Truth is stranger than fiction

The medical value of Super Soakers

Two physicians, in a December note in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, wrote glowingly of the ability of the Super Soaker Max-D 5000 squirt weapon to quickly and safely loosen severely impacted ear wax (knowledge learned from an emergency use when no standard ear-syringing equipment was available).

In fact, they wrote, since the Super Soaker holds much more water than the standard equipment, using it would actually shorten patients' office visits. (However, the Super Soaker was obviously not anticipated for medical use; its awkward design assured that patient and doctor would be drenched by excess spray.)

Least Competent Criminals

Three men who police say stole a car in San Jose, Calif., in October and drove it to Chico, Calif., were arrested in Chico when police caught them trying to break into that same car because they had locked the keys inside (or thought they had, since Chico Officer Jose Lara said he found the keys in one of the men's pockets, after all).

Adam Ruiz, 29, was arrested in Buffalo, N.Y., in January after he showed up at work as a trainee at the same Burger King he had allegedly robbed the week before (strengthening the conclusion that crime certainly does not pay if it pays less well than burger-flipping.)

Recurring Themes

More Courtroom Defendants Employing Ridiculous Legal Theories: Gregory Ignatius Armstrong, 42, was indicted for bankruptcy fraud in Greenbelt, Md., in December for claiming in all seriousness that he is a sovereign nation with unlimited contract powers and is thus owed $500,000 in copyright royalties by anyone who uses his name (in one case, by his Postal Service supervisor who wrote him concerning absences from work).

Oliver Clifton Hudson and Gregory Banks refused to attend their federal drug-conspiracy trial in Baltimore in November because they deny that the government has jurisdiction over their "flesh and blood." Hudson, for example, said the indictment against him was void because it listed his name in all capital letters, when the correct designation is "Oliver Clifton: Hudson."

British school bans raising hands

A school in London has banned children from raising their hands in class and teachers from calling on students with their hands raised.

"It is every child's instinct and every teacher's instinct as well because it is ingrained in us," said Andrew Buck, the school's principal.

"Some pupils are jiggling so much to attract the teacher's attention that it sometimes looks as if they need the lavatory, then when it is their turn they often don't know the answer. Boys -- and it is usually boys -- are seeking attention, so they put their hands up before they have had time to think about the question."

Buck said the same children often wave their arms in the air, but when teachers try to involve less adventurous pupils by choosing them instead, it leads to feelings of victimization, the Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

To spare embarrassment of the students who do not know the answer, the school has incorporated a "phone a friend" system, allowing one child to nominate another to take the question instead.

I can't even make up things this stupid.

How cold is 40 below?

For years now I've had a little joke that I've played on friends... particularly when the weather gets really cold. I'll make a little comment about how it feels like it's 40 degrees below zero. And then stress that I mean Celcius. Then I ruminate about what that would work out to in Farenheit. The conversion process is fairly simple... if you're starting with Celcius, you multiply by 9, then divide by 5. After that, you add 32 and you're done.

So I explain the process to my friend slowly enough so he can do the math as I recite the equation. Finally, I wait until I see the puzzled look on his face and he starts over. It never fails, especially if he's using a calculator. Incidentally, this only works with 40 below zero. I'm so evil.

You break 'em, you buy 'em.. at a museum?

It was every museum-goer's nightmare -- a stumble, a crash and tens of thousands of dollars worth of historic fragments lying on the floor.

The incident happened last week at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, which for decades has displayed a group of Qing dynasty Chinese vases on a window sill... until now.

A hapless visitor tripped on his shoelace, tumbled down a flight of stairs and crashed into the vases, smashing them into smithereens.

The man, who has not been named, left the museum shaken but undamaged -- in sharp contrast to the vases.

"It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident but we are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed," museum director Duncan Robinson said Monday.

"Whilst the method of displaying objects is always under review, it is important not to over-react and make the Museum's collections less accessible to the visiting public," he added in a statement.

The priceless vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, were donated to the museum in 1948 and have become one of its most recognizable exhibits.

Shocked but determined, museum staff have vowed to glue the pieces back together again.

Do you fly here often?

Hoping to ease the nightmare of flying next to a crashing bore, a company in New York will match like-minded passengers to help make the time fly.

Inspired by a flight where he found himself happily seated next to Miss Texas, company founder Peter Shankman says he set up AirTroductions to give travelers a chance to choose their seatmates.

"It is for anyone who travels who does not want to have to deal with the psychological hell of sitting 2 inches from someone you don't know for eight hours," he said.

To use AirTroductions, travelers register online, listing personal details in a profile. When they post their traveling itineraries, the registry provides information on other people taking the same flights.

The registry is free until a user opts to contact a fellow traveler for a $5 fee. Typically, they meet in an airport, where they can arrange to sit together, Shankman said. Nearly 4,500 people have enrolled, although only about 60 have made matches since the registry kicked off last fall, he said.

Julia Filz said she signed up because she's a nervous flyer who wants a seatmate to distract her. "If I'm sitting next to somebody and I'm talking to them, I don't even know if we're taking off or landing," said Filz, who works in Baltimore.

Besides, she added, the system might help avoid a repeat of her worst seatmate experience -- seated beside a woman who was very drunk first thing in the morning.

Randy Petersen, editor of InsideFlyer magazine, said he was not sure the idea would fly. Having a good seat trumps chatting with a stranger, he bets.

"A frequent flyer would never give up an upgrade to first class to go back and sit in coach next to someone you may want to throw out of the plane in the first hour," he said.

And there's the question of who gets the middle seat. "I'm not sure any conversation is interesting enough to have two elbows with me," Petersen said.

While it's designed for networking, a fair share of the people registered with AirTroductions admit they're looking for dates. Some appear more promising than others.

One man provided his photo, with half his hair shocking pink and the other bright blue. One woman promised she "always smells nice," while another insisted that any seatmate wear full body deodorant spray.

A photographer said he was looking for investors, an executive said he was seeking "engaging conversations" about globalization and technology and a rabbi said he would like to "schmooze about Judaism."

One woman from Seattle gave a description that could render her either the best -- or worst -- seatmate ever. "I'm that person whose laugh you'll hear over everyone else's: some call it infectious, others just loud," she wrote.

In Petersen's view, most passengers prefer traveling alone, playing video games on laptops while tuning into music on headphones. But even the most misanthropic traveler can find happiness in AirTroductions, Shankman said.

The system allows passengers to note if what they really desire is a seatmate who will leave them alone, he said.

My last date was a joke

When it comes to romance, women prefer someone who tickles their funny bone while men opt for those who catch their eye, according to an international survey released on Wednesday.

The survey, conducted in 16 countries by Canadian romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises, asked men and women on six continents about traits they liked or disliked and how they went about trying to meet Mr. or Ms. Right.

The poll revealed differences between countries in the way people tried to impress the opposite sex.

Australians and British men frequently admitted drinking too much, while about half of German and Italian men said they had lied about their finances. Spaniards were the most likely to use sex to catch someone's attention.

Eighty percent of Brazilian and Mexican men said they had lied about their marital or relationship status, as did 70 percent of German women, the survey said.

When it came to meeting that special someone, a majority of respondents preferred to rely on friends for introductions. The Internet was not a popular hunting ground except in Portugal, where about half the surveyed men and women opted to find people online.

Both Spain and France suffered a gender gap. Thirty percent of Spanish men, but no Spanish women, looked for love online. In France, 40 percent of men but only 10 percent of women attended parties, bars and clubs to meet someone, but they did have one thing in common: both sexes rated looks as more important than their counterparts in other countries.

When it came to that first meeting, a majority of men polled said beauty was more important than brains, while women put a sense of humor at the top of their list.

Physical attraction was the top priority for men in France, Brazil, Greece, Japan and Britain. And while 40 percent of Portuguese men rated intelligence over looks in a first encounter, no Australian men did so.

In the United States and Canada, humor was considered the most important trait by both men and women, getting 63 and 73 percent of the vote respectively.

Tiffany & Co. sues eBay

Frustrated by the abundance of counterfeit items sold on eBay as the real thing, most individuals have little recourse beyond cancelling payment through their credit card companies, assuming they had the foresight to use that payment method.

When a few of these individuals including Jacqui Rogers, a retiree in southern Oregon who dabbles in vintage costume jewelry, confronted eBay with the fraudulent sellers, eBay refused to do anything and continued to list the sellers' other counterfeit items for sale. The reason, of course, is that eBay is making a healthy profit off those auctions.

"EBay makes a lot of money from a lot of small unhappy transactions," said Ina Steiner, the editor and publisher of AuctionBytes.com, an online newsletter. "If you've lost a few thousand dollars, you might go the extra mile to recover it. But if you've lost $50 or $20 you may never be able to prove your case, and in the meantime eBay has gotten the listing fee and the closing fee on that transaction."

In walks Tiffany & Company, who own the trademark for many of those items being counterfeited, are suing eBay for profiting from counterfeit sales. The case will go to trial by the end of this year, said James B. Swire, an attorney with Arnold & Porter, a law firm representing Tiffany. The legal question — whether eBay is a facilitator of fraud — is a critical issue that could affect not only eBay's future but Internet commerce generally, said Thomas Hemnes, a lawyer in Boston who specializes in intellectual property.

