 Billion?
Even if you know nothing about the music industry, you probably know this: People don't buy albums anymore. Everyone is aware of this, mostly because this phenomenon is reported on constantly. The soundtrack to High School Musical was considered a commercial success by selling 2.9 million units in all of 2007; seven years before, Britney Spears was able to sell 1.3 million copies of Oops! . . . I Did It Again in a single week. That disparity should be shocking, but it isn't -- by now, anyone who (even casually) follows the music industry is inundated with similarly grim statistics all the time. Interestingly, these stories tend to make music fans happy. People hate corporate record labels and love reading about how the industry is failing. As such, the media coverage of plummeting music sales almost always focuses on how labels are losing money. But this coverage usually ignores an economic element that is less tangible but more interesting: What is happening to all the money not being spent on music?

to read the article...

Tastes Like Chicken

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has just offered a $1 million prize to anyone who develops a commercially viable "in vitro chicken-meat product." The catch is that the product can't contain or entail the use of "animal-derived products, except for starter cells obtained in the initial development stages."

The idea is simple: Instead of growing a chicken embryo into a bird and cutting meat from it, you skip the bird part and grow the meat directly from the embryo.

If you don't believe this can be done, read up on the blood vessels, livers, bladders, and hearts we've already grown in labs. Check out this month's International In Vitro Meat Symposium. Scan the latest updates on "cultured meat" R&D.

If this idea repels you as a carnivore, imagine how it feels to a vegetarian. PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk tells the New York Times that the prize offer caused "a near civil war in our office" and that "we will have members leave us over this." Newkirk observes, "In any social cause community, there are people who strive for purity."

She's right.
That force is now shaking up PETA and will soon confront the rest of us. Reality is changing. Eating meat and eating animals used to be the same thing. Now they're coming apart. Should we promote lab-grown meat so people can eat flesh without eating animals? Or is PETA's promotion of meat the final surrender to a mentality of predation?

Purists see it as a moral surrender. "It's our job to introduce the philosophy and hammer it home that animals are not ours to eat," a dissident PETA official tells the Times. Purists also point out that carnivores suffer more obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diseases. Getting your meat from stem cells might not change that.
Pragmatists point to all the issues lab meat would resolve. No more cages. No more body-inflating drugs. No more slaughter. Less environmental harm. "We don't mind taking uncomfortable positions if it means that fewer animals suffer," Newkirk concludes.

Fat Fucking Soldiers in MY army?!?!? I didn't think so.

What's the Army policy on fat people? They're not particularly welcome. The Army's basic recruitment standard is linked to a candidate's body-fat percentage, measured by an equation involving height and the circumferences of the abdomen, neck, and—for women—hips. If they're 27 years old or younger, men must have a body-fat percentage below 26 percent, while women must be below 32 percent.

Typically, however, recruits are first judged against a BMI table. The upper limits on the Army's weight table are slightly more lenient than the definition of "overweight" provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: For example, a 21-year-old male recruit who is 5 foot 10 and weighs 190 pounds would be a bit overweight under CDC guidelines but not above the Army's weight maximum. (You can also be too skinny to be recruited—the minimum body-mass index (PDF) is 19.) If candidates pass muster according to the table, they don't need to go through a body-fat measurement.

Because of increasing obesity rates in the United States, the Army's standards now disqualify a large percentage of the population. A study conducted by Army researchers found that 27.1 percent of the 18-year-olds who applied to join the military in 2006 were overweight—up from 22.8 percent in 1993. Weight is by far the most common medical reason why potential recruits are rejected from serving. And while prospective enlistees can try to make weight before their official screening—often with the support of eager recruiters—the pool of eligible young adults remains smaller than the Army would like.

As a result, the Army has tried to find ways to admit recruits who fall outside the typical boundaries but are still likely to succeed in the service. In particular, the Assessment of Recruit Motivation and Strength—known as ARMS—has become a source of automatic waivers for recruits with a body-fat percentage up to 30 percent for men and 36 percent for women. The ARMS process requires participants to complete a five-minute modified "Harvard step" test—which involves stepping onto a low platform 120 times per minute. After that, applicants must do a certain number of pushups in one minute—at least 15 for men and four for women. Applicants who qualify through the ARMS test get a free pass on being overweight, but they do have to get themselves in shape within a year of entering active duty. Early research suggests that recruits who get ARMS waivers have attrition rates similar to enlistees who enter the Army without a waiver.

Once a recruit makes weight, he's expected to stay slim. At a minimum, Army personnel are required to take a physical-fitness test every six months, which includes a weight screening. If a soldier is above the maximum body-fat percentage (PDF) for his age, he must take part in a "weight control" program that includes a workout regimen and nutritional counseling. While under an "overweight flag," soldiers can't attend a professional military school, be promoted, or even re-enlist.

And yes, you can eat yourself out of the Army: If you don't eventually make satisfactory progress after being placed in the weight-control program, a commander can initiate "separation proceedings" leading to an eventual discharge.

Astounding Pic of the Day

Above the Clouds
Credit & Copyright: Serge Brunier (TWAN)
Explanation: From the windswept peak of Mauna Kea, on the Big Island of Hawaii, your view of the world at night could look like this. At an altitude of about 13,500 feet, the mountain top is silhouetted in the stunning skyscape recorded near dusk in early December of 2005. The volcanic peak rises just above a sea of storm clouds illuminated by a bright Moon. Planet Venus is setting near the Moon as the brilliant evening star. The scene also includes the faint, milky band of our own galaxy's disk of stars and cosmic dust clouds stretching from the horizon into the sky along the right edge of the frame.

Scientists decode brain farts!

We've all goofed up and flubbed up things we've previously done time and again.
It turns out the root of these brain farts may be a special kind of abnormal brain activity that begins up to 30 seconds before a mistake even happens.

When people blunder after performing the same task over and over, scientists had suspected that such lapses were due to momentary hiccups in concentration. Still, little was known about what the brain was actually doing before such errors.

To investigate further, the brains of volunteers were scanned as they performed a monotonous task — repetitively pushing buttons that matched images flashed at them.

Unexpectedly, before volunteers made errors, their brains started displaying abnormal behavior ... up to a half-minute beforehand.
"We thought initially that it would be quite remarkable if we were to find abnormal activity six or so seconds ahead," said researcher Tom Eichele, a neuroscientist at the University of Bergen in Norway. "That the entire process spans across a much longer timescale was quite astonishing and spooked us, such that we checked this finding over and over again."

"We did not find much evidence that the brain is just getting tired. However, I don't think that we understand it well enough to bet all our money yet," Eichele said.

If portable devices could detect this abnormal brain activity before an accident happened, they could save lives — say, by sounding an alert before a slip is made while driving a car or operating a piece of machinery in a factory.

However, if such abnormal brain activity can get detected simply using electrodes on the scalp, then brain-scanning caps under development for video games and other applications might work, Eichele said. "It, at least, does not seem technically impossible," he told LiveScience.

"I bang sluts to give them AIDS." -Trashman

It's from the Sun (brit), so who knows how true it is... but I really, REALLY hope this is a non-truth.

A SERIES of sickening videos have been posted on the internet showing a man who claims to have deliberately "infected" thousands of women with AIDS.

Calling himself 'Trashman' and speaking with an American accent, the masked man says he has infected between 1200 and 1500 unknowing victims with the devastating disease.

He can be seen reading the names and ages of some of the women he claims to have had unprotected sex with in the video clips on website YouTube.
The videos - one of which has been viewed 195,000 times - also feature a web address to a "gangsta" portal filled with pornography and where Trashman has a profile.

In the first video Trashman is filmed reading from a list of women he claims to have infected.

He gloats: "Today I’m doing a show about something that’s more important than killing rappers.
"This here (piece of paper) that I hold in my hand is a list of women who I actually infected with AIDS on purpose.
"So if I call your name and if you just happen to be on my 'I got the AIDS from that n***er’ list', then God bless you."

He then goes on to name several women and their ages.

President of People Living with HIV/AIDS, Brett Hayhoe, said the man “does seem genuine” in the video clips.
He blasted: “It’s extremely disturbing (and) the guy needs psychiatric help.”

AIDS can only be contracted once a person has been infected with HIV, but Mr Hayhoe said the man may have lumped the two together.
Mr Hayhoe said if Trashman was telling the truth, it would be "absolutely devastating" for anyone who has had sex with him.

Man shoots self in alleged road-rage confrontation in Ariz.

TEMPE, Ariz. - Police say a man accidentally shot himself in the stomach after waving his gun in anger at a fellow motorist in Tempe, Ariz.

Tempe police spokesman Brandon Banks says David Lopez is expected to survive and could face charges including disorderly conduct, reckless display of a firearm and felony flight from police.

Banks says Monday that after Lopez shot himself he tried to evade police by driving away but crashed his car and was arrested as he fled on foot.

Banks says it's unclear what sparked the Friday confrontation and that the 33-year-old Lopez has been evasive in police interviews. The other driver was uninjured but also fled the scene and was arrested on a charge of drunken driving.

