The Times-Tribune - News - 11/23/2005 - Man charged with taking $3 from tip jar
SCRANTON — City police arrested a man Tuesday night and charged him with stealing $3 from a tip jar at a Chinese restaurant.
Bryan Clement, 31, of West Market Street, allegedly walked into QQ Chinese Restaurant, 1815 N. Main Ave., at 8:16 p.m. and demanded money, saying he had a gun, Cpl. David Mitchell said.
The 16-year-old girl working at the restaurant refused and went to get her father, police said. The man then took $3 from the tip jar and fled, police said.
He was arrested in the Providence Television & Appliance Center building, 118 W. Market St., after police surrounded the building. Mr. Clement faces robbery and theft charges.
the airlines only 'try', for a mere 90 days, to return the luggage they misplaced, then they sell it -- does this make anyone else ill?
CBS News | What's Lost Is Found, Very Cheaply | November 27, 2005
In our air travels this summer, we checked millions of bags, thousands of which we could have kissed goodbye, lost and gone forever.
But where do they go?, CBS News correspondent Bill Geist asks.
The answer: a remote spot in the Appalachian foothills, where indigenous peoples celebrate the misfortunes of air travelers and enjoy deep discounts on their losses in "The Land of Lost Luggage."
This bothers me because I know how difficult it is for people to get airlines, etc., to track down their luggage. Indeed, from some stories I've heard, it often sounds like the airlines don't even care to find luggage that they misplaced. I've heard of too many people getting the runaround, having to call the airline or cruiseline or whatever, incessantly, for days, in order to make sure they keep trying to find it.
I've never lost any luggage, but I worry about it every time I fly. I'm not foolish enough to believe 'it would never happen to me'.
I generally try to take everything I can as a carry-on. I also have luggage that is easy to carry, unusual looking, and not particularly attractive. And I always make sure there's a personal tag affixed with my name, address, and phone number. Not just on the outside, but I also put my name, address, phone number on something inside my bags. And in the past few years I've started including alternate contact information of family members as well, just in case.
I really hope that this store that sells these lost luggage items would be honest and decent enough to return luggage if they find identification inside the luggage that the airline missed.
Michael's post about the paintings stolen from the Everhart Museum the other night... (he includes photos of the paintings)...
I didn't particularly care for either artist, nor these paintings. But how awful that this should happen, and in my home city.
The Times-Tribune - News - 11/19/2005 - FBI: 'No market for stolen art'
"The true art in an art theft is not stealing the material, it’s selling it," said Robert Wittman, an FBI agent based in Philadelphia who is the agency’s lead art theft investigator. He also took part in the recent recovery in Denmark of a stolen Rembrandt self-portrait valued at $36 million. "There is no market for hot art."
Perhaps I've just watched way too many heist movies... But I'm thinking whoever did this, didn't necessarily do it for the money, at least not just money. There are a lot more lucrative venues for burglars.
Any woman who would give up equal rights under the law for the ability to drink booze for free in a bar, should get herself to the nearest Betty Ford clinic immediately, and any man who would refuse to excercize good manners towards a woman unless she's his subordinate in society, needs to get himself to a psychiatric unit.
I hope really hope this isn't an example of the type of illogical thinking they're teaching in the meteorological department at Penn State University these days.
If feminism prevailed, the world would be drastically different and women wouldn't like the final result.
I suppose there are some masochistic women who wouldn't appreciate getting equal pay for equal work.
The day men and women have the same level of power is the also the day when chivalry dies.
So he's saying that men would be incapable (or at least unwilling) to behave honestly, courteously, and courageously, unless women are their subordinates. Seems to me that a world where women are treated as equals, is a hell of a lot more condusive to respect and courteousy, than if women are treated as chattle.
Many women enjoy visiting bars and having men buy them drinks in exchange for a casual conversation. It seems that after all the work women put into getting ready for a night out, they won't compromise their ability to get free alcohol for the sake of self-independence.
