A stowaway crocodile on a flight escaped from its carrier bag and sparked an onboard stampede that caused the flight to crash, killing 19 passengers and crew.
A woman pronounced "very certainly clinically dead" at a French hospital woke up hours later after her sons refused to turn off her life-support system, medics and the woman said."Very certainly clinically dead."
A review of patients who died soon after acupuncture found a history of punctured hearts and lungs, damaged arteries and livers, nerve problems, shock, infection and haemorrhage, largely caused by practitioners placing their needles incorrectly or failing to sterilise their equipment.Make them sterilize the needles for a start,
Rangers in Washington state suspect an encounter with a mountain goat killed a 63-year-old hiker in Olympic National Park.By the way, Wikipedia says:
Despite its vernacular name, it is not a member of Capra, the genus of true goats.Beware of this untrue goat
Those who doubt that the failings of higher education in America have political consequences need only reflect on the quality of progressive commentary on the tea party movement. Our universities have produced two generations of highly educated people who seem unable to recognize the spirited defense of fundamental American principles, even when it takes place for more than a year and a half right in front of their noses.So his thesis is that they literally don't get it.
A new analysis of political signs displayed at a tea party rally in Washington last month reveals that the vast majority of activists expressed narrow concerns about the government's economic and spending policies and steered clear of the racially charged anti-Obama messages that have helped define some media coverage of such events.Post-modern theories are involved in both - the failure to understand what the founders were about - and the willingness to misrepresent.
“She made him kill her, and she deserves it,” said Sherine Moustafa, a 39-year-old Egyptian corporate lawyer, an opinion that was echoed by every woman of dozens interviewed.Blaming a woman
SOLNESS. There is rather something of the bird of prey in you.I'd say the role requires
HILDE. ...And why not a bird of prey? Why shouldn't I go a-hunting - I, as well as the rest? Carry off the prey I want - if only I can get my claws into it, and do with it as I will.
A top aide to Cook County President Todd Stroger has been charged with stealing more than $300,000 from taxpayers in a scheme to award sham contracts, including some to firms she owned but for which she did no work.Makes sense to me.
He uses these idiot boards to read speeches in television, and I think he loses the connection that he needs emotionally with American voters.It's an interesting question. The prez obviously loves the gizmos. He is reported to bring them with him to fairly small meetings, where I think it might come across as just plain bizarre.
But the most recent Objectivist controversy is too big to ignore, paper over, or address only indirectly. Its implications go too wide and too deep, striking at the very core of the movement's soul.Q: So, what brought this on?
Check out Zernike’s jaw-dropping attempt to define “the rule of law,” which is apparently a term she hadn’t heard until recently.Of course I had to check it out:
...“the rule of law,” Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of “personal ends and desires.”This description of "rule of law"
When confronted by officers last Tuesday, Isaac Stoltzfus, a District Court judge, claimed the bizarre incident was a joke.The humorous comments just write themselves. You've already thought of a couple.
I also learned that many Berliners starting suspecting the Holocaust because of the rather efficient German postal system. When letters would be sent to "ghetto inhabitants" on the Eastern front, often they would be returned with notice that the intended recipient had passed away.This made me remember a book I read years ago, The Terrible Secret, by Walter Lacquer, which documented a lot of the "leakage" of the secret to the West.
The flag in times of peace is displayed with its blue field on top and its red field at the bottom.Yes, we hung the Philippines flag wrong. They're not at war right now. That's it behind the head of the guy with glasses:
A veteran Justice Department lawyer accused his agency Friday of being unwilling to pursue racial discrimination cases on behalf of white voters, turning what had been a lower-level controversy into an escalating political headache for the Obama administration.The Department Of Justice denies all this, but this is the second DOJ lawyer to testify that this has been going on.
On the bill dealing with immigrant workers, Colbert quipped, "Like most members of Congress, I haven't read it."It's funny and sad because it's true.
He said he could not confer the title "to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father."From way back,
Not only do wily rats continue to thrive, but the opossums have become their own epidemic, with bands of the conniving creatures sauntering through yards, plundering garbage cans and noshing on fruit trees.As for the human population, "some Brooklynites have become terrified to go into their yards at night."
“The tea party activists get involved in Republican primaries, play by the rules, and then the Republican establishment candidate proves that he was never a loyal Republican in the first place and goes rogue,” said Matt Kibbe, president of the tea party-aligned group FreedomWorks.Conservatives have a word for Republican liberals and moderates: RINO, pronounced like rhino. It stands for Republican In Name Only.
Can we just point out for the record that you don't dabble "into" witchcraft, you dabble in it?I'm kinda sicka Wicca,
The 23-year-old man was shot twice this morning in different neighborhoods and survived.I grew up in one of these neighborhoods. I don't go back much.
“Someone is trying real hard to kill this guy,” one police source said.
