My first word was dating. Check hers out…

Is she hinting? I wonder…

Technorati Tags: katrina, conspiracy, cookoo cookoo

I really don’t understand why people do this…

Details of the deaths of pro wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife and their 7-year-old son may seem “a little bizarre” when released to the public, a prosecutor said.

Authorities were investigating the deaths at a secluded Fayette County home as a murder-suicide and were not seeking any suspects outside the home.

Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “The details, when they come out, are going to prove a little bizarre.”

Those details may emerge after the completion of autopsies scheduled for Tuesday.

Investigators believe Benoit, (pronounced ben-WAH,) killed his wife and son over the weekend and then himself sometime Monday. The bodies were found Monday afternoon in three different rooms of the house on Green Meadow Lane, in a subdivision off a gravel road about two miles from Whitewater Country Club.

The autopsies were scheduled to be done at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab in DeKalb County.

Ballard told The Associated Press a gun was not used in any of the deaths. But he declined to say how the three died.

“We’re pretty sure we know, but we want to confirm it with the crime lab,” Ballard said early Tuesday.

Jesus Christ, Chris. If you’re gonna off yourself, do the world a favor and off yourself, but why take your family with you?

It’s going to be interesting to see what the bizarre part of this whole thing is.

Man, I hate stories like this. There’s always some innocent kid in the middle of it.

Technorati Tags: chris benoit

A mother of two who reportedly ran a dominatrix dungeon in her Gallows Hill, Boston basement is facing a prostitution charge after allegedly agreeing to perform a sex act on an undercover detective.

Paula Webb, 42, was arrested Wednesday night in the basement of her house on Albion Street. Police said her husband and children were upstairs at the time.

According to a report in the Salem News, the investigation began on March 16, when police responded to a call about a domestic incident at the house. According to the report, the Webbs had been arguing after Paula Webb complained that her husband hadn’t cleared the snow off her car.

According to the report, she told police she wanted to leave and departed while they were still at the house. After she was gone, a still ticked-off Stephen Webb, 54, told the officers he had something to show them and led them to the basement. There, the patrolmen got an eyeful - the room was set up as a dungeon, with eye hooks screwed into the ceiling beams and an assortment of whips, chains, ropes and other items.

According the report, Webb told the officers his wife had a Web site advertising dominatrix services, but when that was slow, she would resort to posting free ads on the Internet offering to perform sexual services. He told the officers the couple had been having financial difficulties.

via KUTV in Salt Lake City

Technorati Tags: sex, crime, prostitution, dominatrix

via This Is Broken

Technorati Tags: broken, sign, strange

I’m sorry but I just don’t buy that people could be this stupid…

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

The findings have prompted claims that some schools are using history ‘as a vehicle for promoting political correctness’.

It almost seems so ridiculous that it can’t be true…

I don’t know… What do you think?

Technorati Tags: holocaust, crusades, history, england, denial, teaching, pc

I had a story here a few weeks ago about a City Manager in Florida who was ready to take the plunge and become a woman. As it turns out, he was fired for job performance-related issues.

No, I’m not kidding.

After a six-hour hearing, the commissioners decided to fire 48-year-old Steve Stanton after his announcement that he planned a new life as a woman. The move came after the commission voted 5-2 last month to suspend him with pay.

Commissioners contended Stanton was being fired because they lost confidence in him, not because he wants to be a woman.

“I think we’re pretty well convinced,” Commissioner Gay Gentry said. “You have to believe us, you have to trust us, it is not about transgenderism.”

Stanton, 48, triggered the debate in the city of 76,000 west of Tampa last month when he announced his plans at a news conference. Commissioners said Stanton’s announcement caused turmoil and work disruption in the city. His contract says he can be fired without cause at any time.

Stanton has not decided if he will sue over the firing.

“I was optimistic, but I knew it would be very difficult to slow down the train,” he said following the hearing.

Heh… The whole transgender thing is just a man behind the curtain sitting next to an all-knowing floating head. Nothing to see here. No discrimination. Move along.

