XIAM007 - Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Thursday, 29 April 2010

New meaning to Franks Hot sauce "I put that shit on everything" - Surgeons extricate hot-sauce bottle from state inmate -

An inmate in a state prison was hospitalized and needed emergency surgery to remove a hot-sauce bottle he apparently had used as a sex device.

Taxpayers will end up paying the prisoner's medical bills, expected to run into the thousands of dollars.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction won't release the name of the inmate, citing federal regulations regarding the privacy of medical records.

However, a report by the State Highway Patrol, which initially investigated the incident as a rape case, said an inmate at the Noble Correctional Facility in Caldwell was taken to Marietta General Hospital on Sunday evening after saying he had been sexually assaulted in the shower by another prisoner.

The injured inmate later acknowledged that he had not been assaulted, but on his own had inserted the hot-sauce bottle anally, sources said.

"At this point, we don't believe there was a perpetrator involved in the incident," said prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn.

However, sources said, surgery was required to remove the bottle. The inmate was hospitalized and was treated in the intensive-care unit.

Walburn said the state won't know the total cost until all medical bills are submitted.

State officials frequently point out that the state is required by law to provide medical care for prisoners - even those who harm themselves. The state is self-insured and pays its own bills.

WaWA - What? - Obama To Wall Street: "I Do Think At A Certain Point You've Made Enough Money" -

Wednesday, 28 April 2010

HaHA - Who is she Fooling? - Cover girl Nancy Pelosi looking rather ... airy in D.C. glossy - and WHY? -

If Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears get flak for airbrushing their photos, why not the speaker of the House?

If you haven't managed to score a copy of the May/June 2010 edition of Capitol File magazine (typically flanked on every table or bathroom at any D.C. social function) you'll notice the cover girl Nancy Pelosi looking particularly young.

Celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Ayman Hakki of Luxxery Medical Boutique in Waldorf, Md., said although he believes Pelosi has had work done (specifically Botox of the frown lines, fat injections, a mini face-lift), the image is not the product of additional plastic surgery.

“There is airbrushing around her eyes, her upper lid has been airbrushed to make it look like there is less fat on the inside,” Hakki told Yeas & Nays. “And there is airbrushing on the line of her jaw.”

He also noted her neck has been blended, and the lines on her face are very subtle.

Pelosi did not give the mag an exclusive photo op. The photos were purchased from Vintage Books and Anchor Books of Random House. Pelosi’s camp said the picture has not been airbrushed, and Capitol File did not respond for comment.

Reason number two not to go to Iran or Iraq - did anyone else notice ALL the cops torture involves SODOMY? -

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has disputed reports that accuse Iraq of torturing and abusing people in a secret prison.

"There are no secret prisons in Iraq at all,"Al-Maliki said in a Monday interview with state-run Al-Iraqiya TV.

Allegations of torture and abuse at the prison, named Muthanna, were first reported by The Los Angeles Times April 19. Amnesty International has urged Iraqi officials to investigate the claims.

Human Rights Watch released a report on the issue Tuesday, saying the detainees are routinely beaten, shocked and sodomized by their interrogators.

Al-Maliki continued to deny that there was a secret prison and called the reports "a smear campaign in which embassies and media organizations took part and it was perpetuated by Iraqi politicians because it serves their interests to say that there are secret prisons."

The prime minister said the Muthanna facility was not secret, it was publicly known and had seven judges working there.

He said there are a small number of cases of abuse in jails but he said that happens in all parts of the world. Al-Maliki said he knows that some members of parliament visited the facility and directed the inmates to make false accusations about torture and give themselves scars. The report by Human Rights Watch was based on interviews conducted with 42 prisoners who had been held at a secret facility in west Baghdad's old Muthanna airport since late 2009. The men were among 300 detainees who were transferred in recent weeks to another detention center after the existence of the Muthanna prison was revealed, Human Rights Watch said. Detainees interviewed by the human rights group this week said that while at the facility, they were handcuffed, blindfolded and hung upside down using two bars, one placed behind their calves and the other against their shins. They said they were then kicked and beaten with heavy cables by their interrogators, who also are said to have placed plastic bags over detainees' heads to cut off their air supply. Detainees also described multiple incidents of alleged sexual abuse, the group said.

Women with suntans are violating Islamic law and will be arrested in Iran - reason number one not to go to Iran -

Women with suntans are violating Islamic law and will be arrested in Iran, the capital city's police chief was reported by The Daily Telegraph as saying Wednesday.

"The public expects us to act firmly and swiftly if we see any social misbehavior by women, and men, who defy our Islamic values," Brigadier Hossien Sajedinia said.

"In some areas of north Tehran we can see many suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins," he continued. "We are not going to tolerate this situation and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them."

The warning follows recent comments made by a hard-line Iranian cleric, who claimed women dressed in revealing clothing were disturbing young men and causing earthquakes.

A preacher has also told the residents of Iran's capital Tehran to leave the city.

"Go on the streets and repent for your sins. A holy torment is upon us. Leave town," said Ayatollah Aziz Khoshvaqt during a recent sermon in northern Tehran.

Boy Scouts of America announced it will offer two awards – a pin and a belt loop – for spending hours playing video games -

Cub Scouts: The term conjures images of kids doing stuff outside – hiking amid nature, tying knots or identifying which leaf will leave you scratching if used for the wrong purpose.

Well, times have changed. In a move that may horrify old-school former Scouts, the Boy Scouts of America has announced it will offer two awards – a pin and a belt loop – to boys who spend hours playing video games.

