Texan teachers to carry concealed guns.

Teachers in Texas will be allowed to carry concealed handguns, BBC reports.

Gee, what could go wrong?

Two amazing things: 1) Supposedly, no parent has a problem with this. 2) The rationale for introducing dozens of guns into schools filled with bored, hormonal, and captive children/young kleptomaniacs:

"When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that's when all of these shootings started," [the school superintendent] wrote on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's web site.

Wow.

Maybe the British are right about arming themselves with gobstoppers and snookers.

Man fined for carrying a weapon.... a Gobstopper!

Gotta love the British. This chap carried a "gobstopper the size of a snooker" around in a sock for protection. Can we please just give British citizens guns so they can cause violent mayhem like real adults??

The only reason to watch the Olympics.

I love the gratuitous beach volleyball ass shots under the guise of news. Here's the official beach volleyball photo site from NBCOlympics.com. And you have to love this in-depth report (called "CRACKing the Code," no less) on the hand signals used - sandy butt close-ups necessary, of course. SFW, but use caution and common sense.

10 movies sold on their sex scenes.

Another great list from Spout's Christopher Campbell, this one counting down ten films that only hit our radars because of the hyped-up promises of nudity/sex. Which reminds me, I gotta go see that Scarlett Johansson/Penelope Cruz kiss movie, whatever it's called.

Article here! Hot cha cha cha!

Cake rocks.

This person has made a Guitar Hero CAKE. WILL YOU MARRY ME?!!!

The how-to steps here.

Amazing Flickr pics here.

Game: Ball Lines

Line up five balls of the same color to clear them. Fun!

Ball Lines.

Coozer Prophesy #2

If the jellyfish don't kill us first, humankind will suffer a mighty blow when the honeybees all mysteriously disappear. Just as bees pollinate the plants, so do they pollinate all hope for our future.

Per The Guardian, honeybee deaths now at a "crisis point":

Britain's honeybees have suffered catastrophic losses this year, according to a survey of the nation's beekeepers, contributing to a shortage of honey and putting at risk the pollination of fruits and vegetables.

The survey by the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) revealed that nearly one in three of the UK's 240,000 honeybee hives did not survive this winter and spring.

God have mercy on our souls.

Colbert Bump enriches Democrats.

A study shows that Democrats receive more campaign money in the days following an appearance on the Colbert Report.

Interestingly, Republicans do worse after appearing on the show.

More info and a nifty graph here.

Birds singing at night due to daytime noise pollution.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

U.S. observers have noticed birds singing long after dark this summer.

In England, researchers found that the British robin was forced to sing at night because daytime traffic was drowning out his mating serenades.

The study measured noise levels and singing at 67 sites. Scientists found that birds sang only during the day at 49 sites, and day and night at 18 sites. Daytime noise levels at those 18 sites were significantly higher.

Man gets kid's bday wrong, wins lotto.

From Breitbart:

Bobby Guffey usually plays the same combination of numbers representing the birthdays of his five children. But he left his glasses at home when he bought the winning ticket Aug. 6, accidentally entering the last number as 48 instead of 46.

The Hoosier Lotto ticket ended up being worth $3 million.

King penguin receives Norwegian knighthood.

This penguin kicks all ass.

The knighthood ceremony began Friday morning with speeches and a fanfare before Nils arrived, under escort with the King's Guard Color Detachment. Nils then reviewed the troops lined up outside the penguin enclosure at the zoo, waddling down the row of uniformed soldiers, occasionally stopping to crane his neck and peer inquisitively at their crisp uniforms before being guided forward by his handler.

More on Sir Waddle Butt here.

Coozer-Bits.

Around the world edition!

Japan Times: Japanese men begin growing facial hair, changing fabric of society.

Jerusalem Post: Jordan bans Jews with religious items, claiming security threat.

Yahoo! Canada: Experimental vaccine kills 14 children in Argentina.

Yahoo! Canada: Great-grandson of Marcus Garvey - Jamaica's first national hero - charged with raping 12-year-old girl. After church.

CNN: Ocean "dead zones" becoming global problem.

UK Times Online: Russia: Dick Cheney is behind Russian invasion of Georgia as a way to defeat Obama.

BBC News: Indian officials tell the poor to eat rats.

Queens enjoys murder spike.

Yeah! My neighborhood is exciting! Beat that, Omaha!!

400% murder spikes in some Queens precincts.