"If eBay lost, or even if they settled and word got out that they settled, it would mean they would have to begin policing things sold over eBay, which would directly affect their business model," Mr. Hemnes said. "The cost implied is tremendous."

In the meantime, Ms. Rogers and three women she met on eBay who are also costume jewelry buffs have banded together to track the swindlers they say are operating in their jewelry sector. "People have faith that eBay will take care of them, but it doesn't," Ms. Rogers said. "EBay has done nothing."

On this day in 1902...

The Carnegie Foundation was established.

Andrew Carnegie spent a good chunk of his life building a chokehold over the steel industry. However, after years at the lead of the second Industrial Revolution, he decided to cash in his chips in 1901 and sold his stake in the mighty Carnegie Steel concern - then worth roughly $40 million - to the United States Steel Corporation for $250 million. Rather than retire and play with his riches, Carnegie followed his belief that "a man who dies rich dies disgraced" and set to doling out his fortune to various philanthropic causes.

All told, Carnegie donated $350 million, $10 million of which he handed over on this day in 1902 to establish the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. According to Carnegie, the Institution was designed "to encourage, in the broadest and most liberal manner, investigation, research, and discovery, and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind." Carnegie's lofty mission translated into an organization dedicated to research and education in "biology, astronomy, and the earth sciences."

Timewaster du Jour

Here's a computer game I can really get into. A first-person shoot 'em up game that mimics an IDPA target match. Except in this case the targets shoot back at you.

It's really a shame that I suck at it

Brother can you spare a quarter?

When I first saw the design for my home state's commemorative quarter, I was mortified. It's not bad enough that we have idiots on tv all the time wearing those pathetic cheese hats at sporting events, ensuring that we'll be called "cheeseheads" for decades to come. The coin has to propagate that image by including a big hunk of cheese. And to solidify our standing as national hicks, the quarter also prominently displays a cow and an ear of corn.

Our state license plates were similar. A decade ago they were bright yellow (cheesy, I guess) and proudly declared Wisconsin as "America's Dairyland". That was then and this is now. Wisconsin is no longer America's dairyland, having been surpassed by California years ago. But certain people in "Illinois's playground" (as we're also known) haven't gotten that memo.

And corn? Sure, we grow corn here. As well as cranberries, cherries, apples and even tobacco. But I suppose corn best exemplifies the po-dunk image the artist felt most at home with. But because I personally was appalled by the design, I quickly passed on every Wisconsin state quarter I got my paws on. And now I read this.

A mistake in the minting process for some quarters issued last year is putting coin collectors in a frenzy. Speculators are bidding up prices for the recently discovered pieces from their 25-cent face value to nearly $1,500.

We'll all be swimming naked soon

This week's edition of The Economist magazine offers an ominous warning for the U.S. economy in the article Danger Time For America.

The Economist has long criticised Mr Greenspan for not trying to restrain the stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s, and then, after it burst, for inflating a housing bubble by holding interest rates low for so long (see article). The problem is not the rising asset prices themselves but rather their effect on the economy. By borrowing against capital gains on their homes, households have been able to consume more than they earn. Robust consumer spending has boosted GDP growth, but at the cost of a negative personal saving rate, a growing burden of household debt and a huge current-account deficit.

When house-price rises flatten off, and therefore the room for further equity withdrawal dries up, consumer spending will stumble. Given that consumer spending and residential construction have accounted for 90% of GDP growth in recent years, it is hard to see how this can occur without a sharp slowdown in the economy.

Handovers to a new Fed chairman are always tricky moments. They have often been followed by some sort of financial turmoil, such as the 1987 stockmarket crash, only two months after Mr Greenspan took over. This handover takes place with the economy in an unusually vulnerable state, thanks to its imbalances. The interest rates that Mr Bernanke will inherit will be close to neutral, neither restraining nor stimulating the economy. But America's domestic demand needs to grow more slowly in order to bring the saving rate and the current-account deficit back to sustainable levels. If demand fails to slow, he will need to push rates higher. This will be risky, given households' heavy debts. After 13 increases in interest rates, the tide of easy money is now flowing out, and many American households are going to be shockingly exposed.

In the words of Warren Buffett, “It's only when the tide goes out that you can see who's swimming naked.”

The least wanted party guest

A recent poll taken in Amsterdam names Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende as the person least wanted to attend a party with.

This got me to thinking who I would name as the one person I would absolutely not want to show up at one of my parties. After a long deliberation, I had to say Al Franken. It's almost a guarantee that he'd get drunk, pick a fight with someone and beat them up.

Those poor Saudis

Some countries fret over the number of teenagers skipping school, but Saudi Arabia is worried about truancy of another kind -- teachers playing hooky to trade on the booming stock market in the world's top oil producer.

Saudi Arabia's education ministry said Thursday it had told headmasters to ensure that teachers do not use work hours for the national pastime of dabbling in the Arab world's largest stock market.

"There have been some cases, concentrated in Riyadh and Jeddah ... over the last year when the stock market has seen a lot of activity," a spokesman said. "There are natural reasons for having to leave school and unnatural ones, such as trading in shares."

Record oil receipts helped the Saudi bourse rise by 104 percent last year. Analysts say half the country's 18 million citizens are believed to hold shares in listed companies, and some 3 million trade regularly.

Movie Review: Brokeback Mountain (who cares?)

John Hawkins, over at Right Wing News (aka Conservative Grapevine), has an excellent write-up explaining exactly why I won't be seeing Brokeback Mountain.

Hillary in '08? Think again.

Even Hillary's Looney Left Base support is quickly eroding. While trying to be everything to everyone (except maybe the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that is the source of all the Clintons' problems, Hillary is slowly but surely alienating those who would have her promote the 'progressive' way of life.

Particularly entertaining is Molly Ivins's view of 'mainstream ideas':

"What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes."

Clearly, when she says "the majority of the American people", she really means "the majority of American people who are in my living room right now." The actual majority of Americans do not think the Iraq war is a mistake. They definitely do not want a socialized healthcare system similar to Canada's. The only people in favor of raising the minimum wage are those who are perpetually stuck in unskilled jobs due to lack of training or education.

But that last line still has me laughing. "...reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but my reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes." Oh yes! I think we all should go to our windows, open them, and yell "I'm mad as hell and I want to pay more taxes!"

The REAL reason we don't get out of Iraq

Iraq and Afghanistan are nearly identical countries from a worldwide view. Both of those countries have democratically elected governments formed after UN-monitored elections that were declared essentially free from fraud and intimidation. Indeed, whatever intimidation was present was from the Taliban in Afghanistan and the insurrectionists in Iraq.

If they wish, Iraq and Afghanistan can order U.S. and all foreign forces out of their countries at any time under the UN resolutions authorizing the U.S. presence in both of those countries. The U.S. and coalition forces have agreed to comply with such resolutions. However, both countries have urged the U.S. and the coalition forces to remain and provide the security they desperately need and want.

As it is, Aghanis and Iraqis are among the most optomistic people in the world regarding their futures. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case while Saddam was in power.

If you'd like specific examples of how life was in Iraq before the U.S. 'occupation', click here.

WARNING: This material is extremely shocking and graphic in nature. It should not be viewed by children. Also, it may be necessary to turn the volume down before watching.

Bad joke du jour

Did you hear about the blonde sniffing Nutrasweet?
She thought it was diet coke.

On this day in 1848

The Gold Rush Begins

A millwright named James Marshall discovers gold along the banks of Sutter's Creek in California, forever changing the course of history in the American West.

A tributary to the South Fork of the American River in the Sacramento Valley east of San Francisco, Sutter's Creek was named for a Swiss immigrant who came to Mexican California in 1839. John Augustus Sutter became a citizen of Mexico and won a grant of nearly 50,000 acres in the lush Sacramento Valley, where he hoped to create a thriving colony. He built a sturdy fort that became the center of his first town, New Helvetia, and purchased farming implements, livestock, and a cannon to defend his tiny empire. Copying the methods of the Spanish missions, Sutter induced the local Indians to do all the work on his farms and ranches, often treating them as little more than slaves. Workers who dared leave his empire without permission were often brought back by armed posses to face brutal whippings or even execution.

In the 1840s, Sutter's Fort became the first stopping-off point for overland Anglo-American emigrants coming to California to build farms and ranches. Though sworn to protect the Mexican province from falling under the control of the growing number of Americans, Sutter recognized that his future wealth and influence lay with these Anglo settlers. With the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846, he threw his support to the Americans, who emerged victorious in the fall of 1847.

With the war over and California securely in the hands of the United States, Sutter hired the millwright James Marshall to build a sawmill along the South Fork of the American River in January 1848. In order to redirect the flow of water to the mill's waterwheel, Marshall supervised the excavation of a shallow millrace. On the morning of January 24, 1848, Marshall was looking over the freshly cut millrace when a sparkle of light in the dark earth caught his eye. Looking more closely, Marshall found that much of the millrace was speckled with what appeared to be small flakes of gold, and he rushed to tell Sutter. After an assayer confirmed that the flakes were indeed gold, Sutter quietly set about gathering up as much of the gold as he could, hoping to keep the discovery a secret. However, word soon leaked out and, within months, the largest gold rush in the world had begun.

