Boris Yeltsin tried hailing taxi in his underpants, wanted a pizza.

In Mother Russia, pizza slices YOU! From Ananova:

Boris Yeltsin got so drunk during a US visit he was found outside the White House in his underpants, trying to hail a taxi as he wanted a pizza.

The following night, a guard mistook him for an intruder after the former Russian president was discovered stumbling drunkenly around the basement of the official visitor's residence.

The embarrassing details about the extent of Mr Yeltsin's drinking habits have been revealed by Bill Clinton, reports the Daily Mail.

The former US president made the disclosures to Taylor Branch, a writer and former flatmate, whom he invited to compile a new 'oral history' of the presidency based on 79 taped interviews.

According to excerpts in USA Today of Branch's new book, the 707-page The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President, Mr Clinton kept the tapes of the interview hidden in his sock drawer.

Mr Branch, however, would make his own tape after each interview in which he would immediately record what Mr Clinton had told him.

Mr Yeltsin was reportedly staying at Blair House, the White House guest residence, in 1995 when the Secret Service discovered him standing alone and barely clothed on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The president, who died two years ago, told them in slurring words that he wanted a pizza, wrote Mr Branch.

Jedi may sue Tesco over hood ban.

I love the corporate response from Tesco. From Ananova:

A Jedi church leader is considering legal action after he was asked to leave a supermarket for wearing his hood.

Daniel Jones, 23, from Holyhead in North Wales, who founded the International Church of Jediism, claims Tesco in Bangor victimised him for his beliefs, reports the Daily Post.

He said: "It states in our Jedi doctrination that I can wear headwear. It just covers the back of my head.

"You have a choice of wearing headwear in your home or at work but you have to wear a cover for your head when you are in public."

Daniel, who works in Bangor, said he'd gone to the store to buy something to eat during his lunch-break but was told by staff to leave unless he took his hood off.

"They said: "Take it off and I said: "No, its part of my religion. It's part of my religious right." I gave them a Jedi church business card," he said.

Daniel has now made an official complaint and is seeking legal advice.

"It was discrimination. They were making a joke against me. I was really upset. Nobody should be treated like that," he moaned.

A Tesco spokesperson said: "Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood."

Barry White has turned shark into love machine.

An aquarium which piped the music of Barry White into a tank to encourage two sharks to breed says the tactic has paid off.

Bosses at the Sea Life London Aquarium say the legendary 'walrus of love' has transformed love shy shark Zorro into a marine love machine.

The therapy has worked so well that staff are now having to warn guests about his frisky behaviour as it is very public, very frequent and looks far from romantic.

"We are absolutely delighted that Zorro is finally getting it together with his intended but the courtship rituals of the zebra shark can appear quite violent and some guests have been a little alarmed," says deputy curator Jamie Oliver.

More here.

Women can't keep secrets for more than two days.

Researchers to also find out if women also really like to buy shoes. By the way, no cure for cancer yet. From Ananova:

The average woman cannot keep a secret for longer than 47 hours, according to a new study.

Researchers found women will typically spill the beans to at least one other person in 47 hours and 15 minutes, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Depending on who the gossip is about, their boyfriend, husband, best friend or mother are the most likely to be the first person they tell.

The study of 3,000 women, aged between 18 and 65, also found that four out of ten admitted they were unable to keep a secret - no matter how personal or confidential.

It also found that alcohol usually gives us a helping hand to blurt out secrets with more than half admitting a glass or two of wine could prompt them to dish the dirt.

Michael Cox, UK Director of Wines of Chile, which commissioned the research to mark Chile's National Day, said: "It's official - women can't keep secrets.

"We were really keen to find out with this survey how many secrets people are told. What we didn't bank on was how quickly these are passed on by those we confide in.

"No matter how precious the piece of information, it's often out in the public domain within 48 hours. That means every single Brit who has confided in a friend should be worried because they don't know where their secret is heading."

Leonard Cohen recovering after collapsing onstage.

Leonard Cohen is the coolest person who has ever lived. Speedy recovery! From HuffPo:

Leonard Cohen is recovering after collapsing onstage while on tour in eastern Spain, his music company said Saturday.

The veteran poet and performer has been released from hospital after suffering from a stomach complaint, Doctor Music Concerts said in a statement.

Cohen was part-way through his song "Bird on the Wire" in Valencia when he fainted, causing the band to stop playing to rush to his aid as concertgoers watched. The concert was stopped.

A video showing Cohen kneeling down several times during the performance and then keeling over sideways during a saxophone solo has been placed on YouTube on the Web by a fan.

The Canadian-born musician, who will be 75 years-old on Monday, was taken in an ambulance to the Nueve de Octubre hospital in Valencia but released early Saturday, Barcelona-based Doctor Music Concerts said.

Monkey pushes woman off cliff.

From News.com.au:

A monkey has pushed a woman off a cliff.

The woman, 60-year-old Zhou Juchang, made the claim after winding up at the bottom of a seven-metre rockface, fracturing her hip and breaking three ribs.

Now she’s suing her travel agent, who organised her trip into China’s Chengdu Wildlife Park.

The monkey allegedly flew into a rage when the woman refused to hand over the bag of monkey food which her tour guide recommended she buy.

A spokesman for the park said the woman’s mistake was showing fear.

“If you show fear a monkey will bully you,” he told London’s Metro.

Teen birth rates higher in highly religious states.

I have a theory that religion and sex are equally popular in states where there's nothing else to do. From LiveScience:

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.

The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn't successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise.

Mississippi topped the list for conservative religious beliefs and teen birth rates, according to the study results, which will be detailed in a forthcoming issue of the journal Reproductive Health.

However, the results don't say anything about cause and effect, though study researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh offers a speculation of the most probable explanation: "We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."

Insane killer escapes on field trip to county fair.

From Raw Story:

In an Associated Press story entitled "Insane killer escapes on field trip to county fair," the wire service reports, "Authorities have put out a statewide alert for a mentally ill killer who escaped during a hospital field trip to a county fair, leading to fears that he'll become more unstable and potentially dangerous the longer he is on the loose with no medication."

"Sgt. Dave Reagan of the Spokane County sheriff's office says Phillip Arnold Paul remained at large Friday and officials believe he's headed to Sunnyside, the town where his parents live," the AP story adds.

Media reports indicate wide incredulity from local residents and officials that an "insane killer" [...] was allowed to go to the fair in the first place.

Police firearms instructor accidentally guns down civilian during a classroom demonstration.

From Daily Mail:

A police firearms instructor accidentally gunned down a civilian worker during a classroom demonstration after failing a training course, a court heard.

PC David Micklethwaite, 52, blasted telephone operator Keith Tilbury at point blank range after mistakenly loading a live round into a 'Dirty Harry' style .44 Magnum revolver.

The victim was taken to hospital where doctors performed life-saving surgery on his bowel and kidney.

Mr Tilbury, 51, did not regain consciousness for 12 days, and has never returned to work.

Micklethwaite, a firearms instructor with Thames Valley Police, faces a massive fine after admitting breaching Health and Safety laws.

He shot Mr Tilbury while attempting to show civilian recruits how the chamber spins in a Magnum made famous by Clint Eastwood.

JRR Tolkien trained as British spy.

Elvish or.... Nazispeak?!! From the Telegraph:

Tolkien, one of his generation's most respected linguists, was ''earmarked'' to crack Nazi codes in the event that Germany declared war.

Intelligence chiefs singled him and a 'cadre' of other intellectuals to work at Bletchley Park, the codebreaking centre in Buckinghamshire.

Its staff - which included Alan Turing, the gay codebreaker - would later decipher the 'impenetrable' Enigma machines.

This saved Britain from German conquest by allowing the Navy to intercept and destroy Hitler's U-Boats.

According to previously unseen records, Tolkien trained with the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS).

He spent three days at their London HQ in March 1939 - six months before the outbreak of the Second World War and just 18 months after the publication of his first book, The Hobbit.

But although he was ''keen'', Tolkien - a professor of English literature at Oxford University - declined a £500-a-year offer to become a full-time recruit.

The reasons behind his decision are not known.

But he went on to write the Lord of the Rings trilogy, one of the most popular and influential works in 20th-Century literature.

5 popular zombie survival tactics... that will get you killed!

Great article from Cracked on why everything we know about zombie survival is wrong. Must-read.

