Welcome to ...

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.


Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Faux's Shepard Smith Schools Wing Nut Senator on the Public Option

You don't hear much about Shepard Smith.
Perhaps it's because he doesn't toe the line with Faux News' wing nut ranting.
That doesn't make news.
Maybe it should.

Full Story

Survey says ...

Depending on how you want to look at it, the city of Miami is full of the most beautiful people of any city in America; but the city of Miami is also full of some of the least intelligent people in the country.

Miamians Beautiful, Yet Not Intelligent

Obama ratings rebound

Obama ratings rebound

The president's job approval rises, despite concerns about the economy, health care, and war.

Axelrod meets with FAUX News chair

Not sure any good can come of this.

But perhaps the White House laid down the law.

This is an actual posting on Craigslist seeking a room mate

I am a female in my mid 60's and I am looking for a room mate. Times are tight and I need some extra money.
I am willing to rent out my bathroom in my 1 bedroom east village home.

My bathroom is large. You can easily put a twin air mattress in there. I only ask that when I need to use the bathroom, you or your air mattress are not in it.

I do ask that when you are in the apartment, you confine yourself to the bathroom. I do not feel comfortable with a stranger walking around my living room. This might change as I get to know you better.
You may have guest over as long as they are confined to the bathroom as well. This might seem a bit odd but please remember the rent is $400 and the bathroom is large.

*****

What is so funny about this is there will be someone who will take her up on her offer.

Burger King attempts risky makeover

Burger King attempts risky makeover

The burger chain is renovating its 12,000 locations to look more "edgy, futuristic."

Surprising ways to boost energy

Surprising ways to boost energy

This foot exercise will get blood flowing through your body and energize you.

Congress debates $500 baby gift

Congress debates $500 baby gift

A funded savings account could soon become reality for all children born in the U.S.

A Slice of Philosophy

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow.
Our life is the creation of our mind.

~ Siddhartha Buddha

And I Quote

Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.

~ Johann Georg von Zimmermann
(Something the repugicans ought to think about)

High-tech pioneers win Nobel in physics

High-tech pioneers win Nobel in physics

Scientists who made high-speed Internet and stunning Hubble photos possible share the $1.4 mil prize.

Investors bet on your life

Investors bet on your life

Brokers want to pay cash for your life insurance policy — but how they'll profit isn't so pleasant.

Glow-in-the-dark mushrooms discovered

Glow-in-the-dark mushrooms discovered

Seven new glowing mushroom species are discovered around the world.

Re-learning how to look for a job

Re-learning how to look for a job

If it's been years since you've plunged into the job market, watch out — the process has changed.

How to adjust
Also:

World landmarks in danger

World landmarks in danger

A hurricane-battered New Orleans school and Peru's ancient city of Machu Picchu need help.

Hands off our Big Boy statue

Hands off our Big Boy statue

A West Virginia city fights to keep a statue of a restaurant chain mascot, despite its owner's wishes.

Reason
Also:

Best and worst vending machine foods

Best and worst vending machine foods

No matter which snack you want, these tips can help you pick the healthier item.

Dimbulb wants a piece of the NFL

Dimbulb wants a piece of the NFL

Wing Nut Hate Talk show host Lush Dimbulb is part of a bid to buy an NFL team.

High-tech hunt for lost masterpiece

High-tech hunt for lost masterpiece

Da Vinci's greatest painting lies hidden somewhere inside a wall in Florence’s city hall.

Clue left

Also:

Retailers booming in the downturn

Retailers booming in the downturn

The recession has bankrupted some big chains, but these businesses are doing well.

NY Plot Was One of Most Serious Since 9/11

The New York-based terror plot the feds say they disrupted last month was one of the most serious in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks, Attorney General Eric Holder declared.

Full Story

Ohio rethinks death

Ohio is considering administering lethal drugs into inmates' bone marrow or muscles as an alternative to a ' or a backup for a ' the traditional intravenous execution procedure, a prisons department spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Bone considered for lethal injection

Killer Priest Loses Appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court has turned down an appeal filed by a Roman Catholic priest convicted of murdering a nun in Ohio.

US Supreme Court turns down Ohio priest's conviction appeal in Easter weekend slaying of nun

United tries $249 fee to check bags for a year

United Airlines put a new twist on baggage fees Monday, introducing a sort of all-you-can-carry fee for luggage. The airline said travelers could pay $249 for the right to check two bags every time they fly United or United Express for a year.

Full Story

U.S. losing ground on preventable deaths

As Congress presses forward with landmark legislation to revamp the nation's health-care system, lawmakers are grappling with a troubling question: Are Americans dying too soon?

The answer is yes.

Full Story

AFA Says 500,000 Sign Petition to Boycott Pepsi


A firestorm has been brewing among the wing nuts with regards to soda.
It's not because soda is bad for you, but because they have accused PepsiCo of advocating both same-sex marriage and homosexuality.
The furor has become such that the American Family Association (AFA)- which neither is American nor Family - says it has now secured over 500,000 signatures (knowing their penchant for lying ... five is closer to accurate - if that many) on a petition from those pledging to boycott PepsiCo.

