Air attack kills up to 80 at religious school

News Item

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Missiles fired by Pakistani helicopters destroyed a religious school on the Afghan border Monday that the military said was a front for an al-Qaida training camp, killing 80 people and prompting strong protests against the country's president and the United States.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15477981

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As Alice Cooper sang, "School's out forever. School's been blown to pieces."

What people in the 24th centruy do for fun

I'm reading Kage Baker's latest book, a science-fiction novel with social satire. In this book, the 24th century's very safe, but very boring.

The governments are moral (too moral) and have banned everything that's "wrong" or "unhealthy". So there's no meat to eat. No dairy products, either, because that's considered animal creulty, too.

There's no tobacco, no alcohol, no coffee, no tea, no chocolate (they're stimulants or depressants, and drugs are bad). Being overweight will get you a hefty fine. If you don't lose weight, you're "hospitalized".

However, they do have time travel. But only the super-rich can afford it. So they take vacations back in time.

Do they visit prehistoric times to see dinosaurs? No.

Do they journey to see the splendor that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome? No.

They travel back to the 20th century to drink wine, eat cheese and smoke cigars.

http://www.users.interport.net/b/e/bendesky/events/maine/maine.html

Primer Protection

New Use for Old Textbooks

MINCO, Okla. -- One of Oklahoma's nominees for state superintendent of education has proposed a unique idea for protecting students from outbreaks of violence.

Bill Crozier, a Union City Republican going against incumbent Democrat Sandy Garrett, said he believes old textbooks could be used to stop bullets shot from weapons wielded by school intruders.

If elected, he said he would put thick used textbooks under every desk for students to use in self-defense.

http://www.koco.com/news/10105982/detail.html

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"Advanced Calculus" = Life

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull" = Death

What do you mean, an African or European Swallow?

Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow
Hashing out the classic question with Strouhal numbers and simplified flight waveforms.
by Jonathan Corum

After spending some time last month trying to develop alternate graphic presentations for kinematic ratios in winged flight, I decided to try to answer one of the timeless questions of science: just what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/

poem to our chickens

Background:

1) Shorting of daylight hours causes a decline in egg production in chickens.
2) My wife's not feeling well.

So I sent her the following Limerick to read to our chickens:

Although a hen egg is quite fillin'
my wife has no qualms about killin'
a hen that stops layin'.
You'd better start prayin'
she don't need Jewish penicillin.

From a talk-show host who knows his "medicine"...

Rush Limbaugh accused Michale J. Fox of exaggerating the symptoms of his illness in an election television advert.

"He's either off his medication or acting. He is an actor after all," Limbaugh said.

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You're an idiot, Rush.

Is that an act, or do you come by it naturally?

Mancini MP3 Madness

As some of you know, I have an extensive record collection. Over the years, I've enjoyed putting together "mix tapes" featuring a single song as performed by a variety of artists. At times, I was able to make a tape of a dozen different artists doing the same song

Well, I've been humbled. Extremely humbled.

http://www.audrey1.com/grahamspage/moon_river/

As Dorothy Parker once wrote, "Such singleness of purpose is met but infrequently."

Heavy mobile use 'damages sperm'

Heavy use of mobile phones may damage men's fertility, a study has suggested.

"Researchers found those men who used a phone for four hours or more a day had fewer sperm and those they had moved less well and were of poorer quality. "

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Moble phone use damages SPERM ???

Those guys must be pressing the phone against the wrong head.

Yiddish with George and Laura

In this inspired follow-up to the bestselling Yiddish with Dick and Jane, Yiddish -- the mother tongue of irony -- invades the ultimate bastion of American WASP culture: Kennebunkport, home of the Bush clan.

What do George and Laura Bush have in common with Dick and Jane? Well, both hail from prototypical WASP families. And, perhaps more to the point, both exhibit a natural resistance to moral complexity (i.e., reality).

That's the premise of this hilarious new primer-style book in which George, Laura, and the entire Bush family communicate with uncharacteristic expressiveness, conveying shades of feeling and nuances of meaning that plain old English can't deliver -- by peppering their conversation with Yiddishisms.

See George's mother. Her name is Bar. She wears a lot of pearls and is a farbisseneh. "You are late, George," Bar says. "Of course I am late," George says. "I am the President of the United States. I am a big macher."

Borat learns American dating customs

Let's Roll

First post on my very own blog.

Just finished typing my first sentence.
Didn't feel the Earth shake.