Summer may never be the same for families in the south suburbs and the Southwest Side of Chicago with the closure of Evergreen Aqua Park, a watery paradise for five decades.Then my indoor pool, at the health club, got flooded - with overflow from the Chicago River:
Even though the water only flooded the first level (pool, weight room, sauna, jacuzzi) the lack of ventilation, moisture seems to have trashed the cardio equipment, the fitness studio's floor "bubbled" up, and the tiles started popping out of the walls in the locker rooms.There are other places to swim, but I can be a creature of habit,
Jesús Malverde, sometimes known as the "generous bandit", "angel of the poor", or the "narco-saint", is a folklore hero in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. He is celebrated as a folk saint by some in Mexico and the United States, particularly among those involved in drug trafficking, but he is not officially recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.He's a handsome devil:
When Cook County Sheriff's officers spotted a statue of Jesus Malverde in a Toyota Camry parked near their west suburban police station, they knew something was wrong.They found a lot of cocaine in the Camry.
An international cybercrime investigation is underway into a sophisticated scam network that left a Western Australian man half a million dollars out of pocket when criminals sold his Perth investment property using stolen credentials.I have a big question - can't this man recover his stolen property? Who is really taking a loss under Aussie law? The article doesn't address this issue.
DeKalb County is suing a local farmer for growing too many vegetables, but he said he will fight the charges in the ongoing battle neighbors call “Cabbagegate.”What Zombie of Zoning banned diversity of vegetables in the first place?
As September 11th approaches, Americans remember the morning in 2001 when the World Trade Center turned to rubble. It is a fitting time to consider the nature of the civilizations that collided that day—and how to defend ours.A civilization that will not rise to defend itself
...
It is said that Ground Zero is “sacred ground.” In truth, all of America is sacred ground—because the individual is sacred here.
Until 2006 it was thought that no mammals, other than bats and marine mammals, had reached New Zealand before humans did. The discovery of a femur and mandibles of an extinct non-volant (non-flying) mammal in Otago, dated at 16-19 million years old, has changed the view of New Zealand's evolutionary history, as it strongly suggests that mammals had been part of New Zealand's fauna since the break-up of Gondwana. The fossil has been called SB mammal. It is not known when, or why, land mammals went extinct in New Zealand but there were none present on New Zealand for several million years before the arrival of man."It is not known why..." Yeah, right. I know why. It was the birds. Did you ever see the Hitchcock movie, The Birds? That should have been a warning to us all.
Except it's not a King quote.Somebody else said it, and King used to quote him.
TV Ads May Be More Effective If We Pay Less AttentionThe idea is that when you pay attention, your critical faculties are in control, and you will be skeptical of advertisers' claims.
The luggage sent to Virginia contained a cellphone taped to a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, in addition to three cellphones taped together and several watches taped together.It's easy to see how watches and cellphones might be used for a terrorist attack, for coordination or even for detonation.
...the U.S. economy is scuffling along.This is impossible, of course. The Germans spent very little on stimulus. We spent a whole bunch. But they're the ones with a stimulated economy.
The German economy, on the other hand, is growing at a sizzling (and obviously unsustainable) 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has come down to pre-crisis levels.
So, here's a regulation I hate: you're not allowed to swim across the lake anymore in Massachusetts state parks. You have to stay inside the dinky little waist-deep swimming areas, with their bobbing lines of white buoys.I prefer to make a break
One of the first facts to emerge about Michael Enright, also on his Facebook page, is his affiliation with Intersections International, a non-profit organization that promotes global peace and reconciliation — and that had recently endorsed the Islamic center at Ground Zero.
Regardless of numbers, it feels like a recessionIt seems strange to me because I keep hearing about bad numbers.
More bad housing, hiring data show an economy that may be faltering
"Who cares if it's a second recession or a double-dip?" said William Dunkelberg, an economics professor at Temple University's School of Business and Management and chief economist of the National Federation of Independent Business. "Either way, things are not going well."Is it a double dip
The family of a 17-year-old Zion teen credited with saving a drowning boy on Monday in Kenosha, Wis., say the good deed has unfairly saddled them with more than $2,000 in medical bills.An ambulance took him to the hospital for "precautionary" reasons. The ambulance ride alone is valued at $700.
The drivers have complained that locals were over-charging them for food and drink while they were stuck.Your truck
“It’s a hot country and the explosive vests are thick and heavy.”When your missions not completed,
I’d never thought about suicide bombing in terms of comfort.
I remember suggesting to one of the most prominent feminist lawprofs that I thought feminism would be better if it expanded more generally into concern about the burdens of gender roles, which men felt too, in interestingly different ways. Individual freedom for all could be the overarching goal.Gender Wars! Smash the Patriarchy!