Full Story

Lower winter heating costs expected

There's good news for people worried about winter heating bills. People using natural gas this winter stand to save $105, compared with last year, and propane users will get even bigger savings, the government said. Households that use heating oil or electric heat also are expected to spend less during the heating season.

Home heating costs on the decline

Lower fuel costs and a mild winter could add up to big savings for consumers.

Wisconsin Parents Face 25 Years in Prison When They're Sentenced in Daughter's Prayer Death

Should be Life!

A Wisconsin mother and father convicted of reckless homicide for praying instead of taking their dying daughter to a doctor could spend up to 25 years in prison. Dale and Leilani Neumann will be sentenced Tuesday in the death of 11-year-old Madeline Neumann, who died on their living room floor from undiagnosed diabetes as they prayed rather than getting her medical treatment.

Full Story

The 10 riskiest foods

Study reveals the 10 riskiest foods

Food-borne illnesses don't always come from the sources you'd expect, a new report shows.

The Real Misery Index

Unemployment Increases The Hardship

The rise in unemployment continues to prolong the hardship for millions of Americans, according to the latest update of the Huffington Post's Real Misery Index.

Full Story

Retail sales to show slump may persist

U.S. retailers probably saw sales decline again in September, signaling weak demand leading into the holiday season that will require chains to sharpen their focus on value.

Full Story

Dollar's woes boost oil, gold

Gold surged to a record high Tuesday after a news report sparked widespread talk about the U.S. dollar being unseated as the currency for trading oil.

Full Story

Overdraft-Fee Revenue Up 35 Percent

Most banks automatically let customers overspend their accounts and then charge them a fee to cover the withdrawal, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

Injured man grows new skull

A British man has stunned doctors by regenerating a portion of his skull .
Gordon Moore, 72, had a metal plate inserted in his head to protect his brain for more than 50 years.

Injured man grows new skull

Fisherman fined for Great White shark caught off Oregon Coast

A fisherman was fined for not reporting a Great White shark caught off the Oregon Coast in August.

Teen inventor's windmills power African village

William Kamkwamba dreamed of powering his village with the only resource that was freely available to him.

Full story

New degree focuses entirely on Beatles

Fans and students of The Beatles now have a chance to get a Masters Degree in everything about the Fab Four.

School ask pupils to bring own toilet paper

Parents of primary school students in Ireland not only have to worry about sending their children to school with packed lunches but also with toilet paper

Phantom storms

The solar wind has died to a ghost of a breeze, so what's stirring up our satellites?
A global study suggests it could be Earth's own atmosphere.

How our weather leaks into space

Carrying a gun increases risk of getting shot and killed

OK, so tell us something we didn't know?!

People who carry firearms are far likelier to get shot – and killed – than unarmed people, finds a new study of hundreds of shooting victims in Philadelphia.

Carrying a gun increases risk of getting shot and killed

Largest ring in solar system found around Saturn

A dusty ring has been found around Saturn that dwarfs all others discovered to date – its particles are likely the detritus of collisions involving the moon Phoebe.

Largest ring in solar system found around Saturn

The Big Picture

From BBC-Science:
Click to reveal

German Magazine Ditches Stick Thin Models for 'Real' Women

Brigitte, one of German's most popular glossy women's magazines, has banned models from its pages and will instead use only "real" women in its editorial pages, as a protest against society's obsession with stick-thin women.

Beginning in January 2010, the magazine, published in Hamburg by Gruner & Jahr, plans instead to work with staff members and with readers who are invited to register in an online audition. All the women featured will be identified by their profession or passions in life, in an attempt to combat the objectification of women.

Brigitte Huber, the bimonthly magazine's editor, said in a statement, "Attractiveness has many faces, whether they are actresses, musicians, first ladies or women on the streets of big cities -- they all affect fashion and beauty styles."

While this might look like a cost-cutting exercise, it is in fact a response to two different trends, according to editor in chief Andreas Lebert. He said in the statement, "Behind the career of a model lies the idea of not showing women themselves. Now many women find this outdated, especially the beauty ideals, molded by the fashion industry, that are highly controversial."

Brigitte has a readership of 3.21 million and was founded in 1954. It is aimed at the "middle youth" market of professional women and mothers of school-age children. Mr. Lebert claimed that Brigitte's readers want to see "real" women, but it remains to be seen how the fashion houses and advertisers will view this radical move and whether they will adjust their own images to fit with the Brigitte aesthetic.

The magazine's website announces, "Because beauty has many faces, from now on we will use not models, but women like you and us. What counts is the personality. We invite you to join in. ... Because women do not need a deputy. ... Because clothing is not a matter of trends, but of personality."

In a similar move, a group of French politicians recently proposed legislation demanding that magazines put warnings on airbrushed adverts and photo spreads to alert readers when an image has been retouched to change a person's physical appearance.

Alexander Schulman, the editor of British Vogue, sent out a letter in June appealing to major fashion houses to end the "size-zero" culture, accusing them of forcing magazines to hire models with "jutting bones and no breasts or hips" by supplying only "minuscule" garments for photo shoots.

