IMAGE OF THE DAY

[No Pic For You!]

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

No longer bitter

A guy in Ohio who lost his car, dog, house and life savings got a nice suprise when he won a $1 million lottery two days after his divorce from his unfaithful wife.

It pays to be a princess

Must be a tough job being a princess. Reports are Diana received "every penny" Charles had at the time of their divorce. Guess she "earned" it.

- Yahoo story

Geoffrey Bignell told The Sunday Telegraph that Charles handed over his entire personal fortune when the divorce was settled in 1996, ... widely reported to be between $25 million and $33 million. "Princess Diana took every penny he had," Bignell was quoted as saying. "I was told to liquidate everything, all his investments, so that he could give her the cash. "He was very unhappy about that. That's when I stopped being his personal financial adviser because he had no personal wealth left. She took him to the cleaners."

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Get Yer Humor....

Some new jokes on the RSR humor page.

For the music lover in you

Collision Detection blogs about graphing music using arcs. Cool if you are into that sort of thing.

He also mentions making music from images of Saturn's rings.

The True Story of King Arthur

A rant on TCS about PC revision of history/herstory. The True Story of King Arthur


Thursday, July 15, 2004

Warning!! Smoking may be bad for your health!

"They" keep saying smoking is dangerous, however some people just won't listen...

BLACKSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) - Warning: smoking in the toilet can be dangerous. A portable toilet exploded Tuesday after a man who was inside it lit a cigarette.

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Thanks Doc!

A man who told his doctors that he drinks more than a six-pack of beer per day is now fighting to get his driver's license back because the physicians apparently reported him to the state.

Keith Emerich, 44, said Tuesday that he disclosed his drinking habit in February to doctors who were treating him at a hospital for an irregular heartbeat.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Digging your own grave

It is extremely exciting," said state Sen. Doug Jackson, D-Dickson(TN), refering to a new program that will tag ex-cons with GPS devices.

"This will give us the opportunity to reduce the demand for prison beds. By doing that, it will allow us to stiffen penalties for more serious felons that pose a much greater risk for the community."

In other words the state is figuring out how to turn citizens into slaves who work to pay for their own imprisonment. The state promises this technique will only be used on the really bad people, and maybe some fathers who are behind on their child support. If you have a few parking tickets or were picked up for public intox no need to worry, for now.

From the horse's mouth
"Court Programs will place tracNET24 units on a wide range of offenders including deadbeat dads, juveniles, domestic violence and misdemeanor cases, and those on pre-trial release for felonies. By adopting tracNET24, Court Programs is providing Mississippi and Florida with the most advanced offender tracking available. The device allows authorities to monitor, via a satellite system, the whereabouts of offenders who are outfitted with small 12-ounce personal tracking units (PTU). A PTU receives signals from the Department of Defense's GPS satellite system and after the PTU is docked for charging, the PTU downloads the offenders' movements into a database accessed by correction officials. In addition, authorities may program exclusion areas, places where the presence of an offender is prohibited; such as certain residences, schools, and child care facilities. tracNET24 gives authorities verifiable records of where offenders have been, 24 hours per day, seven days a week."

Your government is here to help

At first glance this appeared to be a story from Arizona or New Jersey. Guess again! China. It seems officials in the Chinese government love Eminent Domain as much as their American counter parts.

PETITIONERS ATTEMPT MASS SUICIDE IN BEIJING 2004-07-12
HONG KONG, July 12, 2004—A group of 23 petitioners from the northeastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang climbed a building outside the country's Supreme Court in Beijing on Monday in an apparent mass suicide bid over unresolved grievances, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.
...The requisition of land by local governments and their crony development companies is a frequent cause for complaint in China, as local residents are evicted from their homes with little ceremony and scant compensation so local governments can cash in on skyrocketing property values..."We were thrown out with no formal procedures by the Management Bureau for the Affairs of State Organs. They built homes for ministers on the piece of land which they took over from us," she said from the middle of the chanting crowd.

Radio Free Asia(RFA) broadcasts news and information to Asian listeners who lack regular access to full and balanced reporting in their domestic media. Through its broadcasts and call-in programs, RFA aims to fill a critical gap in the lives of people across Asia. Created by Congress in 1994 and incorporated in 1996, RFA currently broadcasts in Burmese, Cantonese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Mandarin, the Wu dialect, Vietnamese, Tibetan (Uke, Amdo, and Kham), and Uyghur. It adheres to the highest standards of journalism and aims to exemplify accuracy, balanceand fairness in its editorial content. For more information on Radio Free Asia, visit www.rfa.org

Monday, July 12, 2004

THE PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses, and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

Friday, July 02, 2004

Free phone calls?

The makers of Kazaa have rolled out Skype, an application that allows anyone with a PC to call anyone with a phone anywhere in the world for almost nothing. Anyone tried this yet? The FCC has and they are not happy. Story here.

Geneva Convention, which doesn't apply

At least prisoners in Iraq are covered by the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross and Amnesty International. Anne-Marie Cusac over at The Progressive draws some parallels between prisoner abuse in Iraq and the US. A few excerpts below.

"The jail system in Maricopa County is well known for its practice of requiring inmates to wear pink underwear, and it is notorious for using stun guns and restraint chairs. In 1996, jail staff placed Scott Norberg in a restraint chair, shocked him twenty-one times with stun guns, and gagged him until he turned blue, according to news reports. Norberg died."

"The Red Cross also says that inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail suffer "prolonged exposure while hooded to the sun over several hours, including during the hottest time of the day when temperatures could reach 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher." Many of the Maricopa County Jail system inmates live outdoors in tent cities, even on days that reach 120 degrees in the shade. During last year's heat wave, the Associated Press reported that temperatures inside the jail tents reached 138 degrees."

"In another incident reported by Amnesty International that happened during McCotter's watch, an inmate at the Utah State Prison "was shackled to a steel board on a cell floor in four-point metal restraints for twelve weeks in 1995. He was removed from the board on average four times a week to shower. At other times he was left to defecate while on the board. He was released from the board only following a court order.""

Thursday, July 01, 2004

Cheers!

A must read on the MDM web site. Cheers to the bastards at the Robert Wood Foundation!