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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, June 11, 2010

The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift
Today's horoscope says:
Your regal, royal bearing and the mantle of authority you wear so easily and so well can sometimes intimidate those around you -- but in a good way!
You have the power to decide whom to let into your world and whom to banish from it.
If someone has been trying to edge their way in, don't hesitate to give them a good shove back out.
If they're this pushy now, imagine how they might act a bit further down the road.
Some of our readers today have been in:
Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Paris, Ile-De-France, France
Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Warrington, England, United Kingdom
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Frankfurt, Hessen, Germany
Coffs Harbor, New South Wales, Australia
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Blackpool, England, United Kingdom
Cagliari, Sardegna, Italy
Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia
Nice, Provence-Alpes-Cote D'Azur, France

as well as Costa Rica, Hong Kong, and the United States in such cities as Ochelata, Glasgow, Des Moines, Brooklyn and more

Today is Friday, June 11, the 162nd day of 2010.
There are 203 days left in the year.

Today's unusual holiday or celebration is:
Corn On The Cob Day

It's Hot

From the "No Shit!" Department:

Taste of Charlotte

STF
You can get a taste of some of the city's street-suitable tidbits uptown this weekend.

Flash floods kill at least 16 in Arkansas

Rising as fast as eight feet in an hour, floods wiped away campsites along a pair of rivers.
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U.S. vs. England 'going to be special'

American soccer has never been more popular in the United States or its players more well-known across the world. And on Saturday comes the first competitive match between the U.S. and England since the great American upset at the 1950 World Cup. For one afternoon, millions will be watching from California to New York island. Like never before in the United States, this is the sport's moment.

Victory of the Mad Viking

 
Victory of the Mad Viking
We need more stories like this one.
Here is a little of the backstory to the story told in the video.

U.S. soccer team's unusual traffic tie-up

American World Cup players get caught in a uniquely South African traffic jam outside their hotel.  
Also: 

Now that's Funny

Now that's Funny
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Put'em up I tell ya

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You know better than to mess with Super Ape - The Ape of Steel!

Interesting In General

Interesting In General
After baby boomers, Generation X, and millennials, the latest group is looking for its moniker.  
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Things They Won't Tell You

Things They Won't Tell You
Airlines make it increasingly harder to cash in reward miles, especially during the summer.  
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As The World Turns

As The World Turns
Talk about crimes against humanity!
Taliban executes boy, 7, for spying
Suspected Taliban militants have executed a 7-year-old boy, accusing him of spying for the government, officials in southern Afghanistan said Thursday. The execution took place Tuesday in the Sangin district of Helmand province, said Dawoud Ahmadi -- the provincial governor's spokesman.

Of all bad men ... religious bad men are the worst
~ C.S. Lewis

Police say the Dutchman "let slip" some details about Natalee Holloway.  
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The State Of The Nation

The State Of The Nation
A photo found in a North Carolina attic reveals a rare portrait of Civil War-era slave children.  
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Local Hospitality

Local Hospitality
You can always tell when a prude has been messing around with anything.

There is a place in the North Carolina mountains that was (and still is to native western North Carolinians) known as "Bony-Ass's Defeat".
And was shown as such on maps from the colonial era until the 1920s when some Yankee prude in Washington, D.C. decided the Bony-Ass's Defeat was too much for the prim and proper prude to handle and changed the location's name to 'Bonus Defeat' on the official geological survey maps.

Now you might ask way was the place called Bony-Ass's Defeat in the first place.

The story is that in the early colonial era there was a hunter who with his dog (whose hind end was naught but skin and bone compared to an impressive chest and shoulders, so the hunter called him 'Bony-Ass') hunted the area and chanced upon a bear on late afternoon. The hunter missed killing the bear with his first shot and would not have time to load a second before the bear would be on him except for Bony-Ass.