Ironically, the California gold rush was a disaster for Sutter. Though it brought thousands of men to California, the prospectors had no interest in joining Sutter's despotic agricultural community. Instead, they overran Sutter's property, slaughtered his herds for food, and trampled his fields. By 1852, New Helvetia was ruined, and Sutter was nearly wiped out. Until his death in 1880, he spent his time unsuccessfully petitioning the government to compensate him for the losses he suffered as a result of the gold rush he unintentionally ignited.

Book Review: The FairTax Book

Are you one of those people who believe the 'Top 1 Percent' richest people aren't paying their fair share of taxes? Do you think your own tax rate is too high? Most people aren't even aware what their own tax rate actually is. The true number is hidden in a withholding system that takes a significant chunk of your check every pay period.

Then there's the issue of the time and money involved of filing your tax forms. The IRS tax code is so complicated that not one single employee of the IRS understands it completely. Not one. And the total cost to taxpayers - individuals and corporations - of filing exceeds $200 billion a year in time and expense.

Now, I'm not one to advocate eliminating taxes entirely. I realize there's a cost to having a federal government that oversees our national security and general welfare. What I do think we need is a simpler system. And I just found out there is. It's called The FairTax.

Talk show host Neal Boortz and congressman John Linder wrote a book explaining how the system works. Essentially, it's a consumption tax that would replace the federal income tax. It's important to stress the word 'replace' as many opponents of the FairTax have misrepresented it as an additional tax.

The part I really like about having a consumption tax rather than an income tax is that it means everyone pays their fair share, as there would be no exemptions. Off-shore tax shelters would be entirely eliminated and no loopholes would help the tax-savvy to evade paying into the system. In fact, every person in the United States becomes a taxpayer, including illegal aliens and foreign visitors. The FairTax system adds millions of people to the tax system literally overnight. And those millions of people will add BILLIONS of dollars. Now that's what I call a fair tax system.

But don't take my word for it. Read the book.

Take a hike!

Rather than spending your time sitting in front of your computer (except to read this blog, of course), perhaps a little exercise might be in order. In that spirit, Readers Digest has announced their selections for the 5 Best Hikes in America.

One Step At A Time
It's the Big Daddy of American hikes, more than 2,174 sole-challenging miles across 14 states, from a mountaintop in Georgia to another in Maine. Each year about 2,000 people set out from one end of the Appalachian Trail (AT) headed for the other; only about 400 soldier on for the six months it typically takes to finish. Mercifully for the rest of us, the AT has hundreds of entry points, and hikes suitable for almost any age, experience or waistline. It cuts through cities and green valleys and cow pastures, across sacred battlegrounds and historic sites, including an early settlement of freed slaves. Hikers pass by the President's retreat at Camp David, and Mount Weather, the federal government's super-secret underground bunker.

Northern Beauty
Like the AT, the Superior Hiking Trail is also accessible at many points along the way -- and getting on this relatively young trail (conceived in the mid-1980s) is definitely worth it. The 210-mile path extends through wilderness north of Duluth, Minnesota, to the Canadian border; a 40-mile extension is in the works. With knockout views of Lake Superior, the path draws 50,000 people a year, some of whom glimpse bear and moose. (Allow three weeks for the whole trail.)

Ozark Getaway
In the Ozark National Forest in Arkansas, head out on the Shores Lake-to-White Rock Mountain loop (13.4 miles). Part of the 165-mile Ozark Highlands Trail, it makes for a brisk day hike or a leisurely overnight, starting at scenic Shores Lake, ascending White Rock Mountain, then returning to the lake via the Salt Fork drainage. Early on, the well-maintained footpath shadows White Rock Creek, passing two eye-popping waterfalls. In spring, the excursion is a burst of dogwood and other blossoms. On the summit, see the spectacular sunset over Oklahoma, then sack out in one of three stone cabins built in the 1930s.

Picture Perfect
A five-mile round trip on Mount Scott, the highest peak in Oregon's Crater Lake National Park, offers breathtaking views of the country's deepest lake, formed by volcanic eruption 7,000 years ago. Along the way, you'll step past 400-year-old whitebark pines, hardy high-elevation survivors. The view of Crater Lake is so stunning it will appear on Oregon's commemorative quarter, starting in June. This hike isn't for the fainthearted; you'll gain 1,500 feet in 2.5 miles of climbing. But the 360-degree views of the lake, the Klamath Basin, and California's distant Mount Shasta make it a great destination.

Cool, Hot Hawaii
On Kilauea Iki, Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park (4 miles), you'll start out in a lush tropical rain forest, then emerge onto a sweeping panorama of black lava, where steam seeps through the vents of Little Kilauea's crater. A two- to three-hour hike yields both extremes. Nearby, at the still-active volcano Kilauea, you might even catch a light show like the one at left.

Another grim milestone

This evening, as I was driving home from work, a bright orange ember suddenly flew out of the window of the Ford Explorer immediately in front of me. A quick mental calculation confirmed that it was a grim milestone. Perhaps minor, but a milestone nonetheless. That milestone was the 10,000th lit cigarette butt flicked nonchalantly out a car window in my general direction.

I'll confess that I can be rather critical of other drivers from time to time. People driving slower than is socially acceptable in the fast lane. Others who only have a vague idea what a signal indicator is, and should be, used for. And people double park their cars as they load or unload their toddlers in their daily car pool, when they could easily pull ahead 2 car lengths and park by the curb will always have a place in my heart as ignoramouses.. or is that ignorami? Yet these people can easily be written off as egocentric louses who simply don't realize there are other people in the world who might want to carry on their lives uninhibited by the callow individuals around them.

The same can't necessarily be said about smokers who inflict their nauseating habit on others around them with impunity. Sure, some more 'sensitive smokers' will be kind enough to blow their smoke over your head as they talk to you. Which relieves us of the immediate desire to puke on the smoker's shoes. Hardly a fair compromise, I think. I would at least prefer the option to retaliate in such a deserved manner once in a while.

Yet sensitive or not, I don't know of a single smoker who uses the ashtray in his or her car. Because.. well, that would be gross. Even the smoker recognizes that. But he thinks nothing of rolling down the window and hurling that fiery butt wherever the wind takes it. Anywhere is fine as long as it's away from the smoker.

I believe my disdain developed when I owned a cherry Mustang convertible. I was enjoying a open-air drive on a beautiful day when the driver in front of me disposed of his cigarette into my backseat with the help of a gust of wind. I pulled over as soon as I realized what happened, but it was too late. I, who have never smoked in a car in my life, was rewarded with a burn in the seat fabric about the size of a quarter. The smoker was long gone, totally unaware that he caused approximately $300 damage to my car with a flick of his wrist.

Consequently, the sight of a lit ember exiting a car window now causes me to reflexively proclaim that driver "Number One" with a single-finger salute.

Now, I have to admit that I have a certain weakness of my own. I eat Taco Bell burritos on a regular basis. I can't help it. I'm addicted. And of course I can't eat a burrito that isn't smothered in that delicious taco sauce. The kind that comes in those little squishy packets. And what are you supposed to do with those packets once you've squeezed most of the sauce onto your pseudo-mexican food? I save them in the car. And when I see a smoker behind me, I try to make him feel a little better about his disgusting personal habits by flipping a half-used packet out over my roof and onto his hood, just to say "Hey, I can relate, man. Peace, brother."

It's also helpful with tailgaters.

But for those of you who don't see the humor in the trillions of cigarette butts that are thrown out car windows each year, there's something you can do. Note the license plate, and report the vehicle online at www.litterbutt.com. After all, those cigarette filters take 15 years to decompose, and contaminate the environment with various toxins. Every little butt hurts.. and every little bit helps.

Osama Announces Book Club

Madman on Collision Course with Oprah

After a brief mention in his terror tape last week turned a little-known book into an instant best-seller, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden today announced that he was officially launching “Osama’s Book Club.”

Mr. bin Laden’s glancing reference to “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” immediately sent the book soaring to the top of the best-seller lists, inspiring the world’s most wanted evildoer to form his new club.

Hours after he announced “Osama’s Book Club,” hopeful authors and publishers deluged Mr. bin Laden’s cave with books, hoping to get a blurb or a mention in his next terror tape.

In a new tape released today, Mr. bin Laden revealed his club’s first selections, including several anti-Bush books by filmmaker Michael Moore.

Other choices, however, were more unexpected, such as “Memoirs of a Geisha,” which the terror mastermind called “a sensual feast.”

In addition to his book club, Mr. bin Laden announced plan to launch a new magazine called “O,” which he described as “a magazine for the jihadist lifestyle.”

But Mr. bin Laden’s newest ventures may have put him on a collision course with talk show legend Oprah Winfrey, who said today that she was contemplating filing trademark infringement suits against the al Qaeda madman.

“I’ve studied the bin Laden tape several times and it appears to be authentic,” Ms. Winfrey told reporters. “But then again, I thought James Frey was authentic, too.”

