Archive through January 19, 2001

The ClubHouse: General Discussions - Jan -Apr. 2001: February: Interesting News Items: Archive through January 19, 2001

Soeur

Thursday, November 30, 2000 - 04:44 am Click here to edit this post

November 30, 2000
Pig Had Right to Fly First Class, F.A.A. Says
By REUTERS

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - Aviation regulators said today that US Airways did nothing wrong in allowing a 300-pound pet pig to fly first class last month from Philadelphia to Seattle.
The pig, owned by a woman with a heart condition who says the animal's presence helps relieve stress, ran squealing through the Boeing 757 on landing, soiling the cabin.
But the Federal Aviation Administration's flight standards office here decided that the pig complied with a Department of Transportation policy on allowing individuals with disabilities to travel with their animals.
Airlines needed only credible verbal assurances that the animal was a legitimate service animal, the agency said.
The agency has no recommendations on how to carry pigs in the future. "The carriers will have to cross that sty when they come to it," said an agency spokesman, Jim Peters.
But a spokesman for US Airways, David Castelveter, said future requests for travel with service animals would be carefully evaluated.
"An incident like this will not happen again," Mr. Castelveter said.

Aroy

Thursday, November 30, 2000 - 07:51 am Click here to edit this post

November 29, 2000
by CNN
PEREIRA, Colombia -- Want to lick hair loss?
A Colombian hairdresser says he has found a way to lick baldness -- literally. His offbeat scalp treatment involves a special tonic and massage -- with a cow's tongue.
"I feel more manly, more attractive to women," says customer Henry Gomez. "My friends even say 'What are you doing? You have more hair. You look younger.'"

Norwican

Thursday, November 30, 2000 - 08:06 am Click here to edit this post

An Oconomowoc alderman ticketed for drunken driving after police found him naked next to his car says he is innocent.

"I will fight this," Ald John D. Gross said. "I was not intoxicated."

Gross said he will plead not guilty when he appears in Municipal Court in January on tickets of operating a vehicle while intoxicated, driving with open intoxicants in a vehicle and driving too fast for conditions.

Town of Oconomowoc police ticketed Gross Sunday about 7:40 p.m. near a railroad crossing on O'Neil Road, a rural road north of the City of Oconomowoc.

Gross said he was returning home from deer hunting in northern Wisconsin when he swerved to avoid hitting a dog and lost control of his car.

His 1996 Dodge Stratus left the road and went into a ditch, which was full of water, Gross said. When he stepped out of his car, he slid into water up this waist, he said.

He then walked to a nearby farm, where a farmer agreed to use his tractor to pull the car out of the ditch. Gross said he then called a tow truck.

The tow truck operator called town police.

After the car was pulled from the ditch, Gross said, he started changing into dry clothes.

Gross said an officer arrived and asked him to take a breath test. But the alderman said he was too cold to blow properly into the device.

"I was freezing cold and shaking so hard I couldn't blow into the tube," said Gross, who was not injured in the accident.

"He probably was freezing cold because when the officer arrived, he was standing outside his vehicle naked trying to change into a pair of coveralls," said town Police Chief John E. Roelandts.

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Nov. 29, 2000.

Guruchaz

Thursday, November 30, 2000 - 01:54 pm Click here to edit this post

I just read that first story. What a riot.

Don't they know how tempermental Tipper can be on a landing after a long flight?

huh huh

Soeur

Thursday, November 30, 2000 - 08:18 pm Click here to edit this post

NOVEMBER 28, 13:36 EST

Canada Hand-Counts Votes in 4 Hours

By DAVID CRARY
Associated Press Writer

OTTAWA (AP) — Florida vote canvassers, take note. Within four hours after the last polls closed in Canada's parliamentary election, officials at 50,000 polling stations had hand-counted virtually every one of nearly 13 million paper ballots.

There were glitches, to be sure — an angry voter seized a ballot box in Nova Scotia and threw it into a polluted lagoon. But overall, Canada's federal elections system, which uses no counting machines, had a smooth Election Night.

Pierre Blain, a spokesman for Elections Canada, said the system stresses transparency, with each party entitled to deploy a representative to watch the polling station chief count the ballots.

Any complaints can be registered with national elections officials; recounts are conducted automatically in cases of extremely narrow victory margins.

Blain, in a telephone interview Tuesday, politely declined to pass judgment on the electoral chaos in Florida, which was compounded by the use of different voting systems in various counties.

``All the democracies must look at their systems themselves,'' Blain said. ``It's not for somebody from another country to look at them.''