Stephen Hawking: Alien but primitive life likely

WASHINGTON (AP) - Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has been thinking a lot about the cosmic question, "Are we alone?" The answer is probably not, he says.
If there is life elsewhere in the universe, Hawking asks why haven't we stumbled onto some alien broadcasts in space, maybe something like "alien quiz shows?"

Hawking's comments were part of a lecture at George Washington University on Monday in honor of NASA's 50th anniversary. He theorized that there are possible answers to whether there is extraterrestrial life.

One option is that there likely isn't life elsewhere. Or maybe there is intelligent life elsewhere, but when it gets smart enough to send signals into space, it also is smart enough to make destructive nuclear weapons.

Hawking said he prefers the third option:
"Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare," he then quickly added: "Some would say it has yet to occur on earth."

Because alien life might not have DNA like us, Hawking warned: "Watch out if you would meet an alien. You could be infected with a disease with which you have no resistance."

The 66-year-old British cosmologist, who suffers from ALS and must speak through a mechanical device, believes "if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before."

Hawking compared people who don't want to spend money on human space exploration to those who opposed the journey of Christopher Columbus in 1492.
"The discovery of the New World made a profound difference to the old. Just think we wouldn't have had a Big Mac or KFC."
...who knew how funny this dude was?!?

50 percent of LA workforce are immigrants

LOS ANGELES, April 21 (UPI) -- Los Angeles is at the leading edge of a U.S. demographic trend, with half of its workforce immigrants, many of them unskilled and speaking little English.

As baby boomers retire, the same pattern will emerge across the country, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. Demographers estimate that by 2025 most of the growth in the workforce will be from immigrants.

Ernesto Cortes Jr., Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, said Los Angeles is at a crossroads.
"The question is: Are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and the majority at poverty or near poverty wages?" he asked. "Right now we're headed toward becoming a Third World city. But we can change that."

The Migration Policy Institute used U.S. Census data to determine that one-third of immigrants have not graduated from high school and 60 percent do not speak English fluently.

So glad I chose Argentina

The euro surged to a record 1.6002 dollars here Tuesday after weak US housing market data added to fears over the health of the US economy.

Surgeons give hope to blind with successful 'bionic eye' operations

Surgeons have carried out the first operations in Britain using a pioneering “bionic eye” that could in future help to restore blind people’s sight.
Two successful operations to implant the device into the eyes of two blind patients have been conducted at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

The device — the first of its kind — incorporates a video camera and transmitter mounted on a pair of glasses. This is linked to an artificial retina, which transmits moving images along the optic nerve to the brain and enables the patient to discriminate rudimentary images of motion, light and dark.

The operations were conducted as part of an international clinical trial of the technology, known as the Argus II retinal implant, which has already proved successful in restoring rudimentary vision to patients who have become blind because of common conditions such as age-related macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa.

American researchers are hoping to develop a camera the size of a pea that could be implanted within the eyeball, replacing natural tissue with artificial technology.
Surgeons hope that the implant could be available to NHS patients within three to five years.

The Argus II uses a video camera to capture images. These are converted into electrical signals, which are transmitted wirelessly to the implant behind the retina. The electrodes in the implant unscramble the signal to create a crude black-and-white picture that is relayed along the optic nerve to the brain. The brain can then perceive patterns of light and dark spots corresponding to the electrodes stimulated.

Small Church's Obama Sign Causes Big Controversy

JONESVILLE, S.C. -- The sign in front of a small church in a small town is causing a big controversy in Jonesville, S.C.
Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking. So last Thursday, he put a new message on the sign at the Jonesville Church of God.

It reads: "Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?"

Byrd said that the message wasn't meant to be racial or political.
"It's simply to cause people to realize and to see what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ," he said.

When asked if he believes that Barack Obama is Muslim, Byrd said, "I don't know. See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim ? I don't know. He says he's not. I hope he's not. But I don't know. And it's just something to try to stir people's minds. It was never intended to hurt feelings or to offend anybody."

Obama has said repeatedly during his campaign that he is a Christian and attends Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Despite some criticism, Byrd says that the message will stay on the sign. He took the issue before his congregation Sunday night, and they decided unanimously to keep it.
Byrd also said he doesn't want it to look like controversy forced him to take the sign down.

ALIENS!!!! Part Deux

Mystery lights reported over Phoenix
People are looking for an explanation for mysterious red lights that appeared in the north Phoenix sky Monday night, reminiscent of a similar event 11 years ago.

Dozens of listeners called News/Talk 92-3 KTAR just after 8 p.m. reporting they were watching the four mystery lights.
``From my position, it looked like they were just hanging, not moving at all," said one man, who called 92-3's ``Gaydos After Dark." He said he ``absolutely" saw something.

A woman caller said, ``It looked like four red tower lights, but it was pretty high up in the air. I called my husband and he said, `Get home, what's wrong with you?'"

Those who saw them said the lights were visible about 13 minutes before moving off to the east.

Deer Valley Airport, which was the closest air field to the lights, had no explanation for them. Neither did Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport or Luke Air Force Base, which said it had no jets flying at the time.

On March 13, 1997, thousands of people reported seeing a v-shaped formation of lights over north Phoenix. They lasted about three hours. Some described them as forming a carpenter's square.

Among those who saw the lights in 1997 was former Gov. Fife Symington, who initially played down the episode. However, he said last year that he believes the lights came from ``crafts of unknown origin" and, ``It remains a great mystery."

ALIENS!!!

Mystery Lights Spotted Flying 'In Formation' In Fla. Skies
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- Strange orbs of light spotted flying in the night sky over St. Augustine are the second reported sighting of mystery lights in the area in recent weeks.

The Puckett family said they spotted the lights in the sky over the weekend. Witness Brandon Puckett, 12, said the lights were apparently flying toward each other.
"I looked up and it was like these two fiery balls like flying across the sky, sort of in formation," Brandon Puckett said. "They were like flying toward each other."

Some skeptics said the lights could be from sky lanterns released during a nearby wedding.

Others are not convinced.

Another sighting of unexplained lights happened in St. Augustine Beach in the early-morning hours of April 14, reported WTLV-TV in Jacksonville.
People around the world claimed to have seen the same kind of lights in the sky and are posting some of the images on YouTube.

in honor of earth day.

PAPER OR PLASTIC?: It sounds like a big step forward in environmental awareness — Whole Foods, the eco-friendly grocery chain, will ban conventional plastic shopping bags in its 270 stores. San Francisco has banned them in some places; so have Uganda and Bangladesh. But paper bags, it turns out, are hardly an ideal replacement. To ensure sturdier bags, most producers use primarily new paper, which means cutting down more trees. Then chemicals are used in the production of the bags to give them strength. According to a study by Franklin Associates, a consulting firm, plastic bags require significantly less energy than paper over the course of their life cycle, from manufacturing to transportation. Indeed, because paper bags are seven times bulkier, on average, than plastic bags, it takes a lot more energy to transport paper bags to grocery stores. Bulk matters on the other end too: paper bags take up nine times as much room in landfills, and recycling plastic uses 91 percent less energy than recycling paper. Which isn’t to say that Whole Foods has it wrong about plastic bags. Most are made from a nonrenewable resource, petroleum, and contain their own mix of toxic chemicals. They may be more energy-efficient with recycling, but only about 1 to 3 percent of plastic bags are recycled, compared with about 10 to 15 percent of paper bags. And millions of the 100 billion bags Americans throw away each year end up as litter, clogging storm drains and choking sea animals. A third way may be the only good choice. As part of its ban on regular plastic bags, for instance, San Francisco is encouraging stores to switch to cornstarch-derived plastic bags, which break down in about a month and release no harmful chemicals. And many stores have started to encourage shoppers to bring reusable cloth bags, or to offer them for sale at a cheap price.

The ring is taller than the 5-yr old all-stars who fight in it.

A blonde-haired girl with her hands strapped into boxing gloves sobs at the side of the ring.
In another image her twin brother takes a direct hit to the face from a sparring partner.
Miah and Kian Flanagan are just five years old.

But already they are seasoned fighters, taking part in an alarmingly fast-growing 'sport' that pits children against other children in the terrifying public arena of the boxing ring.

The opponents - some of them barely old enough to be at school - kick and punch in chilling scenes, while parents shout impassioned advice from the sidelines.
Incredibly parental 'advice' includes encouragement to "come on Princess, go forward, kick 'em, kick 'em."

Welcome to the world of child Thai boxing, one of the fastest growing martial arts in the UK with now over 500 registered clubs teaching this sport.
Children as young as four or five are becoming the latest recruits to organised fighting, where some people's attitude is: "If you're good enough to fight, you're old enough".

'Just enjoy yourself, baby' shouts her father as little Miah sobs
In the strictly governed world of conventional boxing youngsters must be at least 11 to compete.
But in MuayThai boxing there is no such limit. There is also no requirement for protective headgear, despite regular blows to the skull.