Everybody has a zombie contingency plan. A unique and ingenious stratagem they've spent hours contemplating that ensures they and their loved ones will stay alive in the event of a zombie apocalypse. The only problem? You've got the exact same essential plan as everybody else: go raid the gun store, get out of the cities as fast as possible, find a sturdy base to fortify and hole up in, use a melee weapon whenever possible to conserve ammo and--if the worst does come to pass and you find yourself facing down a crowd of the undead--take your time, aim carefully and make every shot a head shot.

Jesus, you're not going to last five minutes. Here's why.

Runner forced to take gender test is a woman... and a man.

Missed this one, which was sent in by Coozer-Phile Duff. From NY Daily News:

Tests show that controversial runner Caster Semenya is a woman ...and a man!

The 18-year-old South African champ has no womb or ovaries and her testosterone levels are more than three times higher than those of a normal female, according to reports.

The tests, ordered by The International Association of Athletics Federations after Semenya's 800-meter victory in the World Championships, determined she's a hermaphrodite - having both male and female organs.

Semenya could be stripped of the gold medal she won in Berlin last month and her competitive future is in limbo, according to Australia's Daily Telegraph.

The athletics governing body is also expected to advise her to have surgery to fix the potentially deadly condition, the paper reported. The IAAF would not comment on the results that have yet to be released.

According to a source with knowledge of the IAAF tests, Semenya has internal testes - the male sexual organs that produce testosterone.

Testosterone is a hormone responsible for building muscles and for producing body hair and a deep voice.

Confirmation of the test results is sure to stoke the controversy that erupted after the university student's sensational track triumph.

She has been embraced in her home country - where she was declared "our girl" - and appeared on a magazine cover after a feminine makeover.

"God made me the way I am and I accept myself. I am who I am and I'm proud of myself," she told You Magazine, which ran a photo spread.

Schoolchildren vote 13-1 to slaughter lamb.

From News.com.au:

A group of schoolchildren who reared a lamb from birth and named it Marcus have overridden objections by parents and rights activists and voted to send the animal to slaughter.

Marcus the six-month-old lamb has now been culled, the head teacher of the primary school in Kent confirmed yesterday, after the school's council - a 14-member group of children aged six to 11 - voted 13-1 to have him killed.

The decision has provoked fury among animal-loving celebrities, animal and human rights campaigners and the parents of some of the children, and led to threats against Lydd primary school and its teachers, according to a member of staff.

About 250 children at the school take part in a program designed to teach them about rearing and breeding animals.

The educational farm was started this year, with Marcus being hand-fed by the children.

[...] Despite that, the school said there had been overwhelming support among the children, the staff and most of the parents to have Marcus - a castrated male who could not have been used for breeding - sent to the slaughterhouse.

But opponents branded it heartless and cruel, with animal rights campaigners asking why Marcus could not have been used to teach the children about wool, and human rights campaigners worried about the emotional impact of Marcus's death on the children.

Student fells intruder with samurai sword.

From CBS News:

Baltimore police say a Johns Hopkins University undergraduate student armed with a samurai sword killed an intruder he discovered in his garage.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says campus security and an off-duty city officer responding to a call for a suspicious person heard screams to call police around 1:20 a.m. Tuesday in the 300 block of University Parkway.

Guglielmi says the student told a man he found inside his garage to leave and the man accosted him. That's when Guglielmi says the student defended himself, cutting off the man's hand and causing a severe laceration to his upper body.

He says the man died on the scene, but police are not yet releasing his name.

Police are interviewing the student and his three roommates and are talking to prosecutors about whether to file charges.

Spineless Senate cuts funding for ACORN after bad publicity.

ACORN helps hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans find affordable housing, an increasing need in this economy. Gosh, wonder why right-wingers would do anything to derail a nonprofit that works to improve living conditions and voter engagement in low-income and minority neighborhoods..... From a gleeful FOX:

The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, a community organization under fire in several voter-registration fraud cases.

The 83-7 vote would deny housing and community grant funding to ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The action came as the group is suffering from bad publicity after a duo of conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp released hidden-camera videos in which ACORN employees in Baltimore gave advice on house-buying and how to account on tax forms for the woman's income. Two other videos, aired on the FOX News Channel, depict similar situations in ACORN offices in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C.

The Senate's move would mean that ACORN would not be able to win HUD grants for programs such as counseling low-income people on how to get mortgages and for fair housing education and outreach.

Former GOP lawmaker charged with murder.

Clearly, this is ACORN's fault. From Huffington Post:

Lexington police charged former Kentucky lawmaker Steve Nunn with murder Monday in the death of his ex-girlfriend.

Nunn, 56, was also charged with violation of a protective order. Lexington police said warrants were served on Nunn after he was taken Monday to the Hart County jail.

Nunn had been under guard at The Medical Center of Bowling Green since Friday, the same day Amanda Ross, 29, a Department of Insurance employee, was shot to death outside her Lexington town house.

Authorities found Nunn hours after the shooting at the Cosby cemetery in Hart County with what appeared to be self-inflicted wrist wounds. Nunn's father, former Gov. Louie Nunn, and mother are buried in the cemetery.

Nunn also faces six counts of wanton endangerment for allegedly brandishing a .38-caliber handgun when he was found at the cemetery, about 95 miles southwest of the scene of the shooting.

Nunn ran unsuccessfully for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2003. He lost a bid for re-election to the state House in 2006 after 15 years as a state representative.

He returned to state government in 2007 as deputy secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, but was put on administrative leave in February after being charged with domestic violence for allegedly striking Ross. He resigned in March.

Scientists create flying mice.

Soar, my children, soar! Bust out of your cages and wreak your revenge!!

Scientists have now levitated mice using magnetic fields.

Other researchers have made live frogs and grasshoppers float in mid-air before, but such research with mice, being closer biologically to humans, could help in studies to counteract bone loss due to reduced gravity over long spans of time, as might be expected in deep space missions or on the surfaces of other planets.

Scientists working on behalf of NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals, with a space inside warm enough at room temperature and large enough at 2.6 inches wide (6.6 cm) for tiny creatures to float comfortably in during experiments.

The researchers first levitated a young mouse, just three-week-old and weighing 10 grams. It appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something.

"It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented," said researcher Yuanming Liu, a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating.

More here.

Dogs were domesticated for meat.

Interesting article submitted by Coozer-Phile Larissa (a cat lover). From Live Science:

These days, it may seem dogs became house-trained to fit into stylish bags and wear diamond-studded collars. But a new genetic study puts forth a less refined explanation: Wolves may have first been domesticated in southern China for their meat, as reported in a New York Times article.

The study, using samples of so-called mitochondrial DNA from dogs around the world, showed all dogs belonged to one lineage, indicating a single domestication event. (If wolves were domesticated in various regions, the team would expect to find more than one lineage.)

They found the highest genetic diversity in dogs from southern China, suggesting this region was the point of origin as a species tends to lose diversity as it spreads. The results, published last week in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, also suggest such domestication occurred about 11,000 to 14,000 years ago, a time when hunter-gatherers first settled down in China's communities.

Study researcher Peter Savolainen of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm said the wolves probably domesticated themselves when they started scavenging around garbage dumps in these human settlements. Later, humans likely bred the dogs for their meat, he suggested. In fact, scientists have found dog bones with cut marks, supporting the dog-meat claim.

Suspect returns to robbed home to ask victim out on date.

I guess he stole everything but her heart... From Breitbart:

Ohio police say a suspect in a robbery was arrested when he returned to the home about two hours later to ask the victim out on a date.

Police say 20-year-old Stephfon Bennett was among three men who robbed a couple late Sunday.

Columbus police Sgt. Sean Laird says the woman recognized Bennett as one of the robbers when he returned to ask her out. She had a relative call police.

Police say Bennett was arrested in front of the home. He was arraigned Tuesday on a charge of aggravated robbery and was being held in the Franklin County jail on $100,000 bail.

Bed sharing bad for health, relationships.

From BBC:

Couples should consider sleeping apart for the good of their health and relationship, say experts.

Sleep specialist Dr Neil Stanley told the British Science Festival how bed sharing can cause rows over snoring and duvet-hogging and robs precious sleep.

One study found that, on average, couples suffered 50% more sleep disturbances if they shared a bed.

Dr Stanley, who sleeps separately from his wife, points out that historically we were never meant to share our beds.

He said the modern tradition of the marital bed only began with the industrial revolution, when people moving to overcrowded towns and cities found themselves short of living space.