``The most important thing is that people must vote,'' he said. ``I'm sure the workers in Florida did their best.''

The Canadian system, in place for a century, uses traditional paper ballots, to be marked with an ``X'' beside the name of the preferred parliamentary candidate. There are no hanging chads, no questions about mechanical snafus.

In Nova Scotia, though, there was little that election officials could do when a man ran off with a ballot box and threw it into a waste-treatment lagoon.

Alexander MacKenzie, who had sought compensation for living near the polluted water, was arrested for the theft, spent Monday night in jail, then was released pending a Dec. 18 court appearance.

The box was recovered with the ballots still legible, but under Canadian law they were discarded because they had been removed from official supervision. The polling station contacted the 125 people who had cast ballots; about 70 returned to vote again.

Optics

Friday, December 01, 2000 - 07:21 pm Click here to edit this post

Soeur, lol I got a copy of that article sent to me and I sent it to every one of my american friends!

Soeur

Sunday, December 03, 2000 - 10:22 am Click here to edit this post

CIA Shuts Chat Room, Fires 4, Suspends 10Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 1, 2000; Page A02

The CIA yesterday fired four employees, suspended at least 10 others and revoked the security clearances of nine private contractors for exchanging "inappropriate" e-mail in computer chat rooms hidden from management.

...rest of article

Soeur

Sunday, December 03, 2000 - 10:24 am Click here to edit this post

Saturday December 2 9:23 AM ET
Two Men Shoot First, Figure It Out Later

WINNIPEG (Reuters) - Two 20-year-old men in rural western Canada could be banned from handling firearms after what police on Friday called a bizarre experiment.

It began when one of the men brought a military-style bullet-proof vest back to their Swan River, Manitoba, home. He then asked his room-mate to shoot him in the chest with a 22 caliber rifle.

That done, and pleased with the lack of damage, he asked his friend to shoot him in the back with a 12 gauge shotgun.

This time, the duo decided to stuff a phone book inside the vest for a bit of insurance.

The phone book absorbed much of the blow, but the target still suffered cracked ribs and bruising.

``The biggest question is why and it's difficult to come up with a logical reason,'' said Sgt. Steve Saunders of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Winnipeg.

Neither man faces police charges but the Mounties are seeking a five-year firearms prohibition.

Soeur

Sunday, December 03, 2000 - 10:56 am Click here to edit this post

from MSMBC:

Japan's Mizuno Corp. has developed a synthetic material for men's underpants that would keep the covered area one Celsius degree cooler than cotton underwear and therefore helpful, for example, to skiers (and, say doctors, to those desiring increased sperm production), according to an August New Scientist report. However, Canadian polyester-mesh underwear manufacturer Stanfield's Ltd. disputed Mizuno's claim of superiority; said a spokesman, "We just haven't got up the guts to measure the temperature of someone's crotch yet."

Soeur

Sunday, December 03, 2000 - 11:13 am Click here to edit this post

Norwalk, Connecticut - The Caldor department store chain apologized this week after 11 million copies of an advertising circular showed two smiling boys playing Scrabble around a board with the word "RAPE" spelled out. Caldor said it does not know who did it or how it got past the proofreaders.

Soeur

Wednesday, December 13, 2000 - 04:00 pm Click here to edit this post

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the fried chicken's head that was found in an order of McDonald's chicken wings...

(check out the picture ...) mcchickenhead

Leap

Wednesday, December 13, 2000 - 04:07 pm Click here to edit this post

From USA Today

The study of penguins

LONDON — Royal Air Force pilots have long been ridiculed, but remain adamant: fly above a penguin colony, they say, and the curious birds topple over like dominos as they stare up at the aircraft. Now, British scientists are traveling to the Falkland Islands to settle the debate once and for all. British Antarctic Survey researchers plan to spend one month aboard the HMS Endurance studying the phenomenon, which Royal Air Force pilots first recorded during the 1982 Falklands War with Argentina. At least one scientist, however, isn't convinced. ''I'm afraid it's an urban myth,'' said Dr. Richard Stone of the British Antarctic Survey. ''Aircraft do have an effect on penguins, but not to the extent of birds falling over.''

Aroy

Thursday, December 14, 2000 - 01:17 pm Click here to edit this post

'Electrocuted' man rises from the dead
From CNN
ALMATY, Kazakhstan (Reuters) -- A Kazakh man who was electrocuted and buried has shocked his friends and family by turning up for his own funeral feast.

