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The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Friday, February 13, 2009

A wee Scottish Tale..

A man is cupping his hand to scoop water from a Highland burn.

A Gamekeeper shouts, 'Dinnae drink tha waater! Et's foo ae coo's sheet an pish!'*

The man replies, 'My Good fellow, I'm from England .. Could you repeat that in English for me.'

The keeper replies, 'I said, use two hands - you spill less that way!!!'

_______________________

*(For the Scots challenged ... he said 'Do not drink the water! It is full of cow dung and urine!)

Real Time is back


Bill Maher in 2009

On the employment front

From the "Screw you and the horse you rode in on" Department:

More and more companies are fighting their ex-employees' unemployment claims.

More in the Washington Post.

'High' Finance

Knowing the company was effectively bankrupt, Merrill Lynch & Co. paid $3.6-billion in bonuses, with the approval of the company's new owner, Bank of America.
More at Bloomberg News Service.

Management at bailed-out firms Morgan Stanley and Citigroup's Smith Barney will hand out their ordinary billions in bonuses, but they understand the PR challenge well enough that they've specifically told recipients not to call them bonuses. They're "retention awards", now.
More at ThinkProgess.

Hobbled Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse will pay bonuses too, but they're paying them by handing out stock in a new hedge fund comprised of toxic investments. Clever.
More in The Independent (London, UK).

In Ireland they're effectively nationalizing its biggest banks.
More in the International Herald Tribune.

Items in the News

Talis Colberg, the Alaska Attorney General who tried to circumvent the ''troopergate'' investigation last fall, has resigned.
More in the Anchorage (AK) Daily News.

After winning a lawsuit over having protesters shot in Africa, Chevron is now demanding legal fees from the Nigerian villagers. They want $500,000. From Nigerian villagers.
More in the Los Angeles Times.

Stewart Parnell, the owner of Peanut Corporation of America, took the Fifth Amendment in non-testimony before Congress, when asked about his personal approval for knowingly shipping out contaminated peanuts. Production at the company's Plainview plant has been halted, after a large pile of dead rodents, rodent droppings, and bird feathers were discovered in the ceiling over the plant's production facilities.
More in the Associated Press.

A federal court says Verizon can't use begging and pleading to stall customers who want to cancel their accounts.
More at CNet News.

The Vatican is evolving, or at least conceding that Charles Darwin may have had a point.
More in the London Times.

The Pinky P.O.V.


Pinky and The Brain

Liars and Fools

Today's Liars and Fools are:

Our Food is Full of Crap ...

... as well as Rodent Hair, Mildew, and Bugs.

In the wake of the peanut butter salmonella scare (caused by rats, roaches, and other awfulness inside the factory), an op-ed in today's New York Times examines the government's standards for acceptable levels of gross stuff in food. According to the writer, you likely ingest up to two pounds of "flies, maggots and mites" each year, without being aware.

Excerpt:
In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet “The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans,” the F.D.A.’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such “defects” for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter.

Among the booklet’s list of allowable defects are “insect filth,” “rodent filth” (both hair and excreta pellets), “mold,” “insects,” “mammalian excreta,” “rot,” “insects and larvae” (which is to say, maggots), “insects and mites,” “insects and insect eggs,” “drosophila fly,” “sand and grit,” “parasites,” “mildew” and “foreign matter” (which includes “objectionable” items like “sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.”).

Tomato juice, for example, may average “10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams [the equivalent of a small juice glass] or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots.” Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation — 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.

The Maggots in Your Mushrooms (E. J. Levy / New York Times)

Here's that happy-fun FDA publication: "The Food Defect Action Levels - Levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods that present no health hazards for humans."

Bon appetit!

Research on snap judgments based on people's faces

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New Scientist reports on the research of Princeton University's Alexander Todorov, who finds that "snap judgments are based on an 'overgeneralization' of an evolved need to read facial expressions for signs of danger.

Brits: rally to save your right to photograph the police at Scotland Yard

Britons are planning on rallying at Scotland Yard on February 16, 2009 to protest the new law that lets the cops throw you in jail for ten years for photographing them in action, if your photo is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism."
The National Union of Journalists, in association with British Journal of Photography, has called for photographers to make their voices heard at a rally on 16 February as a new law is introduced that allows for the arrest - and potential imprisonment - of anyone who takes pictures of police officers 'likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism'...

The NUJ has teamed up with Mark Thomas, a writer, broadcaster, comic and political activisit, along with Chris Atkins, who is behind the documentary Taking Liberties, and BJP for a 'photo opportunity' outside New Scotland Yard on Monday 16 February. 'The plan is simple, turn up with your camera and exercise your democratic right to take a photograph in a public place,' says Marc Vallee, an NUJ member who will be there on the day, and who himself clashed with police over the right to photograph public events

Man charged with arson in Australia fire

A media report says a suspect has been charged with lighting one of the wildfires that killed more than 180 people in Australia last weekend.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported Friday that the man was charged in court on three counts: arson causing death, lighting a wildfire and with possession of child pornography.
The report cites no sources.

The man did not appear in the Morwell Magistrates Court, where he was ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation.

The arson charges are connected to a blaze known as the Churchill fire, one of hundreds that raged through southeastern Victoria state last Saturday, killing more than 181 people and destroying almost 2,000 homes.

Our Readers

Today some of our readers hailed from:

Athens, Attiki, Greece
Erfurt, Thuringen, Germany
Deming, New Mexico, United States
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Beaverton, Oregon, United States

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

You can still get your message across, if it's carefully chosen.

Great!