bob

"Obama had just begun an afternoon statement to reporters lauding the end of a Senate filibuster on his financial overhaul plan when some kind of rodent — opinions differ on which — dashed out of the bushes to his right, just outside the Oval Office." - seems like a security hole/plot for an in the line of fire type movie :P - bob

"A thief stole five paintings, including major works by Picasso and Matisse, in a brazen overnight heist from a Paris modern-art museum, police and prosecutors said Thursday. The paintings disappeared early Thursday from the Paris Museum of Modern Art, across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower, in one of the French capital's most chic and tourist-frequented neighborhoods...On a cordoned-off balcony behind the museum, police in blue gloves and face masks examined the broken window and empty frames. The paintings appeared to have been carefully removed from the disassembled frames, not sliced out." - bob

"It also has implications for efforts to tax what's possibly the state's largest cash crop, because a drop in prices from increased supply might invalidate current estimates of the trade and its value." - bob

I like how they turned a KFC into a pot dispenary. It shows they really know their target market. - Gabe

Sorrento è una poesia, un incanto... - cinzia dellagiovanna

Near Moab, it appears: http://www.pbase.com/listora.... We should go sometime. - Paul Buchheit

im up for it - bob

"The pattern for this happening is when a brilliant white spot forms in the southern zone. Gradually it will start to spout dark blobs of material which will be stretched by Jupiter's fierce winds into a new belt, and the planet will return to its familiar 'tyre track' appearance." - bob

"Nearly 27% of Arab men and 65% of ultra-Orthodox Jews don't work, government figures show. The non-employment rate for ultra-Orthodox men has tripled since 1970, Ben-David said. "We support a lifestyle of nonworking that is pretty unparalleled in the Western world," said Ben-David, who is also a Tel Aviv University professor. "On the one hand, we have this state-of-the-art part of the economy. Then there is the rest of the country that is like a huge drag." What worries Ben-David most is that the nonproductive part of Israel's population, which survives largely on welfare, is also the fastest growing. Today Arabs and the ultra-Orthodox together make up less than 30% of the population, but they account for nearly half of school-age children. If trends continue unchecked, Arab and ultra-Orthodox children could make up 78% of Israeli classrooms, recent studies have shown." - bob

That's my kind of religion. - Paul Buchheit

Maybe you should just grow some peyote. - Gabe

"On Feb. 17, 2009, they received stunning news from the fertility clinic: All of their frozen embryos had been accidentally transferred into the womb of another woman -- and she was pregnant." - bob

If I'm reading the article correctly, both families already have biological children. That said, I can't imagine what they went through. Carrying a baby to term that you know is not your own seems like a huge burden. - Clare Dibble

"An improperly handled human defecation resulted in a tomato plant taking root which was also destroyed." - bob

"Eating for 14 hours at a stretch, an elephant consumes 325 kilograms of food a day. When leaves and fruit fail to fill that giant stomach, it tears off whole branches and eats the wood. Its tusks gouge so much bark from around the stems of full-grown trees that they turn into whitened skeletons and eventually fall at dizzy angles. Trees that survive are pushed sideways to the ground so that their roots can be munched. Now numbering one for every 14 human inhabitants, the relentless roaming of Botswana’s 120,000 elephants is driving villagers from the land by indiscriminately destroying their crops. Even the staunchest conservationists now concede that some significant culling is necessary." - bob

Elephants are evil. But they're cute, so we protect them. - Amit Patel

Can't they just export the elephants to other countries that need them? - Gabe

"The atolls of Maldives encompass a territory spread over roughly 90,000 square kilometers, making it one of the most disparate countries in the world. It features 1,192 islets, of which two hundred are inhabited.[5] The Republic of Maldives's capital and largest city is Malé, with a population of 103,693 (2006)." - bob

"In other jurisdictions, the philosophy of the law holds that it is human nature to want to escape. In Mexico, for instance, escapees who do not break any other laws are not charged for anything and no extra time is added to their sentence;" - bob

haha, good catch casey ;) - bob

"The pinto stallion named Einstein weighed just 6 pounds and measured 14 inches tall when he was born Friday in Barnstead, N.H." - bob

"In a bold predawn attack, gunmen stormed a hotel Wednesday in the heart of the northern city of Monterrey and kidnapped at least three people, officials said. Mexican media said up to 50 hooded gunmen arrived in a convoy and burst into the downtown Holiday Inn, seizing guests and employees." - bob

"The biggest challenge facing the porcine dairy industry is collecting the product. Pigs on average have fourteen teats as opposed to cows that have four teats. Pigs also differ from cows in their milk ejection time, a cows milk ejection is stimulated by the hoimone oxytocin and can last ten minutes, where as a pig's milk ejection time only last fifleen seconds as the suckling pigs stimulate the release of oxytocin. The technology of a 14 cupped mechanized milking machine that can milk a pig in 15 seconds is not available to pork producers.'" - bob