In fact, speaking of his job performance, here’s an interesting tidbit:

The city commission had given Stanton generally good reviews and a hefty raise last year for his management of the city’s $130 million budget and roughly 1,200 employees. But since commissioners put Stanton on leave, some have criticized him for hard-nosed treatment of employees.

Sure… He went from a fantastic manager worthy of a pay raise to a disruptive influence that needed to be terminate to ensure the smooth function of the city government; it happened to coincide with him wanting to become a woman, and it had nothing to do with that decision.

Now about that bridge I’m selling…

Not good news for Bono and Product(RED):

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AdAge.com) — It’s been a year since the first Red T-shirts hit Gap shelves in London, and a parade of celebrity-splashed events has followed: Steven Spielberg smiling down from billboards in San Francisco; Christy Turlington striking a yoga pose in a New Yorker ad; Bono cruising Chicago’s Michigan Avenue with Oprah Winfrey, eagerly snapping up Red products; Chris Rock appearing in Motorola TV spots (”Use Red, nobody’s dead”); and the Red room at the Grammy Awards. So you’d expect the money raised to be, well, big, right? Maybe $50 million, or even $100 million.

Try again: The tally raised worldwide is $18 million.

Ouch! $18 million?? You have to wonder what in the hell is going on with that, especially considering the absolute overflow of ads, marketing, not to mention the backing of enormous companies like Amex, Motorola, and Apple. Considering the chatter over the campaign, it’s really weird that it has translated into so little.

Mark Rosenman sums it up up thusly (and accurately, I might add):

“There is a broadening concern that business is taking on the patina of philanthropy and crowding out philanthropic activity and even substituting for it,” he said. “It benefits the for-profit partners much more than the charitable causes.”

AdAge via Drudge

Technorati Tags: product red, bono, aids, charity

It would appear that something weird went on in this case, but I don’t really think it’s as cut and dry as it first appears…

IT CAME IN the mail - the old-fashioned mail with an envelope and stamp delivered to a box outside your home or through a slot in your door - and sounded like it could be a good deal.

So Mary Ellen Ehly called Vonage in the fall of 2005 to see if the company really did offer better phone service for less money.

After spending 10 to 15 minutes talking with the woman from Vonage who answered her call, Ehly knew the deal wasn’t for her. Vonage sells a service that routes phone calls through the Internet. Ehly didn’t spend much time on the computer and had never even used e-mail. The customer service representative told her billing statements were sent by e-mail.

“I said, you know, I don’t think this is going to work for me,” said Ehly, who had already given Vonage her name, address and bank-account information.

The woman at Vonage sounded peeved about that, but Ehly insisted she didn’t want to switch her phone service. A few days later, Vonage shipped some equipment to Ehly. She refused the package, sending it back to Vonage.

Fifteen months later, Ehly bounced a check and wondered why. She checked her records and found Vonage had been charging her $28.75 a month since November 2005.

Of course, the writer jumps immediately to the conclusion that fraud was involved, which it may very well have been. My question, and the one thing I don’t seem to understand, is how does someone get a bill for something for 15 months and not realize it?

I was paying the infamous AOL bill for a long time before I decided to cancel it, but I was well aware that it was out there. I find it hard to believe that anyone with even half an inch of common sense can pay a minimum $15 bill every single month and not realize that they’re paying it.

Sounds fishy.

Also sounds fishy that she put the order in, gave all the information, and then cancelled the order when she found out that they bill only via e-mail.

It also sounds fishy that a random hotmail account was created for her.

It sounds fishy that Vonage can’t go back and find out who took the call, particularly since up until right before this whole thing blew up, they were still billing her.

I’m just confused.

Lesson learned: Don’t be stupid. Check your bank statement every once in awhile. You might be surprised at what you find!

Philly.com via Consumerist

Technorati Tags: vonage, customer, fraud, consumerism, weird

Bush says that a British pullout from Iraq is a good thing because it’s a sign of progress, he also says that an American pullout is cut ‘n run, and an escalation in American troops is needed because there hasn’t been enough progress.

