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Oh this is a great one. The Harvard professor scams people out of over half a million dollars, and then gets scammed himself by the Nigerian spammers. Justice, except for the people who actually believed that a Harvard Professor would actually do what he said he'd do with the money he bilked them for.
Criminal mastermind collected money for 'SARS research' [The Register]
It's hard to believe that Jepp is doing so much better given the stick that was removed from the poor guy. He's doing real well today and should have his stitches out on Thursday.
The Psycho Sensei finds this highly amusing. I bet it starts a national trend
Marc-Anthony Macon and his boyfriend are fed up of being told that they already have the same rights as straight men -- they may marry women. So, he's come up with a cunning plan:
Until you allow gay couples, nation-wide, to marry one-another, we will start marrying your potential mates.That's right.
Gay men are going to cruise around and find the hottest women they can, and marry them. Don't think the women will be up for it? Let me ask you this:
If women were given the choice of marrying a straight man, who won't give them much sex after the first couple of years, or marrying gay men who will give them no sex, but allow them to sleep with whomever they want, along with taking them dancing, to romantic dinners, bring them random gifts of flowers, tell them how beautiful they are, remember their birthdays and anniversaries and decorate their homes… Which marriage will sound better to them?
Once again, people are arguing who should govern the net, rather than the bigger and more important question: Who gets to decide?
A U.N. summit ends with a consensus that developing countries must have more influence on the way the Internet is run, but conclusions about what should be done are vague. [CNET News.com]
The Psycho Sensei is pleased to announce that her lovely daughter Morgan has won forms in the State Open Tae Kwon Do tournament. Whoooppeeee. Oh, and the Psycho Sensei won forms and creative forms. Someone should tell the Psycho Sensei that she is far too old to be competing in these things, before she completely blows out her knee and annoys the remaining two fibers in her body that are not currently sore.
When I was in Journalism school in another lifetime, we were often reminded of the journalistic integrity and the general excellence of the Christian Science Monitor. I was quite pleased to find the paper offered as an RSS feed so that I could read the stories I was interested in at leisure.
So, after reading and thinking about all of this information regarding how Shrub might have known that Al Qaida intended to hijack aircraft prior to 9/11 yet did nothing whatsoever to beef up security, to possibly change guidelines for what was allowed on board aircraft, or do anything else. Why? Because, at least according to this story our President was too busy planning on avenging his father's bloody nose in Iraq to consider any other group as a terrorist threat.
The outgoing president counseled his successor that he would face five challenges in the international arena - the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, the Al Qaeda terrorist threat, a nuclear-armed North Korea, the India-Pakistan confrontation, and the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in Iraq.Clinton was surprised at Bush's response. He said he disagreed with Clinton's order - that he considered Saddam Hussein to be the primary threat that he would have to deal with.
So if someone knows what is REALLY going on here, please let the Psycho Sensei know. The Royal "We" is quite confused.
From the Washington Post
At the same time, some of Rice's rebuttals of Clarke's broadside against Bush, which she delivered in a flurry of media interviews and statements rather than in testimony, contradicted other administration officials and her own previous statements.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage contradicted Rice's claim that the White House had a strategy before 9/11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban; the CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats; and Rice's assertion this week that Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.
Well gee, who'd a thunk it? After the big "to do" by the Shrub about how gays "ought to have the same rights as all other people", he snuck around behind the scenes to reverse protections already put in place to ensure gays are not discriminated against in the federal workplace.
According to Axis of Logic which cites some damn good sources, the Shrub Administration has ruled that gays can be fired from federal positions solely due to their sexual orientation. They will have no recourse if they are demoted or fired because they are gay.
What a surprise. So if he's lying about this, and he lied about so many other things, why keep him as President? Perhaps he thinks we are too stupid to figure these things out.
Well, here's one interesting theory of what truly happened prior to 9/11, and whether the Administration of the Shrub knew anything, and what they knew. Courtesy of Buzzflash.com
Here's an excerpt:
In 2002, as news of the August 2001 briefing began to emerge, the Bush Cartel hauled out Condi to "explain" that it was true that Bush had been warned that it was highly possible that Al-Qaeda hijackings might occur in the near future, but that Bush wasn't told specifically about plans to attack the World Trade Center or Pentagon so he didn't take action to protect them. The press dutifully accepted this explanation.
