I remember hearing about the US’s new Fingerprint & Photo rule for visitors with visas while I was in Australia earlier this year (not sure how much press it got here, it was *HUGE* overseas). And I remember hearing that Brazil had decided to reciprocate by requiring that any US citizen travelling to Brazil would have to do the same. But somehow I managged to miss seeing this story untill now….

An American Airlines pilot was detained/fined ~$13,000 for making an “internationally recognized obscene gesture while he was being photographed for identification.” Now admittedly, I wasn’t there … I don’t know what he said when the picture was taken, or what his overall demeaner was … but I don’t understand how they can possible justify arresting the guy based purely on the picture. I know lots of people who might hold up a piece of paper like that.

Everybody knows how gross it can be when a whale blows up. But imagine how bad it would be be if it happened all over your car. Actually, don’t bother imagining — this is why you shouldn’t drive 60-tons of decomposing flesh through the center of town.

In case you haven’t heard, NASA has lost contact with Spirit — which makes this Stephen Baxter article I recieved today all the more interesting. It’s got just the right mix of historical factoids and pragmatic optimism to put the past, present and future of Martian exploration into perspective…
(more…)

I’m not sure what to make of this, … the first thing that jumps out at me, is that calling it “X-Ray Vision” is missleading, since it claims she is “capable of distinguishing even the tiniest pathology on a molecular level … which sounds a lot less like the science-fictiony concept of “X-Ray Vision” and more like the Fantasy-ic concept of “Being in tune with the Universe, and every living organism”. But for what it’s worth: The Girl With X-Ray Vision

A buddy of mine asked for an explaination of how the Iowa caucus worked, which prompted two URLs: a long boring document, and an insightful explanation from Time Magazine. Clicking arround Time somemore, I noticed another Iowa article, which got my attention quickly with this quote from Dean (circa 1999)…

If you look at the caucuses system, they are dominated by the special interests in both parties, [and] the special interests don’t represent the centrist tendencies of the American people,
…
I can’t stand there and listen to everyone else’s opinion for eight hours about how to fix the world.

The article goes on to have some pretty interesting comments about how much the media overestimates the importance of the results in Iowa, and some candiates seem to be underestimating it.

As we approach the holiday season, people tend to reflect back on the 2003 and their accomplishments. What better time to take stock of some of this years accomplishments (and misshaps) of people even more disfunctional then yourself.

My buddy Mark put it best when he sent me this link…

Is this the best the Christian abstinance brigade can do?
“100 things do to with your boyfriend or girlfriend instead of it”
I mean, do they read this? Seriously? Do they have teenagers? Have they
ever been a teenager? And what’s with the circa 1950’s ‘it’… come on, even
Jerry Falwell can say “sex” with a straight face.

By now, most people have probably heard about the woman who was trampled the day after thanksgiving when hundreds of Wal-Mart shoppers rushed to buy $29 DVD players. What I just heard about tonight (Thank you Lewis Black and the Daily Show) is that this woman has a history of claiming … suspicious … injuries.
(Scroll down to “Wal-Mart Chaser” in this column for a detailed list of her past “injuries”)

This choice little ditty is just too classic to let slide: The Mayor of London wants the city to have
“an extravanganza to rival the spectacular fireworks displays that cities such as Sydney and Los Angeles have become noted for” — but he doesn’t want it to be very long, and he doesn’t want any one to come see it.
The fireworks will cost £330,000 ($576,000 US) and will only last 2 minutes long — a show put on purely to create a video-bite that can be broadcast world wide. Londoners are actively being told to “stay home” and watch it on TV, becuase having a lot of people there in person may “ruin the effect” for the TV cameras, and the world audience.
Yea-Ha London, you folks really know how to party!

As metioned previously, Babs has been acting like a spoiled little child, complaining that the California Coastal Records Project had violated the sanctity of her home, and was aiding stalkers. I didn’t notice untill today, but last week the judge dismissed her case.
The CCRP web site has more info about the dismissal, and tons of press links.

A fun little toy to amuse yourself with on your day off — assuming you live in a country that likes to eat lots of Turkey today. (requires flash)

This time of year, many people get into the spirt of giving, and donate food/money to programs that help feed the Homeless — particularly homeless children. Other people kiddnap them, tie them up in a sack, tell people they are a stray dog, and sell them to be used as food.

Happy Holidays!