The response was not, as I'd naively anticipated at the time, that I had a great idea or that it was at least an intriguing proposal that we could casually converse about for a minute or 2. No, not at all. I mean, I'm still alive. But there was pushback. Swift, sharp snapback. Men get nothing from feminism. They must give ground. Much ground.
By the way, during the same period, you'd get similar sharp pushback from lefties if you said you thought gay people had the right to marry each other. That was viewed as a conservative position that would undermine the feminist critique of marriage as patriarchy. I also got an instant, angry response from a lefty feminist law professor when I said that the cause of gay rights might be advanced by scientific findings that homosexuality may have a biological cause. Back then, you see, homosexuality was supposed to be a choice, and scientists were condemned even for researching the matter.For some people, these 2 positions dovetailed nicely. Some argued that being a lesbian was a choice in favor of sisterhood and against the patriarchy!
Conceding that sexual attraction cannot be politically mandated, lesbian feminists emphasized lesbianism as a political choice. "Political lesbians" were not required to have sex with other women, but it was expected that they remain celibate. Influenced by Anne Koedt's political analysis of vaginal versus clitoral orgasms, lesbian feminists urged lesbians to refrain from or at least minimize vaginal (and presumably other types of) penetration, and similar "male-stream" acts, including the consumption of pornography.In time the scientific consensus shifted
Merrie Harris says she didn't have any cash when Jay Valentine asked for some Monday, so she let him use her American Express platinum card instead.Lending the homeless your plastic
Friends and bystanders told her she'd never see it again. But Valentine soon returned it after buying deodorant, body wash, cigarettes and water for a total of $25.
One of the most sobering observations made by Wax comes in the form of a disarmingly simple calculus presented first by Isabel Sawhill and Christopher Jencks. If you finish high school and keep a job without having children before marriage, you will almost certainly not be poor. Period. I have repeatedly felt the air go out of the room upon putting this to black audiences. No one of any political stripe can deny it. It is human truth on view.His review ends:
To the extent that our ideology on race is more about studied radicalism than about a healthy brand of what Wax calls an internal locus of control, her book provokes, at least in this reader, a certain hopelessness. If she is right, then the bulk of today’s discussion of black America is performance art. Tragically, and for the most part, she is right.How do you start
Isn't explaining intrinsically a form of oppression, a privileging of the speaker's viewpoint over that of the listener's? Shouldn't we accept that postmodernism defies any single explanation - that it demands a diversity of explanations to reflect its nuanced polarities?Oops, I fear
The goal, however, is not simply to open a typical gay bar, but one friendly to men of Islamic faith. An entire floor, for example, will feature non-alcoholic drinks, since booze is forbidden by the faith. The bar will be open all day and night, to accommodate men who would rather keep their sexuality under wraps – but still want to dance.There's some kind of paradox in Muslim societies around male homosexuality. It's against the rules, but in some forms it is rumored to be routine.
The result is a religion that allows love between those of the same gender as long as they do not have sexual intercourse. Ibn Hazm, Ibn Daud, Al-Mu'tamid, Abu Nuwas, and many others wrote extensively and openly of love between men. However, in order for the transgression to be proven, at least four men or eight women must bear witness against the accused, thus making it very difficult to persecute those who did not remain celibate in their homes.But this more accepting side seems to kept quiet. If it's all behind closed doors, they look the other way.
But private investigators working for the restaurant's insurance company say they taped her dancing at C.R. Fanny's Gentlemen's Club and Sports Bar later that year.Now she's charged with fraud and theft. Insurance companies have no sense of humor!
If a single male cicada can make a noise over 100 decibels, imagine the noise produced when thousands of cicadas sing together. Males aggregate as they sing, creating a cicada chorus.
The biopic stars Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, a female mathematician, philosopher and astronomer in 4th century CE Roman Egypt who investigates the flaws of the geocentric Ptolemaic system and the heliocentric model that challenges it. Surrounded by religious turmoil and social unrest, Hypatia struggles to save the knowledge of classical antiquity from destruction.The film glorifies Hypatia's quest for knowledge, and portrays most of the Alexandrian Christians as ignorant rabble.
Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.Also, TSA has released specs which show that they require scanners to be able to store and transmit images. Like this one:
A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.That's an Attic flashback from Aristotle.
While this case raises a host of complex constitutional issues, all seem to distill to the single question of whether or not Congress has the power to regulate — and tax — an individual’s decision not to participate in interstate commerce. Neither the US Supreme Court nor and federal circuit court of appeals has squarely addressed this issue. No reported case from any federal appellate court has extended the Commerce Clause or Tax Clause to include the regulation of a person’s decision not to purchase a product...Can Congress create a tax to apply
The White House on Friday announced the third departure of a high-level aide to first lady Michelle Obama.They don't say, but I infer, that this is a lot of important people jumping ship in a short period of time. That's reading between the lines, so I could be wrong.
