Candidate for Georgia governor admits to sex with mule, would kill son to secede.

Well, he's certainly tied up the mule-raping, son-killing vote. From Raw Story:

A longshot Georgia candidate for governor who’s already admitted having sex with a mule before finding God says he’s ready to sacrifice his own son in an effort to get his state to secede from the union.

Neal Horsley made national headlines when he posted the names, phone numbers and addresses of abortion doctors online. His “Nuremberg Files” website also crossed off the names of doctors as they were killed.

Now he’s ready to make new news. In an interview by Dylan Otto Krider published late Wednesday, he indicated he’d kill his own son to dissolve the United States (in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade).

Asked if he was ready to sacrifice his own son in a national insurrection, Horsley recounts a fight with his son where he almost killed him.

“I was one foot from killing my own son, or hurting him really, really bad,” Horsley told Krider. “If he would have attacked me again, I would have stuck him. Or cut him or sliced him or done something to stop him. That’s the point, your hypothetical has literally already been worked out with me, and that’s what makes me different from the other candidates for Governor."

Winery offers $60,000 job to eat, drink, twitter.

From FOX News:

Murphy-Goode Winery in California is willing to pay $10,000 a month for six months to a wine fanatic to tweet, blog and keep a photo and video Web log for their company, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

A meet-and-greet event kicking off the two month hiring process drew hundreds of people to San Francisco, including wine enthusiasts from the opposite side of the country.

"This would be a dream-come-true job for me," said Hardy Wallace, who flew in for the event from Atlanta. "I have unbelievable enthusiasm, and I love to share what I'm passionate about."

The 35-year-old, who was laid off in January from Kodak, was the first in line.

In addition, the new hire will also learn and talk about wine, eat food prepared at the winery and live rent free, the Chronicle reported. Oh, and the applicant must also be willing to play the occasional game of poker.

"I'm busy trying to turn grapes into wine, so what I don't know, really, is Web 2.0," Murphy-Goode winemaker Dave Ready Jr., told the Chronicle.

Scientists spot oldest ever object in universe.

...and it's yo mama! From CNN:

Edo Berger got an alert early last Thursday morning when a satellite detected a 10-second blast of energy known as a gamma ray burst coming from outer space.

Telescopes around the world swiveled to focus on the explosion, soon picking up infrared radiation, which travels more slowly than gamma rays. Berger waited for the visible light which he expected to come next.

It never arrived.

"We were kind of blown away. We immediately knew what that meant," Berger said.

What it meant was that he was looking at the oldest thing ever spotted -- an enormous star exploding 13 billion years ago.

"At that point the age of the universe was only 600 million years," he said. In other words, Berger said, he was looking "95 percent of the way back to the beginning of time."

The star which exploded was 30 to 100 times larger than our own sun, and when it died, it gave off "about million times the amount of energy the sun will release in its entire lifetime," Berger told CNN by phone from Harvard University, where he is an assistant professor of astronomy.

Its death throes produced so much energy that "momentarily, we can essentially see it anywhere in the universe," Berger said.

Hundreds of animals laid off from the Bronx Zoo.

From The Guardian:

The crisis on Wall Street has claimed its most exotic victims to date, with unemployment notices being extended to those with bushy tails, spiny backs and horns.

The Bronx zoo, the oldest city zoo in America, has succumbed to a multimillion dollar hole in its budget and ordered the shipping of hundreds of animals to other institutions. The list of species that will be banished from the park include lemurs, porcupines and antelope.

The sacking of the animals follows a decision to close four exhibits, chosen because of a combination of how maintenance costs and relatively low public appeal. Animals that also include deer, bats and foxes will be shifted to other zoos and aquariums around the country.

Steven Sanderson, head of the zoo, said the changes were forced by a combination of the global economic downturn and challenges facing wildlife conservation. "The new plan will make us stronger and more flexible in an uncertain world," he said.

Behind the plan is a budget shortfall of $15m caused largely by a drastic fall in philanthropic donations to the zoo since the downturn began to bite last autumn. The reduction in charitable income accounts for about $13m of the shortfall, with a further $1.7m of cuts being passed onto the zoo from New York city, which is facing its own budget crisis.

