Judge makes girl ward of court so he can change her stupid name
Just ask Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. He had her renamed.
Judge Rob Murfitt made the 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name could be changed, he said in a ruling made public Thursday. The girl was involved in a custody battle, he said.
The new name was not made public to protect the girl's privacy.
"The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child's parents have shown in choosing this name," he wrote. "It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily."
The girl had been so embarrassed at the name that she had never told her closest friends what it was. She told people to call her "K" instead, the girl's lawyer, Colleen MacLeod, told the court.
In his ruling, Murfitt cited a list of the unfortunate names.
Registration officials blocked some names, including Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit, he said. But others were allowed, including Number 16 Bus Shelter "and tragically, Violence," he said.
New Zealand law does not allow names that would cause offense to a reasonable person, among other conditions, said Brian Clarke, the registrar general of Births, Deaths and Marriages.
Clarke said officials usually talked to parents who proposed unusual names to convince them about the potential for embarrassment.
Yahoo News
'Stolen' truck taken by owners dog Max
AZUSA, California - Doggone it, my truck's gone!
Police said Charles McCowan parked his pickup in front of a mini-mart Wednesday, leaving his 80-pound Boxer Max in the passenger seat. When he came out, the truck and Max were gone.
McCowan called police, assuming the truck had been stolen. When officers arrived, they found the pickup across the street in a fast-food parking lot but had no idea how it got there.
In security video shown Thursday on KCAL-TV, the truck can be seen rolling backward out of the store lot and across the street, threading its way through traffic and out of view.
Police said that after McCowan left the truck, Max knocked the vehicle out of gear and sent it rolling backward.
Both Max and the truck emerged without a scratch.
Heated Dust Trails Suggest Primitive Life Beyond Earth
BOSTON - Rocky planets like Earth could be found around most sunlike stars in our galaxy, new research suggests, further raising hopes that scientists will someday find E.T. or at least primitive life beyond our solar system.
The finding is based on an analysis of dust around 309 stars with masses comparable to our sun.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was able to detect the heat that radiated from the dust, "not unlike the smoke you'll see rising from chimneys around here in the Boston area on a cold day," said researcher Michael Meyer of the University of Arizona.
Meyer and his colleagues found "warm" dust, between minus 280 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit (-173 to 27 degrees Celsius), orbiting at an estimated distance from their stars in the same range that Earth and Jupiter are found in our solar system. This allowed them to infer the presence of colliding larger rocky bodies, and to estimate that at least 20 percent and up to as many as 60 percent of the sunlike stars in our galaxy's disk could give rise to rocky planets like Earth.
"From those observations of dust, we infer the presence of colliding larger rocky bodies, not unlike asteroids and other things in our solar system that we know bang together and generate dust," Meyer told reporters here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "By tracing that dust, we trace these dynamical processes that we think led to the formation of the terrestrial planets in our solar system."
The best guess scientists have for the time scale of the formation of Earth, as a result of collisions, is when our sun was between 10 million to 50 million years old (it is now about 4.6 billion years old). Meyer found the warm dust trails in stars between 3 million and 300 million years old.
The results are detailed in the Feb. 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Still no consensus on planet definition
More than 250 planets beyond our solar system have been detected since the late 1990s, and it has become more and more unclear what exactly a planet is. The International Astronomical Union arrived at a new formal definition a couple years ago, but scientists still disagree.
In fact, Meyer said he has become less and less interested in a precise definition of planethood.
"I am interested in how common different masses of objects are and [what] their sizes are, from the inner solar system to the outer solar system," Meyer said. "That will tell us a lot about how our solar system evolved. ... Really, the question is, 'How common are planetary systems like our own around sunlike stars in our galaxy?'" The diversity of exoplanets now found is broad in terms of size and proximity to their parent suns, said astronomer Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University. And the planets resemble the creativity in architecture that you might get from a "schoolchild," if you gave the kid clay and asked him or her to model planets in a solar system, she said.
Fischer, Meyer and other planetary scientists were set to present their research in detail on Monday at the AAAS meeting.