Who is the fake Rockefeller?

I've figured it out. He's D-Fens.

I hate soccer.

Australian football hooligans throw sausage fundraiser for rapist captain. More reason to hate soccer, Australians, and rapists. Sausage is still good, though. Item!

Haven't gotten your Netflix yet?

Netflix is experiencing major undisclosed shipping problems. From the site:

Click here to learn more

We’re sorry to report that since Tuesday we’ve been experiencing issues with our shipping system, so many of you have not received DVDs in a timely manner and many of you have not received emails letting you know we got a DVD back from you.

We pride ourselves in delighting you, and we’ve let you down. We apologize and are working around the clock to restore normal operations. To all of you whose shipments have been delayed, we’ll be automatically applying a credit to your next billing statement. Or, if you are new to Netflix and your first shipments have been delayed, we recognize that this is not a good way to begin your Netflix membership and we’ll automatically extend your free trial.

Our goal is to ship DVDs as soon as possible and to keep you updated. Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience we’ve caused you and thank you for your patience.

The Netflix Team

U2 fan ordered to destroy CDs.

I wish all U2 fans were ordered to destroy their CDs. From WikiNews:

A man living in South Wales, United Kingdom was ordered to destroy his entire music collection after creating a ruckus by listening to the music at an extremely high volume. Police seized his stereo equipment in a raid.

Airborne to cough up $30 million.

Airborne, that super-expensive immune booster that had no scientific merit or testing, has settled with the FTC and will provide $30 million in refunds to consumers. The last day for consumers to submit a claim is September 15, 2008. Click here if you're eligible.

Scientists: Beer goggles are real.

Beer... is there nothing it can't do?

From NewScientist:

The next time you hear someone blaming "beer goggles" for their behaviour, you may have to believe them. People really do appear more attractive when our perceptions are changed by drinking alcohol.

[...] Both men and women who had consumed alcohol rated the faces as being more attractive than did the controls. Surprisingly, the effect was not limited to the opposite sex - volunteers who had drunk alcholol also rated people from their own sex as more attractive.

Women on the Pill pick bad mates.

According to this LiveScience article, women typically choose men who smell different from them, because there's more genetic compatibility that way, or something or other. But when women start popping the Pill, they become attracted to guys who smell more similar to them.

From LiveScience:

The study involved about 100 women, aged 18 to 35, who chose which of six male body-odor samples they preferred. They were tested at the start of the study when none of the participants were taking contraceptive pills and three months later after 40 of the women had started taking the pill more than two months prior.

For the non-pill users, results didn't show a significant preference for similar or dissimilar MHC odors. When women started taking birth control, their odor preferences changed. These women were much more likely than non-pill users to prefer MHC-similar odors.

"The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odors," Roberts said.

I like this article because it provides scientific explanation for why loose women hang out with jerks, and it also infers that jerks smell like girls.

Doctors will no longer need to give me lollies to take away the sniff-sniffs.

Hate getting shots or blood drawn by your doctor, nurse, dentist, or mailman? Well, NIH has reported that scientists are developing super-sensitive saliva sensors that will make needles obsolete! HELL YEAH SCIENTISTS! From the article:

For people who dislike needles, medical tests that require a drop of saliva instead of a vial of blood will one day make a trip to a doctor or dentist much easier. But as scientists now construct the first of these saliva tests for early signs of cancer and other diseases, they continue to push the technological envelope in interesting ways.

As published in the August issue of the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, a team of researchers supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health, report they have developed an ultra-sensitive optical protein sensor, a first for a salivary diagnostic test. The sensor can be integrated into a specially designed lab-on-a-chip, or microchip assay, and preprogrammed to bind a specific protein of interest, generating a sustained fluorescent signal as the molecules attach. A microscope then reads the intensity of the fluorescent light — a measure of the protein’s cumulative concentration in the saliva sample — and scientists gauge whether it corresponds with levels linked to developing disease.

Coozer-Bits.

Bottom line: Don't swim in the Hudson.

Napster is still around?

Dorky guy named Wii undergoes life-changing popularity.

D'oh! Solar-powered robotic observatory loses power and shuts down in pitch-black Antarctica.

Julia Child was a CIA spy. No wonder why her brownies tasted like mind-control devices.

Move over Bush Or Chimp....