Elsewhere, in NBA action, the New York Knicks lost to the New Orleans Hornets, but trounced several fans at Madison Square Garden.

satire by Andy Borowitz

Chicago woman impersonates Wisconsin Attorney General

A Chicago resident was pulled over for driving on the wrong side of the road this weekend. The police officer quickly determined the woman was intoxicated, handcuffed her, and placed her in his squad car while he made arrangements to have her car towed. Left alone in the police cruiser, 22 year old Veronique Armour decided she hadn't done enough stupid things for the evening. So she slipped out of the handcuffs and took off with the police car. Apparently she didn't realize that only the Attorney General of Wisconsin, Peg Lautenschlager is supposed to drive police cars while intoxicated.

Veronique was caught just a few minutes later, and is now facing additional felony charges of grand theft auto and escaping police.

Movie Review: The Constant Gardener (1/5 stars)

Normally I would start a movie review with a link to the movie through Netflix or the Internet Movie Database in order to give you quick access to the movie in the event you choose to rent it. I'll skip the link this time. And strongly suggest you skip the movie entirely.

I just spent two hours watching The Constant Gardener, and at the end had two questions... what does it have to do with gardening, and why should I care?

In a nutshell, the movie is a 2 hour long UNICEF commercial. I fully expected to see Sally Struthers in a cameo at some point. In fact, it was so bad that I WANTED to see her.

The premise can be boiled down to this: pharmaceutical companies are evil; and the United Nations could solve all the problems in the world if it weren't for the huge coverup by for-profit organizations.

Very early in the movie, a British diplomat, played by Ralph Fiennes, is berated by an alleged humanitarian, played by Rachel Weisz. She accuses him of various underhanded tactics employed for the sake of their government. Literally 90 seconds later in the movie, she is proposing to him. Wow, talk about character development.

The next hour is spent watching her manipulate people and set up clandestine trysts. But this is clearly different than the scheming she previously accused her husband of, because it's for a 'good cause'. It's unimportant that she hurts everyone who cares about her, as long as she tries to save a few people she barely knows in a third world country.

Another hour of the movie is spent watching the bumbling husband/diplomat uncover her lies and confront the people she manipulated. Never does he turn his emotions against her. Apparently because he has also decided that her cause was worth destroying his career and their life together.

The ending of the movie is touted as an amazing climax. Admittedly, it was exciting. If only because I realized that there actually WAS an end to the movie. Not that I cared what the ending was, but that it would soon be over.

For a movie starring so many accomplished actors, this was one that accomplished nothing in its own right.

If I had seen it in a theater, I would have demanded my money back. Unfortunately, I can't demand the two hours of my life back that could have been spent in a much more enriching way. Such as playing Jarts online.

Bad joke du jour

A 12 year old girl is sitting in a barber shop with her mother, eating a Hostess pastry, and anxiously awaiting her first hair cut. When her turn comes, she brings her pastry with her to the chair, and the barber covers her. Soon, she pulls the pastry out for a bite.

"You're getting hair on your Twinkie," the barber playfully warns.

"Yes, I know," replies the girl. "And I'm getting boobies, too.

Haikus taking too long? Use this.

The Genuine Haiku Generator.

gnomes follow coyly
ladybugs gloating, moaning
moaning, tall

Stone Age Columbus?

Who were the first people in North America? From where did they come? How did they arrive? The prehistory of the Americas has been widely studied. Over 70 years a consensus became so established that dissenters felt uneasy challenging it. Yet in 2001, genetics, anthropology and a few shards of flint combined to overturn the accepted facts and to push back one of the greatest technological changes that the Americas have ever seen by over five millennia.

The accepted version of the first Americans starts with a flint spearhead unearthed at Clovis, New Mexico, in 1933. Dated by the mammoth skeleton it lay beside to 11,500 years ago (11.5kya), it was distinctive because it had two faces, where flakes had been knapped away from a core flint. The find sparked a wave of similar reports, all dating from around the same period. There seemed to be nothing human before Clovis. Whoever those incomers were around 9,500BC, they appeared to have had a clean start. And the Clovis point was their icon - across 48 states.

An icon that was supremely effective: the introduction of the innovative spearpoint coincided with a mass extinction of the continent's megafauna. Not only the mammoth, but the giant armadillo, giant sloth and great black bear all disappeared soon after the Clovis point - and the hunters who used it - arrived on the scene.

But from where? With temperatures much colder than today and substantial polar ice sheets, sea levels were much lower. Asia and America were connected by a land bridge where now there's the open water of the Bering Strait. The traditional view of American prehistory was that Clovis people travelled by land from Asia.

This version was so accepted that few archaeologists even bothered to look for artefacts from periods before 10,000BC. But when Jim Adavasio continued to dig below the Clovis layer at his dig near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he found blades and blade cores dating back to 16,000BC. His findings were dismissed as erroneous; too astonishing to be credible. The Clovis consensus had too many reputations behind it to evaporate easily. Some archaeologists who backed Adavasio's conclusions with other similar data were accused of making radiocarbon dating errors or even of planting finds.

Decisive evidence would have to come from an independent arena. Douglas Wallace studies mitochondrial DNA, part of the human chromosomes that is passed unchanged from mother to daughter. It only varies when mistakes occur in the replication of the genetic code. Conveniently for Wallace's work (piecing together a global history of migration of native peoples) these mistakes crop up at a quite regular rate. The technique has allowed Wallace to map the geographical ancestry of all the Native American peoples back to Siberia and northeast Asia.

The route of the Clovis hypothesis was right. The date, however, was wrong - out by up to 20,000 years. Wallace's migration history showed waves of incomers. The Clovis people were clearly not the first humans to set foot across North America.

Dennis Stanford went back to first principles to investigate Clovis afresh, looking at tools from the period along the route Clovis was assumed to have taken from Siberia via the Bering Strait to Alaska. The large bifaced Clovis point was not in the archaeological record. Instead the tools used microblades, numerous small flint flakes lined up along the spear shaft to make its head.

Wallace's DNA work suggested migration from Asia to America but the Clovis trail contradicted it. Bruce Bradley stepped in to help solve this dichotomy, bringing with him one particular skill: flintknapping and the ability to read flint tools for their most intimate secrets.

He spotted the similarity in production method between the Clovis point and tools made by the Solutrean neolithic (Stone Age) culture in southwest France. At this stage his idea was pure hypothesis, but could the first Americans have been European?

The Solutreans were a remarkably society, the most innovative and adaptive of the time. They were among the first to discover the value of heat treating flints to increase strength. Bradley was keen to discover if Solutrean flintknapping styles matched Clovis techniques. A trawl through the unattractive flint offcuts in the storerooms of a French museum convinced him of the similarities, even though five thousand kilometres lay between their territories.

The divide was more than just distance; it crossed five thousand years as well. No matter the similarities between the two cultures, the possibility of a parallel technology developing by chance would have to be considered. More evidence emerged from an archaeological dig in Cactus Hill, Virginia. A bifaced flint point found there was dated to 16kya, far older than Clovis. Even more startling was its style. To flintknapper Bruce Bradley's eye, the Cactus Hill flint was a technological midpoint between the French Solutrean style and the Clovis points dating five millennia later. It seemed there is no great divide in time. The Solutrean flint methods evolved into Clovis.

If time could be discounted, Bradley's critics pointed to an obstacle that was hardly going to go away: crossing the Atlantic Ocean in small open boats. How could Stone Age people have made such an epic journey, especially when the Ice Age maximum would have filled the Atlantic with icebergs.

Dennis Stanford returned to his earlier hunch, looking for clues among the Arctic Eskimo peoples. Despite the influx of modern technologies, he was heartened to discover that traditional techniques endured. Clothing makers in Barrow, Alaska, recognised some Solutrean bone needles he showed them as typical of their own. The caribou skin clothing the Inuit still choose to wear could equally have been made by people in 16,000BC. And for Eskimo peoples the Arctic is not a desert - but a source of plentiful sea food. If the Solutreans had the Clovis point it would have made a formidable harpoon weapon to ensure a food supply. Would modern Eskimo ever consider a five thousand kilometre journey across the Atlantic?

The answer it seems is yes - they have undertaken similar journeys many times.. Most encouraging was the realisation that Inuit people today rely on traditional boat building techniques. 'Unbreakable' plastic breaks in the unceasing cold temperatures whereas boats of wood, sealskin and whale oil are resilient and easily maintained. The same materials would have been available to Solutrean boat builders. Even if the Stone Age Europeans could make those boats, would it survive an Atlantic crossing?

Stanford believes the boats' flimsiness is deceptive. With the Atlantic full of ice floes it would be quite possible for paddlers in open boats to travel along the edges, always having a safe place to haul out upon if the weather turned in.

All this evidence was still essentially circumstantial, making the Solutrean adventure possible not proven. Douglas Wallace's DNA history bore fruit once more. In the DNA profile of the Ichigua Native American tribe he identified a lineage that was clearly European in origin, too old to be due to genetic mixing since Columbus' discovery of the New World. Instead it dated to Solutrean times. Wallace's genetic timelines show the Ice Age prompted a number of migrations from Europe to America. It looks highly likely that the Solutreans were one.