Scientists have found that the materials necessary for carbon-based life in the universe, including water, are common. The trick is to find planets in the right location, Fischer said.
"To my mind, there's two things we have to go after," Fischer said. "We have to find the right mass planet, and it has to be the right distance from the star," she said. The trouble is that these "right-mass, right-place planets are in the anti-sweet spot for every [detection] technique that exists now."
Planetary scientists are looking forward to more data on exoplanets in coming years if all goes well with NASA's Kepler mission, set to launch a year from now. Kepler is designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to detect and characterize hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets that are close enough (but not too close) to their stars to support possible life. A similar French mission, COROT, is already making observations.
New view of our solar system
The findings of the past decade have yielded a "revolution" in scientific thinking about our solar system, said planetary scientist Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
A couple of decades ago, Pluto was thought to be in the outer solar system, but scientists now see Pluto in the middle of the solar system. A vast ring of small objects beyond Pluto, called the Kuiper Belt, is now seen as the outer solar system, Stern said.
Giant rat and tiny possum discovered in Indonesia
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Researchers in a remote jungle in Indonesia have discovered a giant rat and a tiny possum that are apparently new to science, underscoring the stunning biodiversity of the Southeast Asian nation, scientists said Monday.
Unearthing new species of mammals in the 21st century is considered very rare. The discoveries by a team of American and Indonesian scientists are being studied further to confirm their status.
The animals were found in the Foja Mountains rainforest in eastern Papua province during a June expedition, said U.S.-based Conservation International, which organized the trip along with the Indonesian Institute of Science.
The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat," said Kristofer Helgen, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. "With no fear of humans, it apparently came into the camp several times during the trip."
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Bruce M. Beehler / CI
This pygmy possum was found in Indonesia's "Lost World."
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A 2006 expedition to the same stretch of jungle — dubbed by Conservation International as a "Lost World" because until then humans had rarely visited it — unearthed scores of exotic new species of palms, butterflies and palms.
Papua has some of the world's largest tracts of rainforest, but like elsewhere in Indonesia they are being ravaged by illegal logging. Scientists said last year that the Foja area was not under immediate threat, largely because it was so remote.
"It's comforting to know that there is a place on Earth so isolated that it remains the absolute realm of wild nature," said expedition leader Bruce Beehler. "We were pleased to see that this little piece of Eden remains as pristine and enchanting as it was when we first visited."
This is why I figure there could be a big foot. They're still discovering new animals! That's scarey!
Suspicious Email 'sent' by Stonington women in Africa
North Stonington — On Monday afternoon, many of Linda Wilkinson's friends received an urgent e-mail from her saying she was stranded and hungry in the African nation of Nigeria and needed them to wire her $2,500 in cash as soon as possible.
Wilkinson, of Wyassup Road, spends much of the year in Zambia helping people in an AIDS-ravaged village and sends frequent e-mails to her friends back home about her work. Supporters include teachers and students at Pawcatuck Middle School, who have raised money to help build a school and provide health care for the orphaned children of Ng'ombe.
Pawcatuck Middle School teacher Janis Ingham, who received an e-mail from Wilkinson last week that did not mention a trip to Nigeria, said at first she worried that Wilkinson was in real trouble, especially since the e-mail came from Wilkinson's e-mail address.
She then talked to fellow teacher Jeanne Steinnagel, and after re-reading the e-mail they began to think it was a clever scam.
They sent an e-mail back saying they wanted to know if she was alone and where to send money. They were given instructions to send it to Victoria Island in Lagos, Nigeria. In recent years, many e-mail scams have originated from Nigeria. The perpetrators often promise millions of dollars to a person who wires a fee to the scammers. The wording of the offers is awkward, and the scammers often ask people to keep details of the deal confidential, just like in Wilkinson's e-mail.
The two teachers then responded saying they were they were concerned someone was using her e-mail address and they were withholding any commitment of money until they heard from her.
Steinnagel, who did not get the original e-mail, received an e-mail from one of Wilkinson's friends warning them of a scam using her e-mail. She said it seems those who received the original e-mail did not get the subsequent warning and vice versa.
