Nice Kitty

So, this lady and her daughter rescue an injured kitty on the side of the road, and take it to the vet.

A woman who helped rescue an injured cat on the roadside got a surprise when a veterinarian told her it was a wild and potentially dangerous bobcat.

It makes you wonder what kind of kitties she has in her house to mistake a bobcat for a pet. The kitty is on the loose again.

Veterinarian Andy Duke, the clinic's owner, said the bobcat did not appear to be suffering any pain from the injured paw when he released it about 10:30 p.m. Monday less than a mile from where Eldred had found it.

"It left the cage like calf coming out of a rodeo chute," Duke said.

Now That's Good Eatin'

In Virginia, this kid would never be able to attend public school again. Fortunately for him, in Alabama they're more sensible.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Hogzilla is being made into a horror movie. But the sequel may be even bigger: Meet Monster Pig. An 11-year-old boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9 feet 4, from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.

And, how exactly, does a sixth-grader accomplish such a feat?

Jamison, who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Monster Pig. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

Good job! So what are you going to do with it?

The hog's head is being mounted by Jerry Cunningham of Jerry's Taxidermy. Cunningham said the animal measured 54 inches around the head, 74 inches around the shoulders and 11 inches from the eyes to the end of its snout.

"It's huge," he said. "It's just the biggest thing I've ever seen."

Mike Stone is having sausage made from the rest of the animal. "We'll probably get 500 to 700 pounds," he said.

Larnin' is a Gud Thing

The photograph says it all.

Students who had been planning to walk across the stage at graduation ceremonies this weekend were instead walking a picket line Thursday morning.

The Trimble Tech High School seniors marched in front of Fort Worth Independent School District headquarters to protest Wednesday's decision by trustees to bar students who failed the TAKS test from commencement exercises.

Let me say it again. Read the sign.

Norwegians Announce Plan to Migrate to Reindeer Pulled Sleighs

OK, they claim to want to convert to biodeisel.

Norway's government is working on a proposal that could lead to a ban on the sale of gasoline-powered cars.

The parliamentary transport groups in the governing Labour, Socialist Left and Center parties have aired the proposal, and the Transport Ministry is now working intensely to determine whether such a ban is possible, newspaper VG reports.

"This is not a problem to arrange. In Brazil over 80 percent of cars sold run on bio-ethanol. Most of the major car makers are banking on flexi-fuel," said Labor parliamentary transport committee representative Truls Wickstrøm.

"Such a ban would pressure the automobile industry into developing technology faster than it otherwise would," said Jenny Klinge, the Center Party representative on the transport committee.

Yes, but where are you going to get the plant matter for this? Norway is not notes for its extensive vegetation cover.

Designer What?

I don't know what to say. (***snigger!***)

One of the world's most prestigious health journals has lashed a fast-growing trend in the United States and Britain for "designer vaginas," the tabloid term for cosmetic surgery to the female genitalia.

Patients who sought genitoplasty "uniformly" wanted their vulvas to be flat and with no protrusion, similar to the prepubescent look of girls in Western fashion ads, they found.

Too much money, not enough healthy social interactions.

Participatory GIS - Gas Prices

There is a site out there called Gasbuddy.com that is a good example of participatory GIS. People submit the local price of gasoline to the site. The website then maps the station and displays it for all comers. You can zoom and pan on the map to wherever you want.

However, as you zoom out you eventually get to this "heat map" (sort of like the one for Zillow on housing prices). Prices only stay posted for 12 hours, so you know you're always seeing the latest. Members get points towards prizes for submitting more prices.

Personally, I wondered about the high prices in the Midwest. It turns out this site also has a page for gas taxes, and those are 15-20 cents higher per gallon in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan than in surrounding states. So, Representative Stupak of Michigan can just kiss our a**.

Ugly Men

Apparently, I'm a hot commodity. Well, maybe I score one out of three. -

In a recent study, sociologist Diane Felmee found only a third of women said looks were the first thing that attracted them to a man. Most preferred a sense of humour or financial and career success.

Researchers at Newcastle University also believe ugly men exist as a way of repairing our gene pool. Women would rather date men with good genes, who can fight disease easily, than a classically beautiful man.

Ace points out a case in point.

AN Essex girl may be the first lady with a tongue stud to have set her sights on the White House. The wife of Dennis Kucinich, a left-wing Democratic congressman and 2008 presidential candidate, is a 29-year-old hippie chick from Upminster at the end of London Underground’s District line.

Trade-offs

If Congress and the President are about to sell us out on immigration, as apparently they are, they ought to at least get us something back for it. no, I don't mean the Republicrats need to give something to the Democrans, or vice-versa. WE need to get something from Mexico.

We're being asked to take in about 10 million Mexicans (plus assorted stragglers from other countries), which is about 10% of their national population, in order to relieve the pressures on one of the most autocratic, corrupt, and imbecilic governments that has graced this planet over the past 500 years. I think they owe us.