Women have sex out of boredom, bribery for chores.

From News.com.au:

For every woman expecting the earth to move, there are two with more practical motives.

From relieving boredom, to keeping the peace or curing a headache, women have sex for many reasons but romance and passion come rather low on the list, a new book has revealed.

One woman even admitted to having sex just so her husband would put the rubbish out.

"Research has shown most men find most women at least somewhat sexually attractive, whereas most women do not find most men sexually attractive at all," Why Women Have Sex authors Cindy Meston and David Buss said.

Having apparently discounted physical attraction, the 1000 women interviewed by the Texas University professors gave a huge range of reasons for sleeping with a man.

One said she did it for a spiritual experience, proclaiming: "It's the closest thing to God."

But mostly the explanations were far more mundane, with 84 per cent admitting to having sex just to ensure a quiet life or to bargain for household chores. One woman said: "I have sex to relieve the boredom because it's easier than fighting. Plus it gives me something to do."

Coozer-Bits.

Some stuff from the past few days I forgot to put up..

Sad: Wolf hunting now legal in US.

Duh: Imprisoning innocent people starting to get costly for Texas.

Yipes: NYC synagogue arms and trains itself to take on terrorists.

Science: Lasers turn light into sound.

Sad: Lenny Dykstra so bad off, he's stealing his own stuff.

D'oh: In other Mutts news, Jerry Koosman gets 6 months for tax evasion.

Awesome: Large thighs may protect heart.

Creepy: UK to be invaded by moth that thinks it's a hummingbird.

Zombie Watch: Human brain could be replicated in 10 years.

Arctic temperatures are warmest in 2,000 years.

From LiveScience:

Arctic air temperatures in the 1990s were the warmest in the last 2,000 years and were a result of rising greenhouse gas levels, a new study concludes.

The findings, detailed in the Sept. 4 issue of the journal Science, also suggest that if it weren’t for these manmade pollutants, temperatures around the North Pole would actually be cooling as a result of natural climate patterns.

"This result is particularly important because the Arctic, perhaps more than any other region on Earth, is facing dramatic impacts from climate change," said study team member David Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "This study provides us with a long-term record that reveals how greenhouse gases from human activities are overwhelming the Arctic's natural climate system."

UFO filmed for 40 minutes by Chinese scientists.

From Daily Mail:

Could this finally be it - 40 minutes of undisputed proof that we are not alone?

Scientists at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, China believe it is a real possibility that this footage of an unidentified flying object is the evidence we have all been waiting for.

They have confirmed 40 minutes of footage of the object was captured during this summer's solar eclipse - and that research has already started on a year-long investigation to find out what it is.

And the scientists were not the only ones to capture the walnut-shaped object on camera.

The clear, daylight sighting occurred over Deqing in Guandong Province. Dozens of students claimed to have seen the object sailing through the air during a rooftop observation of the July 22 solar eclipse.

At least nine of the students photographed it, producing such incredible images as those here.

Japan's new first lady claims she's been to Venus.

This is actually pretty normal for Japan. From Ananova:

Japan's new first lady claims she has visited Venus - and met Tom Cruise in a previous life.

Miyuki Hatoyama, 66, a former dancer, believes she was abducted by aliens as she slept one night 20 years ago, then whisked off into space.

She told the story in a book entitled Very Strange Things I've Encountered, reports The Guardian.

"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green," she wrote.

By coincidence, Miyuki's husband, Japan's new prime minister Yukio Hatoyama, has been nicknamed 'the Alien' by his parliamentary colleagues for his otherworldly manner and prominent eyes.

Hatoyama appears unruffled by his wife's idiosyncrasies, saying: "I feel relieved when I get home. She is like an energy-refuelling base."

Teens film sex act, fearing Large Hadron Collider doomsday.

Maybe they thought it was called the Large Hardon Collider? From News.com.au:

High school students allegedly filmed sex acts while believing that the Large Hadron Collider was about to end the world.

At least three teenagers from a Brisbane state high school are being investigated by police for allegedly filming sex acts on a mobile phone and distributing it to other students, the Courier-Mail reports.

Two students aged between 13 and 15 performed the sex acts in the toilets during school hours several months ago.

The incident occurred after the launch of the particle accelerator ring, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which some dubbed a "doomsday device", sources told The Courier-Mail.

It is understood the girl wanted to lose her virginity to the boy - believing that the world was about to end.

Another student filmed the sex acts on his mobile phone without the girl's knowledge and then circulated it around the school and the wider community via bluetooth.

Rush might return in 2010.

ZOMG! From Noisecreep:

Rush fans take note -- the legendary progressive rock band could be back on the road with a new album in 2010. The trio would love to work again with Nick Raskulinecz, who co-produced the last studio album, 'Snakes & Arrows,' but he'll have to hang on a bit longer.

"I think Nick calls the office once a week," laughs guitarist Alex Lifeson, "just to make sure we're still planning on getting back to work at some point."

Lifeson, lead singer-bassist Geddy Lee and drummer/lyricist Neil Peart played 120 shows behind 'Snakes & Arrows' and "were pretty beat by the end of it," says Lifeson. "We'd been working constantly for the last eight years or so, and really needed a break, and decided to take a year off. We're sort of coming to the end of that period.

"Neil and his wife had a baby just a couple of weeks ago, so he's asked if we can just wait a little bit until he gets settled and see how he feels about getting back to work or when to get back to work. So we're sort of playing it open right now."

Lifeson says he's been doing a little writing at home in Toronto, "just getting myself back into the groove again with recording and stuff like that. I would guess that sometime in the early fall we would get back together and start writing again, and then hopefully by next summer, we'd be ready to tour."

Trivia: MuchMusic launched 25 years ago with Rush's "The Enemy Within."

Experience to extremes! From CTV:

It was Aug. 31, 1984, when J.D. Roberts, his hair styled in a bushy mullet, and Christopher Ward -- sporting pleated pants, a shiny grey jacket and a goofy smile -- introduced "Canada's first 24-hour music channel" with the help of some decidedly low-budget special effects and the promise of upcoming videos by the Spoons, Human League and Culture Club.

Yes, it's been nearly 25 years since MuchMusic launched with Rush's "The Enemy Within," followed by an interview with singer Geddy Lee and a Day One playlist that also included the Fixx, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Yes and Slade.

OK, so maybe one or two of those bands didn't exactly stand the test of time. [WTF?! --Coozer] But hey, in those early days, no one really thought the upstart station would ever survive for 25 years of scrutiny anyway.

"I didn't think about it lasting 25 minutes," Ward told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview.

"Maybe because it was so overwhelming and so new, we weren't thinking about what it was going to become. It was just trying to keep it as entertaining as possible in the moment."

A quarter-century later, those moments -- created spontaneously, with no scripts to speak of -- have left an indelible impact on those who grew up basking in Much's glow, the music fans who curated self-recorded VHS cassette compilations and scribbled down the names of tunes played during the station's countdown of top videos.

Egg industry tosses millions of alive baby male chicks into grinders.

I had no idea about this. Must Read:

An animal rights group publicized a video Tuesday showing unwanted chicks being tossed alive into a grinder at an Iowa plant and accused egg hatcheries of being "perhaps the cruelest industry" in the world.

The undercover video was shot by Chicago-based Mercy for Animals at a hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, over a two-week period in May and June. The video was first obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

"We have to ask ourselves if these were puppies and kittens being dropped into grinders, would we find that acceptable?" asked Nathan Runkle, the group's executive director, at a news conference in Des Moines. "I don't think that most people would."

The group said that tossing male chicks, which have little value because they can't lay eggs or be raised quickly enough to be raised profitably for meat, into grinders is common industry practice. United Egg Producers, a trade group for U.S. egg farmers, confirmed that.

The hatchery is owned by West Des Moines-based Hy-Line North America and is one of many operations in Iowa, the nation's leading egg producer.

The video, shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy for Animals employee who got a job at the plant, shows a Hy-Line worker sorting through a conveyor belt of chirping chicks, flipping some of them into a chute like a poker dealer flips cards.

These chicks, which a narrator says are males, are then shown being dropped alive into a grinding machine.

In other parts of the video, a chick is shown dying on the factory floor amid a heap of egg shells after falling through a sorting machine. Another chick, also still alive, is seen lying on the floor after getting scalded by a wash cycle, according to the video narrator.