“I hope nobody did send her money. I was close,” admitted Ingham. “Hopefully we'll hear from her and she's OK.”
Ingham said that when the e-mails arrived here, it was midnight in Zambia. She said that maybe someone where Wilkinson is living had gained access to her computer while she was sleeping, or perhaps someone stole it.
Ingham and Steinnagel said the person must know Wilkinson because they were smart enough to say she was on a special trip to fight AIDS, poverty, racism and lack of education, all issues she is involved with in Africa. Ingham said the e-mailer apologized for not telling anyone about the special three-nation trip she was on, something she said Wilkinson would have done.
Steinnagel said the scam artists may also have known Wilkinson was successful in getting people to donate money for her work and figured those people would also be willing to help her out of a jam.
In the e-mail, words are not capitalized, there are grammatical mistakes and stilted language, all in contrast to Wilkinson's typical e-mails. It is something Steinnagel said she immediately noticed. She said if Wilkinson was in trouble and had access to e-mail or a telephone, she would contact her husband, who is also in Zambia working for two agencies trying to stem the spread of AIDS.
Ingham said she and others are trying to warn Wilkinson's friends about the possibility of a scam. Steinnagel said Wilkinson's sister-in-law is also trying to contact her.
Linda's Email:
“I am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called “Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which is Ghana , South Africa and Nigeria . It has been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain. “I am really stranded in Nigeria , because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because i have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $ 1000 and they want me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management., I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1500 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $2500 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i need your help. “I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now and I promise to pay back your money as soon as i return home so please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Western Union money transfer.I will also appreciate you treat this matter as confidential as you can.
Linda”
http://theday.com/re.aspx?re=f26d31d5-728d-4ad7-86d1-4586ba02ea15
Eminent domain abuse for Pot Farms!
Eminent domain detractors say this is one of the most outrageous examples of the abuse of this long-standing law, which allows government to seize private property for public use or in recent years, if they deem it 'for the public good'. The fact that government officials plan to grow 400 acres of pot where walnut trees once stood is simply adding insult to injury.
"Don't think for a moment that this is for public use," says Grant Dennis, director of The Private Property Front, a Los Angeles based coalition of attorneys who work pro-bono in fighting eminent domain abuse. "This is about someone pushing their pro-marijuana agenda, and using the livelihoods of innocent citizens to accomplish it."
Not true, says San Francisco city councilman Ted Brenner. Brenner claims that the Davidsons were offered fair market value for Orchards by the Bay, but refused to sell.
"They were stubborn, so they get what they get, which is half that," he says.
"This project is absolutely needed to keep San Francisco on the cutting edge of societal evolution." Brenner says, "Marijuana will be legalized, if for no other reason than the treatment of chronic pain and the after-effects of chemotherapy. Private property is the last refuge for the aristocracy in this country, and aristocrats will not stand in the way of the people's progress in San Francisco."
Brenner explains that medical marijuana outlets in San Francisco are being targeted by U.S. Drug Enforcement agents, supplies 'stolen', and that a reliable source of the drug is needed in order to keep their controversial program going.
Asked if 400 acres of marijuana might be overkill for limited medical use, he said, "I'm sure the rest will find a home."
Private Property Front has already filed for an injunction in San Francisco Federal Court to delay the seizure of the property until the legality of its future use can be determined. That may not stop the city council.
"Regardless of whatever legal remedies the Davidsons or their allies might think they have," Councilman Brenner smiled, "we're going to start clearing trees on Monday... as a fire hazard. I have the distinct feeling that by the time this issue is decided, it will already have been decided."
Dennis assures us that his group will follow this case to the Supreme Court if necessary. The Davidsons are afraid that even if they do win their fight in court, with city bulldozers already waiting in their orchards, what they'll win is 400 acres of bare dirt and holes where their life used to be.
