CAROLINA NATURALLY: Nov 21, 2010

Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift

Today's horoscope says:
Although it's not easy to surprise you, today will prove the exception to that rule.
There's at least one major surprise en route in the department of communications.
Routine conversations and encounters won't be quite so routine right about now.
That goes for any conversation, whether it's in person or via phone, email or snail mail.
If you expect it to turn out one way, it could quite possibly end up in an entirely different direction.
Ready or not, here it comes!

Some of our readers today have been in:

Perth, Western Australia, Australia

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands

Rio De Janeiro, Rio, De Janeiro, Brazil

Duisburg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Paris, Ile-De-France, France

Edithvale, Victoria, Australia

Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Male, Kaafu, Maldives

Sittard, Limburg, Netherlands

Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommen, Germany

Cavite City, Cavite, Philippines

Bilbao, Pais Vasco, Spain

Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

as well as Japan, Lithuania, Turkey, Romania, Belgium, Switzerland, India, South Africa and in cities across the United States such as Downey, New York, Cape Coral, Berkeley and more.

Today is:

Today is Sunday, November 21, the 325th day of 2010.

There are 40 days left in the year.

Today In History November 21

http://www.digtriad.com/genthumb/genthumb.ashx?e=3&h=240&w=320&i=/assetpool/images/101115033932_North%20Carolina.jpg

North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the US Constitution in 1789 on November 21st.

Today's unusual holiday or celebration is:

World Hello Day.

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

TSA Bullshit

Boehner and Congress exempt from TSA procedures

Let them go through the porno-scans and groping. All of them, plus their spouse and kids. Then let's see how long it takes for the security theater to change.

Representative John A. Boehner, soon to be the Speaker of the House, has pledged to fly commercial airlines back to his home district in Ohio. But that does not mean that he will be subjected to the hassles of ordinary passengers, including the controversial security pat-downs.

As he left Washington on Friday, Mr. Boehner headed across the Potomac River to Reagan National Airport, which was bustling with afternoon travelers. But there was no waiting in line for Mr. Boehner, who was escorted around the metal detectors and body scanners, and taken directly to the gate.

TSA security groping leaves 61-year-old bladder cancer survivor soaked in own urine

61-year-old Thomas Sawyer is a retired special education teacher, and a survivor of bladder cancer. He says he was "absolutely humiliated," broke down in tears and soaked in his own urine, after a degrading and invasive TSA "pat-down" at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on November 7 caused his urostomy bag to rupture.

From MSNBC:

Due to his medical condition, Sawyer asked to be screened in private. "One officer looked at another, rolled his eyes and said that they really didn't have any place to take me," said Sawyer. "After I said again that I'd like privacy, they took me to an office."
Sawyer wears pants two sizes too large in order to accommodate the medical equipment he wears. He'd taken off his belt to go through the scanner and once in the office with security personnel, his pants fell down around his ankles. "I had to ask twice if it was OK to pull up my shorts," said Sawyer, "And every time I tried to tell them about my medical condition, they said they didn't need to know about that."
Before starting the enhanced pat-down procedure, a security officer did tell him what they were going to do and how they were going to it, but Sawyer said it wasn't until they asked him to remove his sweatshirt and saw his urostomy bag that they asked any questions about his medical condition.
"One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants."

Sawyer was forced to walk through the airport drenched in his own urine, then board his plane and wait until after takeoff before he could clean himself up in the plane's toilet.

TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine

More TSA Bullshit

This thanksgiving could get expensive for those folks flying who refuse to be felt up and groped by the TSA.

....the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by tsa will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport.

That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the tsa and possibly by local law enforcement. anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest. -

More

Wrong, you have the right to refuse to be sexually battered and to leave at your convenience regardless what the buffoons at the TSA say. Also the threat of 'fines' is illegal and they know it - this is in response to the call for a boycott of the TSA and their checkpoints on Wednesday November 24th (the day before Thanksgiving). And if anyone were to be arrested it would be the TSA agents for sexual battery.

Judge orders Gawker to remove Sarah Palin book excerpts

Gawker received, published and criticized excerpts from Sarah Palin's new book, America By Heart. Though a perfect example of fair use (a limitation on copyright that explicitly allows for reportage and criticism) her publisher has other ideas.

Even after Palin publicized leaked excerpts at supporters' sites, HarperCollins filed a copyright lawsuit against Gawker yesterday. U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa ordered Gawker to remove the passages today, despite the small size of the excerpts and writer Maureen O'Connor's substantial fair-usey criticisms.
Gawker complied. Google's cache, however, republishes the post in full.

It seems a bit shrill to suggest that HarperCollins would have done this to get rid of Gawker's deflating pre-publication criticisms. Its toleration of identical 'infringements' in Palin-Friendly venues can speak for itself.

Policeman on vacation spots stolen art treasures in window of art gallery

Two ancient statues stolen in the 1980s from Italian museums, including a bronze statue of the Greek god Zeus, have been returned home. The Zeus statue and a marble female torso, both dating from the 1st century, had ended up in the hands of a dealer and a collector in New York, officials told a news conference on Friday in Rome.

The torso, from a small museum in Terracina, south of Rome, was on display in a Madison Ave. art gallery when Michele Speranza, a member of the Italian Carabinieri art squad that hunts down stolen artifacts, strolled by when on holiday last year. "I stopped to look at the gallery window and I recognized the statue," Mr Speranza, 38, said. "I thought I had seen it among the photos in our databank" of missing art, said the officer, who took a photo of the work with his cell phone and did some research when he returned to his job in Rome.

"The statue had been given up for lost" after it being stolen in 1988, said Gen. Pasquale Muggeo, head of the Carabinieri art division renowned for tracking down art treasures and artifacts stolen or illegally excavated from Italian soil. The bronze and the torso are each valued at €500,000 (£428,000), authorities said.

The Zeus was stolen from the National Museum in Rome near the capital's main train station in 1980, and was tracked to a New York collector after a photo of it appeared in a Sotheby's auction catalog in 2006. The art squad methodically studies catalogs of major auction houses. No arrests have been made in either theft. Authorities said those who owned the statues were unaware of their illegal provenance.

A Slice of Philosophy

http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/36adf549e8c9b7afcc06d55e1f685d851e443537_m.jpg

Bold career swap pays off

Woman's gutsy career change pays off

Marina Marchese was afraid of bees before meeting the residents of her neighbor's hives.

'It changed my life'

Also:

Save The Words

Save the Words features arcane words that are well on their way out of use. Many are no longer found in dictionaries. Site visitors can 'adopt' these words and pledge to revive them by using them as frequently as possible in conversation and in correspondence. Words like avunculize which means to act as an uncle. Or foppotee which is a simple-minded person.

Save the Words is a project of an advertising agency. Young and Rubicam in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, was hired to promote the print version of the Oxford English Dictionary.