Generally speaking, I think there are way too many lawyers in the world, mucking the place up. But then I see stories like this one, and it occurs to me that maybe what we really need is more lawyers, so that when cops or landlords, or telemarketers, or TSA goons get cocky and think they can walk all over people, they’ll get a rude surprise when the person they are trying to take advantage of says “By the way, I’m a lawyer, and you’re way out of line, and I’m going to sue your ass so hard you’ll wish you were dead.”

Maybe then people in positions of authority would think twice before abusing their power.

Eh, probably not.

SmokeFreeMovies recently came to my attention when my girlfriend told me about a lecture (PPT) she’d just attended by Stan Glantz. Dr. Glantz is somewhat of an eccentric in the Public Health community and started the project on a lark, knowing that Big Tobaco has a history of working with major movie studios — but then he discovered that smoking in movies does significantly stimulate smoking in kids.

Personally, I thought the idea was a little goofy, but he presents some pretty interesting statistics (like: characters in movies smoke 300% as much as people in real life) and their goals are very modest, and seem completely reasonable to me. In particular, they’d like to see smoking given the same consideration as profanity and alcohol in determining if a movie should get an R Rating.

If nothing else, it’s interesting to see some of the Ads the organization has run in industry publications to promote their cause within the Hollywood system. (They are listed in reverse chronological order, so I suggested starting at the bottom and reading up). Of particular interest to me was the Ad they made after finding out about the letter writting campaign of a group of High School kids in New York who wrote 202,000 letters to various Hollywood big shots and got only two replies: one refusing delivery, and one from Julia Roberts’s people threatening legal action if they sent any more letters.

The rock band Hell of Earth is planning to allow an onstage suicide “live” at their next show in St. Petersburg, Florida. As you would expect, this has caused quite a bit of controversy, but my favorite part of the whole thing, is that the city council needed to pass a special law, making it illegal to: “conduct a suicide for commercial or entertainment purposes, and to host, promote and sell tickets for such an event.” Apparently, they had to pass the special law, becuase otherwise they had no legal grounds to try and stop the show — no one in the band is planning to “assist” this anonymous individual, they’re just going to let him come on stage and do his thing.

The show must go on however, the lead singer promises that the show will happen at an undisclosed location within city limits, in front of a select few die-hard fans (pun intended) and it will be broadcast live on their website.

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how miniscule or trivial the substance of a story is, it’s still worth taking note of, if for no other reason then to laugh: Judge Who Nixed Call Registry Is on List.

This is almost old news by now, But It’s new to *me* — so I’m going to share. A law recently went into effect in Minnesota requiring: “All public and charter school students shall recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America one or more times each week.” Now first of all, why only once a week? I mean, why not every morning? But I digress — it seems that when passing this law, the state legislature didn’t consider that many of the urban schools didn’t own flags, and didn’t have the money to buy them, so kids are now saying the pledge to a flag graphic shown on the classroom TVs. That’s right, they can’t afford a $0.95 Flag in each class, but they all have TVs.

Now things are getting even more interesting. A High School student in St. Paul was kicked out of class twice by the same teacher “…for exercising her right not to stand, or participate in any manner in the activity.” Even after her school principle acknowledged “…that the law included an “Opt out” provision which meant that she did not have to stand or recite the pledge.”

Way to go Minnesota school system, way to be on the ball about this whole flag thing.

I’m posting this a little late, but September 20–27 is Banned Book Week, …a reminder not to take one of our most important freedoms for granted—the freedom to read and explore many points of view. So take this oportunity to broaden your mind — read a book from “The List“.

(As seen in the Drudge Report) Aparently, a very sweet old lady with a lot cats died a few years ago, and since then her son has come by every few months with some large bags of cat food and just let the 103 cats have the run of the place … Felines rove in walls as bugs root through filth, building condemned — I really can’t even imagine what kind of person could just walk through feces 3 feet deep to dump some cat food in a kitchen sink.
My favorite quote: “Once the cats breed inside the walls, its economically impossible to clean it up, You can imagine what’s inside those walls, and what the house is going to smell like forever.”
My friend’s favorite quote: “He’s also brought out one dog, a beagle. Jacobson said the dog looked well-fed.”

…then it’s just fun — er … wait a minute … acctually this doesn’t sound fun at all, this sounds seriously messed up: “A man was hospitalised with torn intestines after a friend, attempting a practical joke, pressed an air compressor to his…” Ouch.