Found by my brother, Uncle Don

Our old friends of Fred Phelps are back. OK, so they never actually said what is in my headline, but listening to them it sure sounds like being dead would help their cause. In their f_’d up minds, anyway.

Check out the Westboro church’s website. Click on their Contact link and let them know what you think of their progressive views on life here in the 14th century. Also, check out their blog where you can find out about Rancid Reno Girly-Men [who] Need To Stop Lying

Anti-gay group promises Denison picket

The Kansas-based church that protests at the funerals of U.S. soldiers, claiming the servicemen are dying because God hates gay people and America’s tolerance of them, has decided that God hates Reno too.

“Reno is a dangerous place to be, with the curse of God upon Reno,” the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., said in a news release this week. “God hates Reno, Nevada.”

Police Chief Michael Poehlman called the church’s statement “despicable,” especially because it begins with references to Brianna Denison, a 19-year college student who has been the target of a search since police believe she was abducted from a Reno home on Jan. 20.

“If Brianna Denison dies, blame the corrupt Reno Police,” the church’s statement said, adding that church members will “picket her funeral, in religious protest & warning.”

Now, check out the church’s response.

Found by Gary ‘the dangerous infidel’ Marks

“We looked at their plans. They’re totally unacceptable,” said commission chairman Arnold Punaro, a retired Marine Corps major general.

“You couldn’t move a Girl Scout unit with the kind of planning they’re doing,” Punaro said of plans drafted by U.S. Northern Command, the part of the military responsible for homeland defense.

The klowns running our government are consistent. They don’t get much of anything else right, either.

Microsoft has made an unsolicited $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo, a deal that shakes up the competitive and lucrative market for Internet search…

In a copy of the letter it sent to Yahoo’s board of directors, Microsoft disclosed it had explored a Microsoft-Yahoo deal a year earlier, only to be rebuffed with Yahoo telling it at that time it was confident of the “potential upside” for Yahoo from operational changes it planned.

“A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved,” the letter from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said.

John has skewered this package deal a couple of times. What happened to either of these outfits working at their core businesses? How is an acquisition really expected to help?

Talking CCTV cameras have been installed at two Norwich parks with the aim of slashing anti-social behaviour. Eight cameras at Waterloo Park and one at Eaton Park have been connected to their own loudspeaker system and, through Norwich City Council’s 33-screen, £500,000 CCTV control room, the voice of a camera operator will boom out across each park to tell off those causing a nuisance, committing low level crime and anti-social behaviour. Norwich City Councillor Bert Bremner, responsible for community safety and cohesion, said: “It is a really positive thing for the city. “These will be ways of embarrassing people and reminding them. Someone being told off for dropping litter will respond in a reasonable way, and I believe most people will say sorry and do something about it. There will be some that won’t and, if the matter is serious, the police will follow it up.” The council, which used a £35,000 grant to pay for the installation of the high-tech talking system, is one of 20 areas to receive funding for the project ran in partnership with the government’s Respect Unit. Six full-time operators man the cameras 24 hours a day and there is a direct communication link between the police and the CCTV control room.

I consider being watched by cameras in public anti-social behavior. This has become so commonplace, it seems pointless to even post it. I suspect that’s the plan and it could be working. I’m not familiar with the size of this park or the scope of the problem, but with the cost of the system and 6 full time “operators”, why cant they just hire POLICE to patrol the parks?

A police motorcade the length of a football field escorted troubled pop star Britney Spears to a Los Angeles hospital early Today to get her some help…

She was removed from her home for a “mental evaluation hold,” according to the L.A. Times.

It took the better part of the day to arrange the transport plan, (an) officer said…

Andrew Blankstein, a Los Angeles Times reporter who was at the scene of Thursday’s incident, told CNN that a police convoy, stretching the length of a football field, accompanied the ambulance as it drove down Coldwater Canyon Boulevard — in part to keep the paparazzi from getting too close.

If you’re a redneck junkie – or Black or hispanic – you and three of your friends get tossed in the back of a black-and-white and end up in the detox tank.