Parents have to sign a disclaimer before a fight, relieving promoters of any blame should their children be injured as they compete - sometimes in front of paying adult audiences.

Miah and Kian Flanagan live with their father Darren, a quantity surveyor, and mother Lisa, a nail technician, in Wigan.
The twins were enrolled in boxing lessons at their local gym seven months ago. Mr Flanagan is so passionate about the sport that he has converted the spare room into a gym so he can give the twins extra tuition.

Mr Flanagan believes that the training will help his daughter take care of herself.
"If someone grabs Miah when she's 15 what do you think is going to happen? She knows all the defence moves," he said.
"If I'd never taught my kids Thai boxing how guilty would I feel. Anyway Miah loves it - she's like a ballet dancer with boxing gloves at the moment," he told the the News of the World.

here's Miah, loving it.
"Every time she goes in that ring, there is always a worry she will start crying," said Mr Flanagan, who says he has told his daughter she can give up if she does not enjoy it.
Such is his determination for his children to succeed that he even alters her diet to 'bulk' her up if she faces an older opponent.

Meanwhile his wife coats her daughter with glittery make-up and hairspray before she enters the rings.

The trillion-dollar mortgage time bomb

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Among the nightmares lurking around the corner for the already battered housing and credit markets would be a meltdown at mortgage financing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Although few are predicting an imminent need for a bailout just yet, credit rating agency Standard & Poor's recently placed an estimated price tag on this worst case scenario -- $420 billion to $1.1 trillion of taxpayer's money.

This dwarfs how much it cost to help banks during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980's and early 1990's. That cost taxpayers about $250 billion in today's dollars.

S&P added that saving Fannie (FNM) and Freddie (FRE, Fortune 500) might cost so much that the federal government's AAA credit rating, the top possible rating, might even be at risk. If that was lost, then all federal government borrowing would become more expensive.

At the end of January, 82% of all mortgages in the U.S. were backed by one of the firms, up from only 46% in the second quarter of 2007.

"I would say there's at least a 50-50 chance of some sort of bailout. I'm not saying it will necessarily cost $1 trillion, but they'll need some kind of help, and it very well could happen this year," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Don't care, never gonna throw out my Nalgene. Cancer THAT

The Dirty Truth About Plastic: BPA and other plastics may be as harmful as they are plentiful.
The most pressing question about plas­tic may be whether daily exposure alters the health and fertility of our children and perhaps even our children’s children. It turns out that the hormonelike chemicals in plastic may remodel our cells and tissue during key stages of development, both in the womb and in early childhood. When pregnant mice are exposed to chemicals in plastic, the mammary and prostate tissue of their developing embryos proliferates abnormally, and sensitivity to hormones is forever turned up.

Plastic requires a radically different paradigm of toxicity from lead and cigarettes - whose affects are visible in children.
Plastic harms by stealth: by mimicking our own hormones, by scrambling signals during development, by stimulating our own pathways excessively.

Plastic’s chemical co-travelers make their way into our urine, saliva, semen, and breast milk. Two in particular stand out: bisphenol A (or BPA, used in polycarbonates and resins) and phthalates (used to make plastic soft and pliable). Both upset the way certain hormones function in the body, earning them the designation endocrine disrupters.

If there is one point on which many scientists agree, it is the risk to the developing fetus and the young child. “At least a dozen studies have shown the effects of phthalates on human reproduction,” says University of Rochester epidemiologist and biostatistician Shanna Swan. Biologists recognize a reduction in the length between the anus and the sex organ as an external marker of feminization, easily measured because it is typically twice as long in males as in females.

The evidence on phthalates is strong enough for the European Union to have banned them in children’s toys, and last October California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation setting stringent limits on phthalates in child-care products for children under age 3. Several other states are considering similar legislation.

In mice, at least, BPA exposure at crucial stages of development induces observable changes (such as breast or prostate abnormalities) that last a lifetime.
Last summer's report said BPA is a potential chemical time bomb that may lead to multiple problems, including a higher risk of cancer, especially if exposure occurs in the womb or an infant’s early life and on an unrelenting daily basis.
Two weeks after the report came out, an NIH panel came to a different conclusion: Although public exposure to BPA could pose some risk to the brain development of babies and children, there was “negligible concern” about reproductive effects in adults. An August 2007 statement by the American Chemistry Council claims that “BPA is not a risk to human health at the extremely low levels to which consumers might be exposed.”

“The brain along with the reproductive system and every other cell in your body is exquisitely sensitive to exceedingly small changes in estrogen and other sex hormones, and the fact that the environment is full of chemicals that can activate estrogen receptors means this phenomenally sensitive system is being perturbed constantly by environmental factors.”

In other research, by reproductive biologist Patricia Hunt of Washington State University, female mice exposed to low amounts of BPA in the womb—amounts deemed “environmentally relevant”—had high levels of genetic errors in the eggs they produced. Worse still, the genetic errors in those eggs led to chromosome abnormalities in 40 percent of the next generation’s eggs. That is 20 times the incidence of such abnormalities in unexposed mice.
Nearly one in five human pregnancies ends in miscarriage, half of which are due to chromosomal abnormalities. Abnormalities in a woman’s eggs increase as she ages, and more women are having children at a later age. “A proper study of this problem,” they wrote, “would require assessing the woman’s level of chemical exposure now and maintaining those data for two to three decades,” tracking the abnormalities in her children and grandchildren.

Another study, from Randy Jirtle, also had startling results: brown mommies were exposed to 50 milligrams of BPA per kilogram of body weight daily, and the next generation was fat, with blond fur. “If I were a pregnant woman, I would try hard to avoid exposure to BPA,” Jirtle says.
When pregnant rats are exposed to high doses of phthalates, their male offspring are born with deformed genitalia.
In 134 boys aged 2 months to 30 months, she found that sons whose mothers had higher levels of certain phthalates in their urine had a shorter distance between the anus and the penis. They were also likelier to have smaller penises and incompletely descended testicles.

And on to the (limited) human studies: Phthalate exposure does not come just from moms. A new study gives evidence that infants and toddlers exposed to lotions, shampoos, and powders with phthalates may have up to four times as much of it in their urine as those whose parents do not use the products. The study, just published in Pediatrics by Sheela Sathyanarayana of the University of Washington, looked at 163 children between the ages of 2 months and 28 months between the years 2000 and 2005. The results were alarming, not least because manufacturers are not required to list phthalates as ingredients on labels.

In a study of 65 infants published in 2006, they discovered that the higher the level of phthalates, the greater the evidence of anti-androgenic hormonal activity. [thats a problem with testicles, see.....endocrine system and all.]

“Nobody knows what to do with the information,” says Tufts University environmentalist Sheldon Krimsky, author of Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endo­crine Hypothesis. “This is a highly contested arena with no standards for consensus. And because, for instance, BPA is not put into food but leaches into food from containers, it doesn’t qualify for the Delaney clause, which mandates that if an additive causes cancer in any amount in two species, we can’t put it in the food supply.”

And in a Tufts test in the 80's, Ana Soto noticed that “Suddenly all the cancer cells were proliferating maximally, whether they were being grown in a medium with estrogen or not,” Soto recalls. “We thought that somebody must have opened a bottle of the female hormone estradiol in the wrong place. We scrubbed the whole room, we bought new batches of everything, and the cells kept proliferating. So we began one by one to replace and substitute our equipment, and we finally found the contamination in tubes storing a component of the medium. The tube manufacturer had changed its formula, with the best intention of rendering the tubes more impact resistant. They said the new chemical was a trade secret. So we analyzed it ourselves, and it turned out to be nonylphenol. We injected the chemical into rats and demonstrated that it makes the epithelial lining of the uterus proliferate—a sign of its being an estrogen.” Nonylphenol is also a component in some detergents and other products, and its presence in British streams has been linked to the feminization of fish.
Similar things happened with tests in mice, when levels of BPA in cages and water bottles created environments in which miscarraiges were eminent.

Can cardboard, tin, and glass fix the problem?
Not really....both boxes and cans are lined with plastic.
Not to mention, BPA has been found in drinking water, in 41.2 percent of 139 streams sampled in 30 states, even in house dust.

for the full text, click here

Happy Passover, love...your candidates.

Hillary. She claims she has “always been inspired by the enduring words of the Haggadah: ‘In every generation, each of us must see ourselves as if we personally came out of Egypt.’ ” Indeed, she affirms, “I am deeply moved by this timeless cry to stand up to oppression, tyranny and discrimination — wherever they are found.”

Sure enough, the Obama statement is talkier than Clinton’s. For Obama, Passover is a learning experience: “The Seder, with all its rich traditions, has much to teach us all.” Indeed, “its emphasis on teaching children, and letting them demonstrate their knowledge through the traditional asking of questions, embodies the great Jewish traditions of family and education.”
Obama says, “American Jews have always played a vital role in our national conversation.” So, Obama urges, “let us continue to engage in dialogue, and to ask ourselves and each other how the Passover story challenges us to question the world as it is, and to seek a future that is more just and more peaceful for all.”