Bony-Ass attacked the bear and give as good as he got for several moments until both he and the bear tumbled off the edge of the rock face they were fighting upon. As this was progressing the hunter loaded a second shot - remember these were the single shot muzzle loading days - and he rushed to the edge to see that Bony-Ass had lost the final round of the fight to the ground and was bent misshapen over the rocks below the rock face and that the bear was wobbling away slowly, battered but victorious.

Victorious until the hunter placed a lead ball behind it's ear and it slumped to the ground to become a rug or a coat or saddle cover and the flesh jerked for the winter to feed the hunter and his family. Bony-Ass lay were he died and the rock face that saw this 'titanic' struggle was and will be forevermore known as Bony-Ass's Defeat.

So take you 'Bonus Defeat' and shove it.

Hispanics abandoning Arizona

The controversial new immigration law is only one of the reasons so many are leaving. 
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Rednecks and other assorted weirdos

Rednecks and other assorted weirdos
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Business/images-3/redneck.jpg
Yep, That's a redneck.

News of the positive sort

News of the positive sort
Slow news day (on the positive front that is) so why not take a sojourn to 10 Weird but Wonderful Museums.
Hey, it couldn't hurt, now could it?

Shoe

http://imgsrv.gocomics.com/dim/?fh=1cf727de62f895f34c1dd39df18ed3ed

Culinary DeLites

Culinary DeLites
For more than 20 years, "the other white meat" has been synonymous with pork.  
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In Matters Of Health

In Matters Of Health
The active ingredient in this natural beverage may help burn fat and speed weight loss.
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Helpful Hints

Helpful Hints
Grapes and yogurt are healthy snacks, but they can help your skin and hair in other ways.  
Also: 
The risks can far outweigh the savings when you purchase these 20 items second-hand.
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On The Job

On The Job
There are new opportunities to bump your pay back to pre-downturn levels, says one expert.  
Also: 
These sectors have plenty of jobs and will add more, so it may be worthwhile to change careers.  
Also: 

It's The Economy Stupid

It's The Economy Stupid
By employing three easy strategies, you can start down the path to financial security.
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Headlines

Headlines:
Cooler Pacific Ocean linked to drought conditions, famines.

Science for the People: Surprising discoveries and fascinating researchers.

This is what happens when BP spills coffee

This is what happens when BP spills coffee.

It's Only The Environment After All

It's Only The Environment After All

Iconic Gulf business shucks last oyster

After 134 years, the oldest U.S. oyster distributor may become a casualty of the oil spill.
Also: 

Calvin and Hobbs

http://imgsrv.gocomics.com/dim/?fh=1f383d7b33fc7c1d63a32e62e4822f4d

People with Negative Attitudes More Likely to Learn From Mistakes

negative attitude
This research focused on the relationship between negative emotionality and learning from errors. Specifically, negative emotionality was expected to impair learning from errors by decreasing motivation to learn. Perceived managerial intolerance of errors was hypothesized to increase negative emotionality, whereas emotional stability was proposed to decrease negative emotionality. All the hypotheses were tested in a laboratory simulation. Contrary to the prediction, a positive association was found between negative emotionality and motivation to learn. The effects of perceived managerial intolerance of errors and emotional stability on negative emotionality were as predicted. Moreover, exploratory data analysis were conducted at the level of specific negative emotions and revealed differentiated effects of specific negative emotions on learning from errors.
Also:

Self-Control Is Exhaustible

self control Self Control Is Exhaustible
Psychologists have discovered that self-control is an exhaustible resource. And I don’t mean self-control only in the sense of turning down cookies or alcohol, I mean a broader sense of self-supervision—any time you’re paying close attention to your actions, like when you’re having a tough conversation or trying to stay focused on a paper you’re writing. This helps to explain why, after a long hard day at the office, we’re more likely to snap at our spouses or have one drink too many—we’ve depleted our self-control.
And here’s why this matters for change: In almost all change situations, you’re substituting new, unfamiliar behaviors for old, comfortable ones, and that burns self-control. Let’s say I present a new morning routine to you that specifies how you’ll shower and brush your teeth. You’ll understand it and you might even agree with my process. But to pull it off, you’ll have to supervise yourself very carefully. Every fiber of your being will want to go back to the old way of doing things. Inevitably, you’ll slip. And if I were uncharitable, I’d see you going back to the old way and I’d say, You’re so lazy. Why can’t you just change?

