Panthers Football

When the Carolina Panthers win Sunday at New Orleans, they'll accomplish something no other NFC South team has done this season – beat a division foe on the road.

Home teams are 11-0 in NFC South games this season, with only the Panthers-Saints match-up remaining.

“We'd love to buck that trend,” said Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme. “It'll be tough.”

The Panthers have a lot at stake. With a win, they can clinch the NFC South championship, the No.2 NFC seed in the playoffs, and a first-round bye followed by a second-round game at home.

Should the Panthers lose, they would need Atlanta to lose at home to the 2-13 St. Louis Rams to avoid slipping to the No.5 seed, making them a wild-card team and requiring a first-round game at Arizona.

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Historical Note:
Carolina is 6-0 playing on the road against the Saints since John Fox became coach in 2002.

Sheriff Medford Doing Federal Time In NC

The former Buncombe County sheriff convicted of taking bribes from gambling machine operators has been assigned to a federal prison in North Carolina.

The Web site of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons shows that Bobby Medford has been assigned to Butner Federal Correctional Complex, about 35 miles north of Raleigh. He is in the section that houses low-security inmates.

Medford was convicted in May after accusations that he accepted more than $300,000 in bribes from illegal gambling operators over a dozen years as sheriff. Two of his captains and two lieutenants also were convicted.

The 63-year-old was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Medford had been held in an Irwin County, Ga., as federal officials decided where to send him.

Knock, Knock

Andy Panda from 1940

The other day I posted the first Woody Woodpecker cartoon ... that is not exactly true - it was the first one to feature Woody as the 'star' ... this one however is the first one in which Woody makes an appearance.

Cash-strapped states cut juvenile justice programs

State budget cuts are forcing some of the nation's youngest criminals out of counseling programs and group homes and into juvenile prisons in what critics contend is a shortsighted move that will eventually lead to more crime and higher costs.

Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia are among states that have slashed juvenile justice spending - in some cases more than 20 percent - because of slumping tax collections. Youth advocates say they expect the recession will bring more cuts next year in other states, hitting programs that try to rehabilitate children rather than simply locking them up.

Cruise passenger reported overboard near Cancun

Three Mexican Navy boats and a helicopter were searching the waters off the Caribbean resort of Cancun on Friday for an American woman who reportedly fell from a cruise ship.

A U.S. Coast Guard search-and-rescue crew using a Falcon jet halted its efforts to find 36-year-old Jennifer Feitz late Friday, but will resume Saturday morning using a larger C-130 aircraft, said Petty Officer Third Class Nick Ameen.

Feitz's husband reported her missing from the Norwegian Pearl cruise ship just before 5 a.m. Friday.

Mexico's Fifth Naval Regional Command said in a statement that by late Friday it had found no sign of Feitz and was having to deal with "adverse conditions" and strong waves in the search taking place just over 17 miles (27 kilometers) east of Cancun.

"The search is being carried out for an American woman who fell into the sea from a cruise ship east of Isla Mujeres," an island just off the coast from Cancun, the statement said.

Norwegian Cruise Line says the ship left Sunday from Miami for a seven-day western Caribbean cruise.

Lawmakers demand probe of Mexico beauty pageants

Mexican congressmen called for a federal investigation of potential drug cartel ties to the nation's beauty pageants Friday after a 23-year-old beauty queen was arrested on suspicion of drug and weapons violations.

Congressional leaders warned that cartels may have infiltrated contests to launder money, and said a full investigation was needed.

To many, former preschool teacher Laura Zuniga, named Miss Sinaloa in the drug-plagued northern state's annual beauty contest, symbolizes declining ethics in Mexico.

"It is very sad. What we are seeing is a loss of values among young people," said Representative Juan Francisco Rivera, who heads the congressional public safety committee.
"There should be an investigation to get to the bottom of this, and make sure it (the pageant) is not linked to some type of crime.

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A little late don't you think, Amigos.
If the pageants in Mexico are anything like the ones in the USA they are already so rife with corruption that criminal ties are a given.

Gene Selection

A woman is to give birth this week to the first baby in Britain which has been selected to be free of a gene which greatly increases the risk of breast cancer, experts said.

The 27-year-old woman, who wants to remain anonymous, decided to take the step because several of her husband's close female relatives suffered from breast cancer.

The baby grew from an embryo screened to make sure it did not contain the faulty BRCA 1 gene, which would have given it a 50 to 80 percent change of developing breast cancer.

British woman to deliver baby screened for breast cancer

Drug Combinations You Need to Avoid

Note to seniors (and anyone else) mixing prescriptions with painkillers and/or their favorite dietary supplements: Don't do it until you check with your doctor to make sure they don't interact to cause you harm.

A new study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that 1 in 25 people in their late 50s and older is risking dangerous drug interactions by mixing, for example, the blood thinner warfarin with garlic pills.

That's right, garlic pills are drugs. So, too, are potassium and niacin supplements. At least you should think of them that way, says study coauthor Stacy Tessler Lindau, an assistant professor of medicine-geriatrics at the University of Chicago School of Medicine.

Five dangerous drug combinations you need to avoid

Anti-Aging Herbs and Spices

Among other things, the holidays are a time of national dysnutrition: the disease of excess.
Dysnutrition happens even in the most developed countries when food is plentiful but the overall diet is based on eating all the wrong balance of foods.
Sound familiar?
The typical American diet that is high in simple carbohydrates -- white flour, white salt, and processed food -- is aging us.
We are getting all the bulk without the nutrients, plus adding to our propensity for developing real food cravings.
So whether you are a vegetarian or an omnivore, you can start to reverse aging by simply choosing to eat the right foods to keep you full of vim, vigor, and vitality, especially over the holidays.