The impact of this new prehistory on Native Americans could be grave. They usually consider themselves to be Asian in origin; and to have been subjugated by Europeans after 1492. If they too were partly Europeans, the dividing lines would be instantly blurred. Dr Joallyn Archambault of the American Indian Programme of the Smithsonian Institute offers a positive interpretation, however. Venturing across huge bodies of water, she says, is a clear demonstration of the courage and creativity of the Native Americans' ancestors. Bruce Bradley agrees. He feels his Solutrean Ice Age theory takes into consideration the abilities of people to embrace new places, adding, "To ignore this possibility ignores the humanity of people 20,000 years ago."

Best blonde joke ever

Just don't give away the ending!

If you ever thought your neighbor was bad

Don Bertone is not your usual problem neighbor, San Francisco authorities say.

For three years, Bertone, who once worked for the city Housing Authority and ran for the Board of Supervisors in 2000, has wreaked all sorts of havoc in an otherwise quiet community in the southeastern part of the city known as Little Hollywood, officials and his neighbors said Wednesday.

Bertone, 54, doesn't just play loud music, authorities say. At all hours of the day and night, he has blasted police radio broadcasts, shrill oscillating tones, Spanish dance tunes and other noise from speakers he installed on the outside of his home at 336 Lathrop Ave. Police said they could hear the racket from 100 yards away.

Bertone isn't just a nosy neighbor, they add.

Police said he hooked up floodlights and six cameras that swept the block. Inside his home, he could monitor his neighbors' movements on four video screens.

Bertone is not merely unpleasant, authorities say.

Officers who searched his home Tuesday allegedly found a high-powered assault rifle complete with a flash suppressor, two handguns and 3,000 rounds of ammunition as well as an undisclosed "explosive device.''

Prosecutors charged Bertone with 11 felony weapons counts, two felony drug counts and two felony counts of receiving stolen property -- for two city traffic signs found in his home.

Bertone was being held without bail in connection with the alleged explosive device, although he has not yet been charged on that matter. He is to be arraigned Friday.

In a jailhouse interview, Bertone said he was the victim of a harassment campaign being waged by former neighbors, spiteful police and vengeful city attorneys. He acknowledged having some weapons but said they were all legal.

"I'm being persecuted like crazy,'' Bertone said. "They've blown this all out of proportion.''

Neighbors -- who say now they are getting their first good night's sleep in three years -- have told police they are scared of Bertone. Sometimes they see spent ammunition on his front porch.

"He is the worst neighbor we've ever had in Little Hollywood,'' said Rick Graham, president of the local neighborhood association. He called the property "the oddest house in San Francisco.''

Bertone's two-story home is protected by barbed wire. Milk crates and pallets line the roof on one side. The windows are boarded up, and the wood is painted black.

Bertone has at least four satellite dishes and a dozen antennas on the roof with wires leading to trees. His side fence is topped with hubcaps, and his backyard is covered by blue tarps.

Bertone says the barbed wire is to keep people from jumping a fence into his property. He says his windows are boarded up because neighborhood kids throw rocks into his home.

Neighbors say Bertone's behavior forced some to flee the community. One African American couple who lived next door to him moved after 35 years in the community, Graham said. He said Bertone wrote "KKK" on the side of his own home and made a depiction of a hangman's knot and skeleton.

Bertone denies writing anything on his own home, saying his neighbors had vandalized his property.

Herb Arceo, 70, who lives behind Bertone's house, said he had been unable to rent a second home he owns on the block. When prospective tenants come around, Arceo said, "he'll play the music and put a spotlight on them."

Lily Luk, another neighbor, said she sometimes calls police four times a night but that Bertone simply refuses to answer the door when officers come knocking.

Matters came to a head Tuesday when Bertone was arrested for violating a court order to stop harassing his neighbors. Inside his home, officers allegedly found the rifle, illegal switchblades, ammunition, methamphetamines and cocaine along with the two street signs, one saying "detour" and the other "no parking."

Bayview police Capt. Al Pardini said police have been summoned to the home dozens of times over the last three years.

"If he is going to continue to be this menacing bad neighbor, he is going to have to accept responsibility,'' Pardini said. "How would you like to live next door to this guy?''

Bertone insists he's a fine neighbor. It's silly to call him too noisy, he says, because he has served on a city committee that monitors noise from the airport.

"I was instrumental in keeping noisy jets from flying over San Francisco,'' he said.

In 2000, he ran for supervisor from District 10 and finished 12th in a 12-candidate field. He used to be a plumber for the Housing Authority but lost his job because of his legal problems and says he now lives off his savings.

The only noise he makes, he says, is from the music he plays on his stereo when he works in his backyard. As for the surveillance cameras, he noted, "security cameras are not illegal. . . . I do it because the police come by and hassle me all the time."

He said he had little contact with his neighbors, although he acknowledged that his next-door neighbor -- who moved away -- had problems with him.

"A couple neighbors have signed declarations,'' he said.

In a suit it filed against Bertone last year, the city said that "no fewer than 20 neighbors have come forward to make complaints in the hopes of having Don Bertone stop his harassment of their community.''

Neighbors talked about sleepless nights and of being forced to endure "loud, pounding sounds," the suit said. "Neighbors feel unable to have family and friends visit, to watch the sunset from their backyard, to allow their children and grandchildren to play in the adjacent park.''

The suit accuses Bertone of pouring a "green-like substance'' on one neighbor's car in response to a complaint. "On another occasion, Don Bertone punched his neighbor after the neighbor requested that Don lower his music.''

Another time, Bertone interrupted the same neighbor's family gathering by blaring a taped statement the neighbor had made to police, the suit said. Bertone denied doing so.

Last fall, a judge ordered Bertone not to make any "amplified noise'' after 10 p.m. He was also ordered not to flood his property with light or to intimidate his neighbors. Bertone said he was never officially notified of the suit, so he considers it worthless.

Officials also ordered him to remove barbed wire from his property, pay $64,000 in attorney's fees and stop using his rear yard as an auto repair business, something Bertone insists he isn't doing.

Bertone "terrorized the neighborhood,'' said Matt Dorsey, spokesman for the city attorney's office. The alleged discovery of weapons and ammunition "certainly makes clear that the city attorney's efforts were well-founded," he said.

Bertone says he's in trouble only because he's sued police and filed complaints with the civilian watchdog agency that investigates officers.

"They make it sound like all the neighbors are up in arms against me,'' he said. Asked whether he might be have intimidated anyone, he responded: "Let them call police and make a charge. I don't talk to anybody."

Bin Laden shows up, begs not to receive his 72 virgins

A tape, purportedly made by terrorist bin Laden, surfaced today. In it, Uncle Binny takes his cue from his useless idiots in the mainstream media, accusing President Bush of lying and waging a failing war against al-Qaida.

To solidify his position, bin Laden then makes an unprecedented appeal to the United States, offering a "long-term truce with fair conditions that we adhere to. ... Both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war" if President Bush simply continues the Clinton policy of "don't ask, don't tell" regarding terrorists and the deaths of American citizens.

As I see it, bin Laden hasn't spent much time in Iraq lately, or he'd see firsthand the country is already being built quite nicely without his 'help'. President Bush noted that six months ago, "nearly all" of Iraq's schools were closed. He said many primary schools lacked electrical wiring, plumbing and windows. But today, he said, "all 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges are open, as are nearly all primary and secondary schools in the country."

Emphasizing the success in rebuilding schools in Iraq, the president said the United States had hoped to rehabilitate 1,000 schools by the time school started. However, this month, just days before the first day of class, he said, "our coalition and our Iraqi partners had refurbished over 1,500 schools."

And then there is the economy. More than 30,000 new Iraqi businesses have registered since liberation, and according to a recent survey, more than three-quarters of Iraqi business owners anticipate growth in the economy over the next two years.

Not enough money for education? It's a myth.

The NEA says public schools need more money. That's the refrain heard in politicians' speeches, ballot initiatives and maybe even in your child's own classroom. At a union demonstration, teachers carried signs that said schools will only improve "when the schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

Not enough money for education? It's a myth.

The truth is, public schools are rolling in money. If you divide the U.S. Department of Education's figure for total spending on K-12 education by the department's count of K-12 students, it works out to about $10,000 per student.

Think about that! For a class of 25 kids, that's $250,000 per classroom. This doesn't include capital costs. Couldn't you do much better than government schools with $250,000? You could hire several good teachers; I doubt you'd hire many bureaucrats. Government schools, like most monopolies, squander money.

America spends more on schooling than the vast majority of countries that outscore us on the international tests. But the bureaucrats still blame school failure on lack of funds, and demand more money.

In 1985, some of them got their wish. Kansas City, Mo., judge Russell Clark said the city's predominately black schools were not "halfway decent," and he ordered the government to spend billions more. Did the billions improve test scores? Did they hire better teachers, provide better books? Did the students learn anything?

Well, they learned how to waste lots of money.

The bureaucrats renovated school buildings, adding enormous gyms, an Olympic swimming pool, a robotics lab, TV studios, a zoo, a planetarium, and a wildlife sanctuary. They added intense instruction in foreign languages. They spent so much money that when they decided to bring more white kids to the city's schools, they didn't have to resort to busing. Instead, they paid for 120 taxis. Taxis!