Scientific Minds Want To Know

Scientific Minds Want To Know
Bubble bursting into ring of daughter bubbles (JC Bird/Nature)
With the help of high-speed video, scientists discover there is far more to bursting bubbles than meets the eye.

Harbour seals are able to detect fish that are up to 100m away using only their whiskers, say scientists.

Cithaerias menander butterfly
Scientists release dazzling pictures of tropical butterflies
THE BIG PICTURE
Click to reveal


Bee worship was enshrined in ancient art (Image: 
Ckirie/Chris Irie/Flickr)
The discovery of the oldest known beehives in the world in Israel reveals the skills of ancient bee-keepers
Radar data show new details about a vast mountain range buried beneath the ice of Antarctica.  
Also: 
Giant Sea Reptiles Were Warm-Blooded?
Prehistoric predators could control their body temperatures, study says 
Giant reptiles that ruled dinosaur-era seas might have been warm-blooded, a new study says. Researchers found that ancient ocean predators possibly regulated their body temperatures, which allowed for aggressive hunting, deep diving, and fast swimming over long distances.

Coral Reefs More Diverse, and Fragile, Than Previously Thought

fish serioatopora hystrix birds nest coral photo
Even coral that looks the same, new research shows, may be part of a completely different species. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
Some types of coral are abundant across reefs—turning up in a wide range of depths. Researchers have long assumed that this demonstrated versatility of the species—something that could be useful when rebuilding reefs damaged by pollution, bleaching, and other climatic events.
New research, however, has shown that these corals are not homogeneous. Instead, they consist of a variety of distinct and highly-specialized species—a finding that could have serious implications for the preservation of reefs worldwide.

Drug Manufacturing Facilities are Major Source of Drugs in Drinking Water

USGS researchers test pharmaceuticals in water photo
U.S. Geological Survey hydrologic technicians collect a stream sample from Hallocks Mill Brook downstream of the outfall of one of the wastewater treatment plants investigated. Photo courtesy of USGS.
Guest bloggers Andrea Donsky and Randy Boyer are co-founders of NaturallySavvy.com.
A five-year study conducted by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) researchers has found that pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities are a "significant source" of pharmaceuticals that enter the local environment.
From 2004 to 2009, USGS researchers tested outflow samples from two wastewater treatment plants in New York State where more than 20 percent of the water received by the plants is from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities. The researchers found the pharmaceutical concentrations in the treated water that ends up in your faucet were 10 to 1,000 times higher than the outflows from 24 water treatment facilities around the U.S. (including one in New York State) that do not receive water from pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities.

Answer to saliva mystery has practical impact

Researchers at Rice University, Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have solved a long-standing mystery about why some fluids containing polymers — including saliva — form beads when they are stretched and others do not.

Leave it to Johnny

George W. Bush was visiting an elementary school, and the 4th grade class he sat through began a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked the shrub if he would like to lead the class in a discussion of the word “tragedy.” So, the shrub asked the class for an example of a tragedy.

One boy stood up and said, “If my best friend who lives next door is playing in the street and a car comes along and runs him over, that would be a tragedy.”

“No,” said the shrub, “that would be an accident.”

A girl raised her hand and said, “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove off a cliff, killing everyone on board, that would be a tragedy.”

“I’m afraid not,” the shrub said. “That’s what we would call a Great Loss.”

The room went silent. No other children volunteered. The shrub searched the room and asked, “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?”

Finally, way in the back of the room, Johnny raised his hand, and in a quiet voice, he said, “If Air Force One, carrying Mr. and Mrs. Bush, was struck by a missile and blown up to smithereens, THAT would be a tragedy.”

“That’s right! And can you tell me WHY that would be a tragedy?” asked the shrub.