But as BuzzFlash pointed out at the time -- and we assume most second graders would understand this, but apparently not the mainstream press -- the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon WERE hijackings.
If Bush had taken steps after his pre-9/11 security briefing to put law enforcement and airport security on heightened alert, he might very well have prevented the hijacking attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. But the American press and the TV pundits couldn't figure out this little bit of basic common sense and convinced the American public that Condi had cleared everything up.
The Psycho Sensei is publishing more about the "pledge case" because she thinks it's very important. It is basically a litmus test of how important the First Amendment of the Constitution is to a society that wishes to pretend to be Christian. I say pretends because, as we all know, while the current majority of the population says they are "Christian" they neither behave as mandated in the New Testament, nor do they follow their own mores of worship, i.e. attending church on Easter and Xmas and that's about it.
It is relatively amusing to see the same people arguing for prayer in the schools, arguing that the words "under God" are innocuous. If we apply the Psycho Sensei's "Satan Test" to these words, guess what the reaction would be if we changed the Pledge to "one nation, under Satan." If the resulting pledge is acceptable as innocuous, then you would be allowed to use the pledge in the public schools.
[From Morons.org] Michael Newdow argued on his own behalf that his daughter shouldn't be exposed to the recitation of "UNDER GOD" in the Pledge of Allegiance in school and was subsequently buried in straw men...
We hear a lot of " straw man" arguments here on morons.org and elsewhere. Basically this means that instead of addressing your actual point, your opponent misrepresents your point and attacks that instead; that is to say, rather than going after... [Morons Dot Org]
So how can you force a child to recite something with religion in it? Hopefully the Supreme Court will do the right thing.
When Michael A. Newdow urges the Supreme Court today to ban the mandatory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, he will be up against not only the Elk Grove (Calif.) Unified School District, where his daughter attends classes. [Washington Post: Nation and Politics]
Jepp, the fabulous Egyptian Chicken Hound decided to become a casualty of war on Monday afternoon, when he apparently tried to jump over the fence to defend his world from an evil neighbor dog. Unfortunately, he impaled himself on the fence, and did himself damage on the way off it. He fell onto a stick that decided to enter near the abdominal area, and travel a bit, lodging next to the bone so that nobody could find it in x rays or ultrasound until two days later when the fluid surrounding it made it possible to see it. He also ripped a piece of muscle off his pelvic bone.
So, poor Jeppiepooh was operated on to remove the 4 inch long, 1/2 inch wide stick, has a huge incision there, as well as staples to close the entrance wound. He's got an elizabethan collar on so he doesn't remove his drains that are in his poor body. Once again the fabulous Valerie Campbell, Fantabulous Vet, saved the day.
The "War on Terror" has been used quite effectively to scare Americans and Congress into believing that the more privacy is eliminated, the safer the United States will be. Hopefully, we won't have to deal with the dire consequences that will occur when they find out how wrong they are.
Without fanfare, the government dispenses with two projects aimed at protecting the privacy of American citizens from official snooping. The work on more sophisticated data-mining techiques continues, however. [Wired News]
The Psycho sensei spends some of her time on IRC while she dutifully does her work. IRC is better method of entertainment than television, and you have to somewhat engage the brain in order to participate. I say somewhat, because many of the IRC channels are being inundated by teenagers who seem incapable of using the English language.
Now, I do not believe that all teenagers are equally illiterate. However, there have been so many recent cases, that definitely stand out in a text based medium, that one has to wonder about the state of today's system of education. It would be easy to say that it's just a US problem, but teenagers from Canada and the UK have also been infected by this "bug."
As illustration, I'd like to offer the following AP article on how illiteracy can actually win you free room and board :-).
(Stamford-AP)- Stamford police say a student tried to sell drugs to two officers who were wearing jackets with the word "police" written in capital letters.
Police say 17-year-old Devaugn Goethe was charged yesterday with trying to sell narcotics.
Police say two narcotics officers were on routine patrol in an unmarked vehicle driving slowly when the student flagged them down.
Police say the boy opened the back door of the police car, jumped in and asked the officers what they wanted and how much.
Police say the student also mentioned that the two guys, in his words, "look like cops."
Police say the two officers were wearing raid jackets with the word "police" written in big letters on the back, on the sleeves and on the front.
The officers were wearing the raid jackets because they were looking for fugitives and didn't want to be mistaken for anything but police officers.