Hy-Line said the video "appears to show an inappropriate action and violation of our animal welfare policies," referring to chicks on the factory floor.

But the company also noted that "instantaneous euthanasia" — a reference to killing of male chicks by the grinder — is a standard practice supported by the animal veterinary and scientific community.

Company spokesman Tom Jorgensen said Tuesday an investigation was continuing, and once it's completed the company would release more information.

Runkle acknowledged that his group's ultimate goal was to get people to stop eating eggs. He said he believe many would refuse to eat eggs if they knew what happened to male chicks.

"The egg industry is perhaps the cruelest industry on the face of the planet," Runkle said.

Mercy for Animals also sent letters to the nation's 50 largest grocery store chains, including Walmart, Whole Foods, Safeway, Harris Teeter and Trader Joe's, asking them to include a label on egg cartons that says, "Warning: Male chicks are ground-up alive by the egg industry."

A spokesman for United Egg Producers called the proposal "almost a joke." Spokesman Mitch Head said Mercy for Animals had no credible authority, as well as questionable motives. "This is a group which espouses no egg consumption by anyone — so that is clearly their motive."

Mercy for Animals estimated 200 million male chicks are killed a year, which the United Egg Producers also confirmed.

"There is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens," Head said. "If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we're happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need."

Using a grinder, Head said, "is the most instantaneous way to euthanize chicks."

There is no federal law that ensures the humane euthanasia of animals on farms or hatcheries, according to Jonathan Lovvorn, vice president and chief counsel of the Humane Society of the United States.

The Humane Society also says that virtually all egg farms, even those that sell cage-free eggs, get their hens from hatcheries that kill their male chicks.

Hy-Line says on its Web site that its Iowa facility produces 33.4 million chicks. Based on that figure, Mercy for Animals estimates a similar number of male chicks are killed at the facility each year. Hy-Line did not comment on that estimate.

Runkle, of Mercy for Animals, said most people would be shocked to learn that 200 million chicks are killed a year.

"Is this justifiable just for cheap eggs?" he said.

As to more humane alternatives to disposing of male chicks, Runkle said the whole system is inherently flawed.

"The entire industrial hatchery system subjects these birds to stress, fear and pain from the first day," he said.

Slow Russian customs officials kill over 4,000 rare, exotic fish.

From Gadling, courtesy of JenK.

Slow Russian customs officials accidentally killed over 4000 tropical fish when they failed to clear a cargo shipment in a timely manner.

The shipment weighed in at 18 tons, and was scheduled for delivery to the new Sochi Discovery World aquarium, the largest in the country.

The shipment cost just under half a million Dollars, and had been sent from China. The head of the aquarium went on record to day that the loss was an "atrocity unseen anywhere else in the world".

Temperatures in the black sea resort of Sochi were in the 80's, and even though tropical fish enjoy warmer waters, the hot sun warmed things up too much for the fish to survive. You'll be hearing a lot more of Sochi in coming years, as they are hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Nun goes on booze-fueled car rampage.

Jeez, even the nuns on Long Island drive drunk. Damn that delicious blood of Christ! From NY Post:

A Long Island nun's bad habit has her in trouble with police -- who say she guzzled half a bottle of gin and went on a wild ride that nearly killed a group of children, officials said.

Sister Lauren Hanley, 68, of the St. Frances de Chantal Church in Wantagh, is going to have to say a lot of Hail Marys to make up for her allegedly booze-fueled hell ride Tuesday.

Authorities say she narrowly missed a group of kids, sideswiped parked cars and finally plowed into a tree.

The naughty nun registered a 0.18 blood-alcohol level on a breath test -- more than twice the legal limit of 0.08, prosecutors said.

"They teach us about drinking and driving in school, and to see a nun do it is surprising," said 11-year-old Alex Stein. The Catholic schoolboy said he had to run for his life when Hanley drove a 2006 Toyota Corolla owned by the Sisters of St. Joseph up onto his lawn.

Paris mayoral feud blocks street.

This sounds like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. From BBC:

There has been traffic chaos in two Paris suburbs after their feuding mayors declared the same busy road one-way, but in opposite directions.

Patrick Balkany, the conservative mayor of Levallois-Perret, initially made the D909 one-way to reduce the amount of commuter traffic through his district.

But Gilles Catoire, the Socialist mayor of neighbouring Clichy-la-Garenne, said this increased congestion in his area.

He made his section of the road one-way in the opposite direction.

With the contradictory road-signs in place, the unsurprising result was gridlock, prompting the deployment of municipal and national police to direct traffic away from the area.

"What Clichy has done is not a long-term solution, but it is a response to a unilateral decision by the town of Levallois," Clichy's deputy mayor, Alain Fournier, was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

But Mr Balkany insisted: "The mayor of Clichy has taken a position that is unreasonable and is hurting his own constituents."

Thousands of motorists pass between the two suburbs each day on their way into and out of the French capital.

Chubby Hubby supports gay marriage.

My all-time favorite ice cream has just turned gay. Which is apropos since I've popped many a chubby over Chubby Hubby. From Huffington Post:

To show support for a new Vermont law legalizing gay marriage, the iconic ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's has renamed its popular "Chubby Hubby" flavor. The new flavor, which Ben & Jerry's is producing in partnership with Freedom To Marry, will be called "Hubby Hubby."

For the next 30 days, Hubby Hubby will be available across Vermont. The product's packaging will feature two men in tuxedos getting married. Here's the Boston Herald:

"In the meantime, a wedding-themed Ben & Jerry's truck will hand out free "Hubby Hubby" across Vermont today. Scheduled stops include the Vermont Capitol, where lawmakers passed a gay-marriage law that takes effect today. Ben & Jerry's six Vermont ice cream parlors also plan to sell special "Hubby Hubby" sundaes during September."

Israel's wealthiest woman claims to see the future.

From a skeptical Washington Post:

[...] But the biggest jolt comes from the woman in the executive chair: Arison -- billionaire ($2.7 by Forbes's most recent estimate), perhaps the richest woman in the Middle East, a major force in Israeli philanthropy -- claims that she can see the future.

This is much bigger than a parlor trick. In her new book published this summer in Israel, the 51-year-old Miami native says she felt the Indonesian tsunami sweeping over the land two months before it happened and sensed Hurricane Katrina pummeling New Orleans. In an interview, Arison says she also "saw the writing on the wall" before the global economic crash. Reading about Arison's extrasensory perception makes you ache for a heads-up, maybe a blog entry or a tweet or a phone call to Brownie or Greenspan or somebody who might have helped.

Arison explains that she has finally dropped the fear that has held her back from doing more about what she has perceived. Armed with the insight gained through work with Florida-based psychiatrist Brian Weiss, a proponent of regression therapy and the exploration of (take your pick) deep memories or past lives, she says she is ready to go public with her visions and bring together her spiritual and business goals.

Coolio gives performance at deli for free food.

Big deal, I'd sing to a crowd for a seven-layer burrito and a can of Bud. From Exclaim News, and thanks to Dan F.:

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Take, for example, rapper Coolio, who once sat perched upon the top of the world with hits like “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Fantastic Voyage” but is now enjoying the life of a C-list celeb. Earlier this year, he was arrested for possession of crack cocaine and a crack pipe, and if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s been revealed that Coolio recently performed at a deli, who paid him partially in chicken.

According to a report from TimesCall [via The Daily Swarm], Coolio recently performed at a restaurant called the Deli Zone in Longmont, CO.

As Deli Zone owner Jeremy King explains, his hope was that the rapper would help turn his restaurant into a reputable venue. “My hope is that Coolio is going to give us some recognition,” said Jeremy King. “I’m hoping to get a cool reputation as a cool place to come see music.”

What made it even better for the restaurant, however, was Coolio’s meagre demands. Allegedly, Coolio only asked for “$3,000, a bucket of chicken and a bottle of Patrón (he likes the Silver variety).” Maybe he does weddings too!

Cellphones cause brain tumors, says new report.

Telecom is the new tobacco. Article here, and download the report here (PDF).

A new report, "Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone," was released today by a collaborative of international EMF activists. Groups affiliated with the report include Powerwatch and the Radiation Research Trust in the U.K., and in the U.S., EMR Policy Institute, ElectromagenticHealth.org and The Peoples Initiative Foundation.

The exposé discusses research on cellphones and brain tumors and concludes:

- There is a risk of brain tumors from cellphone use;
- Telecom funded studies underestimate the risk of brain tumors, and;
- Children have larger risks than adults for brain tumors.