Specifically, I think they owe us about 20% of their land area. This would be the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, and Sonora. The existing populations will have to leave, but, hey, that's not our problem.

If the government of Mexico has a better proposal, like all of the Yucatan and Chiapas, where a lot of these desperate people come from to start with, we can listen. Especially if it includes a few areas with nice beaches and/or unexplored oil reserves.

(Strawman follows) Some will argue that such a transfer is unthinkable. Nonsense, I say! Did they not earlier cede all of the southwest to the U.S.? Did they not lose Texas to a small band of settlers? Hell, the only people they've ever managed to resist, were the French. Besides, isn't this a big step toward that North American Union some people are so crazy for?

Queen Victoria's Secret

Today is the Victoria Day holiday for our neighbors in Canada. This is a sort of iconic picture of her, and we tend to think of her in those terms. Plump and stolid.

Well, if you had to sit perfectly still for 10 or 15 seconds for the photograph to be taken, you'd probably look pretty somber too. Ever try to hold a smile for 10 seconds? As for plump, give her a break. By the time of this photo she had been queen for 50 or 60 years. You should look so good at that age.

Besides, with all that satin and lace on display, can you really believe she was confined in tidy whities underneath? I mean she was passably cute as a young woman, but she went on to have nine children while still running the largest empire the world has ever seen. No doubt she took her comfort where she could find it.

Somehow, I doubt that was to be found in massive underwires and thongs as at today's Victoria Secret, or in rough linen or wool with drawstrings.

So, what was her secret?

Zero Tolerance for Guns

Some elementary school students handled a BB gun near a school bus stop. The result is that they've been expelled.

NEWPORT NEWS -- A group of boys played with a BB gun near their bus stop on March 27, according to mothers who were not there but gathered information on their own. The BB gun was unloaded, the parents said, so when the children took turns pulling the trigger, it only fired air. When the kids saw the bus coming, the last boy to hold the BB gun put it down.

Four children were suspended and then expelled for the incident from Sanford Elementary, which is on Colony Road in the Denbigh part of Newport News.

I think the school district is on shaky ground here. Yes, their policy says students may not have weapons at school bus stops. But where does that end? How far away would you have to be before it's not at a school bus stop?

So, if the kids usually stand in your driveway to load onto the bus, and you decide to take junior deer hunting, if someone sees him touch a weapon while loading the truck up, he'll be expelled?

Worse yet, these are the rules for all of the students, not just the elementary kids.

Countdown from 100

Ace has a link to a great set of movie quotes. This is too fun.

What Can't Science Accomplish?

If you like pizza. If you like beer. You're sure to be disgusted by pizza beer.

(CBS) ST. CHARLES, Ill. Beer and pizza are tastes that, for many of us, just seem to go together. But, beer that tastes like pizza?

As CBS 2’s Vince Gerasole reports, a suburban brewer has put a new twist on tap.

Something’s brewing in a garage in St. Charles. Tom Seefurth is mixing up a concoction he'll eventually pour out as beer – pizza beer.

“It's pizza and beer in a bottle,” Seefurth, a self-proclaimed beer nut, says.

There are actually real pieces of pizza stirred into the mix.

American Vacations

One of the things that Euro-peons are always whining at Americans about is that we don't travel overseas. Goodness, most of you colonists, don't even have a passport.

Well, up until this year we didn't need one if we were staying inside the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and most of the Caribbean. This amounts to almost a fifth of the land area of the planet, ignoring Antarctica (for which I doubt you need a passport for anyway, since it's supposed to be "neutral" ground).

The other factor, as I see it, is that while foreigners get a lot of vacation, American bosses don't have to give you squat.

Workers in Finland had one of the best annual leave packages among developed countries, a study by the center found. Finnish workers received 30 days of paid vacation plus another nine paid holidays.

French workers were guaranteed 30 days of paid annual leave, but only one paid holiday. Most European workers were guaranteed at least 20 days of vacation, and some also received as many as 13 paid holidays.

Canadian workers were guaranteed 10 days of vacation plus another eight paid holidays, while Japanese laborers only were guaranteed 10 days of annual leave, the study found.

U.S. workers were guaranteed neither paid vacations nor paid holidays.

Despite the lack of government guarantees, 90 percent of U.S. employers offered vacation, the study found. Workers received an average of nine days of paid vacation and six paid holidays, a total of 15 days off per year.

Now, remember, in these foreign countries this is the minimum vacation they can give a new, first-time employee. It negotiates upwards from there.

What you do in your free time...

...is your own business.

A Palestinian working for Doctors Without Borders has been charged in an alleged plot to assassinate Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other top Israeli officials, according to court document released Thursday.

