Dr. Jacquelyn Kotarac, a woman who apparently tried to force her way into her "on-again, off-again" boyfriend's home by sliding down the chimney, died of mechanical asphyxia, according to autopsy results released Tuesday.
Initial reports said that the 13 workers on the rig were accounted for but were floating in the water near the rig. Twelve of the workers are reportedly wearing immersion suits, and one worker is reportedly injured.
They had boarded a United Airlines Flight from Washington to Tampa on Monday but were taken off the aircraft because of comments made by one of the men, according to an airline spokesman.
In a prime-time address from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama balanced praise for the troops who fought and died in Iraq with his conviction that getting into the conflict had been a mistake in the first place. But he also used the moment to emphasize that he sees his primary job as addressing the weak economy and other domestic issues — and to make clear that he intends to begin disengaging from the war in Afghanistan next summer.
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"Over the last decade, “we have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas,” he said. “And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy and grit and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad.”
Leeds-based Catholic Care sought exclusion from the 2007 sexual orientation regulations and began legal action to change its constitution so it could continue helping married couples only. The commission initially refused to give its consent, but the charity won the right to appeal against its decision.
Why Do Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers? Living Health - enki don't - 5 Comments Tags:Abstinence, booze, lifespan, social interaction, alcoholics 09/02/10 - - - (Link) One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink actually tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.
But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren't entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does tend to increase one's risk of dying, even when you exclude former problem drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.
So he's started a project called Gilpin Family Whisky, which turns the sugar-rich urine of elderly diabetics into a high-end single malt whisky, suitable for export.
James J. Lee, the suspected gunman who held three hostages for hours at the Discovery Communications building in Maryland on Wednesday, apparently had a long history of contempt for the company, which includes the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel and Planet Green networks.
His website, SaveThePlanetProtest.com, was essentially a rambling screed against Discovery, urging the company to expose civilization "for the filth it is" and to puts its focus on "how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution."
Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the insults, as parents and eventually police officers blocked the protesters’ entry.
Since the marriage rate among Japan's shrinking population is falling and with many of the country's remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia's Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men—and their handheld devices.
A Polish man living in Germany went about his business for about five years without noticing he had been shot in the head because he was drunk when it happened.
The civil suit filed Wednesday in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court claims Daniel Dastrup suffered severe back injuries, including a herniated disk, after performing about 200 baptisms at the LDS temple in Raleigh, N.C., on Aug. 25, 2007.
Underneath a highway bisecting this Silicon Valley town, home to Google Inc. and other tech giants, John Draper crammed his bulky frame through the door of a friend's home: a battered 1978 Chevy diesel bus.
Radio parts, a wrench set, arthritis medication and a book on robotics cluttered the dashboard. A padded bench for sleeping and a greasy stove filled the back.
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Beck made the remarks in answer to a question about his previous accusation that Obama was a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred for white people." He contended that that statement "was not accurate" and that he had "miscast" Obama's religious beliefs as racism.
Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”
McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”
That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.
The family of four started "The Garden Pool" and launched an accompanying website to share the story of how they converted an old empty, unused swimming pool into an oasis in the middle of the desert.
Hundreds of mourners dropped notes, cards and letters — many of them stained with tears — into a steel-gray casket on Saturday in a symbolic burial of Hurricane Katrina.
"Sure. We are absolutely safer in New Orleans than we were when Katrina hit," Col. Edward Fleming, commander for the New Orleans District of the Army Corps of Engineers, declared to "Early Show" weather anchor and features reporter Dave Price" on "The Early Show on Saturday Morning."
We're still not ready for another Hurricane Katrina Living Disaster - Harry - 0 Comments Tags:New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, BP, Noaa, Gulf Coast 08/29/10 - - - (Link) As Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast in late August 2005, homeland security officials were preoccupied with preventing another terrorist attack. They had lost sight of the fact that the vast majority of Americans live in the crosshairs not of terrorists but of earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, severe winds and flooding. New Orleans nearly drowned not because al-Qaeda was poised to attack its flood-control system but because the levees, floodwalls and pumps that keep the city dry had long been neglected. Put to the test by a major storm, they failed.
Five years later, one might think that Washington has realized the importance of preparing adequately for the next major hurricane on the Gulf Coast. Not so. Five years later, one might think that Washington has realized the importance of preparing adequately for the next major hurricane on the Gulf Coast. Not so.
The legend: On the wreck's anniversary, the sounds of screeching wheels, screaming passengers and a horrific crash might still be heard. You might also see a uniformed man with a gold watch.
In Kabul Afghanistan, graveyard of empires - and Toyota Corollas.
If this war-torn nation of 29 million is a magnet for foreign occupying forces that never seem to leave, it is also the land where old Corollas from around the globe come to die.
Interval Licensing filed the patent lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington. The companies named in the lawsuit are Aol, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube.
Does Your Language Shape How You Think? Science - halon - 18 Comments Tags:Language, gender, perception, linguistics, mother tongue 08/29/10 - - - (Link) Seventy years ago, in 1940, a popular science magazine published a short article that set in motion one of the trendiest intellectual fads of the 20th century. At first glance, there seemed little about the article to augur its subsequent celebrity. Neither the title, “Science and Linguistics,” nor the magazine, M.I.T.’s Technology Review, was most people’s idea of glamour. And the author, a chemical engineer who worked for an insurance company and moonlighted as an anthropology lecturer at Yale University, was an unlikely candidate for international superstardom. And yet Benjamin Lee Whorf let loose an alluring idea about language’s power over the mind, and his stirring prose seduced a whole generation into believing that our mother tongue restricts what we are able to think.
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Eventually, Whorf’s theory crash-landed on hard facts and solid common sense, when it transpired that there had never actually been any evidence to support his fantastic claims. The reaction was so severe that for decades, any attempts to explore the influence of the mother tongue on our thoughts were relegated to the loony fringes of disrepute. But 70 years on, it is surely time to put the trauma of Whorf behind us. And in the last few years, new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways.
"It is in fact a quote from Hitler and it was selected from numerous quotes and various sources," Easton Area High School Principal Michael Koch said.
NY candidate: Prison dorms for welfare recipients Government Elections - Phlogiston - 2 Comments Tags:NY, gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino, prison dorms, personal hygiene 08/29/10 - - - (Link) Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in "personal hygiene."
Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many tea party activists, isn't saying the state should jail poor people: The program would be voluntary.
Officials at a Los Angeles County jail plan to test out an invisible heat-beam weapon originally developed by the military as a way to subdue brawling inmates by making them feel "intolerable heat."