What did spending billions more accomplish? The schools got worse. In 2000, five years and $2 billion later, the Kansas City school district failed 11 performance standards and lost its academic accreditation for the first time in the district's history.

A study by two professors at the Hoover Institution a few years ago compared public and Catholic schools in three of New York City's five boroughs. Parochial education outperformed the nation's largest school system "in every instance," they found -- and it did it at less than half the cost per student.

This is why he's not called Charlie

Top Ten Chuck Norris Facts

Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. Ever.

Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.

If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can't see Chuck Norris, you may be only seconds away from death.

Chuck Norris has counted to infinity. Twice.

Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting implies the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.

Chuck Norris' blood type is AK+. Ass-Kicking Positive. It is compatible only with heavy construction equipment, tanks, and fighter jets.

In fine print on the last page of the Guinness Book of World Records it notes that all world records are held by Chuck Norris, and those listed in the book are simply the closest anyone else has ever gotten.

There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist.

and my personal favorite... If you ask Chuck Norris what time it is, he always says, "Two seconds 'til." After you ask, "Two seconds 'til what?" he roundhouse kicks you in the face.

Shatner sells kidney stone for $25k

Shatner, famed for playing Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series, sold his kidney stone to online casino GoldenPalace.Com for $25,000. The money will be donated by Shatner to Habitat for Humanity to build houses for the poor.

But Shatner said it wasn't easy parting with a kidney stone, even if it had already left his body. He also said he would never sell unless he had visitation rights.

Police follow thief's trail...literally.

A bungling German thief left a Hansel and Gretel-style trail of feathers which led police from the crime scene to his front door, authorities said Tuesday.

Police in the western city of Bochum said the man ripped open his quilted jacket as he broke into a shop to steal a karaoke set and did not notice it was leaking feathers all the way home. A witness saw the break-in and quickly told police.

"Luckily they were able to act before the next story was played out -- "Gone with the Wind," said Bochum police spokesman Frank Plewka. "All they had to do was follow the feathers."

The 36-year-old was astonished when police came knocking at his door shortly afterwards to arrest him.

Norwegian museum reclaims relic that it can't identify

A contrite Frenchman who stole a relic from a Norwegian museum 42 years ago has returned the item, but art experts are now scratching their heads over what the obscure object is and where it came from, the Norwegian embassy in Paris said.

Bad joke du jour

A popular blonde cheerleader bounced into the local card shop, looked around, then approached the clerk. "Do you have any, like, real special greeting cards?" she asked.

"Yes, we do," he replied. "As a matter of fact, here's a new one. It says, "To the Boy Who Got My Cherry."

"Wow, neat!" she squealed. "I'll take the whole box."

Penal colonies, future and past

Last night I sat down to watch a nearly-classic horror movie of the Aliens Ate My Buick variety. More or less at random, I pulled out "Alien3". It's the third of the Alien movies that all star Sigourney Weaver and feature aliens popping out of people's stomachs in very unpleasant ways. I'm sure you're all familiar with the movies. I find it the most interesting of the movies solely due to the setting. Everything takes place on a small planet that is used as a prison colony. Imagine that... an isolated place where convicts are sent to remove them from polite society. Wait a second, I don't have to imagine that. It's already been done.

In 1788, the First Australian Penal Colony was established. The first 736 convicts banished from England to Australia landed in Botany Bay. Over the next 60 years, approximately 50,000 criminals were transported from Great Britain to the "land down under," in one of the strangest episodes in criminal-justice history.

The accepted wisdom of the upper and ruling classes in 18th century England was that criminals were inherently defective. Thus, they could not be rehabilitated and simply required separation from the genetically pure and law-abiding citizens. Accordingly, lawbreakers had to be either killed or exiled, since prisons were too expensive. With the American victory in the Revolutionary War, transgressors could no longer be shipped off across the Atlantic, and the English looked for a colony in the other direction.

Captain Arthur Phillip, a tough but exceedingly fair career naval officer, was charged with setting up the first penal colony in Australia. The convicts were chained beneath the deck during the entire hellish six-month voyage. The first voyage claimed the lives of nearly 10 percent of the prisoners, which remarkably proved to be a rather good rate. On later trips, up to a third of the unwilling passengers died on the way. These were not hardened criminals by any measure; only a small minority were transported for violent offenses. Among the first group was a 70-year-old woman who had stolen cheese to eat.

Although not confined behind bars, most convicts in Australia had an extremely tough life. The guards who volunteered for duty in Australia seemed to be driven by exceptional sadism. Even small violations of the rules could result in a punishment of 100 lashes by the cat o'nine tails. It was said that blood was usually drawn after five lashes and convicts ended up walking home in boots filled with their own blood - that is, if they were able to walk.

Convicts who attempted to escape were sent to tiny Norfolk Island, 600 miles east of Australia, where the conditions were even more inhumane. The only hope of escape from the horror of Norfolk Island was a "game" in which groups of three prisoners drew straws. The short straw was killed as painlessly as possible and the other two were shipped back to Sydney (where the only Australian court was located) for the trial, one playing the role of killer, the other as witness.

On this day...

In 1912, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrives at the South Pole. His arrival was non-triumphant, however, as he discovered the Norwegian expedition led by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beat them to the Pole by over a month.

Scott, a British naval officer, began his first Antarctic expedition in 1901 aboard the Discovery. During three years of exploration, he discovered the Edward VII Peninsula, surveyed the coast of Victoria Land, and led limited expeditions into the continent itself. In 1911, Scott and Amundsen began an undeclared race to the South Pole.

Sailing his ship into Antarctica's Bay of Whales, Amundsen set up base camp 60 miles closer to the pole than Scott. In October, both explorers set off; Amundsen using sleigh dogs and Scott employing Siberian motor sledges, Siberian ponies, and dogs. On December 14, 1911, Amundsen's expedition won the race to the pole. Encountering good weather on their return trip, they safely reached their base camp in late January.

Scott's expedition was less fortunate. Bad planning and poor decisions were fatal to the entire team. The motor sleds broke down, the ponies had to be shot, and the dog teams were sent back as Scott and four companions continued on foot. On January 18, they reached the pole only to find they had been bested by the Norwegians. Weather on the return journey was exceptionally bad, two members perished, and Scott and the other two survivors were trapped in their tent by a storm only 11 miles from their base camp. Scott wrote a final entry in his diary in late March. The frozen bodies of he and his two compatriots were recovered eight months later.

Why do the British drive on the left?

Ever wonder if it's right drive on the right... or wrong... or whatever.

In the Middle Ages you kept to the left for the simple reason that you never knew who you'd meet on the road in those days. You wanted to make sure that a stranger passed on the right so you could go for your sword in case he proved unfriendly.
This custom was given official sanction in 1300 AD, when Pope Boniface VIII invented the modern science of traffic control by declaring that pilgrims headed to Rome should keep left.

The papal system prevailed until the late 1700s, when teamsters in the United States and France began hauling farm products in big wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. These wagons had no driver's seat. Instead the driver sat on the left rear horse, so he could keep his right arm free to lash the team. Since you were sitting on the left, naturally you wanted everybody to pass on the left so you could look down and make sure you kept clear of the other guy's wheels. Ergo, you kept to the right side of the road. The first known keep-right law in the U.S. was enacted in Pennsylvania in 1792, and in the ensuing years many states and Canadian provinces followed suit.

In small-is-beautiful England, though, they didn't use monster wagons that required the driver to ride a horse. Instead the guy sat on a seat mounted on the wagon. What's more, he usually sat on the right side of the seat so the whip wouldn't hang up on the load behind him when he flogged the horses. (Then as now, most people did their flogging right-handed.) So the English continued to drive on the left, not realizing that the tide of history was running against them and they would wind up being ridiculed by folks like you with no appreciation of life's little ironies. Keeping left first entered English law in 1756, with the enactment of an ordinance governing traffic on the London Bridge, and ultimately became the rule throughout the British Empire.

Ben Franklin turns 300.

No, I'm not referring to a perfect bowling game. Today, on the 300th anniversary of his birth, the statesman Ben Franklin is celebrated as much for his scientific achievements as for the signature on the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

A keen observer of nature throughout his life, Franklin by the age of 42 had amassed enough personal wealth from his printing business that he was able to retire and pursue his love of scientific research full time.

Franklin would prove himself as one of early America's greatest and most prolific minds, famously inventing the lightning rod, the odometer, and bifocal glasses, among other things. According to most historians, it was this dedication to improving the overall quality of life with practical invention that is his lasting legacy.

"In the 1700s, a scientist was someone who thought about the way things work and tried to figure out ways to make things work better." That's how curators of the Franklin Institute, the organization in charge of the science museum that also bears his name, put it. "Every time Ben Franklin saw a question and tried to answer it, he was a scientist."

The following is just a sample of Franklin's quirkier brainstorms. Perhaps not as famous as his theories on electricity or the Gulf Stream, their purpose was to add some enjoyment to life.

The glass armonica

Franklin loved music, playing and composing it himself. On one of many trips he would take to England he saw a performer play a tune by stroking the rims of water glasses, each a different size and filled with varying amounts of liquid. Intrigued by the concept, Franklin set about creating a more structured version of the rim trick. With a glassmaker's help, the armonica was born. A wooden stand propped up 37 glass hemispheres on a rotating rod, which Franklin ran moistened fingers along to produce a variety of notes depending on the thickness of the glass. Both Mozart and Beethoven would eventually compose classical pieces specifically intended for the instrument.

