The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
Meet the Luther Burger, also known as the doughnut burger. It's a bacon cheeseburger in a Krisky Kreme doughnut.
It is estimated that it has about 1000 calories, and contains 45 grams of fat.
And people wonder why they have to make extra-large crematoriums for fat assed people these days…
This makes me ill.
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity. The agency's goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation's borders.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
Also in the news-that-just-makes-me-cringe category, a quote from none other than Dubya himself:
“Brother Jeb would be great president”
Uh huh… let me break out the tinfoil hat now…
I've been browsing phone reviews for a phone I plan on getting to replace my old and busted one. People's grammar is atrocious. I'm not a grammar nazi but I know how to use a spell checker and can generally write a paragraph with nothing more than the odd typo.
http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/motorola-l6.htm
Some of those are just… well, have a look for yourself:
Reviewed by chris from england on 12th Mar 2006
its amazing ppl are sayig da vidio is short go on vidio setings and go on max its a wkd phone i had a sharp gx 15 b4 dis phone rocks
I can deal with the hAx0R 3L33T speak, but seriously…
Reviewed by charlie from england on 12th Mar 2006
I got this phone for me b-day and it is so lush so y r u dissing de phone i aint boverd doe its da buisness
BOVERD????
Reviewed by Louise from on 5th Mar 2006
this fone is amazing coz mine is PINK!! wooh its the best fone i've ever had not that i've had some great fones in the past…
Glad to see you recommend the phone because it's pink…
Reviewed by nadia from england on 18th Jan 2006
dis fone is rubbish u can only record for 20 secondz da v3 is much beta (even if it dont hav video recording itz more fashionable and mor popular expecialy da pink 1) if u want a new fone i recomend da nokia 6230i or da sony ericson k700i dey r worth buying trust me nd dnt buy motorola cuz u can only video for like 20 secondz da only good moto fonez r motorola ROKR and moto V3 BUT NOKIA SAMSUNG AND SONY ERIC IS WAYYYYY BETA byeeee
*cries*
State Board of Education member Connie Morris took exception Wednesday to a picture of a made-up creature that satirizes the state's new science standards hanging on a Stucky Middle School teacher's door.Fellow board member Sue Gamble told The Eagle that Morris asked for the picture to be removed.
The creature, called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is the creation of Bobby Henderson of Corvallis, Ore. It looks like a clump of spaghetti with two eyes sticking out of the top and two meatballs flanking the eyes.
Henderson created the entity and an accompanying mythology on the origin of mankind to make fun of Kansas' recent debate over the teaching of criticisms of evolution, including intelligent design.
In November, the board voted 6-4 to allow criticisms of evolution to be taught in Kansas schools. Morris, who voted for the new science standards, saw the picture during the tour. She did not return phone calls for this report. Gamble, who voted against the new standards and was also on the tour, said that Morris asked principal Kenneth Jantz to have the picture taken down.
Board members toured Stucky before finishing two days of meetings in Wichita on Wednesday. Gamble said that when she saw the picture during the tour, she knew that some board members wouldn't approve of it.
“When we went into that classroom, students were looking at rock formations,” Gamble said. “Connie stopped to talk to a teacher and I moved on. That was when I was aware of the flyer. I thought 'she's probably going to say something to the teacher.' ”
Gamble said that when Morris saw the picture, she asked the principal, who was on the tour, to take it down. Jantz did not comment for this report. Gamble said she didn't see Morris talk to Randy Mousley, the teacher, or to the principal, but that she later went up to Mousley and asked if Morris said anything to him about the picture.
That's when Gamble learned that Morris had asked the principal to take it down. The monster's picture has hung on the door since September or October and was put up there as a joke, Mousley said.
“It's a parody,” he said. “It's just making fun of anti-evolution.”
Mousley said he doesn't teach students about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Also on the door is a Doonesbury comic strip about science, said board member Carol Rupe, who represents Wichita. She also voted against the new standards.
“It was two little pieces of paper on the door,” she said. “It was poking good fun.”
Gamble said she told the principal that it was his decision whether the monster could stick around. “I advised the principal that Morris has no authority,” she said. “I told him to deal with his staff as he saw fit, not by what a state board member says.”
Board chairman Steve Abrams, who voted for the new standards, didn't see the picture but said he thinks that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is silly. “Personally, I think it's juvenile,” he said.
The picture was still on the door at the end of the school day Wednesday.
It seems that today is a good day for random headlines:
In grave with his porn collection!
Asian News International
London, March 13, 2006
A 65-year old unmarried Russian man is apparently so attached to his stack of porn magazines, that not only has he decided to be buried with them when he dies, but has also designed a coffin with special space for them.
Vladimir Villisov, who survived a heart attack, said that the experience had made him realise that the girls in the magazines had been his constant companions for years, and that he wanted them to be his companions in the afterlife too.
“The girls in those magazines have been my companions for years, and I want them to accompany me to the next life,” Fox News quoted him, as telling Utro newspaper.