I’d say that just about covers it. Well put, Stageleft.

Technorati Tags: bush, blair, iraq, strange

This is the kind of story you expect to find in Mad Magazine…

Dixson Sr. was 90 when he died on January 30, 2004. He’s best known for co-writing hits like “Lollipop,” recorded by the Chordettes, and “Begging, Begging,” recorded by James Brown.

On January 16, 2004, the elderly Dixson had surgery at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital at 58th Street and 10th Avenue to repair a broken femur near the hip.

Family members say before the surgery, a hospital staffer removed the elderly man’s dentures, but after the surgery the dentures couldn’t be found.

According to Dixson Jr., over the next 13 days his father was fed some solid food, some soft food, all of which he had trouble eating. “It hurt him to mesh the food with his gums. He said he needed his teeth,” Dixson Jr. said.

The son said his father’s health deteriorated, and he didn’t go on a feeding tube until January 29, 2004 — the day before he died. The younger Dixson said his father, nine days after the surgery, told him, “If I die in here, you go after them.”

via CBS

Technorati Tags: julius dixson

Richard: having cancer is important to THAT ONE PERSON. Intel chips change the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Glad to see you understand news value. But, now, I understand why so many people buy those grocery store gossip magazines. Next you’ll try to tell me that what Paris Hilton isn’t wearing matters to me more than what Google is doing in its labs. Sigh.

Wow… Robert… Really… I’ll defend you forever, but maybe you need to settle down and get some perspective?

Wow…

Just…

Wow…

Technorati Tags: robert scoble

I don’t know what this is about, really. Patches has this weird thing she does. She sucks on her tail and kneads it with her paws like she’s nursing. Do any of you have any idea what this is about? Is it normal? Is it something I should be concerned about?

Technorati Tags: cat, kitten, health, cute

It really started right after 9/11. Then again, that’s probably most likely when I noticed it and it was happening much longer than that.

Many after 9/11 wanted to know what we did to bring 9/11 upon ourselves. To a degree, that’s a good valid question, but when pushed to the extreme it’s almost a device for ignoring things going on in the world. After all, when you think about it, despite the claims that it’s harder to look inward, it’s much easier because it affords you the ability to bring the blame inward and not focus on what’s going on.

Balbulican made an outstanding post on Stageleft yesterday. In it, he describes the various form of hatred that seem to pop up every now and then. He runs down a littany of excuses given and then goes on to explain his annoyance at them, even giving examples such as the folks who say, “moderate Muslims need to say and do more about terrorism and the extremists in their midst.” Balbulican’s problem, of course, is that he completely dismisses that criticism as hate and he moves on about chastising those who say it while completely ignoring the grain of truth encapsulated in that type of thinking.

In his example he explains how he had a conversation with a commenter on his blog who made such a statement, to which he replied that Moderates were fighting back against these types of folks. He went back and forth with the commenter who, at every point of evidence, disclaimed Balbulican’s proof as “not enough.” Balbulican eventually stopped trying to get through to the commenter and just accepted the fact that this guy wasn’t going to change his mind at any point.

The argument was over. The commenter wasn’t enlightened in anyway, and Balbulican was offended by his exhibition of ignorance.

And in the meantime, one of the nuggets of truth that existed throughout the whole thing got lost.

One of the great things about this brave new world is that people have the power to publish “news” as they see fit. In fact, some of the best news sources out there aren’t alphabet networks or dead-tree media. They’re the men and women writing thoughtful commentary on blogs and messageboards around the world. Oh sure there’s a low signal to noise ratio in the blogosphere, but for the most part, things are quite good for people seeking out the truth these days. You have all points of views and all nationalities fairly equally represented and most of them just one click away. Hell, you could start at a center-right blog like mine, click through to a leftwing blog like Stageleft, and end up at at some moderate blogger in another country.

It’s a brilliant time.

Back to Balbulican’s commenter fight.

Inside that commenter’s argument is a truth that, while probably articulated poorly and overly attacked by Balbulican is still a truth. Muslim moderates are not doing a good job of getting the message out there that they don’t support the terrorism that the extremists among them are engaging in.