Swim fins

An avid swimmer, Franklin was drawn to water at a young age and consistently promoted the healthy benefits of the exercise in his later writings. At the ripe old age of 11 he invented a pair of fins that, unlike today's modern flippers, were strapped to the swimmer's hands to help make each stroke more efficient. His contributions to the sport led to his posthumous induction into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

The library chair & extension arm

Spending an inordinate amount of time among the stacks at the library he founded in Philadelphia, Franklin was inclined to improve the simple devices he used while enjoying his books. First, he converted a regular library chair into a multi-functional appliance that could be sat on or used as a small ladder. For those books still out of reach, Franklin devised an extendable "arm" with fingers that opened and closed by pull cord

Broken Arrow... exactly 40 years ago.

On this day in 1966 a B-52 bomber collides with KC-135 jet tanker over Spain's Mediterranean coast, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and one in the sea. It was not the first or last accident involving American nuclear bombs.

As a means of maintaining first-strike capability during the Cold War, U.S. bombers laden with nuclear weapons circled the earth ceaselessly for decades. In a military operation of this magnitude, it was inevitable that accidents would occur. The Pentagon admits to more than three-dozen accidents in which bombers either crashed or caught fire on the runway, resulting in nuclear contamination from a damaged or destroyed bomb and/or the loss of a nuclear weapon. One of the only "Broken Arrows" to receive widespread publicity occurred on January 17, 1966, when a B-52 bomber crashed into a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain.

The bomber was returning to its North Carolina base following a routine airborne alert mission along the southern route of the Strategic Air Command when it attempted to refuel with a jet tanker. The B-52 collided with the fueling boom of the tanker, ripping the bomber open and igniting the fuel. The KC-135 exploded, killing all four of its crew members, but four members of the seven-man B-52 crew managed to parachute to safety. None of the bombs were armed, but explosive material in two of the bombs that fell to earth exploded upon impact, forming craters and scattering radioactive plutonium over the fields of Palomares. A third bomb landed in a dry riverbed and was recovered relatively intact. The fourth bomb fell into the sea at an unknown location.

Palomares, a remote fishing and farming community, was soon filled with nearly 2,000 U.S. military personnel and Spanish civil guards who rushed to clean up the debris and decontaminate the area. The U.S. personnel took precautions to prevent overexposure to the radiation, but the Spanish workers, who lived in a country that lacked experience with nuclear technology, did not. Eventually some 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and vegetation were shipped to the United States for disposal.

Meanwhile, at sea, 33 U.S. Navy vessels were involved in the search for the lost hydrogen bomb. Using an IBM computer, experts tried to calculate where the bomb might have landed, but the impact area was still too large for an effective search. Finally, an eyewitness account by a Spanish fisherman led the investigators to a one-mile area. On March 15, a submarine spotted the bomb, and on April 7 it was recovered. It was damaged but intact.

Studies on the effects of the nuclear accident on the people of Palomares was limited, but the United States eventually settled some 500 claims by residents whose health was adversely affected. Because the accident happened in a foreign country, it received far more publicity than did the dozen or so similar crashes that occurred within U.S. borders. As a security measure, U.S. authorities do not announce nuclear weapons accidents, and some American citizens may have unknowingly been exposed to radiation that resulted from aircraft crashes and emergency bomb jettisons. Today, two hydrogen bombs and a uranium core lie in yet undetermined locations in the Wassaw Sound off Georgia, in the Puget Sound off Washington, and in swamplands near Goldsboro, North Carolina.

My 2 cents worth.

I tried to mail a letter at the post office today but couldn't as the doors were locked. I didn't inform them in advance that I was showing up, so I concluded that the doors were bolted for another reason. Then it hit me like Jenny Craig hits the vending machine outside the gym that it was a holiday. It didn't matter which holiday, since the USPS takes the day off for every one. Didn't we just give those guys a 2 cent raise? I'll be sure to take the day off right after my boss gives me a raise, too. Like that'll ever happen.

And while I'm thinking of it, isn't the USPS a government agency? It must be because it has that US right there in the name. How about that 'separation of church and state' thing that the bleeding heart liberals always whine about? They should be demanding that the post office ignore all religious holidays and work straight through. Sure, Martin Luther King Day isn't a religious holiday. But I'm not sure why it's any sort of holiday at all. I'm not arguing that MLK wasn't a decent guy, and all. I mean, other than the plagiarism and adultery. Still, why his is the only American birthday that we have a national holiday for?

But I digress. The fact is that all the government workers give themselves the day off just because some boxing promoter nailed his 95 Theses on a church door in 1963. Again with the religious thing. Doesn't anybody see this but me?

MLK: A black holiday?

A poll just released by the Associated Press shows an amazing connection between blacks and Martin Luther King Day.

Indeed, according to the AP, blacks are more likely than whites to commemorate MLK's birthday. They're also more inclined to harbor doubts about progress toward his dream of racial equality. The poll didn't mention the college drop-out rate for black males, which was over 3 times that of white males.

Election Projection 2008: Iran Hands Election to GOP

The newly elected leaders in Iran are giving Kim Jong Il a run for his money as the most whacked government in the world. But unlike Kim, the President of Iran is fearless in the face of the United States. My personal opinion is that he only remembers his initial role in the Iran Hostage Crisis of the late 1970s, when his less than potent adversary was Jimmy 'Rabbitslayer' Carter. He doesn't seem to recall how the crisis became a non-issue 444 days after it began.. and 1 day after Ronald Reagan took back control of the White House, and thus our role in the world.

Now, the same Iranian nutcase is back in charge. But instead of controlling a few dozen Iranian extremists that burrowed into the American Embassy by using US citizens as human shields, he controls the whole country. His latest attempt to prove to himself that he isn't a complete whack-job is banning CNN from the country for 'misreporting' his comments.

Apparently CNN said the Iranian whacko attributed the comment "the use of nuclear weapons is Iran's right." When in fact, the President meant "we think the world is stupid enough to believe that Iran, one of the most oil-rich countries in the world, should have the right to develop nuclear energy... not necessarily for the purpose of wiping Israel of the map, as we have plainly stated on many official occasions, but also to bring down the cost of oil in our country from 12 cents a barrel, to 4 cents."

A clear trend is developing. Iran is intent on assuring its place in the world as a nuclear power that weilds its new ability much like a child that finds a hammer and suddenly views everything around it as a potential nail. This leads me to the undeniable conclusion that since the party of asses is, was, and always will be unable to confront genocidal governments, the next election will be handed to the GOP by a clear majority. The American people understand who will be firm in the face of such a threat.

Extra Major Headline News!

The world as we know it changed forever this weekend as several self-important figureheads did something of absolutely no significance to the rest of us.

Paris Hilton made headlines by doing absolutely nothing. Which is what she has done her entire life. The media swarmed en masse to document the latest nothingness, and proclaimed her the most important void of intelligence in the 21st century.

In other news, nearly-talented rap artist, Eminem, proved he should be ignored by marrying his ex-wife, affectionately referred to as 'Bitch'.

Greenhouse gases. Plants. Who'd a thought.

Scientists have just made a shocking discovery that average second graders have been telling their parents for years. Where do greenhouse gases come from? The answer might shock you. Plants.

A worldwide plot has just been uncovered by some of the world's most brilliant scientific minds. For decades, every living plant has been secretly working toward global domination by producing methane, one of the largest causes of green house gases. They would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Are we there yet?

stimulator
Originally uploaded by JoeFriday.

I realize we're only halfway through the non-fishing season in Wisconsin, but I think I have the Seven Year Itch. Actually, it would probably be more like the 15 week itch, as that's about how long it's been since I made my last cast. Damn, this is going to be a long winter.

Democrat thugs go on trial in Wisconsin.

I can't seem to locate this story on any of the major news outlets... they must still be allocating most of their resources to the 2000 recount (which might be the 2000th recount by now)... but the 'Milwaukee Five' go on trial today. The defendents are five Democrat operatives (one is the son of Rep. Gwen Moore, another is the son of former Milwaukee Mayor Marvin Pratt and leader of John Kerry's campaign team in Milwaukee) who were apprehended after slashing the tires of 25 Republican 'Get Out The Vote' vehicles at 3am of Election Day.

This would be a clear example of the felonious 'voter intimidation and suppression' that the Democrat party charged Republicans with after losing the 2004 election. Oddly enough, the same people (Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), national AFL-CIO President John Sweeney) accusing the GOP of these tactics are expected to appear at the trial in defense of the Milwaukee Five.

The MF's (as I like to call them) appeared at the Democrat Party headquarters dressed in 'Mission: Impossible' style gear and shared details of their felony with others.

However, this was just one of many voting irregularities in Milwaukee that day. There were 7000 more votes cast in Milwaukee than voters, suggesting ballot-stuffing in the overwhelmingly Democrat-controlled city. At least 1200 voters registered with invalid addresses. Many were later confirmed to be storefronts and vacant lots. And questions have been raised about the inordinately large volume of Election Day registrations in the city, which does not require any form of identification to vote. Approximately 84,000 people registered to vote on that day, representing nearly 30 percent of all votes cast.

