McCain and Obama get their own comic books
Government Elections Fluff - merricat - 7 Comments
Tags: John McCain, comic book, Barack Obama, 2008 Presidential Elections, IDW Publishing
07/24/08 -  -  - (Link)
Some people say John McCain (R.-Ariz) has a temper like the Hulk, others think Barack Obama is more slippery than Aquaman -- but did anyone expect the two presumptive presidential candidates to be getting their own comic books?
IDW Publishing, a comics company best known for horror titles (most notably "30 Days of Night") and adaptations of movies and television shows, is going into the beltway world by publishing "Presidential Material: Barack Obama" and "Presidential Material: John McCain," a pair of graphic novels that chronicle the life of the two men who both want to be riding on Air Force One for four years.
Private social network Facebook to go Web wide
Around The Web - Harry - 5 Comments
Tags: facebook, privacy, Facebook Connect, affiliated sites, tap member data
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
The leader of a youth movement that swept the world this past year by encouraging Web users to share bits of their lives with selected friends, spoke on Wednesday of spreading his service across the Web, even while apologizing for past excesses.
Mark Zuckerberg, 24, told an audience of 1,000 industry executives, software makers, media -- and his mother and father -- at Facebook's annual conference of how the company's features will run on affiliated sites outside its own.
"Pantyhose bandit" bedevils Mass. town
Crime Stupid - vulvacide - 4 Comments
Tags: massachusetts, school bus stop, queen sized, black hosiery, pantyhose bandit
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
Someone Has Been Leaving Black, Queen-Sized Hosiery Near School Bus Stop For 2 Years
Dozens of pantyhose that have been left near a Milford school bus stop are causing sheer annoyance in the neighborhood.
House Republicans Fire Off Letter To New York Times
Government Politics - The Naz - 8 Comments
Tags: John McCain, Republicans, new york times, rejected, opinion piece
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
In a move reminiscent of past flaps over the perception of liberal bias among mainstream media outlets, House Republicans distributed a letter on Wednesday formally "urging" The New York Times to allow a third party to take out a full-page ad featuring a rejected opinion piece by their party's presidential candidate, Arizona Sen. John McCain.
'Allah meat' astounds Nigerians
Living Religion - enki don't - 11 Comments
Tags: Nigeria, Africa, beef, Allah meat, words in the gristle
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
Diners have been flocking to a restaurant in northern Nigeria to see pieces of meat which the owner says are inscribed with the name of Allah.
What looks like the Arabic word for God and the name of the prophet Muhammad were discovered in pieces of beef by a diner in Birnin Kebbi.
House Passes Housing Bill After Bush Says He Will Sign It
Followup - Harry - 1 Comment
Tags: house, treasury department, mortgage crisis, bailout, mortgage finance companies
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
The House approved far-reaching government assistance on Wednesday for the nation’s housing market, including broad authority for the Treasury Department to protect the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies from collapse.
The measure also includes an aggressive plan to help hundreds of thousands of troubled borrowers avoid foreclosure by refinancing their mortgages with more affordable government-insured loans.
Original Story:
Cost of Bailout of Loan Giants Is Estimated at $25 Billion
Woman kills self before home foreclosure
Death - Rudy - 6 Comments
Tags: Suicide, massachusetts, foreclosure, mortgage crisis, Carlene Balderrama
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
Police in Taunton, Mass., say a woman has killed herself after faxing a letter telling her mortgage company she would be dead by the time they foreclosed on her house.
Zimbabwe introduces Z$100bn note
Government Corruption - Anti-Pope - 6 Comments
Tags: Inflation, Africa, Mugabe, bank-note, loaf of bread
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
Zimbabwe is to introduce a bank-note worth Z$100bn in response to rampant inflation - but the note will barely cover the cost of a loaf of bread.
Blackwater: We're taking our toys and going home
Government War - Bored - 7 Comments
Tags: politics, Blackwater, hired guns, tactical retreat, dystopian future
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
It seems that executives from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration's favourite hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS gas and Little Bird helicopters and go back to the great dismal swamp of North Carolina whence they came. Or at least that's how it is being portrayed in the media.
