Tuesday, January 8, 2008
More news out of Africa...
There must be something in the water in South Africa. I know apartheid has been overcome, but there are still strange goings-on. According to Craig Timberg from the Washington Post, the government recently passed a law that makes it illegal for people under the age of 16 to kiss. Yep, you read that...
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Monday, January 7, 2008
Into the Heart of Darkness...
Tanzania ’s albinos are on high alert after four were found murdered this fall. Two were lynched in the northwest lakes area of Mwanza, and in the northern city of Arusha, an 18-month-old girl was strangled to death by her father, a teacher at a Baptist primary school... Albinism...affects a quarter...
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Sunday, January 6, 2008
A Question of Fairness: A Surprise to Some, But Not to All...
“Who is the fairest US news station of them all? According to a new study, it’s Fox News, a channel best known for its theatrics and blowhard right-wing commentators. The study, conducted at the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, found that the Fox News Channel’s...
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Saturday, January 5, 2008
And here a glimpse of the past: Louisiana’s ‘Casket Girls’...
On about this date in 1728, the first of Louisiana ’s ‘casket girls’ arrived from France with namesake caskets of clothing given them as inducements. On arrival, they were supervised and ‘matrimonially distributed’ by Ursuline nuns. Herbert Asbury’s The French Quarter: An Informal History of New...
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Thursday, January 3, 2008
The Vengeful Husband and His Helpful Wife...
Mary and Ted Roberts of Texas are a close-knit couple. So close that when Mary had sex with four men she met over the internet, she helped Ted extract US$155,000 from them. A jury recently convicted the pair of theft. The court found that Mary helped her lawyer-husband type up documents he sent to...
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Wednesday, January 2, 2008
When Hell Froze Over...
Geologists don't agree on whether the infant Earth's surface was hot and molten or stable and cool - or even when the first solid crust formed. What they do agree on generally is that the crust grew as material from Earth's mantle, the middle layer of our planet, melted and rose to the surface,...
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Monday, December 31, 2007
These are the kinds of people who do need instruction - on many things...
In March, a man and a woman who were accused of a series of vehicle thefts in Newmarket, Ontario [practically Toronto ] made their getaway by blindly following the commands of their stolen Toyota Highlander’s navigation system. The couple wanted to go to Alberta via the Trans-Canada around Lake...
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Saturday, December 29, 2007
Instructions for Idiot Bloggers...
Some of the most insane reading can be found in the manuals that come with a new motor vehicle. It's an open question whether the authors truly believe the world is peopled with utter morons, or whether they themselves fall into that category. Or whether, because of our litigious society, they have...
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Friday, December 28, 2007
And Now for a Change of Venue, from Judge Mathis’ Court to Syria...
While the corpses of their enemies still lay on the battlefield, the victors celebrated by slaughtering cattle and holding a gigantic feast. Then they dumped the war dead into a pit, heaved in the animal bones from their repast, and tossed their plates on top of the pile. Now – nearly six millennia...
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Thursday, December 27, 2007
Amputee didn’t have a leg to stand on...
A man who sold a barbecue smoker with his amputated leg inadvertently left inside has opted to settle a suit against the buyer who had it embalmed for use in a freak show. John Wood will get his leg back but must pay US$5,000 to the buyer. Wood didn’t go to a proper court but opted for a hearing on...
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