Spot the Wonder Cat was born 19 years ago, and promptly abandoned by some evil person, left in a box on the side of the road with 3 siblings. They were found by a friend and brought to work, where they were promptly brought to the vet for check ups. The vet said Spot would likely not live long, because he had a compromised immune system and ringworm. In fact, all the kittens had ringworm. I spent 6 weeks bathing them 2x a day (cats love baths, don't you know..) but they all seemed to be fine, and were adopted out.
Spot had a long and happy life, and died today at 3:40 PM. Light a candle for him if you choose. He is sorely missed. Rest in peace, old friend.
Ever wonder why John Ashcroft has so much angst against laws providing for the personal privacy of US Citizens? It's because they might prevent him from making money by "renting out" mailing lists full of people that thought they were signing up for his lame PAC. So he fights against them tooth and nail so that he can keep making money off of these rentals. Since he made $165,000 off of them in 1999/2000, it's not surprising he'd want to continue to make the big bucks and bugger the idea of privacy.
Unfortunately for John, the Federal Election Commission hasn't liked what he's DONE with the money he's made off of mailing list rentals. So our Attorney General has had difficulty complying with the law. Who'd a thunk it?
For more on the confusing story of our Attorney General, check out The Washington Post.
The highly effective MoveOn.org ads have been running for quite some time now. You've probably seen them - they're the ones with working children depicting who is going to have to pay for Bush's huge deficit. So what is the Republican National Committee's answer to these ads? Not a well thought out point by point rebuttal. Not a "this isn't true" counter ad. But a big fat "WAAAAA" and an attempt to scare media outlets into not running it at all.
Yes, that's right. The RNC can't think of anything to counter these ads, so it is whining about how they MIGHT have been paid for in ways that MIGHT have been illegal, and attempting to use this speculation to strong arm television stations into not running the ads. They are claiming that the money to pay for the ads was not raised in accordance with new campaign finance laws, however MoveOn.org says that it most certainly was, and is now going to spend even MORE money to put the ads in more markets. Good for them.
Since the MoveOn.org ads must be paid for by people who contribute less than $5,000, the Psycho Sensei thinks it would be a fantastic idea for people to make contributions to MoveOn.org akin to the massive number of donations given to the John Dean campaign - a couple bucks here, a couple bucks there. That oughta teach the RNC to fight fairly.
See the story on CNN.com
From Reuters
NAIROBI (Reuters) - A Kenyan villager who has not bathed in 10 years was stripped and scrubbed clean by neighbours sickened by the stench, local media reported on Saturday.
Four neighbours swooped on the 52-year-old man in rural western Kenya, tying him up with a rope before washing him in public, the daily Kenya Times said.
It took four hours to clean the man, whose body was also scoured with sand to remove a thick layer of filth.
The man, a bachelor, has promised to wash once a day and now hopes to find a wife, the newspaper said.
This is utterly HILARIOUS! Use these on your favorite moviegoer
United Kingdom: The wits over at The Guardian have come up with a glossary of useful Aramaic phrases to help enrich your enjoyment of The Passion of The Christ.
B-kheeruut re'yaaneyh laa kaaley tsuuraathaa khteepaathaa, ellaa Zaynaa Mqatlaanaa Trayaanaa laytaw![The Pagan Prattle Online]
It may be uncompromising in its liberal use of graphic violence, but Lethal Weapon II it ain't.Da'ek teleyfoon methta'naanaak, pquud. Guudaapaw!
Please turn off your mobile phone. It is blasphemous.Shbuuq shuukhaaraa deel. Man ethnaggad udamshaa?
Sorry I'm late. Have I missed any scourging?Aykaa beyt tadkeetha? Zaadeq lee d-asheeg eeday men perdey devshaanaayey haaleyn!
Where is the loo? I need to wash my hands of this popcorn.
Psychosensei says HOORAY for Harvard. Nice to see they're using their endowment for the betterment of science worldwide.
Harvard researchers said yesterday they had created 17 new colonies of human embryonic stem cells to be shared freely with scientists around the globe, more than doubling the world's available supply of the medically promising but ethically contentious cells. [Washington Post: Nation and Politics]
Does this scare you? That an American Citizen could be declared an enemy on shoddy evidence, then jailed since 2002 without being allowed to see a lawyer is quite chilling. If the evidence is good, why the fear from the Administration to let justice be served?