Improbably Divine: 10 Unconventional Religious Artifacts
Living Religion - The Naz - 8 Comments
Tags: jesus, Ebay, allah, religious images, divine messages
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
Religious images seem to have appeared over the years in everything from a sliced potato to 400-year-old granite, and some lucky finds from around the world have sold for thousands of dollars on eBay and reportedly delivered divine messages.
Man blows up apartment spraying for bugs?
Living Disaster - DBH - 5 Comments
Tags: New Jersey, explosion, bugs, Insects, exterminate
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
A New Jersey man trying to exterminate insects in his apartment blew it up instead, the New York Daily News reported on Monday.
Global warming could lead to more kittens
Living Nature - sannyasin - 5 Comments
Tags: Global Warming, kittens, humane society, kitten season
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
“Each year it seems to get worse and worse,” said Christina Gin, an animal shelter volunteer in Hayward, Calif., to the Hayward Daily Review earlier this month.
She was talking about the shelter’s surplus of kittens, a problem that animal shelters across the country face every summer. But lately, it seems that there have been more and more of the furry carnivores.
Ms. Gin blames global warming for the feline glut, and she’s not alone.
Bears eat two men in Russia's eastern wilderness
Death - vulvacide - 7 Comments
Tags: bears, russia, Starving, tasty humans, geologists
07/24/08 - - - (Link)
A sloth of up to 30 hungry and desperate bears have attacked and eaten two men in Russia's wild eastern region of Kamchatka and trapped a group of geologists at their remote site.
The bears - apparently starving and looking for food - killed the men last Thursday, Russian agencies reported. They surrounded a local platinum mining company, where both victims worked as security guards.
American searches globe for world's largest fish
Living Nature - Harry - 8 Comments
Tags: extinction, fish, freshwater, worlds record, National Geographic Society
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
Rushing across a temple parking lot, British angler Rick Humphreys yells, "We've got a fish."
He jumps into a small motorboat on the Maeklong River in time to see Wirat Moungnum bring the prize to the surface — a rare, giant freshwater stingray that weighs as much as 44 pounds.
It bursts through the murky water exposing a soft, white underbelly the size of a trash can lid. The crew scrambles to string a rope through its gill-like slits and wrap a towel around its 5-foot-long tail that has a venomous barb.
"It's a start," Humphreys says almost apologetically. The specimen is a tenth of the size of the largest rays. "There are a lot bigger ones than that."
Humphreys is serving as a guide for American biologist Zeb Hogan, who is on a worldwide quest for the largest freshwater fish.
Fish pedicures: Carp rid human feet of scaly skin
Living Health - anonymous coward - 7 Comments
Tags: spa, carp, pedicure, nibble, nice feet
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
Ready for the latest in spa pampering? Prepare to dunk your tootsies in a tank of water and let tiny carp nibble away.
Fish pedicures are creating something of a splash in the D.C. area, where a northern Virginia spa has been offering them for the past four months. John Ho, who runs the Yvonne Hair and Nails salon with his wife, Yvonne Le, said 5,000 people have taken the plunge so far.
"This is a good treatment for everyone who likes to have nice feet," Ho said.
Extra:
For photos of the spa treatment:
http://www.yvonnesalon.com/
Children of God
Living Religion - Lurchi - 2 Comments
Tags: texas, child-welfare, F.L.D.S., Yearning For Zion Ranch, polygamous religious sect
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
On a humid Wednesday in late June, as she waited to be summoned by a grand jury, 16-year-old Teresa Jeffs hitched up her navy blue prairie dress and hoisted herself into the crooked arms of a live oak tree that sits in front of the Schleicher County Courthouse in Eldorado, Tex. For a few minutes, she was not — as has been speculated about many of the young women of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. — a possible child bride, or a sexual-abuse victim, or a member of an out-of-touch, polygamous religious sect. She was just a kid in a tree, perched serenely above the heads of all the lawyers, reporters and sheriff’s deputies — a moon-faced girl with an auburn coxcomb of hair and a mischievous grin.