I don't really have a strong stance on Marijuana use for chronically ill patients. I'm not sure if smoking pot really does make these patients feel better or if it's just an excuse to get a prescription for pot. If it does make them feel less pain, than I think it absolutely should be legal! If it doesn't, I don't think pot should really be illegal anyway (Cigarettes and MANY other things are a lot worse and potentially more dangerous!) But taking an apple orchard to grow weed just seems wrong. Eminent domain abuse has been happening for a very long time, all over. The most famous case (that I've ever had the unfortunate experience of being involved in) was in New London, CT (where I grew up and my mother still lives). The City of New London hired a company called NLDC to "help" New London by rebuilding all these peices of land. They were SUPPOSED to bring more tax base into New London, however, all they ended up doing was taking homes from people and doing absolutely nothing with it. What's there now you might ask? Dirt, big empty dirt lots and that's all it's been for years. Some of these home owners in Fort Trumbull (that's the neighbor hood) had lived there for 3 generations, and NLDC just up and decided to take their homes. At first, they tried to pay them nothing for their homes, than they said they'd pay them around $100,000 for their houses. And if you are at all familiar with Connecticut's real estate, you'd realize that $100,000 couldn't buy you a 1 room shack in the ghetto. My mother organized protests, petitions, even hand cuffed herself, along with many others, to the houses, refusing to move when the bull dozers showed up. Of course they were arrested, but it made the news. It actually went all the way to The Supreme Court. Nothing helped, and those people were left with nothing but memories. One man, a friend of my moms, had been creating a wonderful garden over the years in the backyard of his home. He agreed to move elsewhere as long as NLDC moved his garden for him, which they agreed to. When the time came for the house to be torn down, his garden was not relocated, and he watched as a bull dozer crushed his house and his gardens. A few of the residents were so old, and under so much stress at the thought of loosing their house, they actually died. In a completely different eminent domain case, a women I exchanged emails with had lived in Florida and her house was taken by eminent domain to build a Boston Red Sox practice field. Eminent domain abuse is a horrible thing to have to go through and should not be taken lightly. Click here to see my moms site on eminent domain.
Some Neanderthals had red hair and freckles!
Like bringing to life a naked mannequin, scientists are using genetic and physical evidence found in fossils to clothe the skeletal remains of our closest hominid relatives, the Neanderthals.
More and more, they seem familiar.
Bones from two Neanderthals yielded valuable genetic information that adds red hair, light skin and perhaps some freckling to our extinct relatives. The results, detailed online today by the journal Science, suggest that at least 1 percent of Neanderthals were redheads.
"We can't say anything for the actual fossils we looked at, but we can be sure that part of the Neanderthal population was red-haired," said study team member Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
Earlier this month, other scientists reported genetic evidence that Neanderthals may have spoken similar to how we do today.
Pigment gene
Neanderthals inhabited the plains of Europe and parts of Asia as far back as 230,000 years ago. They disappeared from the fossil record more than 20,000 years ago, a few thousand years after modern humans appeared on the scene.
Holger Rompler of the University of Leipzig, Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona in Spain, and their colleagues extracted the mc1r gene from the bones of a 43,000-year-old Neanderthal from El Sidron, Spain, and a 50,000-year-old specimen from Monti Lessini, Italy. They found that both Neanderthal specimens contained a unique variant of the gene, one that was not found in nearly 4,000 modern humans they compared it with (including the scientists themselves).
The gene is responsible for producing a protein that helps regulate the balance between the red-and-yellow pigment pheomelanin and the black-and-brown eumelanin. Modern people with relatively inactive mc1r receptors tend to have red hair and pale skin. However, other pigmentation genes also contribute to hair and skin coloring.
A past study led by Rompler found a variant of the same gene in woolly mammoth bones, providing evidence that some of the ice-age beasts sported light-colored coats.
In the current study, the researchers tweaked a human mc1r gene so that it matched the variant found in Neanderthals. When they put the gene into modern human cells, it functioned in melatonin production as the modern variants do, suggesting some Neanderthals had fair skin and red hair.
Strawberry blondes
Neanderthals have been portrayed by scientists and even in artistic creations as redheads, but this is the first real evidence for the fiery feature that is thought to be beneficial to modern Europeans.