Now before you see red and dismiss me as just another kook, you need to hear me out.

If the good kook, er, Reverend Phelps had something to spew about. Let’s say how God hates fags, and we were attacked on 9/11 as punishment from God for not stringing up all the gay people in the country by their pinkies, do you think he would have a problem getting that message out? Do you think, as kooky as he and his enraptured followers are, they have a message dispersal problem?

Of course they don’t. In fact, they’re so good at getting their message out and getting under people’s skins, that Congress was trying to act to get these kooks to stop spreading their hate outside the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. They use the web, they play off the media’s morbid fascination with them, they give out flyers, make phone calls, have a television show (in the midwest) and so on and so forth. When they have a message, they make sure you’re going to hear it.

The commenter Balbulican was arguing with had a point, but it wasn’t the point on the surface. It was the grain of truth underneath. Muslims may have that message, but it’s not getting through and they’re not doing a good job of getting it out there.

Maybe they do hate the extremists, but when you have to dig for the people who do, and at the same time you can find those who hate plastered all over the news, then you have a serious PR problem that you need to work out.

That’s the problem, as simply as it could possibly be stated.

But that problem is part of my larger point, not my entire point.

Balbulican is right to say that a lot of the arguments in the vein of what he got are based on hatred. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that a lot of people who say that most muslims agree with terrorists are driven by either blind rage, ignorance, or a combination of the two. There are some thoughtful people who have also arrived at those conclusions from time to time, but I don’t think thoughtful people believe it as an absolute and are open to the opposite view.

This is where Western conditioning comes in.

I believe we of Western cultures are inclined to believe that we’re loaded with hatred and disrespect than they are to believe it exists in others. In fact, the pondering over 9/11 is a perfect example. “What did we do to bring that about?”

Why does it have to be a case of us doing anything? What if 19 terrorist scumbags, funded by a huge terrorist network decided to kill Americans because they don’t like Britney Spears? What if people like Osama Bin Laden, when they release those video tapes, just say anything on them to justify their actions? After all, rationalization isn’t uncommon around the world and we certainly don’t have a monopoly on it in the United States.

What if that’s as deep as the reason goes and it really has nothing to do with something we “did?”

I don’t think Western guilt will allow us to accept that answer, and intellectuals’ heads would start exploding if they heard people widely start accepting the point of view that not everything bad that happens is because we “deserved” it.

I started thinking about various events in our history, especially recent ones, and how many things we automatically take the blame for to the point where the root cause (two words I hate seeing together to begin with) of everything is something we did, something we deserved, or something we could have prevented if we had just INSERT REASON HERE.. I mean, is this really the way we want to start seeing the world? I for one, don’t.

Balbulican’s argument amounted to calling the commenter’s remarks hatred. That’s fine, and I’m in no position to disagree seeing as I can’t stick myself inside people’s minds that well (although I’m working on it; if you hear me rattling around in there, please be nice). However, while Bal’s approach of presenting examples was a good one, his conclusion was lacking because the point the commenter was making, no matter how repugnant it may have been, probably could’ve been examined better.

Instead, the hate card is dragged out, and in an almost typical fashion, you could sense that the blame was on the commenter for thinking what he did, and for us as a society for not recognizing the obviousness of the faleshood he presented.

Hmmmm…

It’s almost as if some Western guilt was blocking the fact that there might even be a grain of truth to the remarks. We simply can’t believe that because it’s lowbrow. It’s offensive. It makes us uncomfortable. Choose your reasons; they all lead down the same road in one way or another.

We in the West typically feel guilty for everything. We feel guilty because the climate is warming to the point where we ignore any natural reasons that may explain it also. We feel guilty because, despite warnings, people sat in their living rooms as Katrina flooded their homes with 3 feet of water. We feel guilty because a kid in the Middle East lives under a respressive government that steals its money while we feed millions of dollars in aid to them, and their leaders live in palaces the size of cities. We feel guilty because bombers bombed trains in Madrid and in London, supposedly in response to a war in Afghanistan in Iraq that was provoked by an attack on the World Trade Center which we feel guilty about for creating the situation that fomented the terrorism that brought the whole thing about.