We understand so little about the view from that tree, about what the world known simply as “outside” looks like to someone like Teresa Jeffs, who was among more than 400 minors forcibly removed from the Yearning for Zion Ranch, which belongs to the F.L.D.S., in early April.
Geologists Blow Up Swiss Mountainside
Science - KEYE-TV - 3 Comments
Tags: explosives, Switzerland, geologists, unstable, mountainside
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
Swiss geologists used over a thousand of pounds of explosives to bring down an unstable mountainside.
Extra:
With Video
GM, utilities join to study electric car impact
Business - happy trauma - 2 Comments
Tags: auto industry, electric car, General Motors, global oil, Chevy Volt
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
General Motors Corp. has joined with more than 30 utility companies across the U.S. to help work out electricity issues that will crop up when it rolls out new electric vehicles in a little more than two years.
The Detroit automaker said the partnership, which includes the Electric Power Research Institute and large utilities such as Southern California Edison and Duke Energy Corp., will deal with issues from tax incentives for the vehicles to where and when they can be plugged in for recharging.
Original Story:
Battery supplier declares itself ready for GM electric car
Cost of Bailout of Loan Giants Is Estimated at $25 Billion
Business - Lurchi - 2 Comments
Tags: taxpayers, mortgage, bailout, decline and fall, $25 billion
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
The proposed government rescue of the nation’s two mortgage finance giants will appear on the federal budget as a $25 billion cost to taxpayers, the independent Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday even though officials conceded that there was no way of really knowing what, if anything, a bailout would cost.
Related Stories:
House Passes Housing Bill After Bush Says He Will Sign It
Estelle Getty of 'Golden Girls' dies at 84
Death - blinko - 13 Comments
Tags: Estelle Getty, Sophia, Golden Girls, advanced dementia, actress
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
Estelle Getty, the diminutive actress who spent 40 years struggling for success before landing a role of a lifetime in 1985 as the sarcastic octogenarian Sophia on TV's "The Golden Girls," has died. She was 84.
Rough seas: One-third of coral reef species face extinction
Living Nature - Harry - 0 Comments
Tags: Global Warming, extinction, One-third, coral reefs, over development
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
"I'd like to be
under the sea,
in an octopus's garden
in the shade."
Or so the Beatles put it back in the good ole' days, before things got really rough in Neptune's realm.
Amid a host of problems for the world's oceans, last week brought a reminder that coral reefs, the sentinel species for measuring the health of the seas, are taking a beating. One-third of all coral reef species face extinction worldwide, reports the latest study, released by Science magazine, with more species looking threatened.
Court rules lesbians are not just from Lesbos
Followup - Pinkie Snarq - 13 Comments
Tags: lawsuit, lesbian, Lesbos, gay women
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
A Greek court has dismissed a request by residents of the Aegean island of Lesbos to ban the use of the word lesbian to describe gay women, according to a court ruling made public on Tuesday.
Original Story:
People of Lesbos take gay group to court over term 'Lesbian'
Could an Obama victory hurt black Americans?
News Opinion - Rorschach - 36 Comments
Tags: Barack Obama, 2008 Presidential Elections, African-Americans, racial equality, post-racial
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
"We had a dream. Now it's a reality."
That's the slogan on a popular T-shirt linking Sen. Barack Obama's presidential run to the Rev. Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality. It's one of several T-shirts -- including "Barack is my homeboy"-- that reflect African-Americans' euphoria over Obama's White House bid.
But there are others who warn that an Obama presidency could hurt African-Americans. They say an Obama victory could cause white Americans to ignore entrenched racial divisions while claiming that America has reached the racial Promised Land.
Man Makes 3-Horsepower Trek Across America
Living - Sweater Undulations - 0 Comments
Tags: RV, America, Travel, Bob Skelding, three horses
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
There are many different ways to see the country, but a man in Deerfield is turning back time in his effort to find America.
Bob Skelding has quit his job and is closing up his home as he prepares to travel across the country in his homemade RV pulled by three horses.