This assumes that many women are not only alcoholics... But even if they got equal pay for equal work, that they'd still be too poor, or too greedy, to buy their own booze.
Other women appreciate a man paying for dinner or movie tickets. But in a world where men and women see each other as equals, a man might not open his wallet and show a level of gallantry toward an intriguing woman.
Again, this is assuming all men who pay for a date's dinner, do so with the idea that they are in authority over the woman... So he's saying that women who have dinners that men pay for are basically slaves/whores.
I guess we know where his expectations lie, when he takes a gal out on a date.
Women would have to protect themselves and a lot of women would find themselves walking home alone instead of being escorted home by a man.
I thought the reason that a couteous man escorts a woman home, is because of the uncourteous bad men out there who would prey upon them. This guy seems to think that men do it because women are simply chattle to be protected.
Furthermore, in a world where women were seen as equals, across the board, women would be no more likely to be the victim of crime walking home than men are, and would not need an escort anymore than a man. And what about "safety in numbers"? No matter what gender you are when walking home at night. There are plenty of areas of various cities in which I would advise men don't walk home alone at night. Plenty of men are mugged according to the statistics I've heard.
A man's reflex to open a door for a woman would be replaced with the thought of her being comfortable enough to open the door for herself.
For pete's sake, does he really think that women need to have doors opened for them? Does he really think the reason someone would open a door for someone else is because they believe the other person to be incapable of opening a door?
I'm a woman and I open doors for people who are certainly not my subordinates! I also hold doors for plenty of people who are perfectly capable of opening a door on their own.
It's called common courteousy.
And courteousy & respect is definitely not dependent upon a patriarchal pedagogy. Indeed, good manners are fostered by a respectful environment of mutuality and equality.
If both sexes were equal, love would become awkward as well. Marriage, or even deciding who should propose or pay for the ring, would be a different experience.
The days of a husband pulling out his wife's chair would be over because men wouldn't want to risk hearing a reminder about how women can do things for themselves.
If I had a husband, who was generally respectful, treated me as an equal, and was kind & courteous, I highly doubt I would "remind" him that I could pull a chair out on my own. That's simply ridiculous.
Furthermore, one wonders why he has this phobia about being reminded that women can actually complete simple tasks on their own, that he views it as such an untenable risk.
It seems that if men and women acted as equals, dating would be pretty boring. The chemistry created between two people is not defined by strong similarities, but by the differences and struggles for power that some feminists seek to destroy.
Oh boy, now the true colours display in their full luminescence...
He's a toxic relationship junkie. A control freak. And maybe even an abuser.
Because if he's suggesting that women should be subordinates, and not equals, then any power struggle in a romantic relationship must play out with the man achieving dominance.
Unless of course he's suggesting most people want to live out their life partnerships on a perpetual battlefield, forever unto death. But that's a recipe for domestic violence... Because power struggles either play out with a dominant & a submissive, have a resolution of equality (if we're talking about healthy rational people), or they ESCALATE.
And if that's the only way some guy gets his jollies in a romantic relationship, that's pretty sick. And if he can't get his needs met through cooperation & communication, but only through force, then I have to wonder about his intelligence, talent, and skills.
I daresay that most grown adults do not view romantic relationships as a game of winners & losers, or a battle between a conquerer and someone they defeat... They view it as a partnership of cooperation.
And most intelligent, rational people don't consider love & peace to be 'boring'.
I think this guy is insulting most men. I don't think most men are egomaniacs with inferiority complexes stuck in an immature unstable mentality, who believe they can only wrest satisfaction through making someone else miserable.
There's a lot of excitement & joy to be found in life. Someone who only finds pleasure in attempting to dominate another person's life, is living a pretty narrow existence.