“Well,” Johnny said, “because it wouldn’t be an accident and it sure as hell wouldn’t be a Great Loss…”

One tracked mind

http://imgsrv.gocomics.com/dim/?fh=05729c760b1fcb8f2194be5b3ceb5fc2
That is if those morons at Faux News had a mind in the first place.

Deliberate dumbassedness

Boomer with Attitude
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/binary/505179ae/grooms_news_headshot.jpg
By John Grooms
A friend of mine, I'll call him Ron, ventures into "Right-wing Radio World" a couple of times a week, and now and then delivers what he calls "Reports from the dark side." In a way, it's a valuable service, since I can't subject myself to the likes of Limbaugh & Co. for more than five minutes before feeling a stroke coming on. Nothing Ron tells me about the right's radio shock troops surprises me much anymore — they lost me forever when they insisted that the torture and killing at Abu Ghraib prison were "pranks" — but I admit I was kind of shocked the other day.
Ron called up and started chatting about some talk show listeners he'd heard who think this county's library system is largely a waste of money. One genius, said Ron, called in with this bit of wisdom: "Why can't people pay a couple of bucks whenever they want to check out a book, or just borrow them from friends?" As if just any book would do at any time for any purpose -- and never mind the overarching fact that centrally located collections of knowledge, made available to the general public, are a cornerstone of civilization. Another insightful listener suggested, "These days, you can find anything you wanna read online, so why are we paying so much for all those buildings?" Laugh or cry; your choice.
Last week, the daily paper ran letters from readers who opposed diverting funds to save the library system. One reader questioned the need to keep library branches open in as many areas of the county as possible, and another delivered an odd threat of a Loonytarian lawsuit against Mayor Foxx for crossing over the city/county line to offer help.
I suspect that critics who talk about libraries this way, or who refer to libraries as mere places to "check out a book," haven't been inside a library in quite awhile. Head to one of Charlotte's library branches today, and you'll find them abuzz with activity -- computer keyboards clicking away, kids taking part in special reading programs, library employees teaching senior citizens how to navigate the Internet, folks who've lost their jobs using the library's resources to build new resumes and bone up on interviewing skills, patrons asking for hard-to-find research material from other libraries around the world, and I could go on and on.
In normal times, you could dismiss the irate radio listeners and letter writers as isolated half-wits, but unfortunately, they're not alone.
As others have pointed out, America is going through a cycle that rolls around now and then in our history, generously called "anti-intellectualism." It usually shows up during times of swift change, and takes the form of a distrust of experts, educators, and what the late Alabama governor George Wallace called "pointy-headed innallecshuls." (Don't laugh, he won five states in the 1968 presidential race that way.) Usually, the distrust takes the form of rhetoric about "elites" who supposedly want to tell the complainers what to do; think of the weird accusations during the health care saga that Obama was going to "pull the plug on Granny." I'll never forget a TV news item in which a middle-aged woman was calmly arguing with a young, male health reform foe, explaining why his "death panel" charge was simply untrue. The man jumped back as if she had hit him, yelled, "Oh, and I should believe you, I guess, because you're soooo smaaart," and laughed at the woman. That's the attitude I'm talking about. It's called being a deliberate dumbass, and it's currently in epidemic mode in the land.
The economy stinks, people are worried, and many feel as if the earth is moving under them. Those things -- along with the fragmentation of the media that allows viewers to avoid any opinions or facts they find uncomfortable -- lead many folks to embrace a locked-in fear that supports their loathing of anything unfamiliar, and which often morphs into a belief that the hated elites are conspiring to destroy everything those folks hold dear. The mistrust can come out as a "reasoned" argument that Obama = Hitler on national TV, or, on a local level, as slurs against libraries or xenophobic gripes about a July Fourth symphony program's inclusion of a medley titled "Fiesta Latina."
Any way you look at it, you're talking about a spread of fearful ignorance as a way of seeing the world. Worse, it's a willful ignorance that can't be talked down from the ledge, since counter-arguments are, you know, probably what they want me to think. Folks who think that way are, to quote colleague Hal Crowther, "wisdom-proof and lethally repetitious."
All I can say is God help us. The hounds of deliberate idiocy -- perhaps best personified by Glenn Beck's self-satisfied, grotesque misinterpretations of history -- have broken their leashes and now run amok on our airwaves, infecting what I seem to remember as having once been a reasonable country with lots of reasonable people. The German writer Goethe, once said, "There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity." Unfortunately, it often seems these days as if the "nothing worse than" crowd is running the show.