Paris-based Doctors Without Borders offers emergency medical treatment at trouble spots around the world. An official from the group, Michael Neuman, said Bashir has worked with them for five years, but the charges were "completely unrelated to his work."

Poor Baby!

Imagine my sympathy -

WASHINGTON — An accused enemy combatant held at Guantanamo Bay told a military hearing he was physically as well as mentally tortured there by having to read a newsletter full of 'crap,' being forced to use unscented deodorant and shampoo and having to play sports with a ball that would not bounce.

Majid Khan of Pakistan denied any connection to Al Qaeda and said he was tortured and his family hounded by U.S. authorities, according to a redacted transcript released Tuesday by the Pentagon.

Khan told an April 15 hearing called to determine whether he was rightly classified as an "enemy combatant" that he also had his baby pictures taken from him, that cleaners left marks on his cell walls and that detainees have no DVD players or other entertainment.

Jamestown Entertainment - Part 2

I noted that a black supremacist leader in the New Black Panther Party intended on being at Jamestown on Saturday. I never did see any mention in the paper of that protest. Then, it was to be on to Toronto for him.

Michelle Malkin notes a report that he never quite made it. Why not? Well, you know, it was the Jews again.

Malik Zulu Shabazz was denied entry by customs officials apparently because of a minor criminal record — a misdemeanour five years ago, members of the group told reporters.

They said they invited Shabazz to speak on issues such as establishing black-focused schools and changing curriculums to include contributions by black people.

Shabazz had been scheduled to attend a rally in front of the Ontario legislature Tuesday afternoon and deliver a lecture at Ryerson University later in the day.

The group held a raucous and angry news conference at Ryerson, lashing out at what they said was the role of the "Jewish lobby" in keeping Shabazz out of the country.

The Toronto Star reports -

“What is to blame is the power of the Jewish lobby to influence politicians, to influence media, to influence whatever,” said Nkem Anizor, 26, president of a radical new Toronto group called Black Youth Taking Action.

“Because it took just one letter, one press release from B’nai Brith and the firestorm began,” she told a news conference at Ryerson today in Shabazz’s place.

Uh, huh. That you are violent hate-mongering freakazoids has nothing to do with it.

Swedish Meatball

So, there's this magician from Sweden, see. And, he has a hard time getting a regular gig. So, why is that?

Swedish magician Joe Labero has provoked a strong reaction with suggestions that Las Vegas is controlled by "Jewish business syndicates, American dollar millionaires and homosexual booking agents".

As a prelude to his controversial thesis, Labero explained that he has long been close to getting his own show in Las Vegas.

"But at the end of the day it seems to be impossible - unless you are a homosexual, a Jew or an American.

Oh, dear. I think we can let the slurs pass for a moment. However, has anyone bothered to tell this guy that Americans consider any performer that gets a regular show in Vegas as a has-been, who'll never be able to get another serious job again?

Now, to the slurs. I am unclear on which group he most dislikes, but summing up, he seems to be upset that jobs in America, even in entertainment, might go to Americans. Indeed, that we would prefer Jews or homosexuals over him.

The guy has now apologized, but in the bigger scheme of things, you can understand why he'd pull almost any rabbit out of the hat to get out of Sweden. He could get burned for doing magic. Or, at least beheaded.

Jamestown Update

It sounds like the festival did better over the weekend than what I saw on Friday. Well, I did go that day because I thought the crowds would be smaller.

Organizers said official attendance figures for the three-day festival would take time to compile, but that a preliminary tally showed roughly 70,000 single-day tickets were sold, out of a possible 90,000.

Only about 37,000 tickets were sold in advance -- "certainly not what we had hoped for," said Jane Zeidler, executive director of Jamestown 2007, the state organization coordinating the festival. But more than 33,000 people apparently bought tickets at the gates.

Absolutely Depraved

What was this judge thinking?

A judge today dismissed a child abuse charge against a woman whose 2-year-old son spent the night in the hospital after apparently ingesting heroin.

Tracie Chaffee, 29, told child protective services worker Darlene Griffith that she had used heroin for a couple months, taking it before and after work, but never at home.

Chaffee’s lawyer, Allan Zaleski, argued there had been no evidence about what caused the boy’s injury. Judge M. Randolph Carlson II agreed, and dismissed the charge against Chaffee.

I'm speechless.

Yeah, That's Your Theory

We have some interesting liquor rules here.

Consumers may bring no more than one gallon (or 4 liters) of alcoholic beverages across state lines. That limit is constitutional because it does not restrict how much a person buys from an out-of-state retailer, the appeals court said.

Hell, I buy more than that on a three day out of town trip. I think my bar/wine rack probably have eight or nine gallons in them at the moment. Yeah, I bought almost all of it here, but I'd never think twice about bringing >4 bottles of wine home from vacation. The trick is usually how to transport a whole case via aircraft with the security for carry-on and kleptos inspecting the bags.