Giant tortoise found in Bronx backyard.

The shelled uprising has begun! From Newsday:

A Bronx woman found an unusual visitor in her Baychester home Tuesday when she discovered a giant tortoise in the backyard.

The female tortoise, which has been named "Shelly," measures in at 30 inches and 60 pounds, and its origin is a mystery.

The giant tortoise species can grow to be four feet long and up to 660 pounds, and are generally living in remote areas of the world. Experts are unsure of how it has been able to survive on its own in the Bronx.

Shelly is currently being cared for at the Animal Care and Control Center.

Terrorists can legally buy guns under US federal law.

Suspected terrorists on the watch list can buy all the guns they want in the US, but I still have to take off my shoes at the airport. From the NY Post:

NEW YORK -- FBI data shows that suspects on the watch list for terrorists and violent gang members make hundreds of gun purchases every year that are totally legal.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun group on Wednesday highlighted the little-noticed figure that was included in an FBI report released last weekend.

The FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System Operations report said there were 230 legal purchases in 2006 by people on the watch list. There were 220 such purchases in 2005.

Under existing federal gun law, those buys are legal. Being on the watch list is not among the nine factors that disqualify someone from purchasing a gun -- like a felony conviction.

Bloomberg's group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is lobbying to close that loophole.

Egypt to slaughter every pig in its country.

This is really sad. Even if you don't feel bad for the pigs and feel it's a terrible waste of their lives, think about all the farmers who will suffer. (Chicago Tribune)

CAIRO (AP) — The Egyptian government says it has begun slaughtering all pigs in the country as a precautionary measure against the possible spread of swine flu.

The Health Ministry says the slaughter of the country's 300,000 pigs will begin immediately.

The ministry has stated several times that there are no cases swine flu in the country, however neighboring Israel has reported two.

Cruise tourist fends off pirates with deck chair.

This guy rules. From Fox News:

A British vacationer is being hailed a hero after he thwarted gun-toting pirates attacking a cruise ship — by throwing a deck chair at them.

Wyn Rowlands was celebrating his 62nd birthday with a dream cruise onboard the MSC Melody near the Seychelle Islands when he spotted armed pirates in a speedboat trying to clamber on to the vessel.

Quick-thinking Wyn, a retired engineer from Bangor-on-Dee, picked up a deck-chair and flung it down at the gang before raising the alarm.

The ship’s captain, Ciro Pinto, was then able to out-manoeuvre the pirates to prevent them boarding the cruise ship.

The MSC Melody and its 1,000 passengers and 500 crew were 600 miles off the coast of Somalia — notorious for pirate attacks — when the incident happenedon Sunday evening.

Missing planets suggests stars eat their young.

Kind of an obvious science item, but I like the article title. From New Scientist:

Exoplanets that venture near their host stars are doomed to premature deaths – even before they get close enough to be ripped apart by the stars' gravity, two new studies suggest.

A star's gravity can put a nearby planet on a 'fast track' to spiralling into the star and may also cause the planet to lose much of its atmosphere, the studies say. The research may help explain why few exoplanets have been found right next to their host stars.

More than 300 exoplanets have been catalogued to date. Many are situated close to their host stars, where it is thought to be too hot for gas and dust to collapse into planets in the first place. That implies that the planets came from farther away and migrated inwards.

Army tells Sikh officers to change appearance.

From Army Times:

Torn between their Sikh faith and their military duty, two soldiers are fighting Army policy that requires them to shave their beards, cut their hair and remove their turbans.

“I don’t think it’s fair for anybody to ask me to choose between my religion and my country,” Capt. Kamaljeet Kalsi said. “Shaving my beard and taking off my turban — these are part of my body. It’s part of my being.”

Kalsi, a doctor trained in emergency medicine, and 2nd Lt. Tejdeep Singh Rattan, a dentist, were first recruited for the Army’s Health Professions Scholarship Program. Kalsi said the recruiters with the Army Medical Corps gave assurances that wearing a beard and turban — mandatory articles of the Sikh faith — would not be a problem. And during several years of graduate school and medical training, Kalsi and Rattan both said their beards and turbans drew no concerns.

