"Apparently the bird was on the roof of a house, and the people involved in the accident were trying to get the bird to come down," said Officer Wentworth. "The bird came, dive-bombed and hit him the head, and the next thing I knew, it flew into the cruiser and sat on my shoulder." The officer immediately rolled up the windows of his car and called dispatch.
The bird, a sun conure, then went peacefully into custody after doing some exploring. "It didn't provide any resistance. It just seemed to be enjoying itself inside the cruiser," said Officer Wentworth. Animal Control then coaxed the conure behind bars and questioned it about what clues it may hold about its past.
"I tried to whistle to it, I tried to say, 'you a pretty bird,' just something to get it to talk. Sometimes they do. If they say names, it helps, but this one was not cooperating," said Officer Deanna Gualtieri. Animal Control say the bird seems well cared for because of its ease with people, but they haven't been able to track down its owner yet. The conure is staying with a foster family for now.
How
do you get criminal charges against you dropped? Here's the unusual story
of how one fugitive got the Feds to drop the charges against him: he's
TOO guilty!
Americans
celebrate Pi Day on March 14 (3/14), but earlier this week on August 14,
we celebrate something kind of related:
After
completing the rites necessary for admission (and learning the
extraordinariily complicated Diospolis handshake), Pythagoras was
accepted into the priesthood. He spent the next 22 years there, learning
geometry and cosmology while embracing the priesthood's other
traditions, such as living life without personal possessions, adhering
to a vegetarian diet, and, perhaps most famously, being strictly
forbidden to eat beans. Although many historians are unsure
why, some have postulated that the bean ban was due to the fact that
they caused flatulence (still do), which destroyed the mental peace the
priesthood of Diospolis felt was necessary for meditation. Another
school of thought notes that black and white beans were used for voting
at the time, and remaining sans beans was the equivalent of being
apolitical. But, beans or not, during Pythagoras' time as a leader in
this brotherhood, he began to develop philosophical beliefs that would
one day become the cornerstone of his own teachings.
Having
spent half his lifetime away from home, Pythagoras finished his studies
in Egypt and returned to Sámos. There, he quickly developed a following
based on his ideals and philosophies, which were known as "the
semicircle of Pythagoras." When not talking numbers with his semicircle
crew, he was living in a cave. A really dark, lonely cave, but one in
which he must have been able to do some darn good thinking.
Much
like modern hippies, Pythagoras and his posse practiced vegetarianism,
wore no fur, and disavowed private property. Of course, also like modern
hippies, his ideas were often approached with fear and derision. In
fact, Pythagoras' beliefs were too mad for Sámos, and the group was
eventually forced to leave town, ending up in southern Italy. In the
city of Crotona (later Croton), Pythagoras founded a philosophical and
religious school based on his life experiences and beliefs (and grew a
long, white, phiosopher beard). Appointing himself head of the society
(thank you very much), Pythagoras dubbed his inner circle of followers
the mathematikoi. He was then quick to incorporate all that he
had come to value, including the elaborate process one had to endure in
order to gain acceptance in his "exclusive group." His Confucious-style
sayings were accompanied by the strict belief that the substance of all
things was a relationship of numbers, and without it, few things in the
universe could exist. Before, Pythagoras had evolved from a learned man
into a well-known and mystical leader of an oft-misunderstood cult.
Read the complaint and accompanying
documents multiple times, highlighter
in hand, while looking for intentional
deceptions, errors, and omissions that
could help your client prevail. First, look
for defects on the face of the complaint.
For example, the named plaintiff might
be a different corporation from the entity named in the supporting documents.
This occurs with surprising frequency.
Second, if your state requires debt buyers to be licensed as debt collectors,
check whether the debt buyer is licensed.
Suing without a license creates standing
issues, and, according to an increasing
number of courts, it constitutes a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices
Act.16 The junk-debt buyer is subject to
the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
because the junk-debt buyer allegedly
acquires the debt after default.