This report, sent to government leaders and media today, details eleven design flaws of the 13-country, Telecom-funded Interphone study. The Interphone study, begun in 1999, was intended to determine the risks of brain tumors, but its full publication has been held up for years. Components of this study published to date reveal what the authors call a 'systemic-skew', greatly underestimating brain tumor risk.

The design flaws include categorizing subjects who used portable phones (which emit the same microwave radiation as cellphones,) as 'unexposed'; exclusion of many types of brain tumors; exclusion of people who had died, or were too ill to be interviewed, as a consequence of their brain tumor; and exclusion of children and young adults, who are more vulnerable.

Disney to buy Marvel.

This is of course awful, except for a possible Iron Man vs. Wall-E match-up. From CNN:

The Walt Disney Co. announced Monday that it has agreed to purchase comic book and action hero company Marvel Entertainment for about $4 billion.

The deal pairs a comic book publisher that just recently began to produce its own movies with one of the largest international media companies in the world.

"This is perfect from a strategic perspective," Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger told CNNMoney.com. "This treasure trove of over 5,000 characters offers Disney the ability to do what we do best."

On a conference call with investors, Iger said the deal will allow Disney to sell Marvel's vast array of characters and properties across different media platforms and in many more markets. For instance, Iger said that Disney's Pixar animation unit was excited about the opportunities that a Marvel acquisition could yield.

"Spider-Man will appear in 'A Bug's Life' sequel," joked Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente.

The deal would give Disney some content that appeals more to boys, a market it has been looking to develop, Iger said. Disney XD, a television station and video game unit, already had a deal with Marvel to use some of the comic book company's action heroes in its content.

"Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses," said Marvel Chief Executive Ike Perlmutter. "This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney's tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world."

Club goer beats self up, blames bouncer.

From NY Post:

A Queens man claimed a bouncer bloodied him when he got tossed from a strip club -- but a surveillance camera there told a different tale.

Khuram Murtaza, 34, called cops after he was tossed out of the Rouge Gentleman's Club, on 58th Street near 55th Avenue, shortly before 1 a.m. Tuesday.

When cops arrived at the Maspeth club, his face was bloody and bruised and he claimed the bouncer had beaten him, sources said.

The bouncer, however, claimed he didn't hit the man and provided proof from the club's surveillance video, the sources said.

Cops viewed the video and it clearly showed Murtaza smashing his face against a car, cutting his own nose, according to court papers.

Murtaza was charged with falsely reporting an incident, said a spokeswoman for Queens DA Richard Brown.

If blood is red, why are veins blue?

I always wondered this, even before I became a sexy vampire. From Live Science:

Blood is red when it has oxygen in it. Without oxygen, it turns blue. So here's what happens:

The heart pumps blood to your lungs to pick up oxygen. The oxygen-rich blood is then pumped out to your body through your arteries. It's red at this point.

From your arteries, the blood flows through tiny blood vessels called capillaries, where it gives up its oxygen to the body's tissues. Your lips have a lot of these capillaries, which is why they're red.

Your blood, now exhausted of its oxygen and turning blue, then returns to your heart through your veins.

Iraq horrifically torturing, killing gay people.

Awful. From Gay City News:

In a 67-page report released on August 17, Human Rights Watch (HRW) — the most prestigious international human rights watchdog organization — has detailed an intensive “sexual cleansing” campaign of murder, torture, kidnapping, beatings, and blackmail carried out against those perceived to be gay in Iraq.

The report, entitled “They Want Us Exterminated: Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq,” is based on interviews recently conducted by an HRW team in Iraq with more than 50 men who identified as gay, as well as with doctors, journalists, United Nations aid officials, and others.

It says doctors and morgue attendants routinely see horrifically mutilated bodies of gay men. HRW said doctors have confirmed an earlier Gay City News report of men being killed by having their anuses glued shut before being force-fed laxatives, causing painful and slow death.

Since March 2006, Gay City News has reported, in a series of articles, on the anti-gay murder campaign by fundamentalist death squads targeting Iraqi LGBT people. The HRW report confirms the deaths of hundreds of Iraqi sexual and gender dissidents in the wake of the security chaos created by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, but it is largely focused on the changing face of the sexual cleansing campaign, which has intensified greatly since the beginning of this year.

Typical of the heartrending testimonies gathered by HRW is that from one man, identified as Hamid, 35, who developed a speech impediment and went into hiding after the murder of his lover of ten years. Speaking through tears to HRW just three weeks after his partner’s murder, Hamid said: “They came to take my partner at his parents’ home. Four armed men barged into the house, masked and wearing black. They asked for him by name; they insulted him and took him in front of his parents. All that, I heard about later from his family. He was found in the neighborhood the day after. They had thrown his corpse in the garbage. His genitals were cut off and a piece of his throat was ripped out.”

Hamid continued, “Since then, I’ve been unable to speak properly. I feel as if my life is pointless now. I don’t have friends other than those you see; for years it has just been my boyfriend and myself in that little bubble, by ourselves. I have no family now — I cannot go back to them. I have a death warrant on me. I feel the best thing to do is just to kill myself. In Iraq, murderers and thieves are respected more than gay people.”

Mexico City bans plastic bags.

From last week, but forgot to post it. What's interesting is how more progressive and proactive places like India and China are than the US in this area. From CNN:

Mexico City's thousands of stores went green Wednesday, as amended ordinances on solid waste now outlaw businesses from giving out thin plastic bags that are not biodegradable.

The law affects all stores, production facilities and service providers within the Federal District, which encompasses the city limits. Nearly 9 million people live inside the district and another 10 million reside in surrounding communities that make up greater Mexico City.

Mexico City becomes the second large metropolitan area in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw the bags. San Francisco in March 2007 enacted an ordinance that gave supermarkets six months and large chain pharmacies about a year to phase out the bags. Los Angeles is set to impose a ban if the state of California does not enact a statewide 25-cent fee per bag by July.

About 90 percent of the bags used in the United States are not recycled.

Bans and other restrictions on plastic bags are in place in several countries.

China has adopted a strict limit, reducing litter and eliminating the use of 40 billion bags, the World Watch Institute said, citing government estimates. Although compliance has been spotty, violation of the law carries a possible fine of 10,000 yuan ($1,463), World Watch said.

In Tanzania, selling the bags carries a maximum six-month jail sentence and a fine of 1.5 million shilling ($1,137).

Mumbai, India, outlawed the bags in 2000 and cities in Australia, Italy, South Africa and Taiwan have imposed bans or surcharges. Ireland reported cutting use of the bags by 90 percent after imposing a fee on each one.

Robot cats purrrrfect for killing us all.

From Yahoo! News circa last week:

Robot cats and other man-made companions could help Britain's elderly, according to a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering. The report recommends that autonomous devices could provide a variety of different services to older people, ranging from basic companionship to medical monitoring. Devices with the appropriate sensors could act as fire detectors, or flash lights when doorbells or phones ring.

"This is not constrained by the technological possibility of it so much as by the desire to do it -- and that is bound up with all sorts of social factors," said Professor Will Stewart of Southampton University, who contributed to the report, speaking to Reuters.

"It is not a complete replacement for your kid calling you once a week. What you want is continuous attention and that is very difficult," said Stewart.

Maybe older Brits could start with the Dream Cat Venus, an autonomous robotic feline that is already available for about $110 in Japan.

I'm also interested in how the right device could extend the companionship offered by an organic pet. Consider Huggable, a robotic teddy bear developed by MIT that seems to fit the bill specified by the Royal Academy of Engineering. It has full-body sensors for electric field, temperature and force, inertial measurement unit, cameras embedded in the eyes and microphones in the ears.

If you think that this is a rather science-fictional scenario, you're right. In Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? robotic pets are routinely used by most people.

Nixon gave Ted Kennedy bodyguards -- to spy on his personal life.

From the Guardian via Truthout:

Washington - Richard Nixon considered Ted Kennedy such a threat that he tried to catch him cheating on his wife, even ordering aides to plant secret service bodyguards to spy on the senator's behaviour.

"Do you have anybody in the secret service that you can get to?" the US president asked his aide John Ehrlichman in a stark series of Oval Office conversations about Kennedy before the 1972 election. "Yeah, yeah," Ehrlichman replied.

"Plant one," Nixon said. "Plant two guys on him. This could be very useful."