Where there are equal rights, there should be equal responsibilities. In a fair world, both men and women would have rifles in hand, ready challenge the enemy on the battlefield. Yet few feminists are yearning to fight wars or work blue collar jobs with long hours. Comparatively fewer women than men work grueling hours on the assembly line. Instead, many want to be key players in powerful companies or work for widely viewed media outlets where their voices can be heard.
Oh yeah, and rich white men are signing up for frontline military battle and vying for jobs in factories all the time?
This guy needs to watch Norma Rae -- a story from a time when there was even less gender equality. Heck, in some of the most sexist regions of the planet today, little girls are working in sweatshops.
Mothers nourish their children, and if these caring mothers were placed in the work force, we force traditional family standards to be the exact opposite of what they are today.
First off, this guy does realize there are women already in the work force, right?
And what's wrong with a father being nurturing? And who says women won't be in the future if they have more equality? Seems to me that's a recipe for two nurturing parents, or at least a better chance of a child having at least one nurturing parent!
We're not living in jungles & caves anymore. Sounds like this guy wants to go back to archaic times when humans lived as hunter-gatherers. I hope he realizes back then, there was no meteorology -- people did a rain dance, or predicted the season's crop success by how much the children screamed on their way to being sacraficed.
Not only do humans not have to hunt animals in the dangerous wild anymore, but the world is plenty populated... In addition, we have a space station, there's planning for a lunar station on the moon, and people hope to eventually have a mars colony, (and if human history is any indicator, it's only a matter of time before people settle on yet newer frontiers)...
So I don't think it's necessary to strictly adhere to the survival methods our species used 12,000 years ago, in order to successfully propagate.
It would be far from the truth to say that women are not entitled to have high-power positions in the work force or successful careers in the military. But in a world where feminism holds the reigns of society, we overhaul the design of the family unit, weaken the effect of feminine sexuality and introduce the possibility of having our daughters, sisters and mothers fight on the front lines and work grueling jobs.
Women are already working grueling jobs, and not even getting paid as much for them as they would if they were men. And plenty of civilian women die in war zones.
As for the "effect of feminine sexuality"... I guess this guy's saying he's incapable get turned on by a confident woman... why should that be our problem?
I'm not here to say what is right or wrong, but those who are fighting for equality need to keep in mind the changes that may occur if society adopted a true feminist perspective.
If women choose to fight for equality, they should be careful what they wish for.
That sounds like a threat to me.
Sounds to me like he's saying, "You want equal pay for equal worth? You want equal rights under the law? You don't want to let me control you? Well then I won't be nice to you, I'll be even more rude. So there." or perhaps, "You want high positions in companies and want to be my boss, well, then I hope you, your mothers & sisters die in combat."
Spoken like a true misogynist, wrapped up in a pitiful dog-eat-dog perspective of reality.
But here are some people who wrote about this column far more concisely than I have:
The Digital Collegian - Letter to the Editor - Many men supportive of feminism's ideals
To him, men and women have certain roles that must be followed or everything will fall apart... I see a world where women are treated by the content of their character and not prescribed gender roles. I see a world where relationships are based on attraction and love rather than a dance of power.
The Digital Collegian - Letter to the Editor - Feminism works toward a more perfect society
Surely you didn't mean to imply that women think free drinks are better than equal pay in your column, Scott Dimmich? .... It's OK that you forgot to mention that in places like Mexico, factories can be up to 70 percent women workers -- this is because it's such a feminist society.
Wonderblossom | Brianna Brash-Nyberg
Yup, my life sure would be horrible and meaningless if men thought I was "comfortable enough" to open doors, and if romantic relationships were characterized by, I don't know, shared values, responsibilities, and experiences instead of power struggles.
Stories and Other Things, Also
I am told that this article is not a parody, though nothing about the contents helps me to believe that this can possibly be true.
Pandagon: Nice pedestal you got there, be a shame if something happened to it
I love "chivalry"! I'd never want to see it go. Any system that allows for assholes to think they are owed at least a blow job for lowering themselves to opening your door for you is one that I would be absolutely crushed to see disappear.