The man was wrapped in a cloth shroud according to Muslim tradition and buried in a shallow grave after apparently dying while trying to steal power cables in eastern Kazakhstan, local media reported Wednesday.

But two days later he regained consciousness and rose naked from the ground, Express K daily said.

The paper said he had difficulty flagging down a vehicle to take him home.

Soeur

Thursday, December 21, 2000 - 04:24 pm Click here to edit this post

How private is email?
CLAIRE SWIRE, the unfortunate victim of the most ungallant act of male braggadocio in the history of the internet, was in hiding yesterday as the full consequence of her graphic online flirtation came home to haunt her.

The 26-year-old PR executive, whose sexual
appetites became the subject of an email circulated to millions of people around the world, was said to be "horrified" in the wake of the incident. Miss Swire became the unwitting subject of the lewd, electronic chain letter after she had a private email conversation with a boyfriend, Bradley Chait, about a sex act.

Mr Chait, 27, a City lawyer, sent the explicit
correspondence to six friends. After that, the number of recipients snowballed as it was forwarded, copied and forwarded again. As the web of Mr Chait's betrayal spread across the world, so speculation over Miss Swire's identity grew. A web site was set up in her honour yesterday and internet discussion groups buzzed with claims from people who said they knew her or had seen her picture.

Miss Swire fled her flat in Fulham, west London, for her parents' home in the East Sussex village of Blackboys, but was forced to flee again after she was tracked down by tabloid journalists.

cyber version of public washroom wall

Juju2bigdog

Thursday, December 21, 2000 - 05:26 pm Click here to edit this post

Funny as hell, Soeur.

Guruchaz

Thursday, December 21, 2000 - 10:34 pm Click here to edit this post

Soeur,

That Chickenhead story was awesome! I even watched the Realaudio clips and sent them to to 6 friends. That's hilarious! huh huh

Guruchaz

Friday, December 22, 2000 - 09:11 am Click here to edit this post

http://www.wvec.com/news/video/chickenhead.ram


http://www.wvec.com/news/video/chickenhead_publicity.ram

Soeur

Wednesday, December 27, 2000 - 08:06 am Click here to edit this post

THE BOSS STEPPED ONSTAGE a full hour before the scheduled start of the concert, the second of two small charity performances he gave Dec. 18 and 19 at the Asbury Park Convention Hall in New Jersey. Though he only came out for an impromptu sound check, Bruce stuck around and sang versions of “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” and “Hey, Good Lookin’”—both Hank Williams originals—and Elvis Presley’s “Mystery Train.”
It was clear this gig wasn’t going to be standard Springsteen. The small venue—about the size of a high school gymnasium—was transformed with a Christmas tree, wreaths, cheesy Styrofoam candy canes and chintzy plastic menorahs. It looked like a high school dance. But The Boss was more himself than at any concert you’d see at Madison Square Garden...

Bruce & Co. Christmas Benefit

Soeur

Wednesday, December 27, 2000 - 08:09 am Click here to edit this post

The Newsweek Quiz
How carefully are you following current events?


Test

Soeur

Sunday, December 31, 2000 - 02:04 am Click here to edit this post

Video-Baby Elephant Born at Seattle Zoo

more...

Leap

Thursday, January 04, 2001 - 11:09 am Click here to edit this post

I taught e-commerce last quarter and wish I would have found this article then. It is about wacky ideas from entrpreneurs looking for funding.

Click Here

Soeur

Thursday, January 04, 2001 - 05:03 pm Click here to edit this post

DOVER, Del., Jan. 3 — Thirty- three years ago, Ruth Ann Minner, the daughter of a sharecropper, was suddenly widowed with three sons to raise and not even a high school diploma to build a career on.

Scrappy and determined, Mrs. Minner worked two jobs, went to school and finally saw her future after landing a receptionist's job in the office of the Delaware governor.

Waahh! I wanna move to Delaware...

Soeur

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 07:43 am Click here to edit this post

Where Is King Kong When a Bulb Goes Out?

It was a cold and windy evening, which doesn't mean much, unless you are one of the men hired to change the light bulb at the pinnacle of the Empire State Building....

How many men does it take to change the lightbulb on top of the Empire State Building?

Soeur

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 07:52 am Click here to edit this post

Funny cartoon strip...

Rudy Park

Soeur

Friday, January 19, 2001 - 08:13 am Click here to edit this post

KATNI, India — Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and when some of this city's leading citizens went looking for the strangest fellow they could find, they selected Kamla Jaan: an illiterate, foul-mouthed eunuch. They persuaded her to run for mayor...

"People were tickled by the idea."