We’re caught in an endless chain of guilt.

The worst part of it is not the guilt itself, though. Getting over that simply requires a concerted effort to examine the issues better and follow the issues down the highway even when there’s an exit on that highway that says we did something wrong. That’s merely an exit, but you can’t continue on the highway of discovery if you take the first exit that allows you to call the problem solved and the situation understood. It’s no more valid to drop everything at the “we’ve done bad and deserve it” than it is to drop it at “all muslims act that way,” but the problem is that it’s a hell of a lot more acceptable to call guilt the problem and look inward then it is to look outside of ourselves and not just say “we’re to blame for everything.”

I know this post is going to set off some arguments, and I fully hope it actually stirs up a little bit of thought. Occam’s Razor states that the simplest answer is usually the correct one, but that doesn’t mean that the simplest answer to arrive to is correct, only the one that’s the least complicated. We’d be wise to examine both our tendency to take a hit and our unwillingness to dish one out. I have a feeling if we do that, we’ll have a much better society for it, and discussions like Balbulican’s wouldn’t end up with one side thinking the other is just loaded with visceral hatred and the other thinking that he was arguing with a typical leftist kook who dismisses everything as hate.

What do you think? Do you think we in the west are more prone to guilt than other cultures / parts of the world? Or do you think it’s something that’s only employed in certain situations (ie: racism, bigotry) real or perceived?

I for one am tired of shallow analysis on both sides. Not every criticism of a group is hatred, and not everyone who dismisses your argument as hatred is a kook.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s have some real discussion on the issues.

I’m all ears.

Technorati Tags: tolerance, guilt, hatred, balbulican, stageleft

Steve Centanni’s comments upon his release from captivity were, to say the least, odd…

“We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint,” Centanni told FOX News. “Don’t get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

PC makes me sick. Jeff Jarvis does indeed say it best:

I’d say that given the circumstances, he could have been excused if he’d left off the PC postlude.

And as usual, he’s right.

Technorati Tags: centanni, radical islam, terrorism

Sometimes, WTF is all you can really say…

BOMBAY, India - The owner of a restaurant named after Adolf Hitler said Thursday he will change its name because it angered so many people.

Puneet Sablok said he would remove Hitler’s name and the Nazi swastika from billboards and the menu. He had said the restaurant’s name — “Hitler’s Cross” — and symbols were only meant to attract attention.

Sablok made the decision after meeting with members of Bombay’s small Jewish community.

“Once they told me how upset they were with the name, I decided to change it,” he said. “I don’t want to do business by hurting people.”

Sablok said he had not yet decided on a new name.

Hitler’s Cross opened five days ago and serves pizza, salad and pastries in Navi Mumbai, a suburb of Bombay, also known as Mumbai.

On Thursday, Bombay’s Jewish community welcomed Sablok’s decision to rename his restaurant.

“He realized he made a mistake and listened to reason,” said Elijah Jacob, a community leader. “Some people have wrong conceptions of history and he realized it was not appropriate.”

Bombay’s Jews had called the theme of the restaurant offensive and demanded a name change. There are about 5,500 Jews in India, with about 4,500 of them living in Bombay.

“I never wanted to hurt people’s feelings,” said Sablok.

Some Indians regard Hitler as just another historical figure and have little knowledge about the Holocaust, in which 6 million European Jews were systematically killed during World War II.

The swastika symbol, which was appropriated by the Nazis, was originally an ancient Hindu symbol and it is displayed all over India to bring luck.

Technorati Tags: india, nazi, nazis, hitler, hitler’s cross, restaurant, strange, stupid

This has to be the weirdest story ever…

CANTON — Alana Lipkin walked out of the Shaw’s Supermarket here last week with 12 items — everything from a Kodak disposable camera to Neutrogena hand cream — all for free.