David Walliams' stalker admits campaign
Entertainment Celebrities Minor - Whitaker - 21 Comments
Tags: Mental Illness, celebrities, Little Britain, David Walliams, stalkers
07/23/08 - - - (Link)
A woman has admitted in court to harassing Little Britain star David Walliams over a four-year period.
Sarah Bartholomew, 29, from Essex, sent a stream of letters, e-mails and gifts to the comedian, and texted his agent saying: "I need his baby."
Highbury Corner Magistrates Court was told her actions were at the "upper end of stalking".
Break-in suspects found asleep on stolen goods
Crime Stupid - Billie_Joe_Buttfuck - 10 Comments
Tags: Alcohol, sleep, Sleeping, backpacks, thiefs
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
Police say a trail of pillows and backpacks led to two sleeping men who were arrested after a department store break-in. Kyle Burress, 25, and Allen Pierce, 27, have been charged with second-degree burglary.
Mystery foot was depressed man's, police say
Followup - enki don't - 6 Comments
Tags: British Columbia, Feet, DNA test, vancouver, depressed man
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
One of five feet that have mysteriously washed up on the shores of British Columbia over the past year has been linked to a depressed man who disappeared a year ago, police said Saturday.
Original Story:
Fourth right foot washes up near Vancouver, RCMP confirm
Other Related Stories:
Fifth severed foot (and the first left) is washed ashore
Wash. state link to Canada's mystery feet?
Wash. state link to Canada's mystery feet?
Followup - enki don't - 6 Comments
Tags: canada, Washington, footless body, San Juan Islands, mystery feet
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
Authorities in Canada and Washington state are trying to determine whether a footless body that washed up in the San Juan Islands last year is connected to any of the mystery feet that have been washing ashore in British Columbia in recent months.
Original Story:
Fourth right foot washes up near Vancouver, RCMP confirm
Other Related Stories:
Fifth severed foot (and the first left) is washed ashore
Mystery foot was depressed man's, police say
Found Feet Owner's Name Released by Texas Authorities
Followup - KEYE-TV - 1 Comment
Tags: texas, Lake Travis, DNA, found feet, Jeffrey Michael Prout
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
On Monday, the Travis County Sheriff's Office released the name of the person whose feet were found along the Lake Travis shoreline.
DNA evidence says the feet are from Jeffrey Michael Prout. He was reported missing on his 29th birthday in August of 2006.
Original Story:
County decides foot found in lake matches another
Living in fear: Tanzania's albinos
Followup - RomancingTrain - 0 Comments
Tags: murder, Africa, Tanzania, albinos, Albinism
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
Twenty-five people with albinism have been murdered in Tanzania since March, a BBC investigation has found.
Albinos are targeted for body parts that are used in witchcraft, and killings continue despite government efforts to stamp out the grisly practice, the BBC's Karen Allen says.
Once, albinos used to seek shelter from the sun. Now they have gone into hiding simply to survive, after a series of killings linked to witchcraft.
Original Story:
Growing Trade in Albino Body Parts
'Unfathomable' End for Pregnant Victim
Crime Violent - winter_mute - 1 Comment
Tags: murder, Evil, fetus, pregnant woman, Andrea Curry-Demus
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
Authorities say a slain pregnant woman may have been alive and was possibly drugged when a baby was ripped from her womb, allegedly by a woman who tried to pass the infant off as her own.
The eviscerated body of 18-year-old Kia Johnson of McKeesport was found bound at the wrists and ankles with duct tape, and wrapped in a comforter and garbage bags.
Vomiting dummy for medic training
Technology - enki don't - 23 Comments
Tags: vomit, training, Dummy, iStan, paramedics
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
A dummy that moves and feels like a real patient and can bleed, vomit and sweat has been unveiled as the latest training tool for health professionals.
The remote-controlled mannequin, called iStan, has been acquired by the University of Portsmouth.
'Body Of Christ" Returned To Church After Student Receives Email Threats
Living Religion - enki don't - 29 Comments
Tags: florida, Hostage, Catholics, Eucharist, The Body of Christ
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
Orange County, FL -- One week after a University of Central Florida student snatched something sacred from church, armed UCF police officers stood guard during Sunday Mass to protect what Catholics call "The Body of Christ."