"What we can say is most likely at least 1 percent, but possibly more, probably more, of the Neanderthals had two copies of the inactive variant and these would have been red-haired," Hofreiter told LiveScience.
At high latitudes where the Neanderthals resided in Europe, the UV radiation would've been minimal. And so fair skin, which has little protection from the sunny rays, would mean the individuals could absorb enough of the UV to produce vitamin D in sufficient amounts.
"Lighter skin is adaptive because vitamin D production depends on UV radiation," Hofreiter said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21474978/
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25 Secrets revealed about the Mona Lisa after cleaning
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Lace on Mona Lisa's dress
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The transparency of the veil shows da Vinci first painted a landscape and then used transparency techniques to paint the veil atop it.
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A change in the position of the left index and middle finger.
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The elbow was repaired from damage due to a rock thrown at the painting in 1956.
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The blanket covering Mona Lisa's knees also covers her stomach.
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The left finger was not completely finished.
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A blotch mark on the corner of the eye and chin are varnish accidents, countering claims that Mona Lisa was sick.
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And the Mona Lisa was painted on uncut poplar board, contrary to speculations.
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Elephants are afraid of bee's
Elephants are the largest beasts alive on land today. Yet these goliaths are afraid of bees, researchers have discovered. The giants flee when they hear the buzz of a bee swarm.
Their fear could be used to help protect them. The researchers figure strategically placed beehives might serve as low-tech elephant deterrents, to reduce conflicts between man and beast that often lead to the pachyderms being killed.
"If we could use bees to reduce elephant crop-raiding and tree destruction and enhance local income through the sale of honey, this could be a significant step forward towards sustainable human-elephant coexistence," said zoologist Lucy King at the University of Oxford in an email sent from a tent in the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya.
Scientists had previously suspected that elephants preferred to steer clear of bees. For instance, in Kenya, observers noticed that elephants damaged acacia trees with empty or occupied beehives significantly less than trees without hives. In Zimbabwe, researchers saw elephants forging new trails in order to avoid beehives
Click link below to read the rest...
http://www.livescience.com/animals/071008-elephant-bees.html
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Police decontaminated after flea attack
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Four officers investigating a burglary were attacked, not by a fleeing burglar, but a swarm of fleas in a filth-ridden vacant house. The tiny, biting attackers were so overwhelming that the South Bend patrolmen had to be decontaminated and ended up being sent home early from their shifts.
"They were all over the place — in our socks and even in our shorts. It was disgusting," said Cpl. Ken Stuart.
To avoid infesting their squad cars, the police station or relatives, Stuart, Cpl. Chris Slager and Patrolman Paul Strabavy endured a lengthy flea decontamination process.
A van took them back to the station, where the men showered with flea/lice shampoo and soap. A wife of one of the officers brought them spare clothes.
As many as seven officers helped with the decontamination on Sunday.
"The guys were very angry. The last thing they wanted to deal with was fleas," said Sgt. Chuck Stokes. "That killed the whole shift."
Stokes said the house's tenants had recently been evicted, but returned periodically to feed a dog tied up in the backyard and allowed it to run around inside the garbage-filled house.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/odd_flea_infestation;_ylt=Ag4qSqAYEPBM0fu81t2qVOEE1vAI
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Doctors found appendix's use
WASHINGTON - Some scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for your gut.
That’s the theory from surgeons and immunologists at Duke University Medical School, published online in a scientific journal this week.
For generations the appendix has been dismissed as superfluous. Doctors figured it had no function. Surgeons removed them routinely. People live fine without them.
And when infected the appendix can turn deadly. It gets inflamed quickly and some people die if it isn’t removed in time. Two years ago, 321,000 Americans were hospitalized with appendicitis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system, according to the study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most of it is good and helps digest food.
'A good safe house'
But sometimes the flora of bacteria in the intestines die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix’s job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.
The appendix “acts as a good safe house for bacteria,” said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a study co-author. The location of the appendix — just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac — helps support the theory, he said.