Yes, that’s right. Just picture a group of 8- to 10-year-olds huddled around not a campfire but a TV, that glowing box of complacency.

Apparently these new awards are geared toward making Scouts understand which games are appropriate for their age group, not just rewarding them for sitting around on their butts playing video games. Scouts also can work towards their pin by playing a video game that "helps you in your schoolwork."

But you still have to wonder if this isn’t a misguided attempt by the Cub Scouts to stay relevant by pandering to boys’ interests. Seems to me the Scouts should be getting kids outside and teaching them practical skills beyond the bubble of their everyday lives instead of how to read the back of a video game box.

It reminds me of some “Star Trek” episode where a civilization has become so reliant on technology that they have no practical know-how and can’t fix it when it breaks - picture Picard MacGyvering a computer with a paper clip so the planet doesn’t explode.

Those of you who were in the Scouts, what’s your take on this? Should today’s Cub Scouts be rewarded for playing video games? What badge or award were you most proud of earning?

WestJet employees mock traveller after losing her cat - Ludwig is missing at Pearson International Airport - since Monday! -

Julie Mannell snuggles with her cat Ludwig. The cat went missing at Pearson airport after its cage was dropped.

Julie Mannell's beloved cat Ludwig is missing at Pearson International Airport after his cage was knocked to the ground and opened while being loaded onto a conveyor belt.

To add insult to injury, WestJet baggage handlers mocked Ms. Mannell as she searched for him.

“I heard this meowing sound and I got all excited because I thought I’d found him," she told theToronto Star. "But it was just the WestJet baggage guys making sounds to mock me, making fun of me. Another guy said he could find Ludwig if he could just bring in a big dog. He thought that was quite funny.”

The insensitivity shown to this woman is unconscionable.

Ludwig is a living, breathing, sentient being who is, no doubt, absolutely terrified, not to mention hungry and dehydrated, somewhere in the bowels of Terminal 3.

To make matters worse, it was never Ms. Mannell's intention to place Ludwig in the baggage compartment in the first place. But WestJet officials in Montreal would not allow Ludwig to travel in the cabin with his owner because his carrier was not soft sided. Odd, considering that hard-sided carry-on luggage is permitted.

After paying an extra $50 for Ludwig's trip in the baggage compartment, Ms. Mannell believed her cat would be handled with care and arrive in Toronto safely.

And now she waits.

Toronto Animal Control has set humane traps at the airport, in hopes of luring Ludwig out, and WestJet has put up posters of the black-and-white feline. But poor Ludwig has been missing since Monday night and has yet to reappear.

Sunday, 25 April 2010

Seattle cartoonist launches "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" - do your part to water down # targets & protect 1st amendment -

After Comedy Central cut a portion of a South Park episode following a death threat from a radical Muslim group, Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris wanted to counter the fear. She has declared May 20th "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day."

Norris told KIRO Radio's Dave Ross that cartoonists are meant to challenge the lines of political correctness. "That's a cartoonist's job, to be non-PC."

Listen to Molly Norris on Dave Ross

Producers of South Park said Thursday that Comedy Central removed a speech about intimidation and fear from their show after a radical Muslim group warned that they could be killed for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

The group said it wasn't threatening South Park producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but it included a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004, and said the producers could meet the same fate. The website posted the addresses of Comedy Central's New York office and the California production studio where South Park is made.

"As a cartoonist I just felt so much passion about what had happened I wanted to kind of counter Comedy Central's message they sent about feeling afraid," Norris said.

Norris has asked other artists to submit drawings of any religious figure to be posted as part of Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor (CACAH) on May 20th.

On her website Norris explains this is not meant to disrespect any religion, but rather meant to protect people's right to express themselves.

Saturday, 24 April 2010

Stephen Hawking: Aliens exist but don't talk to them - it's too dangerous - might simply raid Earth for its resources -

THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.

The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”

The answer, he suggests, is that most of it will be the equivalent of microbes or simple animals — the sort of life that has dominated Earth for most of its history.

One scene in his documentary for the Discovery Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff-face where they are picked off by flying, yellow lizard-like predators. Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

The completion of the documentary marks a triumph for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease and has very limited powers of communication. The project took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on rewriting large chunks of the script and checking the filming.

John Smithson, executive producer for Discovery, said: “He wanted to make a programme that was entertaining for a general audience as well as scientific and that’s a tough job, given the complexity of the ideas involved.”

Hawking has suggested the possibility of alien life before but his views have been clarified by a series of scientific breakthroughs, such as the discovery, since 1995, of more than 450 planets orbiting distant stars, showing that planets are a common phenomenon.

So far, all the new planets found have been far larger than Earth, but only because the telescopes used to detect them are not sensitive enough to detect Earth-sized bodies at such distances.

Another breakthrough is the discovery that life on Earth has proven able to colonise its most extreme environments. If life can survive and evolve there, scientists reason, then perhaps nowhere is out of bounds.

Hawking’s belief in aliens places him in good scientific company. In his recent Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as likely places to look.

Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a lecture earlier this year that aliens might prove to be beyond human understanding.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

Stephen Hawking's Universe begins on the Discovery Channel on Sunday May 9 at 9pm

Friday, 23 April 2010

Ron Paul Warns Congress on Iran: A Vote For Sanctions is a Vote For War - scare-mongering about Iran having missiles -

April 22, 2010

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These “drones” ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.

We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iranto detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s oft-repeated quip about Iraq: that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud.

We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.

Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.

Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work” – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.

This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.