Two years ago, Spain stipulated a minimum body mass index for catwalk models.

After beating Microsoft, Eolas sues everyone else

A company that won a $565 million patent-case judgment before settling with Microsoft in 2007 has filed suit against 22 more companies, alleging they also violated the same patent.

Eolas Technologies holds patents on technology that allows Web sites browsers to include embedded media and applications. In its complaint (PDF) filed Tuesday, Eolas named as offenders Adobe, Amazon, Argosy Publishing, Blockbuster, CDW, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, Go Daddy, Google (including YouTube), J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, New Frontier Media – shall I keep going? – Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Rent-a-Center, Staples, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments and Yahoo.

Most likely, they have the deepest pockets among companies on a much longer list.

"We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources," Eolas Chairman Michael Doyle said in a statement sent to seattlepi.com. "Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair."

The Tyler, Texas-based company is seeking permanent injunctions, triple damages and attorney fees.

Eolas, a spin-off of the University of California, won its high-profile case against Microsoft in 2004, securing a $565 million judgment before Microsoft appealed. The case bounced around the appeal process before the companies settled in 2007 for a confidential amount of money.

The University of California, however, disclosed its piece of the settlement: $30.4 million.

The suit against Microsoft, filed in 1999, alleged the Redmond-based company violated patent No. 5,838,906. But Tuesday's lawsuit adds another patent to the mix – one the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just granted on Tuesday morning.

Eolas didn't waste any time.

"Obviously, we intended to file as soon as the patent was issued," said Eolas' attorney, Mike McKool of the McKool Smith firm in Dallas. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas – a known haven for small patent holders that sue larger companies.

The '906 patent covers the ability of Web browsers to act as platforms for interactive embedded applications. The new patent, No. 7,599,985, expands on the '906 patent, covering Web sites' use of plug-ins and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to embed applications, according to the Eolas announcement.

After one rejection, Eolas' '906 patent has withstood three USPTO reviews – most recently in February – and remains valid.

During the case against Microsoft, opponents said the lawsuit would destroy the future of the World Wide Web by limiting the use of Eolas' patented technology. Though Microsoft changed parts of Internet Explorer in response to the case, that never happened.

And you wonder why you're getting screwed?

Wellpoint ... the largest U.S. Health Insurer cuts it's own employees health benefits.
In the memo from Randy Brown, Wellpoint’s chief human resources officer, the company said it would lower its contribution toward worker premiums and raise deductibles in two of its three benefit plans. “Your cost per paycheck will probably increase,” the memo said. Wellpoint has 42,000 employees. - More here.
Meanwhile, Wellpoint is suing the state of Maine for not allowing the company a built in 3% profit margin.
Anthem, a subsidiary of Indiana-based insurance giant Wellpoint, had requested an 18.5 percent rate increase that would support a 3 percent profit this year for policies sold to individual Mainers who are not covered under employer-sponsored group policies. Kofman’s decision reduced the average increase to 10.9 percent. - More Here.
And that profit margin they want won't go to actually saving Americans lives...it will go to pay for their executive salaries and "overhead."
...in 2006, executive compensation for the nine highest-paid administrators in Maine totaled more than $4.3 million, averaging almost $500,000 per executive.
How's that for a 'fine kettle of fish', eh, boys and girls?!

Wing Nuts Aim to De-Liberalize the Bible

Those morons at WingNutTopia (excuse me - 'Conservapedia') have started the Wing Nut Bible Project.
The project aims to remove "liberal bias" from the Bible.

Full Story

This is hilarious ... the very foundation of their 'religion' has a "liberal bias".
Oh, how the wing nuts doth soar twixt flights of deluded fantasy.

H1N1 flu vaccines for some

H1N1 flu vaccines for some

With supplies limited, health care workers get inoculated, while others have to wait.

The truth about Ahmadinejad

The truth about Ahmadinejad

A British newspaper incorrectly claims the Iranian president's birth name is of Jewish origin.

What's getting cheaper in the recession

What's getting cheaper in the recession

The downturn has been good for at least one thing — big bargains for shoppers.

Prices dropping across America

Also:

How small savings become big nest eggs

How small savings become big nest eggs

Even if you haven't saved at all, it's possible to retire with more than $1 million in the bank.

Unusual Holidays and Celebrations

Today is Mad-Hatter Day.

Daily Almanac

Today is Tuesday, Oct. 6, the 279th day of 2009.

There are 86 days left in the year.

Today in History, October 6.

Our Readers

Some of our readers today have been in:

Barnet, England, United Kingdom
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
Paris, Ile-De-France, France
Athens, Attiki, Greece
Madrid, Madrid, Spain
London, England, United Kingdom
Celje, Celje, Slovenia
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

Letting go of some of your negative energy is easier to do when you get your heart pumping!
So go for a long jog in the woods, hit the gym, or just do some jumping jacks in your kitchen while the cookies are baking!
As long as you can fit some kind of exercise into your day, you will help yourself get over an old grudge, forgive someone who wronged you, or shake loose a bad feeling about someone.
Focusing on making your life better lets you be more positive overall.

Yeah, OK.