John McCain. He understands Passover as a time for reflection about sacrifice: “As families gather together for Seders, members of the Jewish faith reflect upon the painful sacrifices made by their ancestors, the joys of freedom, and the triumph of inherent goodness over evil.”

McCain’s statement is also the only one to mention current assaults on Jews. He asks us to reflect on three young Israelis — Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser — who were kidnapped in the summer of 2006 by Hamas and Hezbollah, and “who will celebrate this occasion, once again, in captivity.” McCain recalls his meetings with the families of two of these men in December 2006, reiterates his commitment to seek their swift release, and urges others to do the same.

So if Clinton’s Passover message is liberal, and Obama’s is multicultural, one might call McCain’s Zionist. There’s a clear choice of worldviews here — and not just for Jews, but for all Americans.

Cat Lovers Appreciate Soul Mate in Vatican

TONS of the Pope news this past week was HELLA boring. Here is one worthwhile piece, from the NYT: [your hard news source, America]

Their names are Shadow, Butch, Misty, Rusty, Sparky, Sunshine, Esther, Marty and Spunky. They are cats, some former strays, some tiger-striped. But to Jan Fredericks of Wayne, N.J., they are family, they are God’s creatures and deserving of compassion.

And in Pope Benedict XVI, Ms. Fredericks, the chairwoman of the fledgling American branch of Catholic Concern for Animals, believes that she has found a kindred spirit: Along with an enormous entourage and a message of peace, the Pope brought with him to the United States a lifelong love of cats.

Benedict’s kindness toward the strays of Rome is already the stuff of Vatican legend. His house in Germany, its garden guarded by a cat statue, was filled with cats when Benedict lived there full time before he was posted to the Vatican in 1982

And Benedict is, without a doubt, the first pope to have had an authorized biography of him written by a cat — Chico, a ginger tabby who lives across the road from Benedict’s old house in Germany.

The pope’s fondness for felines has been often remarked upon since his elevation in 2005. And the recently published “Joseph and Chico: The Life of Pope Benedict XVI as Told by a Cat” (Ignatius Press, 2008) is a children’s book written by Chico with the “aid” of an Italian journalist, Jeanne Perego.

An excerpt: “When I’d see that the shades were up next door, I knew he was home,” Chico writes. “Then I’d race over and rub up against his legs. What wonderful times we’ve spent together!”

“One time the Swiss Guards had to intervene,” Cardinal Bertone joked. “ ‘Look, your eminence, the cats are laying siege to the Holy See.’ ”

Happy 1,000th post!!!

I OFICIALLY spend to much time on this thing.

The element, Governmentium...very funny.

Research has led to the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years; It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.Research has led to the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years; It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Drunk bros make boat, cant get it out of yard?

A man who built a home-made boat in his back garden over five years was left scratching his head after discovering he'd made it too big for him to get it out.

Trained engineer, John Melling, started building the 30-feet Trimaran yacht at the bottom of his back garden five years ago - but it has now outgrown its home and is proving a problem to move.

Mr Melling, built the yacht so that he and wife, Sue, a primary school teacher, who got married in the same garden, can enjoy sailing.

"We will be taking this boat to Greece eventually, after I have retired, to spend some time in the sunshine," said the keen sailor.
"I may even race it - but right now the challenge is getting it out of the garden."

Mr Melling has even considered having his pride and joy airlifted out of his garden, and said he always knew he was going to face this problem.
"It's not as though I'm some idiot who got the measurements wrong and is now stuck with a boat he can't move," he said.

"I knew from the start that once the boat was finished I would face some problems getting it out of the garden.

"It is possible to lift it onto a trailer so if anyone fancies tending a hand to help me move it I would be very grateful," he said.
"I'm going to get some friends round and we can move the boat together - we can make an afternoon of it.

....but I don't want to live on the Moon...

The US space agency hopes to build moon bases that can house astronauts for stays of up to six months, with an intricate transportation and power system, Carl Walz, director of NASA's Advanced Capabilities Division, said Friday.

NASA is examining different designs for lunar outposts but that they could be inspired by the orbiting International Space Station (ISS), he said.

"We need to establish a long, extended presence on the moon, up to six months -- same as the time we spend at ISS," Walz, a veteran astronaut, told AFP during a forum on the future of NASA at the University of Miami.

"I would anticipate that we would build something similar as what we are building for the ISS, but maybe something different," he said.

The station usually houses three scientists, although it can accommodate more when astronauts arrive aboard NASA's space shuttle on missions to expand the orbiting laboratory.

The space agency will also need to design transportation, communication and power systems for the lunar surface as well as give the astronauts the ability to venture out of their bases for scientific research, Walz said.

"We will live at the moon, work at the moon, do sites at the moon and use its resources," he said.

translations at 3 am

what I learned this morning:
Si quieres el perro, acepta las pulgas. If you want the dog, accept the fleas.

Oklahoma sheriff charged with using inmates as sex slaves

ARAPAHO, Okla. (AP) — Authorities have charged a western Oklahoma sheriff with coercing and bribing female inmates so he could use them in a sex-slave operation run out of his jail.

Custer County Sheriff Mike Burgess resigned Wednesday just as state prosecutors filed 35 felony charges against him, including 14 counts of second-degree rape, seven counts of forcible oral sodomy and five counts of bribery by a public official.

Burgess, the top officer in the county of 26,000 since 1994, appeared in court Wednesday was released after posting $50,000 bail.

A federal lawsuit filed in October claims Burgess told one drug court participant he would have her sent to prison if she didn't comply with his sexual demands.

The lawsuit, filed by 12 former inmates, alleges the sheriff's employees had them engage in wet T-shirt contests and offered cigarettes to those who would flash their breasts.

One prisoner alleged she became a jail trusty with more freedom after agreeing to perform a sex act on Burgess, but lost that status when she later refused.

Burgess also faces two counts each of sexual battery, rape by instrumentation and subornation of perjury, and one count each of engaging in a pattern of criminal offenses, indecent exposure and kidnapping.

He could be sentenced to 467 years in prison if convicted on all counts, special prosecutor James Boring said, though a lesser sentence would be more likely.

City Tries Again to Require Restaurants to Post Calories

New Yorkers wondering just how many calories they are consuming in each grande-size white hot chocolate at Starbucks (490) or Double Whopper with cheese at Burger King (990) could soon see those numbers printed alongside the price, according to revised regulations approved on Tuesday by the city’s Board of Health.

Under the rules, which officials rewrote after a federal judge struck down similar provisions in September, any chain that operates at least 15 outlets nationwide would have to display calorie content on their menu boards, menus or food tags — essentially wherever the restaurant lists the information that customers use to make their choices.

“Most people underestimate calorie content by a lot,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, adding that he considered the rules a potent weapon in the crusade against rising obesity rates. “Even dietitians get a lot of it wrong.”

Dr. Frieden said his department’s research showed that consumers often make faulty assumptions about the calorie counts of items on a menu. But when they have the information, he said, they tend to choose food with fewer calories.

As a result of the regulations, set to go into effect on March 31, Dr. Frieden predicted that some restaurants will eliminate some of their offerings, like appetizers that top 2,000 calories.

a list of foods so bad for you you may actually coil in horror and die.

Worst Appetizer: Chili’s Awesome Blossom
calories: 2,710
fat203g
Chili’s is all sorts of wrong. I love the place, but you could literally shit a rat after eating there.
Now I know why - it's because they pack a week's worth of calories into your dinner.
THIS IS AN ONION. What do you have to do to alter an onion into a day's worth of food? Yuck.

Breakfast of Caloric Champions: Denny’s Smoked Sausage Slam
calories:1,480
fat:88 saturated fat:30
sodium: 4340
carbs: 118
cholesterol: 610
Denny's is good for two things: late-night, drinking induced eating benders, and the subsequent heart failure. 2 eggs, covered in chopped bacon, ham, sausage..."cheddar" cheese. Doesn't sound like enough? Have no fear, that's just the first plate of this meal. You've also got your meat dish...2 strips bacon, 2 sausages, hash browns, and oh, yeah, pancakes.....2 of em. DOUBLE yuck.

Viva Mexica: Chipotle Barbacoa Super Burrito
calories:1493
fat:68 sat. fat22.5
sodium: 2644
carbs:151
cholesterol:144
I love burritos. They are one of the two things I could be happy eating forever (sushi being the other) So though I know its gross, I think I would eat Special K for my other 2 meals to make this work.

Money Well Spent: Carl’s Jr. Bacon Cheese Six Dollar Burger
calories":1070
fat:76 sat. fat:30
sodium: 1910
carbs: 50
cholesterol: 170
Bam. A whole day's worth of food(fat technically-not calories), for six bucks. Second world countries drool in jealousy.