The truth be told ...

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Lunatic Fringe

Lunatic Fringe
When dealing with wingnuts ... Remember the rule: 
If they accuse someone of something, then they're already guilty of it.
Glenn Beck: Worst Racist In The World
karoli posted this over at Crooks and Liars:
 
Forgive the cheap riff on Olbermann's Worst Person in the World designation, but if the epithet fits, no one wears it better than Glenn Beck.
All that apologizing for racist comments he did last year? Yeah, not so much. Now listen to the clip at the top and try to count how many dog whistles he jammed into 64 seconds.
With regard to President Obama:
BECK: When you see a typical person like the president of BP, he [Obama] has a reaction that has been bred into him.
Now that actually kind of works. It does, if you understand who his parents were, and who his grandparents were. Because they're not really the typical white people.
His mother wasn't. His mother was a revolutionary.
His father wasn't. A revolutionary.
His grandparents, they went to the communist Little Red Church just outside Seattle. They had communist friends.
So it's almost like Marxism has been bred into him.
Yep, piling scum on scum: Beck is once again viciously and falsely smearing Obama's parents. Doesn't he claim to have a rule that "you leave the families alone"?
I really hate writing about Glenn Beck because I'd like to make him a footnote on the back end of history. He's the equivalent of a two-bit carnival barker with a shape-shifting magical box, where he can put facts in and pull them out as bull.
But after reading Over the Cliff and previewing Bill Press' new book, the emerging trend is too scary to ignore.
With each passing day the rhetoric gets more violent, more ridiculous, loaded with even more hyperbole and scary images, with the sole intention of stoking fear, anger, and loathing into those with ears to hear.
If they win the propaganda war, it will be because we didn't call it out when we saw it and call it what it is: bare, naked racism blended with a scary witches' brew of long-standing key terms, fears, and biases.
This is why law student Angelo Carusone listens to four hours of Glenn Beck every day and then pushes advertisers to drop their ads from his show. It's his mission: to make it more and more difficult for Beck to have a platform to spew this nonsense.
He's successful, too. He's gotten hundreds of advertisers to drop their sponsorship. In the UK, Beck's show has NO advertisers. None. While this might not cause Fox to drop his show entirely, it does expose the Murdoch agenda quite clearly. After all, any businessman without an agenda would have dropped him like a hot potato when the revenue to support the show dried up.
But no. Beck is such a lowlife scumbag that he just ramps up the nasty a few more notches and carries on, while all the time claiming to be a patriot.
What he is is a whore. Plain and simple.
http://www.sensibleerection.com/images/entry_thumbnails/1272658436_

Professor Dog at you service

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2572/3961890387_dbc45a1036.jpg
Professor Dog at your service.
Professor Dog will be an intermittent regular feature answering the more inane and stupid questions the staff here at Carolina Naturally get from some real idiots out there (nearly 100% of them from wingnuts).

Planet Earth

Planet Earth
An emergency search is under way for Abby Sunderland, who was trying to navigate the world alone.
Also: 
Update:
Abby Sunderland was feared lost at sea while attempting to sail solo around the world.  
Also: 

China overturns ban on bald travelers

China overturns ban on bald travelers

China has canceled a controversial visa restriction on bald Taiwanese visitors amid discrimination concerns, travel agents and local media said on Thursday. The rule imposed by the southern Chinese city of Xiamen barred bald people from applying for one-year multiple-entry permits before it was canceled earlier this year, according to Taiwan's Travel Agent Association.