Since I have never, ever opened a door for myself, I have to wonder--is that more or less difficult than hauling the laundry baskets or huge bags of groceries for myself?
Someone tell G. Gordon Liddy that his women with guns pinup calendar is shrinking the testicles of undergrads at Penn State. Pandagon: Of doors and the holding of them
Why this topic holds such fascination is hard to say, but I am going to venture that it has a lot to do with the eternal semantic question of what is arbitrary and what is loaded with meaning--is holding a door open for someone mere politeness or a rude indication that you think the person is helpless and/or your social inferior? After my article the other day, a number of people have pointed out what should be blatantly obvious, that holding open doors hasn't been a gendered custom in god knows how long.
I hope this opinion column haunts Scott Dimmich long enough for him to 'complete his education' & join us in the 21st century, before he attempts to practice (his particularly screwy version of) the patriarchal pedagogy on who knows what victims.
Wired News: Boycott Sony
After weeks of criticism, Sony has finally agreed to temporarily stand down on an abusive and likely illegal copy restriction practice. Hold the applause.
On Friday, the world's second-biggest record label pledged to temporarily stop making CDs that leave computers vulnerable to security breaches. This is a step in the right direction, but it does not go nearly far enough toward correcting a serious ethical lapse. In fact, it is proof positive that Sony is unworthy of our trust or our business.
.....
The software, which Sony included on 20 or more recent CDs, gives no warning of the rootkit, nor does it inform users that it prompts PCs to contact a Sony website for updated lyrics or art, and in the process, reveals the user's internet address and details about how often the CD has been played.
Friday's announcement was inadequate to say the least. Sony, which has yet to say how many CDs carrying the XCP software remain on store shelves, stopped short of issuing a recall, a necessary step if consumers are ever to trust Sony with their computers again. And it still owes customers who have loaded the XCP software onto their machines an easy way to get rid of it.
Add to these failures the utter lack of contrition shown by the label and its executives and you get what's effectively an unforgivable combination. "We stand by content protection technology as an important tool to protect our intellectual property rights and those of our artists," Sony said in Friday's statement announcing the temporary suspension.
All of which goes to show that a mealy-mouthed apology is worse than no apology at all.
When will these people learn that anything they do in that vein, is only going to stop the people who are no threat to the industry anyway?
They've actually made pirated copies seem immensely preferable to their CDs that are full of spyware & security risks. How is that helping intellectual property rights and artists?
I'm seeing less and less ad-free blogs these days, as Google Adsense is very popular... though of course I find Google ads to be potentially very dodgy...
I don't really have a problem with advertising on blogs, in general, depending on the blog, the type of advertising, the manner in which the advertising is done, and the products or services advertised.
Of course it concerns me that someone claiming to have a personal blog, might be corporate sponsored, and might be getting paid for what they write, and not just displaying a button, banner, or link -- in that their content might actually be the advertisement, but not clearly defined as such. And I'd consider that dishonest. I would also find it disingenuous if someone was writing to please their sponsors.
Though I'm sure that's not too common, especially among your 'average joe' bloggers.
One of the reasons I choose not to use Google Ads is that I would be concerned about having ads to companies I wouldn't necessarily recommend, or might actually be opposed to, randomly thrown onto my site.
But more concerning is the stories I've heard where Google Ads have displayed things on sites, related to the content, but embarrassingly inappropriate to the content.
I could just imagine Google Adsense inserting ads specifically targeting germaphobes for products containing triclosan on my posts about adveritising taking advantage of germaphobia & people with OCD and the potential hazards of triclosan!
wish jar journal: the greater cost
Comment Posted by: Leafy: "I used to belong to an eating disorders support group on a popular website. Each page had random ads that would come up - including many many ads for diet and weight loss products. The ads were dangerous triggers for a group of people who were doing their best to overcome body image issues. The moderators of the support group had no control over the advertising and eventually the group shut down."