Just Wrong, Yet So Right, Mate: Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries
calories: 2900
fat: 182
cholesterol:240
I have never had these, but I Saw a pick and almost ate my own foot. WOW. Ham and cheese on fries. Those Aussies are on to something. Just...eat slowly, and over hte course of 24 hours, cus this side dish will do you in for the day.

Bomb Kills Dozens at Iraqi Funeral

Why Iraqis/Americans will never get along. Ever.
Differences in understanding of way world works.

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber killed 30 people at a funeral in Diyala Province on Thursday, and a fierce dust storm that blanketed much of Iraq provided cover in Baghdad for intensified rocket attacks into the fortified Green Zone.

In Diyala, relatives had gathered in the small village of Albu Mohammed for funerals for the two men, who were killed by gunmen two days before. They were nephews of a prominent Sunni tribal leader, Sheik Kareem Kamil al-Azawi.

A tent was erected to accommodate the mourners, and while family members were setting up lunch tables about 50 yards away, the suicide bomber slipped inside. When the mourners returned, he detonated the explosives in his belt, according to Capt. Qasim al-Nayimi of the Diyala command center.
It seems that they were targeted for their cooperation with American and Iraqi forces in fighting Sunni insurgents.

Sheik Amir Habeeb al-Khaizaran, a member of Parliament whose brother is the head of the Azawi group, said that the two men mourned at the funeral were killed by other members of their tribe who were loyal to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group.

Double Your Lifespan with a Drug that Mutates Your Ribosomes

It's been known for a while that restricting your diet will increase your lifespan, but now researchers have shown one reason why: Eating less causes your ribosomes (your cells' protein factories) to mutate. And it's looking like mutated ribosomes (pictured here) could be one key to life extension. The good news is that you may not have to starve yourself to mutate your ribosomes anymore. Biologists at the University of Washington have managed to induce the life-extending mutation in ribosomes with a drug that doubles the lifespan of yeast cells.

The key is to lower protein-production in cells, which is why eating less can cause lifespan extension. According to the University of Washington:

In this project, the UW researchers studied many different strains of yeast cells that had lower protein production. They found that mutations to the ribosome, the cell's protein factory, sometimes led to increased life span. Ribosomes are made up of two parts — the large and small subunits — and the researchers tried to isolate the life-span-related mutation to one of those parts.
"What we noticed right away was that the long-lived strains always had mutations in the large ribosomal subunit and never in the small subunit," said the study's lead author, Kristan Steffen, a graduate student in the UW Department of Biochemistry.

The researchers also tested a drug called diazaborine, which specifically interferes with synthesis of the ribosomes' large subunits, but not small subunits, and found that treating cells with the drug made them live about 50 percent longer than untreated cells. Using a series of genetic tests, the scientists then showed that depletion of the ribosomes' large subunits was likely to be increasing life span by a mechanism related to dietary restriction — the TOR signaling pathway.

the tiniest bit of celeb gossip.

Natalie Portman and Devendra Banhart?!?? Seriously?

Word.

Eating disorders may be contagious

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A study of U.S. high school students provides additional evidence that eating disorders may be contagious.
In a study, researchers found that binging, fasting, diet pill use and other eating disorder symptoms clustered within counties, particularly among female students.

"These findings confirm the strong social influences on female adolescents in the U.S. to be thin, sometimes using unhealthy behaviors to achieve this goal," the researchers write in the current issue of the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Research in the 1980s in female college students first suggested that disordered eating behavior spread through "social contagion," demonstrating that binge eating clustered within sororities, Dr. Valerie L. Forman-Hoffman and Cassie L. Cunningham of the VA Iowa City Health Care System note in their report.

Severe food intake restriction, dieting, exercising and diet pill use all showed clustering by county, as did any weight control symptom overall or any eating disorder symptom. But no clustering was seen for purging, possibly due to the "secretive," less socially acceptable nature of this behavior, the researchers suggest.

Based on their results, the researchers think it may be more effective to target eating disorder prevention efforts to counties or schools where they are more common, rather than individual students.

Research: Intellect linked to rhythm

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, April 17 (UPI) -- Swedish scientists seeking to dispel myths about supposedly dumb drummers say their research indicates that those with high intelligence keep the best rhythm.

Professor Frederic Ullen of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and Guy Madison of Sweden's Umea University said they submitted 34 right-handed men between ages 19 and 49 to a test of rhythm involving tapping a drumstick at several different intervals and then gave the men a 60-question psychometric test, The Daily Telegraph reported Thursday.

"The rhythmic accuracy in brain activity that is observed when a person maintains a steady beat is also important to the problem-solving capacities measured with the intelligence tests," Ullen said.

"We found that people with high general intelligence were also more stable on a very simple timing task," he said. "We also found that these participants had larger volumes of the white matter in the brain, which contains connections between brain regions."

Quest added to the list of D-list meth heads.

Richard Quest, a reporter and business travel specialist for CNN, is being arraigned today on a misdemeanor charge of drug possession after the authorities said he was found with methamphetamine in Central Park.

Mr. Quest was arrested early Friday morning after being escorted out of Central Park for violating the park curfew, a law enforcement official said Friday. The park is closed from 1 a.m. to 6 a.m.

The police noticed Mr. Quest at 64th Street and West Drive at about 3:40 a.m., the official said. As he was being escorted out, he volunteered, “I have meth in my pocket,” according to an official briefed on the case. The police searched him and recovered a small amount of methamphetamine in a Ziploc bag.

Mr. Quest is a high-profile correspondent for CNN International, known for feature reports and profiles. CNN calls Mr. Quest, who is British, one of the network’s “most instantly recognizable members.” He hosts “CNN Business Traveler” and a feature program titled “Quest” for the news network. CNN had no immediate comment.

It's an EMU, not an ostrich...DONT HIT IT!

GREENFIELD --'We were driving home on Interstate 91 from Brattleboro Wednesday afternoon around 3 p.m., and were just coming into Greenfield when my girlfriend starts shouting 'Look, look! There are ostriches running across the highway!' recalls Robert Berube, a home improvement contractor from Colrain.

He said his girlfriend, Donna Pedigo, who's a nursing student from Greenfield, insisted that they stop and try to save the birds -- which turned out to be emus -- before they were hit by a car and injured.
'I used a 50-foot contractor's extension cord to lasso the first one. I made a loop in it and tossed it over the bird's head,' he said.

'As I was getting the first one, Donna was trying to chase down the second one, but it ran away so fast she abandoned the pursuit,' Berube said. [pussy]

The couple followed the second bird up a slope to a fence that runs along the highway and then herded it back down into a swampy area, where the battle continued.
'I tried to lasso it again, but the loop was too big and he ran right through it, so I had to try and tackle him. 'That bird kicked my ass!' Berube recalled ruefully.

The bird kicked him in the stomach several times and also clawed at his arm before he and Pedigo could get the extension cord around its neck. 'Another guy stopped to help us and got his leg clawed. I tried to warn him, but it was too late,' he said.

The emus had been at large since Sunday, when their owner, Arthur Dahowski, of 716 Mohawk Trail, inadvertently left their pen open as he rushed off to deal with a family medical emergency.

According to Dahowski, it was fortuitous that Pedigo and Berube found the birds -- state officials had said that they might have had to shoot the emus if they had interfered with traffic on the highway. There had been several sightings over the past few days, and officers had seen them running along local roads.
'They saved those animals,' he said.

ooh, baby, can i lick your snot?

Many swoon over a delicate "htchew!" accompanied by a fine mist. Some like the breathy buildup, some like the release afterward. Others prefer them in series, one after another after another, in a phlegmy trifecta.

Music to the ears? Maybe not for most. But for those with a sneezing fetish, hearing, seeing or having a sneeze tickles them in all the right places. And with allergy season upon us, enthusiasts can look forward to some quality sneezing.

Take, for example, the members of Sneeze Fetish Forum, a site with discussion boards related to all things rhinologic. One poster describes a woman who has the "cutest sneeze ever. She gives a big 'ahhh.' Makes the squeak sound of a pinched stifle, and then lets out a loud 'chooo.'"

Response posts were alternatively congratulatory and envious of the poster's encounters with the sneezer.

Yo, I done told you already, that shit AIN'T my dog!

LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. (AP) - More than two weeks after Ken Griggs claimed a boarding kennel returned the wrong dog after spring break, he and his family were reunited with their black Labrador named Callie.
During the break in late March, Callie shared a kennel with a lookalike named Dixie. When Griggs went to retrieve Callie on March 30, he somehow ended up with Dixie.

Griggs knew something wasn't right when Callie wouldn't heel and the family cat—normally pals with Callie—hissed at the dog.

Griggs returned the dog to the kennel and Allison Best, the kennel owner, examined whether Callie might have gotten mixed-up with any of the other black Labradors staying there that week and contacted the owners. A meeting was set up with Dixie and Callie.

Griggs arrived at the Dundee kennel before the Sherwood woman and a black Lab got excited when he and his children approached. The kids declared it was Callie, and everyone went back home to Lake Oswego.
But it turned out to be the same dog Griggs had just returned.