Minutes before the Mass began, Student Senator Webster Cook returned the Holy Eucharist he was holding hostage in a Ziploc bag ever since smuggling the blessed wafer of bread out of the Catholic Mass service Sunday June 29.
Man Caught Huffing In Public Again
Crime Stupid - Sweater Undulations - 13 Comments
Tags: arrest, mug shot, huffing, Patrick Tribett, paint-covered face
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
A man with a nationally known mug shot and paint-covered face was arrested Tuesday for at least the seventh time on suspicion of huffing paint.
Patrick Tribett, 44, has been arrested on charges of huffing paint at least seven times. He's had a history of huffing paint -- and being caught -- since 1998.
How not to do an American accent
Entertainment - vulvacide - 55 Comments
Tags: BBC, authenticity, American accent, dialect coach, mimicry
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
Everyone can do an American accent... at least everyone thinks they can. But how many would pass muster with a Hollywood studio? The BBC's Stephen Robb took a lesson from one of the movie industry's top accent coaches.
Any actor or actress hoping to convince in a foreign accent must have three words in the back of their mind at all times.
They won't be phrases like "shape of mouth", "position of tongue" or "placement of voice" - although all of these will be fundamental to learning and adopting an accent.
The three words haunting the performer, driving hour after hour of dialect practice, are "Dick", "Van" and "Dyke".
Extra:
With Video
Turkey's first gay honour killing
Crime Violent - Namor - 25 Comments
Tags: islam, Turkey, honor killings, homosexual, hate-crimes
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
In a corner of Istanbul today, the man who might be described as Turkey's gay poster boy will be buried – a victim, his friends believe, of the country's deepening friction between an increasingly liberal society and its entrenched conservative traditions.
Ahmet Yildiz, 26, a physics student who represented his country at an international gay gathering in San Francisco last year, was shot leaving a cafe near the Bosphorus strait this week. Fatally wounded, the student tried to flee the attackers in his car, but lost control, crashed at the side of the road and died shortly afterwards in hospital. His friends believe Mr Yildiz was the victim of the country's first gay honour killing.
Radovan Karadzic arrested
Government - Simian Pride - 2 Comments
Tags: bosnia, Serbia, war crime, Radovan Karadzic, Srebrenica
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, one of the world's most wanted men, has been arrested in Serbia after more than a decade on the run.
The Bosnian Serb wartime political leader disappeared in 1996.
He has been indicted by the UN tribunal for war crimes and genocide over the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica.
In tight times, shunning materialism saves money
Living - vulvacide - 4 Comments
Tags: Inflation, consumerism, San Francisco, conservation, duh
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
Give up worldly goods and help save the Earth.
Oh, and save lots of money.
As the economy worsens, one group of Americans is turning to an Earth-friendly way of life as a hardline strategy for saving. The Compact started a few years ago in San Francisco as a group of people who vowed to shun consumer culture for a year in the name of conservation. Now it has over 9,000 members and spinoff groups are sprouting up across the country.
Nurse gave wrong woman abortion
Living Health - RomancingTrain - 10 Comments
Tags: abortion, nurse, mix up, wrong patient, oops!
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
A nurse who gave a chemical abortion to a patient who had only come for a consultation has been cautioned.
Ann Downer, based at the Calthorpe Clinic in Edgbaston, Birmingham, failed to check the woman's personal details before giving her the drug.
Bush to cite Vietnam in defense of Iraq
Government War - Chet - 9 Comments
Tags: Iraq War, George W. Bush, Vietnam, quagmire, withdraw
07/22/08 - - - (Link)
Critics of the war in Iraq who compare the conflict to Vietnam have the analogy backward, President Bush plans to tell veterans in a speech today.
In what the White House is billing as a major foreign policy address, the president will say that the lessons of Vietnam teach that the U.S. should stay in Iraq, not withdraw. Terrorists cite Vietnam to predict that the United States will run from the Iraq war, he will say.
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