She wasn’t shoplifting. She was taking advantage of the chain’s price accuracy guarantee, which gives shoppers a product for free if it scans at the register for a price higher than advertised. Lipkin is so good at finding mispriced items that she says she typically snags more than $200 worth of free merchandise per store visit.

But her days as the queen of supermarket pricing errors may be nearing an end. The region’s two largest supermarket chains have banned Lipkin from their stores, calling her a disruptive influence. Lipkin, a 45-year-old single mother of two from Framingham, says the stores are blaming her for their failure to accurately price their products.

That’s typical. Of course the stores don’t like her. They don’t create the policy with the intention of ever giving anyone the benefit of it. They create the policy to get you in the store and then they try to divert you when you take advantage of it. Just try and cash in on those “we’ll match it or beat it” type deals. I did it while living in Staten Island with Circuit City. I bought a TV, and found it that weekend in the paper for $90 cheaper. I called them and they said they didn’t match ads that were from companies outside of 10 miles (this one wasn’t) from the store, and they, under no circumstances matched prices from New Jersey. I informed them that Staten Island is approximately 3 minutes from New Jersey and if they didn’t match the price, they’d be eating the TV. They eventually gave in, but imagine if I wasn’t persistent?

Anyway, this story gets even stranger:

Stop & Shop Supermarkets three years ago notified Lipkin she would be arrested for trespassing if she entered any of its stores. Shaw’s sent Lipkin a similar letter Aug. 10, which she received shortly after the Globe accompanied her on one of her shopping trips.

“We do that with any customer who becomes disruptive in our stores,” said Judy Chong , a spokeswoman for Shaw’s.

Faith Weiner , a spokeswoman for Stop & Shop, said she believes Lipkin is the only customer the store has ever banned. “We felt that she took unfair advantage of our price accuracy policy and tried to manipulate it to her advantage,” Weiner said.

Read: She took advantage of a policy we’re proud of until we have to back it up with action. Judy Chong, you’re a hypocrite and so is the company you work for. How is someone making you back up your policy taking advantage? Simply put, they aren’t, but I guess instead of fixing your idiot employees, you just shitcan anyone who tries to benefit from a policy customers are supposed to benefit from.

It gets even stranger…

Lipkin insists she hasn’t been disruptive. The no-trespass letter she received from Shaw’s specifically mentions an incident at a store in Stow, but the evening manager of that store, Stephen Kavanagh , signed and dated a statement for Lipkin in which he said he was asking her to leave because “she was only looking for scan guarantee items and not shopping.”

I’m sorry but what the hell difference does it make if she walks into the store, walks up and down every aisle and leaves? What is the definition of shopping? People go “shopping” all the time and don’t “buy” things, so has this guy actually redefined the word and then employed his own definition to ban someone from the store. How about that?

If only that was the end of it.

“She’s one of a kind,” said Jack Walsh , the town of Framingham’s director of weights and measures. “They accuse her of switching labels, but I don’t think she does that. She spends a lot of time on her hands and knees searching for pricing errors.”

[...]

Asked how Lipkin seems to find more pricing errors than state inspectors, Carroll said: “She’s a hunt and searcher. We don’t do it that way. We select products at random. She’s a professional shopper.”

Or in other words, a consumer does a significantly more thorough job than those who are paid to do it.

Meanwhile, Lipkin is still banned… Stores are still gonna balk at standing up to the policies they implement… In the end, the consumer loses this one because she dared to hold the stores to their word.

Bastards.

Boston.com via Consumerist

Technorati Tags: shopping, consumerism, consumer advocacy

That’s quite a log there…

Er… A mystical log holds the secret?

Uhhh….

via Lobowalk

Technorati Tags: weird, strange, gross

Apparently The Tetris Company decided to kill a clone, namely Quinn for the Macintosh.

Why?

Well, who knows. Here’s the reasoning.

Apparently, The Tetris Company has a problem with calling Quinn a Tetris clone. God knows, there’s no other games calling themselves that.

Technorati Tags: tetris, tetris clone, quinn