Nixon made clear that the secret service protection afforded Kennedy before the 1972 election would be rescinded after. Then, said the president, "if he gets shot, it's too damn bad". His aides disdainfully referred to Kennedy supporters as "super-swinger jet-set types".

Tape recordings from the Nixon White House betray a preoccupation with the Kennedy mystique and how that might be used against the Republican president by the last surviving brother, who died on Tuesday aged 77. Nixon wanted a sharp and private eye kept on Kennedy's movements after the Chappaquiddick scandal, hoping to catch him with a woman other than his wife, Joan.

Nixon's men had investigators tail Kennedy on a Hawaii vacation and when he was at his Martha's Vineyard haunts.

Mortified, they told Nixon that Joan Kennedy wanted to wear "hot pants" to a White House function until her husband talked her out of it. But Ted's behaviour? In the aftermath of his scandal he was careful not to step out of line, the tapes suggest.

Thai woman jailed for 18 for "royal slur."

From Raw Story:

A Thai court Friday convicted and sentenced a female “Red Shirt” protester to 18 years in prison for insulting the country’s revered monarchy during anti-government rallies, an official said.

Daranee Charncherngsilapakul, 46, a hardcore supporter of Thailand’s ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was found guilty of making speeches that were insulting to the Thai royal family.

The judge at Bangkok’s main criminal court said her speeches at Sanam Luang park in the capital during three pro-Thaksin rallies in June and July last year were against the law of lese majeste, the court official told AFP.

“The court convicted the defendant on three counts and sentenced her for six years on each count,” she said.

“Although the defendant testified that she did not intend to insult the monarchy or make the public believe her, she could not escape her wrongdoing,” the verdict said.

Lese majeste — insulting the monarchy — is a serious charge in Thailand. Anyone can file a complaint, and police are duty-bound to investigate it in a country where the king is treated with almost religious adulation.

Ultra rare tiger dismembered at zoo, sold on black market.

Leave it to JenK for the really sad, disturbing global news. (Thanks!) Sad item!

In a shocking case that has zoologists baffled, an ultra rare Sumatran tiger was killed and dismembered at a zoo in Indonesia. There are only 400 of the critically endangered tigers left in the wild--but that's not even the most appalling part of the story.

Well, it might be, but this is pretty despicable, too: just over 5 years ago, the Zoological Society of London had used this particular tiger to help train Indonesian veterinarians and zoologists. And one of those very veterinarians may be responsible for killing it, skinning it, dismembering it, and putting it up for sale on the black market.

US military deaths in Iraq War at 4,335.

Just a reminder that we still have young people dying everyday in an unnecessary war. From ABC News:

As of Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009, at least 4,335 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The figure includes nine military civilians killed in action. At least 3,466 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

[...] The British military has reported 179 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, one death each.

Is the next GOP obsession zombie attacks?

From Raw Story:

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann took a leap into fantasy politics on Tuesday, suggesting that the current Republican obsession with health care reform creating “death panels” could easily lead into an all-out panic over zombies.

[...] At the same time, conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has begun describing supporters of health care reform as zombies. “They are having to send out multiple e-mails, war rooms, websites to instruct their brain-dead zombies on how to go out and show support for this abomination!” Limbaugh wrote recently. “It’s the Night of the Living Dead, in the daytime! Obama zombies marching around with little instructions and pamphlets and manuals.”

“The evidence is all around us,” Olbermann concluded, “and it’s hungry for our brains.” He then turned to former Saturday Night Live writer Max Brooks, known as “the Studs Terkel of zombie journalism.”

“Could we see the GOP using the zombie defense against Democrats?” Olbermann asked.

“If they did it would be counterproductive,” Brooks replied, “because Republicans would like a zombie outbreak.”

“During a zombie outbreak society would collapse,” Brooks explained. “The government would implode. We would all have to retreat to our homes surrounded by our guns. Sounds pretty right-wing to me.”

“This is in lockstep with the Republican strategy,” continued Brooks. “Right now, zombies are hot, they’re hip, they’re now — especially among young people. So what do Republicans do when something is hot and hip and now among young people? They attack it.”

Olbermann, however, got in the last word, suggesting yet another reason why Republicans might look favorably on a zombie attack. “If the zombies are looking for brains, they’ll only eat the Democrats.”

Scientists create monkeys with DNA of three parents.

From Daily Mail:

Scientists have produced four baby monkeys who each have three biological parents.

They used an IVF procedure designed to stop the spread of incurable inherited diseases.

Scientists believe the breakthrough could lead to the first genetically engineered children within a few years.

It has provoked an ethical storm, however. Critics say it is a step towards an era of hybrid children and warn that it erodes the sanctity of life.

The technique is intended to help women who carry genetic diseases. It involves transferring healthy DNA from the mother's egg cell into an egg donated by another woman.

Children conceived by the technique would inherit DNA from three sources - their mother, the donor and their father.

Teabagging case results in Australian military court being declared invalid.

I always knew teabagging would be the end of the rule of law. From News.com.au:

The new Australian Military Court, a centrepiece of reforms to the military justice system, has been declared constitutionally invalid.

High Court judges have unanimously ruled that legislation establishing the court required it to exercise the judicial power of the Commonwealth.

This was despite it being specifically declared not to be a court under the constitution and that it was to operate more in the manner of a tribunal.

For that reason it was constitutionally invalid, the judges said.

The decision means a former sailor, Brian Lane, won't face trial before the military court on charges of committing an act of indecency and assaulting a superior officer.

The High Court ordered that a writ of prohibition be issued barring the court from proceeding to try the charges against Mr Lane.

The charges relate to incidents in August 2005 when he was alleged to have been photographed placing his genitals on an army sergeant's forehead - a practice known as "teabagging" - while the sergeant was asleep.

Up to half of US population may get swine flu.

From ABC News:

Thirty to 50 percent of the entire U.S. population could be infected with swine flu this fall and winter, according to a report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

As many as 1.8 million people may end up in the hospital, and 30,000 to 90,000 could die, with a concentration among children and young adults, the presidential panel of the nation's leading scientists said today in outlining what it called a plausible scenario. That's more than twice the annual average of deaths typically associated with the seasonal flu, and those occur mainly in people older than 65.

"We're going to have people hospitalized and we will, unfortunately, have more deaths," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

The report says this swine flu is a "serious threat to our nation and the world." Because it's a new strain of the flu, people do not have a built-in immunity.

Follow-Up: Wal-Mart given okay to build near Civil War battlefield.

Wal-Mart welcomed the decision and will look to open stores on Indian burial grounds, burnt-down orphanages, and Ground Zero. From Yahoo! Finance:

Officials in central Virginia approved a Walmart Supercenter early Tuesday near one of the nation's most important Civil War battlefields, a proposal that had stirred opposition by preservationists and hundreds of historians.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to grant the special permit to the world's biggest retailer after a majority of more than 100 speakers said they favored bringing the Walmart to Locust Grove, within a cannonball's shot from the Wilderness Battlefield.

Historians and Civil War buffs are fearful the Walmart store will draw traffic and more commerce to an area within the historic boundaries of the Wilderness, where generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee first met in battle 145 years ago and where 145,000 Union and Confederate soldiers fought and more than 29,000 were killed or injured. One-fourth of the Wilderness is protected.

But they could not sway supervisors, who said they didn't see the threat.

"I cannot see how there will be any visual impact to the Wilderness Battlefield," Supervisor Chairman Lee Frame said, casting a vote for the special use permit the retailer needs to build. "I think the current proposal ... is the best way to protect the battlefield."

The retailer said construction could begin in a year.

Nearly 400 people crowded into Orange County High School to attend the board's hearing. Some came dressed in period costume, including a dead ringer for Lee.

Cranberry juice doesn't help fight UTI's.

From EurekAlert:

Current clinical evidence for using cranberry juice to combat urinary tract infections is 'unsatisfactory and inconclusive', according to Raul Raz.

"An apple a day..." Not all medical problems require a state-of-the-art solution, and it would be nice to think that products from the corner shop could treat a widespread and uncomfortable ailment. Cranberry juice and related products have been touted as a simple solution for urinary tract infections, but Raul Raz, a member of F1000 Medicine, finds little to support this claim.

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a common complaint. Between 10% and 20% of women will suffer a UTI at least once, and a third of these will experience it recurrently. Some recent studies support the use of cranberry as a preventative, but Dr Raz, Director of Infectious Diseases at the Technion School of Medicine in Israel, and his associate Faculty Member, Hana Edelstein, advise the medical community that "cranberry should no longer be considered as an effective [preventative] for recurrent UTIs".