How Ironic - Click to read the rest on MSNBC.com
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Illinois tries comical stop signs
This Chicago suburb has installed second stop signs beneath the regular ones at 50 intersections with messages, including "WHOAAA" or "Stop ... and smell the roses."
"I thought it might make people smile and take notice," Mayor Dave Heilmann said as he launched the campaign Friday. "You've got people on their cell phones, their BlackBerries and iPods while driving. Those are all distractions. Hopefully, when they see a sign they're not expecting it might make them stop."
The new signs are red octagons, just like the real stop signs, but instead of just "Stop" they say "Stop ... right there pilgrim" and "Stop ... in the naame of love." Naame? Think of the drawn-out pronunciation in the hit by the Supremes.
It might be too soon to know whether the alternative signs will work. But while the mayor was posing for a photo with one of the new signs, a driver sped by without stopping.e a laugh will get their attention.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/odd_stop_means_stop;_ylt=AjjtyQAhvWRoVx0fGvLuIscE1vAI
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I am embarassed...
MAPUTO, Mozambique - The head of the Catholic church in Mozambique said on Wednesday he believed some European-made condoms were deliberately tainted with the HIV/AIDS virus to kill African people.
“I know of two countries in Europe who are making condoms with (the) virus on purpose, they want to finish with African people as part of their program to colonize the continent,” Archbishop Francisco Chimoio told Reuters.
“If we are not careful we will finish in one century.
“I also know some companies who are manufacturing anti-retroviral drugs already infected with the virus, also in order to finish quickly the African people,” Chimoio said.
He declined to name the European countries in question or the source of his allegations.
The Catholic Church, followed by 17 percent of Mozambique’s population, opposes the use of condoms.
“People must choose what they want between death and I propose to them that (abstinence) is the best way to fight HIV/AIDS,” Chimoio said.
More than 16 percent of Mozambique’s 19 million people, mostly economically active adults aged between 14 and 49, are infected with HIV/AIDS. About 500 infections are recorded every day, according to the health department.
Diogo Milagre, deputy executive chairman of Mozambique’s National Council for the Fight Against AIDS, said the government’s efforts to combat the scourge were hampered by a struggling health infrastructure and staff shortages.
“Now over 50 percent of Mozambique’s hospital beds are occupied by AIDS patients while infections are sky-rocketing (but) we haven’t lost the battle yet as we are now changing our approach,” he said, declining to comment on Chimoio’s charges.
“We need to study this phenomenon very carefully particularly cultural aspects with we believe are fuelling infections on several fronts at once,” Milagre said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20999747/
It could not be more obvious what his intentions are by claiming that he has inside information on two European countries are purposefully infesting condoms with AIDS, and that the only solution is to be abstinent. I am embarassed for the Catholic church and don't think that I even have to say anything more on this...I am dumbfounded.
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Pope John Paul II
ROME - A doctor alleged Wednesday that Pope John Paul II violated Catholic teaching against euthanasia by refusing medical care that would have kept him alive longer — a charge immediately dismissed by Vatican officials.
In an article in the Italian journal Micromega, Dr. Lina Pavanelli, an anaesthesiologist, questioned why John Paul was only outfitted with a nasal feeding tube on March 30, 2005, three days before he died. She said he clearly was in need of artificial nutrition well before then.
John Paul was rushed to Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic hospital two times in February 2005 with breathing crises related to his Parkinson's disease; he was released for the last time March 13. He died in his Vatican apartment on April 2, from what the Vatican said was septic shock and cardiocirculatory collapse.
The Vatican announced March 30 that John Paul had been outfitted with a nasal feeding straw to improve his nutrition so he could recover strength...(click link below to finish article).
Some things are more important than following through with what you might have said before, and trying to be right, like most of us Catholics try to do. When this man was on his death bed, in all honesty, he probably said "screw this! I want to go home!" Are they seriously trying to make The Pope look bad? Leave The Pope alone for Christs sake.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_re_eu/pope_euthanasia_4;_ylt=AiZNju9kR.Bk53YiiEL8esoE1vAI
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German politican suggests marriage should expire
BERLIN (Reuters) - Bavaria's most glamorous politician -- a flame-haired motorcyclist who helped bring down state premier Edmund Stoiber -- has shocked the Catholic state in Germany by suggesting marriage should last just 7 years.