Still thinking there might be a Callie impostor roaming his house, Griggs went to his regular veterinarian. She confirmed that the dog lacked Callie's surgical marks.
The case finally resolved itself when the kennel owner got a phone call from an acquaintance of the Sherwood woman, who had told her that "Dixie was not Dixie."

Best visited the Dixie's house to examine the dog. After realizing it was Callie, she told the woman she needed to meet with Griggs.

Best told The Oregonian newspaper she had no comment about how the confusion might have occurred. "We tried to do everything we could, and it's really unfortunate we had two customers who couldn't identify their dogs," she said.

the new L33t? 'Nerdic' is fastest-growing language

telegraph......From dongles to mashups to RickRolling, 'geek speak' has become the fastest growing language in Europe [and the world] as new words are invented to describe technological advances.

Experts claim about 100 new words are added to the language of technology, dubbed 'Nerdic', every year - three times the number of new words making it into the Oxford English Dictionary.
This year the number of new Nerdic words will rise to 200, according to research carried out by e-tailer pixmania.com to mark the 15th anniversary of the internet.

Stuart Miles, the editor of gadget website Pocket-Lint.co.uk, said: "Technology has revolutionised the way we speak. With so many words and phrases being created all the time it's created a whole new way of communicating.

He added: "If you're really into technology like me, it is actually possible to have an entire conversation in Nerdic, although not everyone else would be able to understand it." [my sister surely would, zlol]

Now calls have even been made to have Nerdic recognised as an official language. WHAT?!?!?!?
The researchers found that Nerdic contained the three core elements needed to define a language - words, phrases and pronunciation.

Ulric Jerome, the managing director of pixmania.com, said: "Technology has infiltrated our lives in many ways and at such a pace it is natural that it has developed a language of its own.
"It's exciting to see Nerdic bringing Europe together, and by recognising Nerdic as an official language the UK will continue to help unite technology fans across Europe."

some examples:

RickRoll - To intentionally misdirect internet users to a video of Never Gonna Give You Up by 80s one-hit-wonder Rick Astley.
UGC (user generated content) - The buzz word in the internet right now. Flickr, Facebook and YouTube all rely on the reader generating content on the sites.
Mashup - Take two or more really interesting elements from different websites or applications and make them into one - think Google Maps with an overlay of where you can buy clown outfits from.
Android - Think iPhone but with a slightly different interface on phones from Samsung to HTC and with the ability for anyone to make applications for it.
Fuel-cell - Green water powered battery for everything from cars to laptops that will boost your gadget's life considerably over standard batteries.

just b/c you dont recognize her doesnt make mommy love you any less.

Dr. Michael Salzhauer, in Bal Harbour, Fla, does not save lives. He saves faces. And asses, and noses, and tummies.
From the tragic life of being on a fat, ugly woman.
Now----he's taken his surgical magic to a whole new level. For a woman telling her friends, it's not hard to tell her friends why she got new tits, or a new nose. But telling your child can be a challenge.

SALZHAUER TO THE RESCUE!
"My Beautiful Mommy" (Big Tent Books), comes out this Mother's Day. It features a perky mother explaining to her child why she's having cosmetic surgery (a nose job and tummy tuck). Naturally, it has a happy ending: mommy winds up "even more" beautiful than before, and her daughter is thrilled.

What's the market for a children's picture book about moms getting cosmetic surgery? No one specifically tracks the number of tummy-tuck-and-breast-implant combos (or "mommy makeovers," as they're called), but according to the latest numbers from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, breast augmentation was the most popular cosmetic surgery procedure last year, with 348,000 performed. Of those, about one-third were for women over 40. There were 148,000 tummy tucks—up 1 percent from the previous year.

Dr. Salzhauer said so many moms brought kids to their appointments that he was motivated to stock up on lollipops in his office. He says that mysterious doctor's visits can be frightening for children. "Parents generally tend to go into this denial thing. They just try to ignore the kids' questions completely." But, he adds, children "fill in the blanks in their imagination" and then feel worse when they see "mommy with bandages," he says. "With the tummy tucks, [the mothers] can't lift anything. They're in bed. The kids have questions."

Illustrations in the bookshow a crook-nosed mom with loose tummy skin under her half shirt picking up her young daughter early from school one day and taking her to a strapping and handsome "Dr. Michael."

The girl asks: "Why are you going to look different?"
Mom responds: "Not just different, my dear — prettier!"

"There are people who are going to read this and say you're indoctrinating kids and idealizing beauty. That's not the intention of the book at all," he said. "The intention is to allow parents who are going through this process anyway to have a vehicle to explain it to their kids."
Salzhauer said he performs about 200 tummy tucks and breast procedures a year, the bulk on mothers.

So This is Pretty Crappy.

CROWN POINT, Indiana (AP) --Indiana 55 has reopened after a truckload of human feces spilled onto the roadway in northwestern Indiana's Crown Point.

The driver told police he was hauling treated human feces from a water recycling plant in Portage when the load spilled about 10:30 a.m. Thursday.

The Lake County hazardous materials response team came to clean up the mess, along with the Crown Point Fire Department and Indiana State Police.

The northbound and southbound lanes of the highway were closed during the cleanup.
The Indiana Department of Transportation cited the driver for an unsecured load.

it said load....

Poor Petey, getting his ass kicked in Jail...

Pete Doherty has been moved to a segregated area of Wormwood Scrubs prison for his own safety after learning that fellow inmates were planning to attack him.

The Babyshambles singer begged to be put in the high security segregation wing after prison officers informed him of the plot.
The troubled star is serving a 14 week sentence in the west London prison after breaching his bail conditions for drugs offences.


LOOK AT HIS LITTLE HAT!!!! tee hee!

Doherty was also strip-searched by four prison guards, wearing latex gloves, who were looking for drugs.
The examination followed reports earlier this week that Doherty has been injecting heroin in his cell. [coincidentally: I'd guess also the reason people want to kick his ass...bitch can't pay for his own smack!]

get psyched.

CAS AN 102 Human Behavioral Biology and Evolution
Biology relevant to the behavioral sciences. Introduces basic principles of evolutionary biology, animal social behavior, primate adaptations, human origins, genetic/hormonal/neural bases of behavior; and issues of human socioecology and adaptations. Discussions highlight nature-versus-nurture issues.
Get psyched...my education begins.

What the Improper REALLY stands for.

You might already be wondering what the hell I'm doing with an Improper Bostonian in my hand.
Let me just say, I love Ezra Dyer. He's angry, jaded, mean...everything I adore. If he were not happily married, I'd be on him. No joke! The dude makes me crack up on the weekly.
So I get the excuse for a rag. Really, one large, 40 page advertisment for dancing and drinking with sluts.
But they did the WORST most offensive thing - to me. For most readers...it's why they pick it from it's shiny street corner box in the first place.
And, without further ado:

THE LIST
10 of the priciest T-shirts on Newbury St.
10. Stil: green, 100% cotton, $128.
.....4. Riccardi: The Great China Wall, brown, 100% cotton, $470.
AND THE VICTOR, you sick, sick fucks
1. Chanel: white, patch pocket, 100%cotton, $1,065
THIS IS MORE THAN I PAY IN RENT. For a goddamned fruit of the loom fucking white cotton tee. Please, please tell me this is a joke. I beg you.

SKINS - to go the way of coupling or the office?

My money's on Coupling. Becuase you cant ACTUALLY TALK about SEX on american TV.
thats why the UK is better.
But still, they will try.....dry humping instead of fucking, etc.
Seriously, can we just try to be as open as the rest of the world? Just once?

Popular Channel 4 show Skins, about teens- 16 and 17 yr olds- being teens - specifically doing drugs and banging everything that moves, is going international.

Already optioned in Spain and in Romania, "There has been interest from a couple of U.S. networks to adapt the format," Channel 4's acquisitions head Jeff Ford says.

Created by veteran British scriptwriter Brian Elsley and his son James, "Skins" employs a writing team mostly in its early 20s; one episode of the current run is written by an 18-year-old.

"One reason why the audience has taken to 'Skins' is because it doesn't preach," Channel 4's head of scheduling Rosemary Newell says.
FAT CHANCE THIS WILL HAPPEN IN AMERICA, WE NEED MORALS TO EVERY STORY.

"There are things in 'Skins' like young people having sex and doing drugs that make people feel uncomfortable," Ford says. "If HBO or Showtime made a version of 'Skins,' there wouldn't be a problem: A (broadcast) network adaptation would need to be watered down."
[sad. just like coupling.]

followup on the abortion sick story

from JEzebel

Updates Yale: Abortion Art Piece Was "Creative Fiction"So it turns out that Aliza Shvarts, the Yale student who said she impregnated herself only to abort her embryos using "herbal" methods several times over for an art project, totally pulled one over on everyone. (Well, everyone except Moe.) She didn't really get pregnant a bunch of times, and she didn't really give herself abortions. According to a statement issued by Yale spokesperson Helaine S. Klasky, the entire stunt — Shvarts' press release, visual presentation, and narrative materials — was all part of Shvarts' real art project: Proving people are gullible weenies.