I admit I'm no George Clooney, or even George Wendt, but Sarah Jessica Parker's face gives me the willies. SarahJessicaParkerLooksLikeAHorse.com has allowed me to laugh at my fears, though now I feel bad for the horses.

GAO: 2/3 of corporations avoid paying taxes.

Hmm. I don't make trillions of dollars, but I sure have to hand over half my check to the government. Something about that doesn't seem right...

From Huffington Post:

Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office released Tuesday said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

Sex prevents cancer.

Hey baby. Want to lower your risk of heart attack and cancer? *wink wink*

From BBC News:

According to the NHS Direct website, "sexercise" can lower the risk of heart attacks and helps people live longer.

Endorphins released during orgasm stimulate immune system cells, which also helps target illnesses like cancer, as well as wrinkles, it states.

Sexual health experts said such claims could not be scientifically proven.

Trend Spotting: Stealing from Corpses.

Feeling "stiffed" by your job? Need to take "grave" matters into your hands? Do you enjoy "Tombstone" pizza while reading annoying and irrelevant puns? Then you need to hop on the bandwagon/hearse and do what all the ghoul kids are doing - steal from corpses!

Corpses are a wonderful resource. They oftentimes have jewelry, watches, money, credit cards, drugs, and weapons. Best of all - they practically give away their stuff by not saying anything or fighting back. From ABC News:

Stealing from the dead is a recurrent theme in death investigations that pops up periodically, according to Dr. Randy Hanzlick, a leading forensic pathology professor and a chief medical examiner in Georgia.

"There have been cases around the country," Hanzlick told ABC News. Accusations include stealing prescription drugs, cash, personal valuables and, in one case, a handgun from the dead.

In June, a coroner's office investigator in West Virginia was accused of stealing a credit card from a body and using it to charge more than $400 at a strip club.

Why the uptick in robbing remains?

These incidents highlight weaknesses in the system that Hanzlick says must be examined. [...] Experts say that people who are untrained and inexperienced often qualify to hold the position of coroner in many states and counties throughout the U.S. and that the risks and consequences are great.

In Georgia, for example, anyone who is a registered voter, at least 25 years-old, has no felony conviction and has a high school diploma or equivalent is eligible to be a coroner, bearing the responsibility of leading death investigations, signing death certificates, and holding inquests.

"The coroner may be a local garage mechanic who uses a local hospital pathologist who has not had any training in forensic pathology," said Hanzlick. "The training requirements have to be stiffened up."

Look, he did a pun too! Don't hate!

Coozer-Bits.

Science Edition!

The heat in chili peppers (the chemical capsaicin, as you foodies know) is a defense mechanism against killer fungus that seeps into the pepper through holes made by bugs. More here.

Creepy snakes eating all of Guam. Item!

Simian foamy virus found in people living and working with monkeys in Asia. Yipes.

Giant, flying dog poop takes down Swiss city.

I'll just quote the whole article. This is the kind of art I enjoy.

A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.

The art work, titled "Complex S(expletive..)", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.

Steiner said McCarthy had not yet been contacted and the museum was not sure if the piece would be put back on display.

By the way, what's a "children's home"? Are they saying this gigantic mound of flying shit landed on an orphanage? Because that's hilarious.

Decapitation craze reaches the UK.

Everyone loves decapitation! This guy did it in a very inventive way - using his fancy car and a rope.

The businessman tied one end of the rope to a tree, then climbed into his Aston Martin and wrapped the other end around his neck.

He then drove the £90,000 car into a busy main road, forcing other drivers to watch his horrific death.

The reason? Why do all men lose their heads? Women. The Daily Mail explains.

A vine grows in Brooklyn.

This Daily News article made me throw up a little in my mouth.

Not to be a snob, but I'm not drinking wine produced underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

America drinks and goes home.

According to this Forbes article, 1 in 5 Texans in Austin confess to binge drinking. And if you count the people too drunk to answer the poll, it's probably more like 1 in 4. From the article:

Austin ranks high for its drinking habits across the board. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey, 61.5% of adult residents say they have had at least one drink of alcohol within the past 30 days, and a staggering 20.6% of respondents confess to binge drinking, or having five or more drinks on one occasion. [...]

Coming in second on the list is Milwaukee. This city, known as "the nation's watering hole," has a long reputation as a city built on beer. It was once the nation's top beer-producing city, home to four of the world's largest breweries: Schlitz, Pabst, Miller and Blatz. Legendary sitcom characters Laverne and Shirley fixed bottle caps on one of the city's assembly lines. Even the town's baseball team--the Brewers--reflects its boozy past.