I could just imagine a site, containing information on people seeking help for alcoholism, sporting ads for vodka & beer...
wish jar journal: the ongoing debate
Comment Posted by: Helen: "I had google ads for a while. One day I wrote about a town here in NZ that eliminated plastic bags from shops. A collective called the 'bag ladies' sewed lots of plain calico bags and distributed them to all households. People were asked to bring their calico bags, or their own plastic bags or boxes. The whole town got behind it. It is a very inspiring story. Anyway, the next day the google ads on my page were for plastics companies and plastic bag manufacturers! Yeeeeikes! I felt so humiliated and embarrased. There I was encouraging people to think about their plastic bag usage, and diminishing plastic and packaging...and the ads on my site were in direct contradiction!
I'm reminded of the story of how National Geographic had this big issue declaring evolution a fact of science, and then on their web site version of the article, they provided links to creationist stuff, and a link to a forum where people could debate against what they said was a proven fact.
(See nonist - ape shit)
I assumed that the web producers for National Geographic, trusted to handle the web site, were simply ignorant of the issue involved.
Clearly anything automated, or where you trust someone else to decide what's going to be displayed or advocated on your site, is potentially detrimental to your content.
Of course I don't think that makes all advertising bad, in general. I link to Amazon.com sometimes, but more because I like & use Amazon.com myself regularly, and I have very specific control over what items I choose to recommend.
apparently an aluminum foil deflector beanie can actually amplify radio signals, and most particularly those reserved for government use!
On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets:
An Empirical Study
"It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings."
I heard, from someone who attended, that he was surprised at how few Tobyhanna Army Depot employees attended, and that there were a lot of empty seats at the gathering.
the Other Michael's post regarding the blog that was voted "best local blog" in the Electric City Readers poll 2005 -- Am I one of only a few people in NEPA that never before saw this blog?
Mind you, not that I don't think it deserves any attention. It's just that I never before came across it. And here I thought I had my finger on the carotid artery pulse of local blogging.
Note: I didn't vote in that particular readers poll because I never saw the ballot because I was too busy reading local blogs that week.
just another reason why I don't buy much new music anymore
First Trojan using Sony DRM spotted | The Register
Virus writers have begun taking advantage of Sony-BMG's use of rootkit technology in DRM software bundled with its music CDs.
Sony-BMG's rootkit DRM technology masks files whose filenames start with "$sys$". A newly-discovered variant of of the Breplibot Trojan takes advantage of this to drop the file "$sys$drv.exe" in the Windows system directory.
"This means, that for systems infected by the Sony DRM rootkit technology, the dropped file is entirely invisible to the user. It will not be found in any process and file listing. Only rootkit scanners, such as the free utility RootkitRevealer, can unmask the culprit," warns Ivan Macalintal, a senior threat analyst at security firm Trend Micro
Copy protection doesn't really work to prevent copying, because the people who want to copy it, always find a way around it, and now the innocent people are paying for their foolish attempts to prevent it.
first, why does this guy think he knows the mind of god? second, if god was going to strike down people in PA, wouldn't he have struck down a lot more people by now, who have studied & taught the science of evolution all these years? third, does this guy realize he sounds really loopy? fourth, how can anyone take this guy seriously anymore?
CNN.com - Robertson warns Pennsylvania voters of God's wrath - Nov 10, 2005
Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.
you wouldn't just get a seat over the wing... you'd get a seat right in the wing
NASA - Wing Design Would Be More Fuel Efficient and Environmentally Friendly
For almost a hundred years most planes have looked like a tube with wings, but that may change thanks to NASA research. Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., are testing a design for a flying wing, called a blended wing body or BWB, which would be more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly than today's aircraft.
of course McDonald's, Wal-Mart, and a corrections officer would be involved in a story like this...