Actually, "gullible weenies" isn't the term that was used, but that's pretty much what it amounted to. Here's the full statement from Klasky:

Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body.
She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.

Other Haley is on to something: Brit Reality TV Really IS better!

Georgina Briers is struggling. It is late in the evening, but the 20-year-old is hunched over a dilapidated sewing machine in a New Delhi workshop, unsuccessfully trying to stitch a seam in a garment."
I can't do it, she tearfully moans. "It's not possible. I'm too hot."

All around her, rows of Indian workers glance up momentarily to see what the fuss is all about, before returning to their frenetic stitching.
Still crying, Georgina slumps back and groans. "This is how I imagined a sweatshop to be," she says. "Dirty, smelly - it's absolutely horrible. It's my idea of hell."

For someone whose idea of eternal damnation would previously have been a week without a shopping trip to Primark, Topshop or H&M, it is no surprise that Georgina is finding the work punishing.
She is used to buying new outfits and accessories on an almost daily basis.

For four weeks, instead of buying clothes, Georgina would instead be making them. With six other British youngsters, she was taken to India as part of a new BBC series, to experience first-hand how her throwaway High Street outfits are made.

What they would experience:
Working up to 18-hour days in soaring temperatures
being shouted at by stressed supervisors
having to sleep by their sewing machines
required to ask permission to get up from sewing machine, even for the bathroom.

Sitting in a line of 30 workers who produce the firm's total of 300 garments a day, every detail of their lives was timed and controlled.
After training, they took their place in a hangar-like room of roughly 1,000 workers, where some were expected to sew collars (one a minute) and others sleeves (two per minute).
And like their Indian co-workers, they were forced to survive on wages of less than £2 a day - enough only for the most basic of goods.

Demoted 3 times, Georgina ended the week making onnly £1.50 p/day.

Swedish researchers find world's oldest living tree

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - The world's oldest living tree on record is a nearly 10,000 year-old spruce that has been discovered in central Sweden, Umeaa University said on Thursday.

Researchers had discovered a spruce with genetic material dating back 9,550 years in the Fulu mountain in Dalarna, according to Leif Kullmann, a professor of Physical Geography at the university in northwestern Sweden.

That would mean it had taken root in roughly the year 7,542 BC.

"It was a big surprise because we thought until (now) that this kind of spruce grew much later in those regions," he said.

Scientists had previously believed the world's oldest trees were 4,000 to 5,000 year-old pine trees found in North America.
The new record-breaking tree was discovered in Dalarna in 2004 when Swedish researchers were carrying out a census of tree species in the region, Kullman said.
The tree's genetic material age had been calculated using carbon dating at a laboratory in Miami, Florida.

Spruces, which according to Kullmann offer rich insight into climate change, had long been regarded as relatively newcomers in the Swedish mountain region.
The discovery of the ancient tree had therefore led to "a big change in our way of thinking," he said.

Oh, Rupert, how Ginger you are....

Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are the two main reasons why Hollywood will never be home to “Harry Potter” star Rupert Grint, he tells Showbizspy.com.

“I met Lindsay last summer and she talked about herself a lot,” said the 19-year-old actor who plays Ron Weasley in the wizard flicks. “She said she was going to win an Oscar before she turns 25. I just kept thinking, ‘But you can’t act.’”

And don’t even get the British actor started on the likes of Hilton! “I haven’t met Paris and don’t want to either,” he said. “She and Lindsay are the type of girls you need to stay away from.”

Court terminates 8-year-old girl's marriage

SANAA (Reuters) - A Yemeni court ordered the marriage of an eight-year-old girl terminated on Tuesday because she had not reached puberty.

The court also ordered the child's family to pay about $250 in compensation to the 30-year-old ex-husband.

The girl's lawyer and human rights activist Shatha Nasser said the minor had filed a suit in April asking for divorce and told the court that her husband had been physically abusing her and forcing her to have "sex with him after hitting her."

One of the people attending the trial volunteered to pay the compensation, the lawyer said, but did not explain the reason why the court ordered the compensation.
The ruling terminated the marriage instead of granting a divorce to prevent the husband from seeking to reinstate the marriage, according to the lawyer.

Many minor girls in Arab countries that observe tribal traditions are married to older husbands but not before puberty. Such marriages are also driven by poverty in countries like Yemen, one of the poorest countries outside Africa.

Our world is a sick, sick world.
Her PARENTS let her marry some old dude! She's a baby! And the worst part is that theyre getting all Old testament and forcing the family of the girl to pay the "husband"

Black Day for love, big day for noodles

SEOUL (Reuters) - It was a Black Day for love in South Korea on Monday with lonely hearts trying to ease their pain by diving head first into bowls of noodles.
South Korea celebrates Valentine's Day, where local custom dictates women give gifts to men. It has taken on a popular event born in Japan but sweeping Asia known as White Day on March 14 when men return the favor with gifts for women.

But Black Day, on April 14, is a South Korean original. It is marked by people who have not found love dressing in dark colors and commiserating over meals of black food, with the dish of choice being Chinese-style noodles topped with a thick sauce of black bean paste.

"I had a miserable time on Valentine's Day, felt even lonelier on White Day and now I'm crying over a bowl of black noodles," said a young women who asked only to be identified by her family name Na out of embarrassment.
"Things better be different next year."

At universities across the country on Monday, students without lunch dates ordered black noodles, dined with other lonely hearts and searched for companionship.
South Korea marketers have hatched special days for the 14th of each month to create a calendar laden with love.

Some days have gained traction such as Black Day, while others such as Green Day in August, when couples are supposed to drink cheap liquor that comes in green bottles and walk in the woods, have yet to attract much of a following.
Black Day events have snowballed, with a major matchmaking service this year providing an evening of speed dating where the dish of choice is sushi blackened by squid ink.

Pic of the day!

Iran threatens to 'eliminate Israel' if it launches attack

empty or not, Iran's threats are downright scary.


"Should Israel take any action against Iran, we will eliminate Israel from the scene of the universe," Gen. Muhammad Reza Ashtiani said in Teheran on Tuesday.

Ashtiani's statement followed Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's comment last week warning Iran that any attack on Israel would result in the "destruction of the Iranian nation."

Ashtiani claimed Israel was "very vulnerable" and dismissed allegations that Iran was worried about Israeli maneuvers.

"Due to its special conditions, Israel is very vulnerable in the region," he said. "The aggressors will face a crushing response."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev responded by saying "these hateful and extreme statements from the Iranian leadership are unfortunately routine. The sad reality is that these statements expose the mind set and political agenda of the leadership in Teheran. Unfortunately these hateful words are backed up by very dangerous actions."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Aryeh Mekel said that these comments illustrate the need for the international community to "work with more determination" and take steps to keep Iran, which is threatening to destroy another UN member state, from obtaining nuclear weapons.

israel plan: back on.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Your tendency to behave in a certain rhythm will be challenged when someone knocks you off your clock. You're amazingly versatile when you relax. Your mantra: All is happening in perfect time.

to help the ethiopian jews!
thank you, Len Lyons!
HUZAH!

Quote 2

Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us....Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
-E.O. Wilson

Quote of the Day

I want to do something with my life; I want to be a cyborg.
-Kevin Warwick

also, babies are not capable of love....no spindle cells.

not so subtle vent.

1. stop it. you're not his mom.
2. how do you not feel degraded as a human? you do NOTHING for yourself. you are a dog.

f dostoyevsy in the b

seriously.
finished brothers K FINALLY, so glad to have read the next book in under 24 hours.
forgot what real books felt like.

failed new life plan.

After some research, PhD in Bio Anth not a possibility in Israel.
:(

Vid of the Day

The new chip that will let an iPod store 500,000 songs

Mobile phones, iPods and other consumer devices may soon be able to hold a hundred times more information than they do at present thanks to a breakthrough in storage technology.

Scientists at IBM say they have developed a new type of digital storage which would enable a device such as an MP3 player to store about half a million songs - or 3,500 films - and cost far less to produce.

In a paper published in the current issue of Science, a team at the company's research centre in San Jose, California, said that devices which use the new technology would require much less power, would run on a single battery charge for "weeks at a time", and would last for decades.

So-called 'racetrack' memory uses the 'spin' of an electron to store data, and can operate far more quickly than regular hard drives.

Like flash memory - the most advanced type of memory for small devices such as mobile phones - it has no moving parts, meaning that the problems associated with mechanical reliability are dramatically reduced.

Unlike flash, however, it can 'write data' - or store information - extremely quickly, and does not have the 'wear out' mechanism that means flash memory drives can only be used a few thousand times before they wear out.

"The promise of racetrack memory - for example, the ability to carry massive amounts of information in your pocket - could unleash creativity leading to devices and applications that nobody has imagined yet," Stuart Parkin, the IBM fellow who led the research, said.
At present the most capacious iPod - the 160GB iPod Classic - can store 40,000 songs.