New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes”, said Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a “switch”, which literally “turned off” the ability to produce brown eyes”. The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to our hair, eyes and skin. The “switch”, which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 does not, however, turn off the gene entirely, but rather limits its action to reducing the production of melanin in the iris – effectively “diluting” brown eyes to blue…

Variation in the colour of the eyes from brown to green can all be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes. “From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” says Professor Eiberg. “They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.” Brown-eyed individuals, by contrast, have considerable individual variation in the area of their DNA that controls melanin production.

This isn’t a positive or negative mutation, of course. Not that the fact will prevent the ignorant from value judgements.

Like, how you interpret the headline for this post.

Check out the website of a company apparently related (same street address according to the story) to these guys’.

Clean-film business was front for porn, police say

The founder of Flix Club, the now defunct family-friendly edited-movie business, was arrested along with a Springville man Thursday night on charges that they paid two 14-year-old Orem girls for sex.

Daniel Dean Thompson, 31, of Orem, was released from the Utah County Jail on bond Friday afternoon, according to the Utah County Jail Web site. Isaac R. Lifferth, 24, of Springville, is still in jail. Bail was set at $30,000.
[…]
According to a report Thursday by John McCombs, an investigating officer with the Orem Police Department, Thompson told the girls that edited movies were sold at Flix Club as a front, but he and Lifferth actually made and distributed pornography.
[…]
Flix Club was forced to close last year in the wake of a landmark federal court ruling that said several movie-editing businesses violated U.S. copyright laws when they altered movies to remove nudity, profanity and other offensive content and offered “sanitized” versions for sale.

“You’re not Christ. You’re not Prince Hamlet.”

Veteran political activist and consumer champion Ralph Nader, blamed by the Democrats for costing them the tight 2000 elections…is mulling a 2008 bid for the White House.

He told AFP that he had launched a presidential exploratory committee “to test the waters to see if we can get enough contributions and resources, such as skilled staff” to run as an independent candidate.

Nader told AFP he wanted to fight “the injustices, deprivations and insolutions that the candidates are ignoring” such as failing to address the need for a living wage, health care for all and the “enormous, bloated, wasteful military budget…” and vehemently rejected the title of “spoiler.”

“It is a title that is never applied to a Democrat or a Republican. It is only applied to a third party candidate,” he said.

Which is a crock.

Independents are free to express themselves inside – and outside – the two establishment political parties. After eight years of Bush League rule, the last thing we need is another messiah.

My suggestion for a name would be ‘Vend-A-Toke.’

Pot vending machines take root in L.A.

The city that popularized the fast food drive-thru has a new innovation: 24-hour medical marijuana vending machines.

Patients suffering from chronic pain, loss of appetite and other ailments that marijuana is said to alleviate can get their pot with a dose of convenience at the Herbal Nutrition Center, where a large machine will dole out the drug around the clock.

“Convenient access, lower prices, safety, anonymity,” inventor and owner Vincent Mehdizadeh said, extolling the benefits of the machine.

But federal drug agents say the invention may need unplugging.

Interestingly, drug dispensing machines have been around for a while.

New Thoughts On Language Acquisition: Toddlers As Data Miners

Indiana University researchers are studying a ground-breaking theory that young children are able to learn large groups of words rapidly by data-mining.

Their theory, which they have explored with 12- and 14-month-olds, takes a radically different approach to the accepted view that young children learn words one at a time — something they do remarkably well by the age of 2 but not so well before that.

Data mining, usually computer-assisted, involves analyzing and sorting through massive amounts of raw data to find relationships, correlations and ultimately useful information.
[…]
“This new discovery changes completely how we understand children’s word learning,” Smith said. “It’s very exciting.”

Wanted: rich older women interested in hot younger guys. Applicants must be over 35, earn at least $500,000 a year or have a minimum of $4 million in liquid assets, entrusted assets or divorce settlement…

That’s the basis of a speed-dating event organized by a New York entrepreneur bringing together 20 “sugar mamas” and 20 “boy toys” vetted by an elite New York matchmaker…

“I find younger guys will usually be totally into you while older guys will be looking over your shoulder at a younger woman,” said Gail Garrison, 44, a fashion designer and former model…

I wonder how many of our readers would qualify?