Cranberry contains hundreds of compounds, and it has been difficult to determine which might be responsible for any therapeutic effect, hindering its adoption. Raz and Edelstein point to differences in clinical trial design and the lack of standardization for doses and formulation. There is a range of potential side-effects including stomach upsets and weight gain. Cranberry can also interact badly with other medicines such as Warfarin, commonly used to treat heart disease.

Rush documentary in the works!

This sounds amazing. From Blabbermouth:

According to the RUSH fan site RushIsABand.com, RUSH documentary filmmakers Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen were recently interviewed by Classic Rock magazine's Jerry Ewing about the first-ever feature film documentary on Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart.

"Geddy had been in [Dunn and McFadyen's previous documentary] 'Metal: A Headbanger's Journey' and we were thinking about other bands we could work with," explains McFadyen. "We felt that RUSH had always been overlooked by the critics so we met them on tour and they liked what we said. We started working on it, then IRON MAIDEN came about so we took a break to do that and raised the financing for the RUSH film. We've started on it now and done a load of interviews so now we're editing with a load of archival footage."

"We've been lucky. Not only have we had access to [RUSH management] SRO's archives but also Geddy, Alex and Neil's own personal archives," enthuses director Dunn. "I was just at Geddy's house this week. Going through his personal collection of memorabilia. I dug up some gems I don't think RUSH fans have ever seen so we're hoping to offer something new."

As RUSH fans themselves, Dunn admits this is making him feel like a kid let loose in a candy store.

"Well, Geddy's definitely the premier band archivist," Dunn says. "He has a massive collection of photographs and clippings. We even got our hands on Neil's handwritten lyric sheets from back when they were making 'Fly By Night', '2112' and 'A Farewell To Kings', and I don't think they've ever been seen before."

Queens park hosts naval battle with togas and tomatoes.

Even by NYC standards, this is pretty bizarre.

Queens gladiators emerged spattered but victorious last Thursday as cultural institutions from across the city converged in Flushing Meadows Corona Park for a fiery battle royale as surreal as anything since perhaps the spectacle of the 1964 World’s Fair.

Teams from the Queens Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and Manhattan’s El Museo del Barrio joined a mystery team representing Staten Island for “Those About to Die Salute You,” an artistic face-off between the boroughs.

The frenzied, hour-long fight in a World’s Fair-leftover reflecting pool involved tomato projectiles, foam bats and more pyrotechnics than were probably allowed.

[...] Tableaux from the evening were not what one would see at a typical art show: a nude man in his 60s changing out of a tomato-soaked toga between two parked cars; a heavy metal band playing in the museum. Hundreds of people showed up in togas, some with the proper, two-layer Roman look, some with golden laurels, some in bedsheets with garden ivy in their hair.

More here.

Aussie town dumps Japan sister city over dolphin massacre.

Good job by Broome. Hopefully more attention will be paid to what's going on in places like Taiji. From AFP:

An Australian town with deep historical ties to Japan has severed its sister city relationship with a Japanese village to protest an annual dolphin slaughter, civic leaders said Monday.

Councillors in the remote West Australian town of Broome voted unanimously to end sister city ties with Taiji at a meeting on Saturday because they felt the dolphin cull was unacceptable, said Broome's mayor, Graeme Campbell.

The decision was taken reluctantly, he said, as Broome's links to the southern Japanese village dated back to the late 1800s, when Japanese migrants pioneered the Australian town's pearl diving industry.

"It's a sad day for Broome, given the historical and cultural contribution made by many people from Japan to the town and the number of people living here who still have relatives in Taiji," he told AFP.

"It's very disheartening and sad for those people. It was a unanimous decision by council, none of us can condone the slaughter."

Animal welfare activists accuse Japan of slaughtering some 2,000 dolphins every year in waters near Taiji by driving them close to the shore then hacking them to death.

The cull is the subject of a recently released US documentary called "The Cove", in which filmmakers covertly recorded dolphins being killed near the village.

Campbell said the documentary had resulted in Broome being inundated with protests against the sister city relationship.

Rare lemurs hunted, eaten amid civil unrest.

No, starving refugees aren't eating the lemurs, but rich morons who are taking advantage of lax conservation enforcement. From National Geographic:

Rare lemurs are being hunted as an exotic delicacy in the midst of Madagascar's political unrest, conservationists say.

Since a March coup d'etat in the island country, long-nurtured conservation measures have quickly fallen by the wayside—making lemurs the targets of hunting gangs.

The criminals are fueling demand for a new bush-meat delicacy in the country's upscale restaurants, according to the nonprofit Conservation International.

No one knows how many lemurs have been killed, but species such as the golden crowned sifaka—considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature—are being targeted.

Man hospitalized after superglue public toilet seat prank.

From FOX News:

CAIRNS, Australia — A man who used a public toilet in a shopping mall was taken to a hospital to have the toilet seat removed from his backside after someone smeared it with glue in what an official condemned Monday as a sick joke.

Police urged possible witnesses to come forward after the 58-year-old man was humiliated in the northeastern city of Cairns by the prank.

An ambulance was called to help the man after he was found stuck by fast-acting adhesive glue to a toilet seat on Saturday in the busy shopping mall.

Paramedics removed the seat from the toilet and took him to a hospital, where medical staff used industrial solvents to get it off.

Cairns local government official Di Forsyth said the man, who was not identified, was not injured but was "extremely embarrassed" by his experience.

"I'm disgusted that a gentlemen has had to go through that because someone thinks it's funny," Forsyth said. "It's a sick joke."

UK government to create a pint glass that won't shatter in pub fights.

I like that the British gov't isn't trying to curb binge drinking and pub violence, but taking steps to prevent beer spillage. From Daily Mail:

Last orders have been called for the traditional pint glass, after the Government deemed them too dangerous to handle.

The Home Office has called in a team of designers to create a safer beer glass in a bid to reduce the number of violent assaults.

Pint glasses made from safety or shatterproof glass, have been introduced into pubs and clubs around Britain recently.

The popular shaped glasses are easy to stack and have a bulge below the rim to prevent them from chipping.

However, there are still around 87,000 violent incidents involving glassware each year, which costs an annual estimate of £100m in NHS, police and court costs.

Consultancy Design Bridge won the pitch to create a range of 'safer drinking vessel prototypes' that will be unveiled in December.

'The challenge is to not only develop a safer pint glass, but to ensure they are attractive to industry, manufacturers and consumers,' a spokesman from the Government funded Design Council said.

Under the 'Designing Out Crime' initiative, the firm will focus on two areas, looking at what can be added to the glass to make it safer, and ‘a complete paradigm shift’, which could look at using new materials or forms.

Magician provokes riot.

Well, at least he didn't try pulling a rabbit out of the boy's pants. From Ananova:

An Indian conjuror needed an armed guard out of town after his 'magic' provoked a riot.

Rajeev Patel had been performing on the street in Berhampur, eastern India, when he asked a young boy to join him for a special magic trick.

Witnesses said he then pulled down the boy's pants and asked him to hold a piece of clay before saying he would change it into a sweet.

One man in the crowd said: "We were all shocked when he just pulled the boy's pants down but if that wasn't enough he didn't even manage to do the spell and a lot of people though he was just putting it on so he could look at the boy's backside.

"They got furious and started shouting at him and then when he said he would try it again they just went mad."

"He failed and the crowd turned violent," added a police spokesman, after officers took two hours to quell a riot and give the hapless magician an armed guard out of town.

More on The Goldblum and Alex from Lost.

Judgmental article rife with jealousy and spelling errors (corrected below). Item!

There were rumors back in June that actor Jeff Goldblum, 56, had met an unfortunate fate and had died while shooting a film. As everyone probably knows by now, Goldblum was part of a celebrity death hoax that spread around the internet.

Goldblum is not only very much alive, but is being seen flirting and cuddling his 21-year- old girlfriend, actress Tania Raymonde.

Their thirty-five-year age difference is not something new in Hollywood, or in the history of dating and mating, but it brings up the question; "how much of an age difference is too much?"

The old guideline for socially acceptable age differences in western culture was, the arbitrary, " half-your-age-plus seven," rule. Under this mathmatical formula you would take Goldblum's 56 years and divide by half (28) and then add seven more years for good measure. This would mean that it was fine if Raymonde was 35 years old. This would be a more familiar twenty-one-year age difference.