Now facing active duty in July, Kalsi and Rattan said their superiors are no longer accepting of their religious accommodations. As a result, the soldiers, through a civil rights group called the Sikh Coalition, recently filed formal complaints with the Army Inspector General’s Office and the Defense Department.

The Goldblum DESTROYS Law & Order.

By all accounts, The Goldblum awesomified Law & Order: Criminal Intent, as he is wont to do. From Videogum:

Last night was Jeff Goldblum's debut on Law And Order: Criminal Intent, and the entire show was HILARIOUS, not just because of Jeff's quirky, nerd-weirdo character, but because the plot was about a bunch of Williamsburg hipsters living in a huge loft and killing each other off in an effort to take over each other's spots in a shitty band. AND there's a red herring about how the murders could be caused by minorities in the neighborhood who think the hipsters are displacing them. It's ripped from the 2002 headlines! Jeff Goldblum had a bunch of really funny lines, but I'm going to have to say this exchange, with the parents of the first dead hipster, was his best work on his first episode:

(Link with video here)

Thanks JenK!

GE's new disc can hold 100 DVDs.

From NY Times:

General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.

The storage advance, which G.E. is announcing on Monday, is just a laboratory success at this stage. The new technology must be made to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices.

But optical storage experts and industry analysts who were told of the development said it held the promise of being a big step forward in digital storage with a wide range of potential uses in commercial, scientific and consumer markets.

“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.

The promising work by the G.E. researchers is in the field of holographic storage. Holography is an optical process that stores not only three-dimensional images like the ones placed on many credit cards for security purposes, but the 1’s and 0’s of digital data as well.

Study: Conservatives don't know Stephen Colbert is joking.

Study excerpted on Huffington Post:

This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

Suspect escapes police after officer nods off during questioning.

From the Daily Yomiuri:

MITO, JAPAN--A 24-year-old man escaped from Mito Police Station on Friday after a senior policeman fell asleep while questioning him on suspicion of theft, having consumed tea that was later found to contain a sleep-inducing drug.

The police said Saturday they had detected traces of a sleep-inducing drug in the urine of the officer and in the tea remaining in his cup, but the officer denied taking any sleeping pills.

The senior policeman said he lost consciousness suddenly, and the police are investigating how the sleep-inducing drug came to be mixed into the tea.

Blind, one-armed golfer hits hole-in-one.

What was his handicap? From Ananova:

A nearly blind, one-armed golfer has overcome his disabilities to hit his first hole-in-one.

Bomb blast victim Alan Perrin, 45, had to quit the Royal Marines in 1992 after suffering horrific injuries in a training exercise explosion.

But he fell in love with golf, despite being left partially blind in his remaining eye, reports the Daily Mirror.

And he defied the odds to hit the amazing 160-yard shot at his local Exminster Golf Club, near Exeter, Devon.

After hitting the one-handed drive, Mr Perrin and his partner thought the ball was lost after there was so sign of it on the green.

He explained: "We spent five minutes looking but didn't want to hold up the next group so we moved on. When those behind us saw the ball in the hole. I was stunned."

Pedophile cult leader escapes prison in helicopter.

I never understood the appeal of cults until I felt the fizz of Koo Koo Cola. From Breitbart:

A cult leader jailed for sex attacks on children escaped in a helicopter from a prison on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion on Monday, the regional administration said.

Juliano Verbard, who was serving a 15-year term for rapes and sex assaults on children, and two of his jailed followers were hauled on board a chopper hijacked by three accomplices, said senior official Jean-Francois Moniotte.

[...] The helicopter landed on waste ground a few hundred metres (yards) away and the gang escaped in a van that had been waiting for them, he said. The two crew members were unhurt and are assisting police.

Earlier, the hijackers had boarded the chopper pretending to be tourists, before seizing control and directing the pilots to Domenjod prison, where it landed in the exercise yard and took on the escapees.

White House idiotically terrorizes NYC.

Completely moronic. Even Bush wasn't this stupid. From CNN:

A White House official apologized Monday after a low-flying Boeing 747 spotted above the Manhattan skyline frightened workers and residents into evacuating buildings.

The aircraft was a White House plane taking part in a classified, government-sanctioned photo shoot, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

"Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision," said Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office. "While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption."