"It would probably have raised the question of discrimination if Chinese customs officials were to ask visitors to remove their wigs," said Roger Hsu, a spokesman for the association.


Hsu said the rule had mainly applied to frequent business travelers but he said he did not know how many people had their visas rejected for being bald. The Taipei-based Liberty Times quoted unnamed travel agents as saying that Chinese authorities were concerned that "it was easier for bald people to disguise themselves".

Ties between Taiwan and China have improved markedly since Ma Ying-jeou became the island's president in 2008 vowing to boost trade and tourism. Beijing still considers self-ruled Taiwan part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary. The two sides split in 1949 after a civil war.

U.S. military turns to TV for surveillance technology

drone surveillance
Reporting from Washington — As it rapidly expands its drone program over Afghanistan, the U.S. military is turning to the technology that powers NFL broadcasts, ESPN and TV news to catalog a flood of information coming from the cameras of its fleet of unmanned aircraft.
U.S. military archives hold 24 million minutes of video collected by Predators and other remotely piloted aircraft that have become an essential tool for commanders. But the library is largely useless because analysts often have no way of knowing exactly what they have, or any way to search for information that is particularly valuable.
Advertisement
To help solve that problem, the Air Force and government spy satellite experts have begun working with industry experts to adapt the methods that enable the NFL and other broadcasters to quickly find and show replays, display on-field first-down markers and jot John Madden-style notations on the screen.

Alleged text-rage beating accomplice sweetly apologizes

A 13-year-old Florida girl charged in connection with the savage beating of her friend said she did not think the boy charged with the assault would follow through on texted threats of violence. “If I knew he was going to do it, then I probably would have done something about it,” Kayla Manson said. “I wouldn’t really hurt somebody, and wouldn’t help someone hurt somebody.” Manson is a central figure in the case that shocked the US on March 24, when 15-year-old Wayne Treacy attacked fellow Deerfield Beach Middle School student Josie Ratley, also 15, while she was waiting for her school bus. The attack followed an exchange of text messages that began with Ratley telling Treacy that he shouldn’t be seeing her friend, Manson.

Treacy told police he snapped when Ratley made a reference to his deceased older brother, who committed suicide last year. After texting Ratley that he was going to kill her, he put on his steel-toed boots and rode his bike three miles to the school. Treacy did not know Ratley and asked Manson to identify her for him. After pointing out her friend, Manson said she got on the bus to go home and did not see what happened next. Treacy threw Ratley to the ground, pounded her head against the concrete sidewalk and kicked her repeatedly with the steel-toed boots. Ratley somehow survived the attack.

Video contains NSFW language.

Manson said when Treacy asked her to point out Ratley, he didn’t say he intended to kill her. “I thought he would probably just curse her out or yell at her, embarrass her,” she said. “I thought he would never touch a girl.” Manson told Vieira she did not see the texts that threatened her friend with death. Vieira asked which texts she did see. “The one where she calls him a rapist, and … he calls her a c---,” she said, casually using the vulgar term. When she repeated the word, Vieira had to tell her, “We just have to be careful with our language.”

Vieira later apologized to viewers, saying, “It’s really not Kayla’s fault. I asked her about the text message, and she … was giving me verbatim what was in it. She didn’t know there are certain words you can’t say on television.” Jonathon Marne, one of Manson’s two attorneys, joined her for the interview and pointed to Manson’s casual use of the word as evidence that kids don’t view language and threats the same way as adults do. “These terms, unfortunately, are part of common vernacular in middle school. These children speak in ways that adults would not find appropriate,” Marne said. “You’ll hear one child threaten another child, ‘Oh, if you do that, I’ll kill you.’ They don’t take these things seriously.”

Paranoia Strikes Deep

Paranoia Strikes Deep 
Saudi Arabia: Young Man To Be Jailed And Whipped For Kissing In 
Public Al-Yom says the man, who is in his 20s, was seen at a mall with a woman "sitting on one of the chairs, exchanging kisses and hugs."