Anecdotally, most people can point to some successful relationship that they know where there has been a difference of 15 or 20 years. But when that number climbs upwards, people might begin thinking of Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall. Motives come into question when the age difference becomes far greater; especially if the elder partner has their money, social, or professional status at risk.

KFC unleashes sandwich that uses fried chicken as bread.

For those in poverty-stricken countries who wait for hours on bread lines - IN YOUR FACE! USA! USA! From Consumerist:

This is perhaps man's greatest achievement or evidence of our civilization's impending doom. Maybe it's both.

Meet the KFC "double down." Although no mention of it is made on KFC.com and we have never seen an ad for it ourselves, we are being lead to believe that it is real by Foodgeekery.com. They have crappy cell phone camera footage of a commercial (from Omaha, apparently) for the mysterious beast, as well as photographic evidence of it in the wild.

The sandwich consists of two fried chicken fillets wrapped around bacon, cheese and Colonel's sauce. It apparently tastes like you think it would.

More advertisers bolt from Glenn Beck.

From Huffington Post:

Glenn Beck returns to Fox News Channel on Monday after a vacation with fewer companies willing to advertise on his show than when he left, part of the fallout from calling President Barack Obama a racist.

A total of 33 Fox advertisers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., CVS Caremark, Clorox and Sprint, directed that their commercials not air on Beck's show, according to the companies and ColorofChange.org, a group that promotes political action among blacks and launched a campaign to get advertisers to abandon him. That's more than a dozen more than were identified a week ago.

While it's unclear what effect, if any, this will ultimately have on Fox and Beck, it is already making advertisers skittish about hawking their wares within the most opinionated cable TV shows.

Man attacks woman with axe over missing chicken leg.

Police are calling it fowl play. Item!

A Bogota man attacked a woman with an axe for selling him an incomplete chicken - one leg was missing, the man said.

"The children of the man came to buy a chicken, we sold it completely. Two hours later the man came and claimed I stole part of the chicken," victim Maria Ortiz told RCN news.

"He called me a #*$~%* and said he would kill me. I really feared for my life," the vendor added.

And right she was. The angry costumer followed Ortiz to her home and attacked her with an axe. Luckily, the victim came away with minor injuries at her arm and head.

The man was arrested for attempted murder.

Hedgehog joke wins comedy prize.

I guess the porcupine joke was too prickly. From BBC:

Comedian Dan Antopolski has won a prize for the funniest joke of this year's Edinburgh Fringe.

The funnyman, who has previously been nominated for the Perrier award, picked up the trophy from TV channel Dave.

Nine comedy critics sat through thousands of jokes before choosing 27 for viewers to vote on.

The winning joke was a one-liner from 36-year-old Antopolski's show Silent But Deadly - "Hedgehogs. Why can't they just share the hedge?"

Cockney slang added to some London ATMs.

Would you like to see your Jack Palance before ending this transaction? From Ananova:

A cash machine operator has introduced Cockney rhyming slang to a number of its ATMs.

People wanting cash out of Bank Machine's ATMs in East London can choose to have their instruction given to them in rhyming slang, reports BBC online.

Customers will be asked to enter their Huckleberry Finn, rather than their Pin, and will have to select how much sausage and mash or cash they want.

The company plan to trial the rhyming slang in five cash machines for three months.

Ron Delnevo, managing director of Bank Machine, said: "We wanted to introduce something fun and of local interest to our London machines.

"Whilst we expect some residents will visit the machine to just have a look, most will be genuinely pleased as this is the first time a financial services provider will have recognised the Cockney language in such a manner."

Wal-Mart battles to build superstore on Civil War site.

But what better way to honor thousands of dead military than with half-price chinos? From ABC News:

On the same ground where a Civil War battle was fought almost a century and a half ago, Wal-Mart is now waging a fight to build a new superstore. But the proposal has been met with opposition from around the country, with Washington lawmakers and Hollywood actors trying to fend off the company's plans.

The dispute will come to a head on today, when the Orange County board of supervisors will vote on the matter.

At issue is the proposed superstore's proximity to the Wilderness battlefield, where on May 5, 1864, more than 160,000 soldiers fought a battle in the midst of the Civil War.

Critics say the new Wal-Mart would be too close to the battlefield. Not to mention, Wal-Mart already has four stores in a 20-mile radius of the area. Multiple members of Congress, including Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., have come down against the proposed store.

Robots learn to lie.

What could go wrong? From Live Science:

In an experiment performed in a Swiss laboratory, 10 robots with downward-facing sensors competed for "food" - a light-colored ring on the floor. At the other end of the space, a darker ring - "poison" - was placed. The robots earned points for how much time they spent near food as opposed to poison.

The experimenters, engineers Sara Mitri and Dario Floreano and evolutionary biologist Laurent Keller, also gave the robots the ability to talk with each other. Each robot can produce a blue light that can be seen by the others and which can give away the position of the "food" ring. Over time, the robots evolved to deceive each other about the food ring.

Their evolution was made possible by the artificial neural network that controlled each of the robots. The network consisted of 11 "neurons" that were connected to the robot's sensors and 3 that controlled its two tracks and its blue light. The neurons were linked via 33 connections - "synapses" - and the strength of these connections was each controlled by a single 8-bit gene. In total, each robot's 264-bit genome determines how it reacts to information gleaned from its senses.

Researchers devised a system of rounds in which groups of ten robots competed for "food" in separate arenas. After 100 rounds, the robots with the highest scores - the fittest of the population, in the Darwinian sense - "survived" to the next round..

At the start, the robots produced blue light at random. However, as the robots became better at finding food, the light became more and more informative and the bots became increasingly drawn to it. The red ring is large enough for just eight robots, so they had to jostle each other for the right to "feed". The effects of this competition became clear when Mitri, Floreano and Keller allowed the emission of blue light to evolve along with the rest of the robots' behavior.

As before, they shone randomly at first and as they started to crowd round the food, their lights increasingly gave away its presence. The more successful robots became more secretive. By the 50th generation, they became much less likely to shine their lights near the food than elsewhere in the arena.

Tom Ridge confirms Bush raised terror alerts for political gain.

So I bought all that duct tape for nothing? From US News:

Tom Ridge, the first head of the 9/11-inspired Department of Homeland Security, wasn't keen on writing a tell-all. But in The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again, out September 1, Ridge says he wants to shake "public complacency" over security. And to do that, well, he needs to tell all. Especially about the infighting he saw that frustrated his attempts to build a smooth-running department.

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

People tend to walk around in circles.

From Daily Mail:

It's a recurring scene in desert movies - a group of lost people try to find their way through the dunes but end up walking round in circles.

Now scientists have shown that the old cliché really is true, and that without help from the sun or stars people are unable to walk in a straight line.

Researchers in Germany left six volunteers in a forest and asked them to keep going in the same direction. On cloudy days - with no sun to guide them - the volunteers ended up walking in circles and crossing their paths without realising it.

In a second experiment, volunteers were left in the Sahara for several hours with water and food.

Again, they were able to keep to a straight path only when the sun was visible. As soon as it went behind clouds they wandered aimlessly in loops.

Dr Jan Souman, who led the study, said: 'Those stories about people who end up walking around in circles when lost are true.

'People cannot walk in a straight line if they do not have absolute references, such as a tower or a mountain in the distance or the sun or moon, and often end up walking in circles.'

[...] Dr Souman, of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tubingen, added: 'One explanation offered in the past for walking in circles is that most people have one leg longer or stronger than the other - which would produce a systematic bias in one direction.'

But the researchers disproved that by showing that blindfolded volunteers walked in circles but without any preference for going clockwise or anti-clockwise.

Tobacco may cure norovirus.

From Yahoo! News:

Scientists have developed a vaccine for the common viral infection norovirus from a novel source: a tobacco plant.

The new vaccine was "manufactured" in a tobacco plant using a bioengineered plant virus.

This plant biotechnology opens the door to faster, more inexpensive ways to bring vaccines to the public quickly, especially in times when viruses mutate into unpredictable new strains, said Charles Arntzen, who reported on the vaccine at the American Chemical Society annual meeting, in Washingtopn, D.C.

[...] The new vaccine for norovirus is a step in that direction. Norovirus is a dreaded cause of diarrhea and vomiting that may be the second most common viral infection in the United States, behind the flu.