I only learned of this story tonight, when I happened to turn on my television set, to watch a movie, and then got sucked into watching the ABC Primetime news show.
The story summed up...
A corrections officer obsessed with police, called a McDonald's in another state, claiming to be a local police officer investigating a purse snatching, and that the suspect is a teen girl employee.
He told the assistant manager to call the teen girl employee to come in the back office, strip search her, and take away her clothes and her car keys, effectively trapping the girl in the back office.
And the 51 year old female assistant manager did just that.
Then the manager, the asisstant manager's fiance, got on the phone, was left alone with the teen employee, and the man on the phone instructed the manager to sexually assault the teen.
And the manager did just that.
And it was all caught on videotape.
And through this case, they caught the guy who called on the phone impersonating a police officer, who had perpetrated this hoax, successfully, in no less than 60 times according to the article. (Though who knows how many times it was successful and not reported, and who knows how many times it was attempted but the people involved didn't fall for it.)
I don't care what psychological experts say...
Psychological experts say it is human nature to obey orders, no matter how evil they might seem -- as was illustrated in one of the most famous and frightening human experiments of the 20th century.
..... "Once you accept another person's authority, you become a different person," Blass said. "You are concerned with how well you follow out your orders, rather than whether it is right or wrong."
A rational intelligent person should be able to question authority that seems that suspicious!
It should be incredibly common sense to realize that no police officer would conduct an investigation of a purse snatching over the phone, and that a police officer would not have a civilian conduct a strip search or a cavity search on their employee. And certainly it should be severely common knowledge, (even for someone with an IQ score of 83), that no legal acting police officer would order a civilian to carry out felony sexual assaults.
(At best, this is evidence that the ability to think rationally and a familiarity with the law of the land are not requirements for management at McDonald's.)
Even at the age of 18, I don't believe that I would've submitted to a strip search, no matter what. I would've punched someone in order to run out of that office, if they refused to get the police there in person.
And yes, I think I can say I would do so in that situation.
Because I once worked at a small store at a mall where a key holder (above a regular employee, but not a supervisor) who was on a power trip was ordering me around for a week straight, and finally cornered me in the stock room and raised her arm to hit me... I ducked past her, ran out of the stock room, ran through the store, pausing only briefly to tell the supervisor what happened and that I was quitting effective immediately, and the very next day I called the home office of the chain, told the corporate office the entire story of everything questionable that ever happened in the store. (And I learned that a few weeks later, the entire management was sacked, as well as most of the employees.)
So if I ran out of a store & quit for that relatively minor incident, you can imagine what I would do if someone had suggested a strip search or worse!
Mind you, even if the girl could've escaped... I still think that the other people involved are responsible for their own actions. Clearly the 51 year old stupid assistant manager who made the teen girl employee strip and exposed her to male management & co-workers, is accountable for her own actions & decisions, as is her fiance, the sexual molesting manager.
If I were a manager, I would not have believed, without proof, that the man on the phone was a police officer.
And yes, I believe I can say what I would do in that situation.
Because once, several years ago, a man, in a police uniform, came to my door yelling "Police, open up!". And I refused to open the door until he showed me his badge. And then I refused to allow him into my apartment, when he asked me for proof of my identity. I kept the door closed & locked while I went to another window and checked the street below and saw the police car outside. And then I got my driver's license, and took it to the door and slipped it to him through an only partially ajar screen door, never letting him near me. (Apparently they were seeking for questioning, a young woman who may have been a tenant in my building at some time.)
So if I was that suspicious and cautious about a man, in person, in uniform, you can imagine how suspicious I would be about a man claiming to be a policeman on the phone.
So why did they accept that hoax caller's authority in the first place?