Witnesses reported seeing the plane circle over the Upper New York Bay near the Statue of Liberty before flying up the Hudson River. It was accompanied by two F-16s.

"I was here on 9/11," said iReporter Tom Kruk, who spotted the plane as he was getting coffee Monday morning and snapped a photo. Kruk called the sight of the aircraft low in the sky "unsettling."

The incident outraged many New Yorkers, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"First thing is, I'm annoyed -- furious is a better word -- that I wasn't told," he said, calling the aviation administration's decision to withhold details about the flight "ridiculous" and "poor judgment."

"Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Center defies the imagination," he said. "Had we known, I would have asked them not to."

Linda Garcia-Rose, a social worker who counsels post-traumatic stress disorder patients in an office just three blocks from where the World Trade Center towers once stood, called the flight an "absolute travesty."

"There was no warning. It looked like the plane was about to come into us," she said. "I'm a therapist, and I actually had a panic attack."

Garcia-Rose, who works with nearly two dozen post-traumatic stress disorder patients ages 15 to 47, said she was inundated with phone calls from patients Monday morning.

"They're traumatized. They're asking 'How could this happen?' They're nervous. Their anxiety levels are high," she said.

Garcia-Rose is considering filing a class-action suit against the government for sanctioning the plane's unannounced flight. "I believe the government has done something really wrong," she said.

Capt. Anna Carpenter of Andrews Air Force Base said local law enforcement agencies and the Federal Aviation Administration had been given notice of the exercise.

New York Police Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne said the department had been alerted to the flight by the federal agency "with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it."

Sen. Chuck Schumer echoed the mayor's sentiments in a separate news conference Monday afternoon, saying the Federal Aviation Administration should have notified the public to avoid panic.

"It is absolutely outrageous and appalling to think that the FAA would plan such a photo shoot and not warn the public, knowing full well New Yorkers still have the vivid memory of 9/11 sketched in their minds," the New York Democrat said. Schumer said the FAA's decision to not announce the fly-by "really borders on being either cruel or very very stupid."

Building evacuations also took place across the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey.

RUW: Computer program to take on Jeopardy!

Wait, isn't Alex Trebek already an evil robot? From NY Times:

I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human “Jeopardy!” contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward.

I.B.M. scientists previously devised a chess-playing program to run on a supercomputer called Deep Blue. That program beat the world champion Garry Kasparov in a controversial 1997 match (Mr. Kasparov called the match unfair and secured a draw in a later one against another version of the program).

But chess is a game of limits, with pieces that have clearly defined powers. “Jeopardy!” requires a program with the suppleness to weigh an almost infinite range of relationships and to make subtle comparisons and interpretations. The software must interact with humans on their own terms, and fast.

Indeed, the creators of the system — which the company refers to as Watson, after the I.B.M. founder, Thomas J. Watson Sr. — said they were not yet confident their system would be able to compete successfully on the show, on which human champions typically provide correct responses 85 percent of the time.

“The big goal is to get computers to be able to converse in human terms,” said the team leader, David A. Ferrucci, an I.B.M. artificial intelligence researcher. “And we’re not there yet.”

The team is aiming not at a true thinking machine but at a new class of software that can “understand” human questions and respond to them correctly. Such a program would have enormous economic implications.

Coozer-Bits.

Creepy: Global warming just got scarier (tick-related).

Politics: Taliban deride "worthless" truce with Pakistan.

Sad: Climate change forces Eskimos to abandon village.

Misc: Air France plane with "no-fly" passenger refused entry into US. (No-fly passenger is a journalist writing about the CIA. Hmm.)

Politics: Sri Lanka army to end the air strikes they've been denying for weeks.

Science: Dinosaurs lived in the Arctic.

Awesome: Cool photos from the World Sand Sculpture Festival.

Awesome: More atheists are "coming out."

Science: Bleach might help treat eczema. (Read first and don't try at home.)

Science: Asteroids didn't kill dinosaurs, geologists find.

In first 100 days, Obama flips Bush Admin's policies.