Gabriele Pauli, who poses on her web site in motorcycle leathers, is standing for the leadership of Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) -- sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) -- in a vote next week.
She told reporters at the launch of her campaign manifesto on Wednesday she wanted marriage to expire after seven years and accused the CSU, which promotes traditional family values, of nurturing ideals of marriage which are wide of the mark.
"The basic approach is wrong ... many marriages last just because people believe they are safe," she told reporters. "My suggestion is that marriages expire after seven years."
After that time, couples should either agree to extend their marriage or it should be automatically dissolved, she said.
Fifty-year-old Pauli, twice divorced, is a maverick intent on shaking up her male-dominated and mainly Catholic party which has dominated Bavarian politics since World War Two.
"This is about bringing ideas into the CSU and starting a discussion," she told German television on Thursday after she had unleashed a wave of criticism from other politicians.
Former foe Stoiber said she did not belong in the CSU and European lawmaker Ingo Freidrich dismissed her views.
"She is diametrically contradicting our Christian, ethical values," Freidrich said.
Peter Ramsauer, head of the CSU in Germany's parliament, compared Pauli's ideas to "the dirt under your fingernails".
Pauli, who attracted attention earlier this year when she posed for a magazine wearing long black latex gloves, was at the centre of a snooping scandal which eventually led to Stoiber, Bavarian premier for 14 years, saying he would stand down early.
She said his office tried to obtain details about lovers and alcohol consumption to use against her.
The CSU will elect Stoiber's successor as party head at a conference next week. He will be replaced as state premier in early October.
Viewed as a party rebel, Pauli stands almost no chance of winning next week's vote. The contest has been fought mainly between Bavarian state economy minister Erwin Huber and German Consumer Minister Horst Seehofer.
The popularity of Seehofer, a 58-year-old married father of three, has suffered from the disclosure that he had been having an affair with a younger woman who recently had his baby.
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Wallet found in theater after 43 years
EL CENTRO, Calif. - A California man who lost his wallet more than 40 years ago finally got it back when construction workers renovating a movie theater discovered the billfold Friday jammed between the metal casings of a radiator.
"I remember losing it," 70-year-old Epigmenio Sanchez told the Imperial Valley Press newspaper. "I just don't remember where."
Between the folds of crumbling brown leather were fragments of his past: a few family photos, old pay stubs and a couple of department store charge cards he had not seen in more than 40 years. His birth certificate, which Sanchez carried when he went to Mexico to prove he was a U.S. citizen, also was there.
The only thing not in the wallet was money — but Sanchez said he cannot remember whether he had cash when the wallet went missing at the Crest Theater.
Sanchez said he used to go to the movies with his wife, Tillie, after dropping their three children at a relative's house for the day.
"We wanted to get away from the kids for a while," Tillie Sanchez said. "That was our little escape."
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Man spends 1 yr following all 700 rules in Bible
Sept. 21, 2007 - After A. J. Jacobs spent a year reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica for his book “The Know-It-All,” he figured he had the yearlong experiment thing down. How much harder could it be to follow every rule in the Bible? Much, much harder, he soon discovered, as he found himself growing his beard, struggling not to curse and asking strangers for permission to stone them for adultery. Jacobs spent the year carrying around a stapled list of the more than 700 rules and prohibitions identified in the Good Book, and also consulted with religious leaders and spent time with the Amish, Hassidic Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses. He spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Jennie Yabroff about his experience and his new book, “The Year of Living Biblically” (Simon & Schuster), which goes on sale Oct. 9.
Read the rest of the article, Q & A's here
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Astronomers find a hole in space
8/24/07 WASHINGTON - Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday.
Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody's home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years away. But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that's far bigger than scientists ever imagined.