Rounding out the top five hardest-drinking cities are San Francisco; Providence, R.I.; and Chicago.

Bush: Scientists and animals should die.

Disgusting. From Yahoo! News:

Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press. [...]

If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of endangered species regulations since 1986. They would accomplish through rules what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects.

Return of the Evil Empire?

I was pretty flip last night when talking about Cheney, but Russia is acting horrifically. I won't pretend to be an expert on Russia and the Caucasus region, but these articles are interesting.

From the NY Sun:

In yesterday's emergency session, the American U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, accused Moscow of attempting to orchestrate a "regime change" in Tbilisi and said Russia's "campaign of terror" in Georgia could have a serious effect on its relations with America and the rest of the world.

Georgia, America, the United Nations, and France as the president of the European Union have called for a cease-fire and a return to the situation that existed before the latest hostilities in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region were launched on Friday. France is said to be preparing a Security Council resolution along those lines.

But the Russian U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said such calls miss the "complex" nature of the situation. The only acceptable solution, he said, is a complete and unilateral withdrawal of Georgian troops. Former Russian "peacekeepers" in South Ossetia, he added, are now on a "peacemaking" operation.

Interesting peacekeeping operation considering a report I heard of at least 2,000 civilians killed. Meanwhile, the Independent has reported a second Russian front, indicating full-fledged invasion.

From The Independent:

Russia opened a second front of fighting in Georgia today, sending armoured vehicles beyond two breakaway provinces and seizing a military base in the country's west, officials said.

The development indicates that Russian troops have invaded Georgia proper from the separatist province of Abkhazia while most Georgian forces are locked up in fighting around South Ossetia.

And what about from Russia itself? Here's an interesting article from the Moscow Times on its country's media coverups:

Russian television is flush with footage of misery left by the Georgian assault in the separatist district of South Ossetia, but few, if any, reports mention Russia's bombing of Georgia.

William Dunbar, a correspondent in Georgia for English-language state channel Russia Today, mentioned the bombing in a report Saturday, and he has not gone on air for the station since.

"I had a series of live, video satellite links scheduled for later that day, and they were canceled by Russia Today," he said by telephone from Tbilisi on Sunday. "The real news, the real facts of the matter, didn't conform to what they were trying to report, and therefore, they wouldn't let me report it.

"I felt that I had no choice but to resign," he added.

Smokers can now blame genetics.

From Science Daily:

Anyone who has ever tried smoking probably remembers that first cigarette vividly. For some, it brought a wave of nausea or a nasty coughing fit. For others, those first puffs also came with a rush of pleasure or "buzz."

Now, a new study links those first experiences with smoking, and the likelihood that a person is currently a smoker, to a particular genetic variation. The finding may help explain the path that leads from that first cigarette to lifelong smoking. [...]

In a paper published online today in the journal Addiction, a multi-university collaborative team of researchers specializing in statistical genetics, gene analysis, and trait analysis reports an association between a variant in the CHRNA5 nicotine receptor gene, initial smoking experiences, and current smoking patterns.

By the way, about that journal Addiction -- I can't stop reading it.

Nationwide boycott called for "Tropic Thunder"

Doesn't a boycott assume people are going to see the movie in the first place?

NY Times with the article.

Bush at the Olympics.

Pic from MyWay. I'm not saying a word.

Dick Cheney resurfaces.

Wow, I haven't heard a peep from Dick Cheney in months. Dude is so shadowy, I forgot he existed.

But it looks like he crawled out from his spider hole to once again express his special brand of diplomacy. From the Boston Globe:

Vice President Dick Cheney called Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to express U.S. solidarity in the conflict with Russia and told him "Russian aggression must not go unanswered," the vice president's office said on Monday.

"The vice president expressed the United States' solidarity with the Georgian people and their democratically elected government in the face of this threat to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Cheney's office said in a statement.

It said Cheney, in a phone call on Sunday, told Saakashvili that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community."

Not that I disagree with the Bush admin on this one, but is it just me or do we only hear from Cheney when he's picking a fight?

Toronto explodes.

BBC reports that thousands had to flee their homes when a propane gas plant exploded in northern Toronto.

Some residents were slow to react as they thought the awesome pyrotechnics were part of a Rush concert.