20 anti-aging herbs and spices to add to your diet now

Diabetic Health News

A new report suggests that treating gum disease in patients who have diabetes with procedures such as cleanings and periodontal scaling is linked to 10 to 12 percent lower medical costs per month.

Treating gum disease linked to lower medical costs for patients with diabetes

Handle With Care

George, Roy, Bob, Jeff and Tom as The Traveling Wilburys

Toussie or not Toussie

The shrub has rescinded a pardon issued to Isaac Toussie, after it came to light that Toussie's father was a big-bucks donor to the repugicans in 2008.

The announcement of the pardon apparently wasn't the pardon itself, and thus the perpetually-incompetent cabal can plausibly take it back, but this article by an associate professor of law at Michigan State University suggests that the answer is a little vague and that Toussie has grounds to press for the pardon he was proffered.

The implications are, of course, much larger than Toussie's case -- some people are expecting some pretty outrageous pardons from the shrub in his last days, and the power to revoke pardons would be a heck of a handy tool for any Obama-era investigations of the cabal's crimes.

But more realistically, there's precious little to suggest that Obama's people have any interest in justice for the cabal's criminal junta, so none of this means much unless you're friend or family of Isaac Toussie. (see details at Concurring Opinions)

As the Toussie matter unfolded, the New York Times had nothing to say about Toussie's father's contributions to the repugicans, until long after bloggers brought it to the Times' attention. (details at Raw Story)

No end to the gall and the stupidity

As if the rest of the world looks askance at us anyway ...

At the United Nations, America was the only nation to vote against food as a human right.

"The Bush administration, speaking for the U.S.A., therefore must consider it tolerable that 6 million children die every day -- children who could be fed if we weren't wasting billions on stealth fighters, littoral combat boondoggles and non-effective defense against non-existent ballistic missiles from Iran."

Details at Crooks & Liars.

GMAC gets the government's OK to become a bank

The Federal Reserve gave General Motors a crucial boost yesterday by approving a request from GMAC, which provides funding for most of the automaker's dealers and many of its customers, to become a bank holding company.

The move gives GMAC access to new sources of funding, including a potential infusion of taxpayer dollars from the Treasury Department and loans from the Fed itself.

Read the rest in the Washington Post.

Neighborhood geothermal experiment

When Douglas Worts learned that the City of Toronto was going to fix the pavement on his street, he knew what he had to do: he called his councilor to get it stopped.

Worts has nothing against good roads. But he looks at his street – Laurier Ave. in the Parliament-Wellesley area – as more than a roadway.

He thinks it has the potential to heat and cool his house and others, by providing the footings for a geothermal heating system.

Now the city is interested in the idea, and has given $25,000 to Worts and his neighbours, through the Don Vale Cabbagetown Residents Association, to carry out a feasibility study.

Worts had never thought much about geothermal heating and cooling until he happened to hear that it was being considered for the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa.

He talked up the idea at the Laurier street party in 2007, and some neighbours expressed interest.

He explained that down past the frost line, the Earth keeps a temperature that’s warmer than winter air and cooler than summer air.

Geothermal systems take advantage of that by pumping fluid through underground pipes to carry the seasonal warmth or coolness to the surface.

Full Story

Last shot to avoid infamy

Cornerback Travis Fisher said he won't fly back to Detroit from Green Bay if the Lions somehow manage to find a way to beat the Packers on Sunday.

"If we win, I ain't catching the plane back home," he said with a laugh. "I'll walk back to Detroit."

Chances are, Fisher won't have to worry about making the 482-mile trek.

A loss would install the Lions in their very own NFL Hall of Shame as the league's first team to go 0-16 in a season. They're already the first to go 0-15. A win, of course, would be better, allowing Detroit the dubious distinction of becoming the ninth franchise to finish a season 1-15.

The last team to finish the season winless was the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, an expansion franchise that went 0-14.

As of this moment ...

4217 Brave men and women will not be returning from Iraq
ALIVE!

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DIY Genetic Engineering

The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself.

Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering — a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories.

In her San Francisco dining room lab, for example, 31-year-old computer programmer Meredith L. Patterson is trying to develop genetically altered yogurt bacteria that will glow green to signal the presence of melamine, the chemical that turned Chinese-made baby formula and pet food deadly. […]

Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, said amateurs will probably pursue serious work such as new vaccines and super-efficient biofuels, but they might also try, for example, to use squid genes to create tattoos that glow.

Cowell said such unfettered creativity could produce important discoveries.

“We should try to make science more sexy and more fun and more like a game,” he said.

Full Story

Frendship

Friendship between Women:
A woman didn’t come home one night The next morning she told her husband that she had slept over at a friend’s house. The man called his wife’s 10 best friends. None of them knew anything about it.

Friendship between Men:
A man didn’t come home one night. The next morning he told his wife that he had slept over at a friend’s house. The woman called her husband’s 10 best friends, eight of which confirmed that he had slept over, and two said that he was still there.

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

You might be inspired to get up early and go to the post-season sales

They've lost it!

I am inspired to sleep in late and avoid the post-season sales

Damn, they're trying to commercialize everything - even horoscopes!