Marine Science Field Work

Winnie thought this was pretty lame, but I think it's vaguely funny. It does seem to hit the high points of what I hear the students say about field work at sea.

I'm Screwed

Several months ago investigators from the state corporation commission interviewed me about the "rebate program" that my dealer offered when I bought my last car, three years ago. See, the rebate doesn't come immediately. You have to wait 39 months. I was supposed to get back almost 10% of the original price of the car.

Too bad it's (almost) a scam.

An administrative judge gave Casey a preliminary legal victory last week in a clash between state regulators and the dealer. The three judges of the Virginia State Corporation Commission must still decide if they agree that the program doesn't violate securities laws.

The program has been the subject of an intense investigation by the staff at the SCC since last December. Casey immediately ended the program at its Hampton Roads dealerships, but had already issued 8,532 certificates worth tens of millions of dollars.

The SCC sent subpoenas this year to interview 17 current and former Casey salespeople, and sent out questionnaires to 400 former Casey customers in the program.

Casey says some customers came back to the dealership making threats and demanding money, to no avail. Some dissatisfied customers had not followed the program's rules.

Crap!

The Arctic Icecap

Yes, it's true! The arctic icecap has shrunk!

The European space agency said its images showed the rate of overall ice loss had risen sharply to its highest rate since satellite records began thirty years ago.

That's opened up the historically impassable Northwest passage through the Canadian Arctic, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The famous sea-route has, until recently, been completely ice-bound throughout the year. Scientists say global warming is to blame for melting the ice and making the route navigable for the first time since records began in 1978.

OMG! The melting has reached the greatest rate seen in the 30 years of records!! Ice levels have reached their lowest levels in 30 years of records!!! Uh, wouldn't that mean that, on average, the icecap had been greater in the last few years than 30 years ago?

Katie Couric

Those viewer polls are harsh!

NEW YORK (AP) - If some people thought traveling to Iraq and Syria was a ratings stunt for Katie Couric, it didn't work out that way. The "CBS Evening News" tied a record low with just under 5.5 million viewers last week, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday. Last week and Memorial Day week are the two least-watched CBS evening newscasts since at least 1987, and probably far earlier.

CBS said it wasn't surprising, and argued that last week's
numbers were artificially deflated because of U.S. Open coverage.

This is when you know you are sooo screwed on TV - your viewer figures are "artifically deflated" by a tennis match.

President Winnie

Not content with being just Professor Winnie, she has now moved on to President Winnie.

ACLU Pervert - Update 3

I've written about this creep before. Former president of the Virginia chapter of the ACLU. Kids soccer coach. Railed against porn filtering software on library computers. And now -

A former Arlington County youth sports coach and civil rights lawyer who once headed Virginia's American Civil Liberties Union chapter was sentenced today to seven years in federal prison for buying child pornography that prosecutors labeled sadistic and masochistic.

Charles Rust-Tierney, 51, pleaded guilty in June to downloading hundreds of pornographic images of children as young as 4. Authorities said Rust-Tierney used a computer in his 11-year-old son's bedroom to view the files, which included a six-minute video that depicted sexual torture of children, set to a song by the rock band Nine Inch Nails.

Why?

Rust-Tierney told Ellis that he viewed child porn as a way to escape "despair" in his personal life.

Poor baby.

Compulsory Health Care

Most of the Democrat candidates talk about instituting universal health care. John Edwards is the only one recommending compulsory health care. Not just compulsory that your employer provide it, but compulsory that you go to the doctor.

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat "the first trace of problem."

Teen Drinking

The Wall Street Journal touches on the practice we always followed in our house.

In societies where children drink with their parents, this typically means giving a kid a small amount of wine or other alcohol, often watered down on special occasions or a family dinner. Many European countries also lower the drinking age for children when they are accompanied by parents. In the United Kingdom, for example, the legal age is 18, but for a family at a restaurant it is 16. In France and Italy, where the legal age is 16, there is no age limit for children drinking with parents.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum

Well, this would be different.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum contains a collection of over one hundred and fifty penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the land and sea mammals that can be found in Iceland. Visitors to the museum will encounter thirty eight specimens belonging to fifteen different kinds of whale, one specimen taken from a rogue polar bear, nineteen specimens belonging to seven different kinds of seal and walrus, and ninety three specimens originating from nineteen different kinds of land mammal: all in all, a total of one hundred fifty one specimen belonging to forty two different kinds of mammal. It should be noted that the museum has also been fortunate enough to receive a legally-certified gift token for a future specimen belonging to Homo Sapiens.