Jose Padilla, the American citizen accused of plotting to blow up a radioactive "dirty bomb," met yesterday with his attorney for the first time since President Bush declared him an enemy combatant in 2002. [Washington Post: Nation and Politics]
Ringing telephones, ringing doorbells, beeping UPS units, smoke alarms, and Control G have one thing in common - they're all interruptions. The difference in my reaction and annoyance level is directly related to the importance of the event signaled by the interruption.
I have found, over the years, that my brain works in rather strange (I won't say mysterious) ways. When it decides to rush off headlong into a project, a compelling thought pattern, or even a nice nap or daydream, any disturbance causes a first reaction of *ARGH*. The next reaction will be determined by the importance of the interruption. For example, if it's my smoke alarm, the importance standard has been satisfied, and the task of making sure everyone is ok replaces whatever else I was doing on the stack of muddled thought patterns. And this is a "good thing" :-).
If, however, the first reaction of *ARGH* moves quickly into the subsequent reaction of &!^@%#, thought continuity is completely lost as my parasympathetic nervous system fails to stand down after the initial *ARGH*. The attempt to regain previous productive or otherwise useful thought patterns becomes more difficult, consistent with the level of &!^@%#, and any brilliant plans to end world hunger, promote whirled peas, or even feed the cats or pay the bills become lost.
The telephone is consistently the device which produces the most &!^@%#, although the doorbell can be a close second. This is because only the telephone has the capacity of creating an initial *ARGH* which is not only enhanced, but actually heightened by the subsequent &!^@%# event due to the sheer level of &!^@%# only made possible by certain events.
The most obvious &!^@%# producing event is the telemarketer. Although the "do not call" list has helped somewhat with this &!^@%#, it has not stopped the "courtesy calls" or the "let us add THIS to your current benefits" or the "this will only take a moment of your time" etc. It may have taken a moment of my time, but it also scrambled my brain patterns such that the *ARGH* does not stand down and the annoyance takes considerable time to overcome.
Perhaps as annoying as the telemarketer is the "idiot coworker" phenomenon. This &!^@%# producing type person calls to ask some earth shattering question, whose answer is usually literally right in front of them.
The next category of annoyance (although well meaning) are friends and relatives who want to call to talk about nothing. In case they haven't noticed, there are several much more efficient methods of communicating nothing to me. I have occasionally encouraged some of these friends and relatives to try honing their skills of telepathy. Don't worry, I'll get the gist of their normal messages.
So, what is the best way to communicate "small talk" or "order confirmations" or "thank you for being alive" or other such messages? I'm so glad you asked, for this was why the Goddess invented email. Email's interrupts can be turned off so that there is no *ARGH* that colors any following messages. Email can be accessed when thoughts reach a natural lull, so any &!^@%# can be dealt with by judicious use of the delete key. (Note, I am not saying spam is an ok thing, just that it is easier to deal with when there is no *ARGH* immediately preceding the &!^@%#). Email itself is not nearly as much an interruption or intrusion as the internal telephone.
To recap, if *ARGH* is immediately followed by &!^@%#, this is a "bad thing." If &!^@%# occurs with no *ARGH* it is better. If neither *ARGH* nor &^@%# occurs, it is by far the best. And that, gentle reader, is why I HATE the telephone.
So I wonder if this nun had to get drunk after watching The Passion of John Deere or something
WARSAW (AFP) - A Benedictine nun could lose her driving licence after hitting a car parked outside her convent at Krzeszow in southeast Poland while drunk at the wheel of a tractor, a local police spokesman, Dariusz Waluch said.
Waluch said the 45-year nun "was in no fit state to blow into a breathalyser" after the accident and police were waiting for the results of a blood-alcohol test before charging her.
Due to my highly hazardous job in which I am exposed to multiple biohazards on a daily basis (called children), I caught a rotten head cold last week. More unfortunately than even that, the Wessiepooh also caught said cold, ensuring he would be staying home from work and thus getting himself into serious trouble. Some of the trouble in which he engaged, was prowling through the kitchen and scavenging. This scavenging resulted in his eating something he shouldn't, and inflating half of his body to resemble a grotesque 1/2 a Ted Kennedy, thus ensuring he would be home even longer.
While I love having my darling husband home with me, someone tell me WHY this man is compelled to watch the Hitler (History) Channel every waking hour? Why does he never tire of black and white footage of abused POWs, people getting blown up, skewered, shot down, or otherwise killed in nasty ways?