They were either extremely stupid, or they already had it in them to do wrong with the slightest provocation or excuse.
people disingenuously promoting the idea that preventing gay (& people who seem gay) from getting employment, education, or credit, protects marriage (gay marriage wasn't even part of the law) -- to call it strawman fallacy would be an understatement
news24.com - 'Holy Anus' stirs up unholy row
Cape Town - Well-known campaigner against homosexuality Dr Peet Botha has come under fire because a section in his latest book is entitled The Anus is Holy.
obviously not all Christians believe the same thing... (as if anyone should ever believe all people of any religion believe the same thing or behave the same way)
Evolution in the bible, says Vatican - The Other Side - Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au
"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".
This idea was part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasised, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belonged to a different realm - science.
SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Science -- Vatican official: Faithful should listen to modern science or risk danger of fundamentalism
The Vatican project was inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1992 declaration that the church's 17th-century denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." Galileo was condemned for supporting Nicolaus Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun; church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.
"The permanent lesson that the Galileo case represents pushes us to keep alive the dialogue between the various disciplines, and in particular between theology and the natural sciences, if we want to prevent similar episodes from repeating themselves in the future," Poupard said.
man sporting mohawk steals an ambulance & rushes a defibrillated deer into a ditch... or something like that
Salt Lake Tribune - Nation and World - Creme de la Weird
In September, after law enforcement officers in North Carolina spotted a reportedly stolen ambulance and chased it through three counties until forcing it into a ditch north of Greensboro, they found the driver to be mohawk-hairstyled Leon Hollimon Jr., 37, who is not a medical professional but was wearing a stethoscope and with latex gloves in his pocket. Strapped to a gurney in the back was a dead deer, and according to witnesses cited by the Florida Times- Union newspaper, an intravenous line was attached to it and a defibrillator had been used.
coffee doesn't have to taste burnt! dark roast doesn't have to mean burnt-roast... (unless you're in Seattle where I'm told they prefer things bitter & burnt)
Being a tea drinker, (mostly Earl Gray), for years I thought I didn't like coffee.
Until a few years ago when my pal Jason G. introduced me to coffee from Sumatra, and quality roasted Columbian.
Give me organic Sumatra coffee from Alterra over that burnt-roast crap any day...
I'm assuming, well hoping, that when people my age go to Nine Inch Nails concerts, they're going for nostalgia's sake, and not because they're still full of teen angst, insecurity, and self-loathing.
(There are medications which have proven beneficial to many for that sort of thing.)
I wonder why Trent Reznor himself hasn't grown & moved onto different themes, but I guess it'd be foolish to give up what's been successful in making money.
not as fashionable as a banana clip... but to think I was impressed with my dentist's magnifying goggles...
NASA - A Second Set of Eyes
JORDY's name was inspired by Geordi La Forge, a character on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Geordi, who was blind, used special glasses that enabled him to see.
The technology improves on the Low Vision Enhancement System (LVES), a video headset developed through a joint research project between NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Worn like a pair of goggles, the LVES (pronounced "Elvis") contained two eye-level cameras, one with an unmagnified wide-angle view and one with magnification capability. This system manipulated the camera images to compensate for a person's low vision limitations.
The LVES was only commercially available for a short time. But its potential inspired Enhanced Vision Systems of Huntington Beach, Calif., to pursue developing JORDY in an effort to bring a new and improved low-vision headset to the market.
because I like looking at old pictures of ancestors... from 13 billion years ago
NASA - Scientists See Light That May Be From First Objects in Universe
Scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope say they have detected light that may be from the earliest objects in the universe. If confirmed, the observation provides a glimpse of an era more than 13 billion years ago when, after the fading embers of the theorized Big Bang gave way to millions of years of pervasive darkness, the universe came alive.
bike race sponsored by the company that makes a drug that cyclists use illegally as a performance enhancer -- seems a tad dodgy to me!
NPR : Biotech Firm Amgen Sponsors Bike Race
Charles Pelkey, news editor of VeloNews magazine, discusses the Biotech firm Amgen's sponsorship of the new Tour of California cycling race. Amgen makes synthetic versions of the hormone erythropoietin, which some cyclists have illegally used to boost the amount of oxygen in their blood.