But does it taste like bacon? - Paul Buchheit

pig's milk? does not sound right - mr. lambert

15 seconds? That doesn't sound like much - Gabe

""The next thing I know, I'm spun around. I see this kid...and he's pulling (the iPad) out of my hand." Jordan says the Apple bag's cords were wrapped around his fingers and he couldn't let go. "I never hear it coming, I never see it coming. I just remember this kid pulling and pulling and pulling and it got caught…took the flesh right off, the tendons and everything. There was nothing but bone."... Jordan called for help and was rushed to the hospital. There, a doctor gave him the bad news. "He said 'I recommend amputation'."" - bob

"Like other lead(II) salts, lead acetate has a sweet taste, which has led to its use as a sugar substitute throughout history. The ancient Romans, who had few sweeteners besides honey, would boil must (grape juice) in lead pots to produce a reduced sugar syrup called defrutum, concentrated again into sapa. This syrup was used to sweeten wine, and to sweeten and preserve fruit." - bob

"Both writers advised against the use of bronze or copper kettles, as the metals would react with the acids in the defrutum and give the finished product an unpleasant metallic taste. The preferred vessels for boiling and storing defrutum were made of (or lined with) lead, which leached lead acetate crystals into the must when it was boiled, progressively sweetening the mix. The Romans seemed not to mind the taste of lead, and it formed a distinct part of defrutum's flavor. Geochemist Jerome Nriagu published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1983 hypothesizing that defrutum and sapa may have contained enough leached lead acetate to be of danger to those who consumed it regularly. A 2009 History Channel documentary produced a batch of historically-accurate defrutum in lead-lined vessels and tested the liquid, finding a lead level of 29,000 ppb, a staggering 290,000% higher than the current US drinking water standards of 10 ppb. These levels are easily high enough to cause either acute lead toxicity if consumed at once in large amounts or chronic lead poisoning when consumed in smaller quantities over a longer period of time (as defrutum was typically used).[2] Also, because chronic lead poisoning can cause infertility and high infant mortality, some scholars hold that the long-term digestion of defrutum, along with eating food and drink with bronze utensils containing lead (which were mended with pure lead), was a contributing factor in the decline of Rome." - bob

Ooops :) - Paul Buchheit

"The ash cloud, which has drifted from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, forced officials to shut down airspace in Britain, Ireland, France and Scandinavia, causing further delays worldwide. The volcano is still spewing ash into the air, and authorities said they did not know when the airspace would reopen. All non-emergency flights to and from British airports were banned from noon Thursday until at least 8 a.m. Friday Eastern time. Swedish authorities said they would shut their airspace, and French officials shut down all flights to and from Paris and 23 other airports." - bob

Dislike. Our flight out of London tomorrow was canceled - Benjamin Golub

"A weapons-grade ring of electrorefined plutonium, typical of the rings refined at Los Alamos and sent to Rocky Flats for fabrication. The ring has a purity of 99.96%, weighs 5.3 kg, and is approx 11 cm in diameter. It is enough plutonium for one bomb core. The ring shape helps with criticality safety (less concentrated material)." - bob

more like one ring to bomb them all - Chris Heath

I feel like something is missing... - Paul Buchheit

Where's Alcatraz? - Gabe

"By the year 2020, there will be 30 million more men than women of marriageable age in this giant empire, so large and so different (its current population is 1,336,410,000) that it often feels more like a separate planet than just another country. ...All over this district, the evidence of government concern is on display. A 20-yard-long propaganda poster in one tiny hamlet dwells sternly and very frankly on the problem, declaring: 'Our current family planning policy is this, "Pay attention to the issue of gender imbalance."' It quotes a recent national census showing a growing imbalance and predicts: 'In 2040 there will be 300million men and 250 million women under 40. At least 30million men will have difficulty getting married....One of the many posters for medical services advertised what it called a 'dream abortion - totally painless', which made me wonder what the considerably cheaper non-dream versions must be like. Yuan Quan slipped into a busy down-market establishment in a grim and basic part of town, with a flourishing market for stolen bicycles just outside, and the police looking the other way. She asked the abortionist if he ever aborted boys. He gaped. 'Are you mad?' he almost shouted, 'Nobody aborts boys unless they are deformed. Girls are what we abort.'...Boys are kidnapped by families who want a male heir and do not care where they get him. Girls are taken to be brought up as child brides for cherished, spoiled boys, who will not have to worry about the increasing shortage of girls." - bob

It's not just China: http://www.economist.com/world... (in the same issue, there were also http://www.economist.com/opinion... and http://www.economist.com/world... about gendercide). - Michal Cierniak