Pupils import torture tools to highlight UK arms loopholes
Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday March 30, 2006
Schoolchildren have exploited loopholes in Britain's arms controls by importing torture equipment including thumb and wall cuff restraint devices and a Chinese “sting stick” – a metal bar covered with spikes.
All that teenagers from Lord Williams's school in Thame, Oxfordshire, needed was a letterhead, a mobile phone, an email address, and a little money. They also set up a separate company in Ireland to avoid British controls on the sale of small arms.
The government says it is opposed to any trade in torture equipment, but bans only those items mentioned on a published list. The wall cuffs from Poland, thumb cuffs from Taiwan, and sting stick from China do not appear on the list.
The pupils set up two companies, Williams Defence and Williams Defence (Eire). Through their Irish company they arranged deals to destinations covered by British and other national trade embargos, including the sale of Pakistani grenade launchers to Syria, Turkish guns to Mali, and South African rifles to Israel.
The Thame children got quotes but did not go ahead with the deals. However, children from a school in Portloaise, near Dublin, succeeded in buying electric shock batons from Korea and leg irons from South Africa.
The ease with which British controls on trade in torture equipment and small arms can be evaded is exposed in a Dispatches programme, After School Arms Club, presented by Mark Thomas, to be broadcast on Channel 4 next Monday. “It should not be legal, and yet we've proved that children, who by law are not allowed to drink alcohol, can broker arms from countries along a trade route from Poland to China, Israel to South Africa. And many of these arms are used against – or tragically even by – children,” said Maddy Fry, 16, a pupil at Lord Williams's school.
George Lear, head of citizenship at the school, said: “We were stunned by what we could achieve. Nobody questioned us at any stage.” Roger Berry, chairman of the Commons quadripartite committee which monitors export controls, said yesterday that Britain was in the absurd position where children could freely import equipment that could be used in torture while anyone could be arrested for carrying “offensive weapons”.
The pupils presented Malcolm Wicks, minister responsible for export controls, with the sting stick outside the Commons. He has asked them for a report on how they managed to import the torture equipment so easily.
From The Guardian.
British researchers blame “wrap rage” for more than 60,000 injuries in this country. In 2004, a writer for The Times of London described the CD as “the crucible of wrap rage,” whose old cardboard box was replaced by a “zip strip. The answer to our unwrapping prayers! Yet 12 years later, a pull-tab torn off in hand, we are still chewing through plastic like wild dogs.”
That's so true though. Some of the stuff we buy these days, you need a chainsaw to open. Katy is always afraid I'm going to stab myself with my leatherman when I try and cut through that hard plastic clamshell…
WASHINGTON — With no fanfare, President Bush signed a bill Monday pushing the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion. The measure allows the government to borrow an additional $781 billion and prevent a first-ever default on Treasury notes. It also lets the government pay for the war in Iraq without raising taxes or cutting popular domestic programs. The debt limit increase was the fourth of Bush's presidency, totaling $3 trillion. With the budget deficit near record levels, an additional increase in the debt limit almost certainly will be required next year. The measure allows the debt limit to rise from $8.184 trillion to $8.965 trillion.
Yes folks that's 9,000,000,000,000$USD. Now given the fact that at the time I'm writing this, the world population is about 6.6 billion people, this means that if you spread out the US debt across the whole friggin world (!!!), each man-woman-child would owe about 1400$. If you reduce that down to the US population, about 295 million, that comes to a staggering 30 grand!
Canada's debt per capita is a third of this amount and people are already worried the country is going to go bankrupt. But since this is the US, everything is hunky-dory…
From the I-can't-believe-I'm-actually-reading-this-shit desk:
As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts.
Said an FBI spokesman on why not all agents of the FBI are allowed to have an email account…
Chirac threatens nuclear attack on states sponsoring terrorism
President Jacques Chirac has dropped a political bombshell by threatening to retaliate with nuclear strikes against any state found to be responsible for a large-scale terrorist attack on France. In the biggest shift in French nuclear doctrine for 40 years, M. Chirac revealed that the force de frappe – the French nuclear deterrent – had already been reconfigured to allow it to destroy the “power centres” of any state which sponsored a terrorist assault.
Source: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article339823.ece
Cure me with sex
A woman has taken out a full page advert in a newspaper asking for sex to help cure her cancer. Divorcee Elisaveta, 30, explained in the ad: “Doctors have discovered two lumps in my breast. “They have told me the best way to beat cancer and stop the spread is to have sex.”
Her plea in top Russian daily Moscow Komsomolets added: “The ideal candidate would need to have sex with me every two days for at least a year.” A cancer specialist told the paper: “To avoid this cancer after a certain age, three sex sessions a week are necessary.”
Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16601093&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=cure-me-with-sex–name_page.html
Some of you will have received links/memes from me in the past pointing to truly weird shit (bonerbunny comes to mind). I make no secret that through various means, I come into contact with stuff that most people wouldn't even dream of. Yet today, I have found my match. A link that sounds so horribly vile that I daren't even click on it.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you http://www.ratemyvomit.com/
(and if you do go look at it, please, don't tell me about it).