The breakthrough also potentially paves the way for a radical re-writing of one of the most basic laws of computing - so-called Moore's Law, the maxim coined in 1965 by the co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore, according to which computing speed doubles roughly every two years.

In September, Mr Moore himself said that the continued application of his law would come up against some fundamental laws of physics by about 2020 - laws which forced Mr Parkin and his team to rethink how silicon chips operate.

IBM said the technology was still "exploratory" at this stage, but that it expected devices which used it to be on the market within ten years.

Pretty girls, unattractive men gel well

Women seeking a lifelong mate might do well to choose the guy a notch below them in the looks category. New research reveals couples in which the wife is better looking than her husband are more positive and supportive than other match-ups. The reason, researchers suspect, is that men place great value on beauty, whereas women are more interested in having a supportive husband.

Researchers admit that looks are subjective, but studies show there are some universal standards, including large eyes, "baby face" features, symmetric faces, so-called average faces, and specific waist-hip ratios in men versus women.

A group of trained "coders" rated the facial attractiveness of each spouse on a scale from 1 to 10, with the perfect 10 representing the ultimate babe. About a third of the couples had a more attractive wife, a third a more attractive husband and the remaining partners showed matching looks.

Overall, wives and husbands behaved more positively when the woman was better looking. Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioural economics at MIT's Programme in Media Arts and Sciences and Sloan School of Management, said, "Men are very sensitive to women's attractiveness. Women seem to be sensitive to men's height and salary."

In couples with more attractive husbands, both partners were less supportive of one another. McNulty suggests wives mirror, in some ways, the level of support they get from husbands.

"The husband who's less physically attractive than his wife is getting something more than maybe he can expect to get," McNulty told LiveScience. "He's getting something better than he's providing at that level. So he's going to work hard to maintain that relationship."

what a dick, dr. fucking phil.

A bondsman says TV's Dr. Phil has posted $30 thousand bond for the ringleader of the eight Lakeland teens accused of kidnapping and beating a girl in front of a video camera.

It's believed Mercades Nichols will be talking about the case on his nationally syndicated show soon.

Some parents had complained earlier this week that they could not afford the high bond set by the judge.

However, six of the eight were out of jail Saturday.

All eight teens face kidnapping and battery charges. Kidnapping carries a penalty of up to life in prison.

Stripping is a high art, just like opera, or ballet.

A professor of anthropology and dance who has visited more than 130 topless clubs for various research projects, including four in Memphis this week, said exotic dancing has serious artistic value and is not unlike dancing found in many mainstream ballets, plays and musicals.

"It's a learned skill, it's creative and it communicates a message through movement," said Dr. Judith Hanna, a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland. "Nudity, proximity and touch are an integral part of artistic performances. They would be prohibited (under the proposed ordinance)."

Hanna testified during a daylong hearing in which the club owners are seeking a preliminary injunction of the county ordinance banning beer sales and requiring pasties. The ordinance is scheduled to go into effect at the end of this month.
[who in the hell would go to a dry strip club?!?!?
U.S. Dist. Court Judge Bernice Donald said she would issue a written ruling on the injunction request no later than April 23. A trial date for the clubs' suit against the city and county has not been set.

The ordinance, which is based on a 10-year-old state law, has been upheld in at least two previous legal challenges, though lawyers for the seven topless clubs in the suit say they are raising new issues, including the legality of requiring dancers to remain six feet from customers and from one another during performances.

The club attorneys argue that the ordinance violates free speech, is overly broad and is so unconstitutionally vague that wording could make The Orpheum an adult-oriented establishment if performers in the musical Cats sat in the lap of an audience member.

"It is so vague the owners don't know what kind of dance they could do," said plaintiff's attorney Michael Murray. "They would have to entirely guess what they can and can't do. Their businesses would be destroyed. These are honest businessmen, not outlaws."

Citing the recent prostitution conviction of topless-club kingpin Ralph Lunati, whose clubs featured live two-girl sex shows on stage, they said the ordinance would stop that activity quicker than the two-year undercover investigation that relied on federal racketeering charges.

"Prostitution very much includes lap dances," said Rolwing. "If they can't properly run these businesses without prostitution, then that's their problem."
The county ordinance would cover Memphis as well, although the City Council has considered adopting its own, less stringent ordinance for sexually oriented businesses.

Beer-sipping clients have taxes done in a bar

HOBOKEN, New Jersey (Reuters) - The sounds of the Rolling Stones pour from the speakers while beer glasses are filled and a jovial game of darts takes place 10 feet away.
It's just another night at the office for Carmine Sodora, certified public accountant.

Sodora founded Tavern Tax in 2005. For 10 weeks leading up to the April 15 deadline to submit U.S. income tax returns, he brings his tax-filing services to bars on weekday nights and weekend afternoons. He didn't know of anyone else offering such a service.

"I always say to people, 'Where's your beer? I can't have one but you can,'" Sodora said.

Although this year he has focused on Hoboken -- a small New Jersey city across the Hudson River from Manhattan, and home to 53 bars and a young population -- he has worked out of New York City bars in the past.

"I was looking to expand my personal tax business. It's primarily to go after a demographic -- yuppies," the 30-year-old said, referring to young urban professionals. "I've seen a 75 percent repeat, year after year.

Disarming stressed-out cops?

BEIJING (Reuters) - Police facing emotional strains due to financial or romantic problems could be stripped of their department-issued handguns in China's Jiangxi province, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The public security bureau in the province will begin inspections this month to make sure officers who have received administrative punishments, or are under investigation, will not be able to carry firearms, the Southern Metropolis Daily said.

Guns would also be retrieved from "officers who are suffering from serious illnesses or face psychological and emotional instability resulting from love or marriage frustrations and heavy debt," the newspaper reported, citing an announcement from the Jiangxi public security bureau.

Police officers carry guns in China but several mishaps have led to a debate over whether tighter restrictions are needed to govern when officers can use lethal force.

Last November, a doctor in the southern city of Guangzhou was shot dead by patrolling officers when he resisted police attempts to inspect his car.

A district police chief, allegedly disgruntled about his demotion, shot dead a deputy Communist Party boss of Hohhot city in Inner Mongolia in February.

Car wash finds $500,000 diamond pendant

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Car cleaners at a Russian firm got a surprise when they cleaned out a vacuum cleaner this week: a diamond pendant worth up to 300,000 euros ($475,400).

"I didn't know how much it was worth at first so I got a jeweler to come around and he said it was worth as much as 300,000 euros," Vladimir Shapiro, owner of the car cleaning firm in Russia's northern city of St Petersburg, told Reuters.

"When I heard the value my jaw dropped to the floor," he said. "You would have to notice losing something like this."

He said he was not going to disclose much about the pendant so that he could return it to its true owner.

Masseuses told to padlock pants

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A bid by a local government in Indonesia's East Java province to curb prostitution by asking masseuses to wear a padlock on their pants was an insult, a newspaper quoted the minister for women's empowerment as saying.

The recently implemented policy in the tourist area of Batu was misguided, State Minister for Women's Empowerment Meuthia Hatta told the Jakarta Post on Thursday.

"It is not the right way to prevent promiscuity. It insults women as if they are the ones in the wrong," Hatta said.
The best way to curb prostitution in massage parlors was to improve security systems including installing CCTV, Hatta said.

Batu, 75 km (46 miles) south of Indonesia's second-biggest city, Surabaya, is a popular tourist destination for its cool climate, hot springs and mountain scenery.

Indonesia has a flourishing sex industry and massage parlors are frequently a front for prostitution. But there has been a vigorous debate over morality in recent years, exposing deep divisions in the Southeast Asian Muslim-majority nation.

Last month, Indonesia passed a bill to restrict access to pornographic and violent sites on the Internet, while parliament has yet to pass a controversial pornography bill that aims to shield the young from pornographic material and lewd acts.

Earlier draft versions contained provisions that could jail people for kissing in public and criminalize many forms of art or traditional culture that hinge on sensuality, sparking criticism it could curb freedoms and hurt Indonesia's tolerant traditions.

Dry cleaner gives same-day service to thieves

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A dry-cleaning shop owner in Papua New Guinea has found a unique way of encouraging thieves to clean up their behavior: giving them a steam cleaning.

Police in the northeast coastal town of Lae said a 20-year-old man suffered burns and scalding to his abdomen, chest and back after the owner turned a steam cleaner on him after he was caught stealing pants worth 14 kina ($5.50).

"The owner has done this to many people already," police spokesman Nema Mondiai told Australian Associated Press on Wednesday.

Police seemed unconcerned about the radical punishment and released the thief after being assured he had learned his lesson.

Papua New Guinea, a mountainous country of about 6 million people, has significant crime problems and 85 percent of its population live off subsistence farming.

A new report by Australian academics on Wednesday, based on surveys of 153 PNG firms, found break-ins, burglary, armed hold-ups and robbery, as well as employee theft, were the most frequent crimes faced by local businesses.