(I heard this the other day when I was in the car driving, and forgot to post it then.)
In an interview by Charlie Rose, Rice stated that Jesus is only 8 years old at the end of this "first" book (she's planning more)... I was going to say -- at least Jesus' life was about 500 years shorter than Lestat's, so there would be a limit to how far this series could drag on -- but that's not exactly true, as Jesus has lived on for over 2000 years now, so this could be quite a bottomless well for her...
The Gospel According to Anne - Newsweek Entertainment - MSNBC.com
But what's she going to do with herself once her hero ascends to Heaven? "If I really complete the life of Christ the way I want to do it," she says, "then I might go on and write a new type of fiction. It won't be like the other.
Am I the only one thinking she sounds a bit arrogant for being humbly devoted to Christ?
And am I the only one who had the suspicion that she may have been thinking...
Let's see. I wrote violent books, some romanticizing murderous mythical creatures of evil, as well as both heterosexual and homosexual sado-masochistic sexual erotic novels involving a lot of bondage, whips, sex slaves, and fetishes. Now how can I ride the Left Behind/Da Vinci Code/Passion of the Christ wave, & get a bunch of novels published about the life of the ready-made popular character of Jesus Christ from a first person narrative, and make money, without having an outcry against me, and a bunch of death threats & such? Oh, I know, I'll declare myself born again in faith, hide behind the Catholic Church, and I can render myself to appear saved from my past sins in the eyes of a potential target market.
Okay, so maybe I'm being awfully cynical. Maybe she has been saved, and regained her faith. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
In his interview with Rice, Charlie Rose asked a question in the line of whether her (late) husband, an atheist, was an influence in keeping her away from religion. 'Heaven knows', women have been dissuaded from the things important to them by their husbands for thousands of years. But she insisted that wasn't the case, and that her husband was more than happy to go through another marriage ceremony in her church. But I must say, when she was speaking of her late husband's atheism, I did hear a tiny note of regret, or perhaps even bitterness, though of course I could be mistaken and perhaps it was just the regret of a widow about her husband's death in general.
One thing I noticed, the article describes her erotic novels as "soft-core S&M".
But that kind of gives the impression that they're just about people playing dress up as french maids & gladiators, tying each other's hands to the bed posts, & some spankings.
Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty Trilogy novels went a tad farther than that. They were explicit descriptions of sex slaves bought & sold, auctioned on an auction block nude with horse tails on dildos hanging out their bums, people made to pose naked as statues in sexual positions while being taunted & sexually teased, sex slaves held in chains & shackles while being forced under threat of violence to scrub floors, and floggings where they are bruised with welts from whips, with no boundaries between heterosexual and homosexual sexual contact. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
But I just think it's important to distinguish those novels from the average sexy novel on the market.
a burglar breaks into an artist's home, mistakes a bizarre piece of art for a human head, reports it to the police, then the police break into the artist's home to investigate
I don't think there's anything that could encourage sexual activity any more than simple teenage hormones already do
Debate rages on use of cervical cancer vaccine / While almost 100% effective, some contend use condones teen sex
A new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer has set up a clash between health advocates who want to use the shots aggressively to prevent thousands of malignancies and social conservatives who say immunizing teen-agers could encourage sexual activity.
.....
"Just because you wear a seat belt doesn't mean you're seeking out an accident," Kaye said.
Thinking of this... If some people opt out of the immunization, they'd be the only ones getting HPV.
I could see it now... Average parents warning their daughters, "Stay away from Timmy, his parents are conservative Christians, so he probably has HPV."
superficiality >>If the facade is what's important to you, all you wind up with is an illusion. Disillusionment is the gift of substance.
-- Chloe<<
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-- a story from a time when there was even less gender equality. Heck, in some of the most sexist regions of the planet today, little girls are working in sweatshops.