"This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of expected to see in terms of a typical void," said Minnesota astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal. "It's not clear that we have the right word yet ... This is too much of a surprise."
Rudnick was examining a sky survey from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which essentially takes radio pictures of a broad expanse of the universe. But one area of the universe had radio pictures indicating there was up to 45 percent less matter in that region, Rudnick said.
The rest of the matter in the radio pictures can be explained as stars and other cosmic structures between here and the void, which is about 5 to 10 billion light years away.
Rudnick then checked observations of cosmic microwave background radiation and found a cold spot. The only explanation, Rudnick said, is it's empty of matter.
It could also be a statistical freak of nature, but that's probably less likely than a giant void, said James Condon, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. He wasn't part of Rudnick's team but is following up on the research.
"It looks like something to be taken seriously," said Brent Tully, a University of Hawaii astronomer who wasn't part of this research but studies the void closer to Earth.
Tully said astronomers may eventually find a few cosmic structures in the void, but it would still be nearly empty.
Holes in the universe probably occur when the gravity from areas with bigger mass pull matter from less dense areas, Tully said. After 13 billion years "they are losing out in the battle to where there are larger concentrations of matter," he said.
Retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran said of the discovery: "This is incredibly important for something where there is nothing to it."
Rudnick paper: http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/0704.0908
National Radio Astronomy Observatory: http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2007/coldspot/
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Studies confirm that Abraham Lincoln had facial deformity
Laser scans of two life masks, made from plaster casts of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th president's unusual degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study.
The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right, an aberration called cranial facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments — including smallpox, heart illness and depression — that modern doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln.
Lincoln's contemporaries noted his left eye at times drifted upward independently of his right eye, a condition now termed strabismus. Lincoln's smaller left eye socket may have displaced a muscle controlling vertical movement, said Dr. Ronald Fishman, who led the study published in the August issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.
Severe strabismus leads to double vision and can be treated today by surgery.
"Lincoln noticed double vision only occasionally and it did not bother him a great deal," said Fishman, a retired Washington, D.C., ophthalmologist and history buff.
Most people's faces are asymmetrical, Fishman said, but Lincoln's case was extreme, with the bony ridge over his left eye rounder and thinner than the right side, and set backward.
Lincoln's appearance was mocked by his political enemies, historians say. The author Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Lincoln fan, wrote of the president's "homely sagacity" and his "sallow, queer, sagacious visage." Hawthorne's description was deemed disrespectful and deleted by a magazine editor, said Daniel Weinberg, owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago.
Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum described the left side of Lincoln's face as primitive, immature and unfinished.
When Lincoln was a boy, he was kicked in the head by a horse. Laser scans can't settle whether the kick or a developmental defect — or neither — contributed to Lincoln's lopsided face, Fishman said.
The scanning technique is usually used to create 3-D images of children with cleft lip and palate before and after surgery. Fishman teamed up with Dr. Adriana Da Silveira, an Austin, Texas, orthodontist who specializes in children with facial defects, to scan a bronze and a plaster copy of two life masks, owned by the Chicago History Museum.
Life masks were in vogue in the 1860s, said James Cornelius, curator at the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill.
Lincoln cooperated with sculptors to make them twice, in 1860 before his first presidential nomination, and in 1865, two months before his assassination. Lincoln probably did it for political purposes more than posterity, Cornelius said.
"It's the equivalent of TV face time now," Cornelius said
(I knew that Lincoln suffered from depression, this being one of his quotes:
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Grandmother and others attacked by beaver
A grandmother taking a leisurely swim in a Swedish river ended up in the hospital after a beaver attacked her with its tail, regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda reported Wednesday. Police sources said it was the second time a beaver had attacked humans at the beach on the banks of the Bottenaa River, around 150 kilometres (93 miles) west of Stockholm, the newspaper reported."The beaver attacked the grandmother. She was seriously hit by the animal's tail and received a number of bites and scratches," an officer told the newspaper.The authorities have decided to kill the dozen or so beavers living near the beach to eliminate any further risk to local bathers.
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