Sure, it's the economy, stupid. But Obama's first 100 days get an A for sticking to his campaign promises and overturning some nasty Bush-era stuff. Here's a good summary from ABC News. Some excerpts:

Marijuana:

Signaling a drastic shift in the Bush administration's policies on drugs, Obama's appointed Attorney General, Eric Holder, said federal agents will relax their enforcement of marijuana laws and go after only those distributors who violate both state and federal law.

Gay Rights:

On March 18, the Obama administration formally endorsed a United Nations statement urging world leaders to decriminalize homosexuality, a declaration that less than three months ago Bush refused to sign.

More changes to Bush's rules on homosexuality are likely to come in the next four years. Obama promised in his campaign to overturn the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that stemmed from the 1993 law that forbade homosexuals from serving in the U.S. military.

Stem Cell Research:

In his latest rollback of Bush administration policies, President Obama signed an executive order Monday lifting the 7½-year ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and a memorandum covering all scientific research. In a less-than-subtle criticism of Bush's ban, Obama said, "In recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values. In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent," the president added before signing the order.

Global Gag Rule:

The debate on whether U.S. government should fund international family planning groups that provide abortions or related services has been brewing for decades.

Obama overturned the policy on Jan. 23, just days after he took the oath of office. "For the past eight years, [the restrictions] have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries," Obama said in a statement.

Patients Rights:

Breaking with Bush on health care, Obama wants to give more power back to the patients on whether health care providers should provide controversial services. The administration revoked the Bush-era "Provider Conscience" rule that created more regulations to prevent those who refuse to hire doctors and nurses opposed to abortion rights from receiving federal funds. The move was applauded by abortion rights advocacy groups, who say the limits restricted patients' rights.

Guantanamo:

In his first major step in office, Obama signed an executive order closing down the detainee center at the Guantanamo Bay military facility within a year, and established new guidelines on interrogation methods and the treatment of detainees. In another order signed on the same day, Obama mandated all U.S. interrogators in all agencies to adhere to rules in the Army Field Manual, and the president also called for the shut down of CIA detention centers around the world.

Withdrawing Troops from Iraq:

Partially fulfilling one of his major campaign promises that probably is one of the sharpest reversals from Bush's policy, Obama ordered the drawdown of troops in Iraq at a late February pit stop in Camp Lejune, N.C. "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end," the president said on Feb. 27 in a gathering of troops.

Endangered Species Act:

The president authorized full scientific reviews of projects that might harm endangered wildlife and plants. Obama's memorandum overrides the Bush administration regulation that limits scientific reviews of projects that could harm endangered species.

While signing the act on March 3, Obama chided Bush's policies, saying that "For more than three decades, the Endangered Species Act has successfully protected our nation's most threatened wildlife. We should be looking for ways to improve it, not weaken it."

Oil & Gas Drilling Near National Parks:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced in February that the government would withdraw oil and gas leases that were offered on 77 parcels of public land for drilling near national parks in Utah by the Bush administration and that are currently in court. "In its last weeks in office, the Bush administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our nation's most treasured landscapes in Utah," Salazar said. "We need to responsibly develop our oil and gas supplies to help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but we must do so in a thoughtful and balanced way that allows us to protect our signature landscapes and cultural resources in places like Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Parks, Dinosaur National Monument, and Nine Mile Canyon, for future generations."

Labor Laws & Equal Pay:

Only ten days in office, Obama signed three executive orders that he said would "level the playing field" for labor unions and that would make unions easy to organize. Obama reversed a Bush order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their only bargaining representatives. Additionally, in undoing Bush's policies, Obama ordered that federal contractors offer jobs to current workers when contracts change and that federal contractors be prevented from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining. Obama's first law signed was also labor-related. The Equal Pay for Equal Work Bill was signed into law Jan. 29 and sought to end pay disparities between men and women.

Restrictions on Cuba:

The president relaxed travel, commerce and mail restrictions on Cuba, allowing American-Cuban families unlimited visits to the island and no restrictions on the amount of remittances they can send back. The White House also plans to expand telecommunications networks that link the United States and Cuba, as well as export of humanitarian items. President Bush tightened restrictions on Cuba in 2004, which been under U.S. embargo since 1962.

Also: Released torture memos, dropped term "War on Terror," lifted the ban on casket photos, and looking to allow states to set their own stricter fuel efficiency standards.