John Kerry carried the state by only 11,384 votes. You do the math.

Word of the day: Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it represents. Examples are buzz, crash, whirr, clang, hiss, purr, squeak, mumble, hush, boom.

Muslims declare jihad on Samsonite!

Thousands of Muslim pilgrims rushing to complete a symbolic stoning ritual during the hajj tripped over luggage Thursday, causing a crush in which at least 345 people were killed, the Interior Ministry said.

The stampede occurred as tens of thousands of pilgrims headed toward al-Jamarat, a series of three pillars representing the devil that the faithful pelt with stones to purge themselves of sin.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said 345 people were killed. Dr. Abbasi, a Red Crecent doctor at the scene, put the number of injured at 1,000.

This reminds me of Halloween when I was about 5 years old. My parents dressed me up as a ghost. The costume consisted entirely of a sheet with a couple holes cut out so I could see. I remember tripping on that damn sheet about every 10 steps. Considering the muslim wardrobe is nearly the same, I'm surprised this sort of tragedy doesn't happen on a weekly basis.

Common myths, and other misinformation.

It takes 7 years to digest bubble gum. Wrong. It takes 7 years to digest airplane food.

The Great Wall of China is the only manmade object visible from outer space. As if. Several IKEA lifestyle centers are identifiable in Hubble images. And Madonna's "self-image compound" has been the discussion aboard more than one space shuttle flight.

Humans use only 10 percent of their brains. MRI images show that the average human uses well over half of his cerebral cortex. This myth has been reinforced by a recent study of the brains of politicians, with several prominent members of Congress falling far short of the public average. And Democrat leaders being in the single-digit range.

Adults don't grow new brain cells. See the post above.

Water drains backwards in the Southern Hemisphere compared to the Northern Hemisphere. That only occurs in places where people drive on the left side of the road.

Animals can warn us of impending disasters. While it technically is true, the reality is that they won't. Don't bother to look around for Whiskers after that big earthquake. She'll have already hitched a ride to France.

A penny dropped from the Empire State Building could kill a pedestrian. With the price of a hot dog from a street vendor in New York City topping $6, it's doubtful a penny would go noticed anywhere in the Big Apple, regardless of how far it falls. Unless it's sitting on a subway rail and derails the train.

A dog's mouth is cleaner than a humans. Tell me that one again right after you see Fido with his head buried between his legs for five minutes.

Men think about sex every seven seconds. It just seems that way. Although that might be the case for a male between the ages of 13 and 23, eventually a man's hormones ease off and those thoughts are replaced with plans for the next fishing trip. Ironically, this is exactly the same time that a woman's hormones kick in like a furnace turned on for the first time after you return from your week long ski trip. That's when nature has its little joke and women finally find out how it felt for us guys all through high school and college when our dates 'just want to talk.'

A falling cat will always land on its feet. I've tested this one personally, and it only happens about 70 percent of the time. Of course, I have to admit that I found the test a bit tedious and started inventing clever ways to 'drop the cat'. The football spiral nearly always produced contrary results. As did duct-taping a paper bag over the cat's head.

In space no one can hear you scream. This is more of a philosophical myth, along with the tree falling in the forest. The truth is that anyone can hear you scream in space. They just figure you deserve your untimely demise for starring in a Ridley Scott movie.

Chicken soup can cure the flu. Hello! Have you heard of the bird flu? Duh.

Seasons are caused by the Earth's proximity to the sun. Seasons are actually caused by television programming executives.

Cockroaches are the only animals that can survive a nuclear blast. I don't have any empirical evidence to back this up, but I believe telemarketers will be among the survivors, as well.

Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death. This is only a slight deviation from reality. Hair and nails stop growing when bodily functions cease. But it will be the only good hair day you've had in months.

Make $75,000 a year as a professional leech.

Starting her career as an unwed and unemployed mother in Madison, Wisconsin, Elizabeth Johnson has found the secret to a very stable and lucrative lifestyle. Become a social parasite. Elizabeth, who now lives in Ashland, Oregon, has teamed up with her 'partner', Jason Pancoast, and with the help of their three children ranging in age from 6 years to 3 months old, have turned the art of preying on people's conscience and a desire to help the unfortunate into a business that pays better than $75,000 a year.

The couple, who share a background of broken homes, quickly bonded on one of their first dates, which was a canoeing trip enhanced by LSD.

When asked recently why they don't put in any effort to become respectable contributing members of society, their flippant excuses were that no one would hire them as they haven't had a real job in 8 years. Also, having to be accountable to an employer would take away time they spend on the streets with their kids. These being the same children that are used in their rouse to procure an income almost double the national average.

So you see.. it's for the children.

Timewaster du jour

Play Battleship on your computer. Make sure you have your sound turned on. Uber cool.

An Apple with a twist.

Apple (arguably one of the greatest computer and industrial design firms on the planet, have finally released their latest laptop... the MacBook Pro. First glance shows that they wisely stuck with the previous Powerbook design. For the past year, I have owned a 15" aluminum Powerbook, and have nothing but praise for the ergonomics and style. The sleek metal look, and Bauhaus design still makes me smile when I look at it.

The big... no, HUGE change in the new MacBook is the implementation of Intel chips. Gone are the motorola PowerPC chips. Whether that's good or bad, I can't say. But Apple claim that the new MacBook will run 4 times faster than the previous model. I'm all for switching to Intel if that's the case.

However, the two big questions that are on every Macophile's mind are reliability and software compatibility. Admittedly, Mac owners love to remind PC users about their familiarity with the Blue Screen Of Death. Not that Macs haven't had their problems, as well. I personally suffered for weeks with 'kernel panics' that locked my Powerbook up at least once an hour. But once I swapped out an aftermarket memory stick for Apple-approved Samsung RAM, the problem disappeared immediately and has never returned.

Software compatibility has been more of an issue with Macs ever since the release of OSX Tiger. Much like the deservedly-hated Windows XP, I've heard many stories of driver issues for printers, scanners and other peripherals under OSX 10.4. Fortunately, I've learned never to be the first to jump onto a new OS bandwagon. Let the company work out the bugs first, then proceed with caution.

Another aspect of software deals with the programs Mac users current are, and have been using for years. Will the current programs run on the new system? We're led to believe it should be a seamless change. I guess we'll know in a couple months when the new machines hit the proverbial streets.

One thing that surprised me is that the prices of the respective models weren't affected. The new version of the MacBook Pro (comparible to the Powerbook) starts at $1999. I'm guessing that the Intel chips are cheaper to make, or at least Mac expects to sell so many that volume will keep the cost down.

As of today, I'll be saving my nickels. And looking under the sofa cushions. By the time I put $2,000 in my piggybank, we'll know if the new Macs are Apples or lemons.

Movie Review: The House of Flying Daggers (5/5 stars)

When is the last time you sat down to watch a movie expecting a pleasant distraction for an hour or two, but become so mesmerized that two hours later you end up yelling at your home entertainment center because it ended too soon? That's what happened to me while watching House of Flying Daggers.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit I'm a bit of a martial arts fan. But probably not any more than the average guy. Who doesn't like to see guys fighting with big nasty swords. And let's face it, chinese women are hot. In this case, we're talking about Ziyi Zhang who is hot like a Walmart parking lot is hot at noon... on the 4th of July... in Death Valley. And yes, she's got every move I could ever imagine. If you're at all like me, you'll end up rewinding the 'Echo Game' scene a few times.

House of Flying Daggers is very similar to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. You'll immediately recognize Ziyi Zhang from her role there as the young bandit. Also, the same mystical martial arts style is enlisted. Personally, I had a hard time getting into CTHD because of the 'flying technique' that was, in my opinion, overused. This wasn't the case with Flying Daggers. Much of the action was of the mystical style that is expected of these movies, but it always added to the drama rather than distracting from it. The special effects never went over the top.

What was over the top, though, was the cinematography. And I mean that in the best possible way. I've often heard people gush about the scenery in Under The Tuscan Sun (which is good), but the use of scenery is epic in Flying Daggers. If that's what China is like, I need to call my travel agent tomorrow.

Then there is the music score, which is enhanced marvelously by the Dolby Digital surround system. If you have a state of the art entertainment center, you'll love this one. Trust me.

Still, a movie is more than just scenery and sound. Even if it has Ziyi Zhang in the lead. There has to be a believable plot. No problem here. While it might not be the most original storyline I've seen, it works quite well here. And if the ending doesn't get you misty, you better head to Oz to find the Wizard and ask him for a heart.

House Of Flying Daggers is a pleasure to enjoy for all the right reasons. Lots of action to keep your eyes glued to the screen. Not that you'll need it due to the incredible landscapes. Attractive and powerful characters. An amazingly good surround sound experience (and this coming from a guy who owned a Dolby Surround system in 1988, before nearly any video rental was available in a surround sound format). And a love triangle of Homeric proportion.

Yes, it's a martial arts movie. But it's not just a martial arts movie. I expect House of Flying Daggers will be flying off the video store shelves.