Picture in need of a caption

This picture is in desperate need of a caption. Any suggestions?

Thanks to the St. John Tradewinds News for the picture.

I'm not sure how this happens...

I came across this article about a woman who gave birth on an international flight from Samoa and New Zealand. Apparently, the woman initially abandoned the baby and then tried to come back for the baby. Both mom and baby are now together and are both doing well in the hospital.

The article states that the "New Zealand Press Association quoted an unnamed Auckland Airport staffer saying it was not known if other passengers and crew on the Pacific Blue flight from Samoa noticed the woman was in labor."

Now, just a few weeks ago, I witnessed the labor and delivery process. It's kind of loud and kind of messy. It's something that you would notice if it were going on around you. How could the other passengers and crew not know that this lady was having a baby? One would think that somebody would have seen or heard something.

I'm also not sure how you can leave a baby behind on the plane. It's not quite like forgetting your book in the seat pocket. Again, one would think that somebody would have said to the much-less-pregnant looking woman, "hey, ma'am, I think you're forgetting something."

Ice cream flavor or band?

Here's a little fun for your morning. I came across this quick little 10-question quiz. It will provide you with a name, and all you have to do is guess whether it is the name of a discontinued flavor of Ben & Jerry's ice cream or the name of a band that can be found on Myspace. I got 50% right. You can take the quiz here.

Enjoy.

It's a crime I tell you

According to this article, Reginald Peterson recently walked in to a Jacksonville, Florida, Subway restaurant and ordered a spicy Italian sandwich. The worker preparing his sandwich aparently forgot to include the sauce. Peterson must have thought that this was a crucial part of his sandwich. So he did what anyone in his position would do.

He called 911.

He demanded that officers come to the restaurant and force the workers to make his sandwich correctly. Amazingly, the police did not hurry to Subway to address the situation. So Peterson did what anyone else would do.

He called 911. Again.

This time police did show up. They tried to calm Peterson down and explain the proper use of 911. When that effort failed, Peterson was arrested for making false 911 calls.

I'm not sure which is more incredible to me, the fact that somebody actually thought "I can't believe they messed up my order; I'm going to call the police," or the fact that the police actually showed up.

Trust, but verify

According to this article, the choir from a school from Millbury, Ohio, which is located about 15 miles southeast of Toledo, took a trip to perform in Chicago. The chaparones of the trip were a little concerned with the teenagers leaving their hotel rooms after curfew. Teenagers have certainly been known to do things like that on these kinds of trips. It's natural for schools to want to enforce the curfew to keep the students from getting into mischief. And in a city like Chicago, particularly for students who aren't from big cities, there are safety concerns as well.

The chaperones on this trip decided to take measure to make sure that students wouldn't break curfew and that those who did could be identified. So they sealed the doors to the hotel rooms with duct tape. While this would certainly allow them to identify which rooms had people who violated curfew, they apparently did it in a way that caused students to fear that they wouldn't be able to get out of the room in case of fire.

While school officials claim that students would have been able to break the duct tape and exit the room in case of emergency, at least one set of parents is considering suing over the incident because their son felt like he was trapped in the room.

I have to say, while I applaud the school's efforts to keep its students safe and out of mischief, I'm not sure that this was the best way to go about it.

Talk about a mess...

According to this article from CNN.com, a truck flipped over on the highway during this morning's commute in Sacramento, California. What made this particular accident unusual was what the truck was carrying.

When the truck flipped over, it spilled it's load of 400 colonies of honeybees. According to an officer from the California Highway Patrol, somewhere between 6 million and 16 million bees were left flying around the accident site. Officials warned motorists to roll up their windows and turn off their air conditioning to avoid having bees find their way into cars.

It took over 7 hours for authorities to calm the bees down and coax them back into their hives.

In my favorite part of the article, authorities said that, while they had the mess cleaned up, they "didn't know how many bees remained unaccounted for."

Sometimes one vote does matter

What would happen if they held an election and nobody showed up to vote? According to this article, they had that very situation in Tamarac, Florida.

The city of Tamarac, which is located in Broward County in South Florida, is considering annexing the currently unincorporated neighborhood of Prospect Bend. The neighborhood, with its 200 residents and 68 registered voters, had a special election to vote on the annexation.

Although the Tamarac officials mailed details to the each of the residents, not one single voter actually showed up to cast a ballot on the issue.

If just one voter would have showed up to vote, he or she would have determined the election. According to this article from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, it appears that one reason for the lack of turn-out is the fact that most or all of the neighborhood residents rent apartments and aren't property owners. One registered voter, Juan Vidal, demonstrated this lack of interest when he said, "It doesn't make a difference to me either way."

Although no one actually came to vote, the city was forced to keep a polling place open for 12 hours, with a cost of $2,500 to the taxpayers.

Since no one voted, Tamarac is now going to have to try to find another way to annex the neighborhood.

At some point, you just have to take their word for it.

According to this article, Benjamin Lovell from New York City was given access to a $5.8 million bank account that wasn't his. The bank confused Lovell with another man also named Benjamin Lovell. He apparently tried to tell officials at the bank that he didn't have an account with nearly $6 million, but the officials insisted that it was his and that he had the right to withdraw the money.

The investment banker, and real account holder, Benjamin Lovell wasn't so convinced that the other Benjamin Lovell had the right to withdraw the money. The "lesser-funded" Lovell now faces grand larceny charges for the $2 million he took from the account. And he doesn't even have much to show for it. While he spent some of the money on jewelry and cash gifts to friends, much of the money went into bad investments and has been lost, according to prosecutors.

So much for the "bank error in your favor" card from Monopoly. It might end getting you sent to jail.

Greatest. Name. Ever.

How can you not love a place named
Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaoggagoggchaubunaguhgamaugg?


You can check out a larger view here.

Bet you didn't know a french fry is considered a missile

According to this article, three 13-year-old students at Laramie Junior High in Laramie, Wyoming, were cited for "launching missiles" after throwing french fries during their lunch. Apparently, school officials had heard rumors that there was going to be a food fight, so they warned students at an assembly the day before that if they threw food, they would have to suffer the consequences.

Apparently the consequences are receiving an ticket for an adult infraction under the city ordinances and a three-day suspension. While school officials compared to incident to an attempt to start a riot, not everyone agrees. Even the Wyoming director of the ACLU weighed in, calling the citations and suspensions and "overreaction" and saying the the situation "could have been handled differently."

I don't know exactly what the Laramie city council had in mind when it banned "launching missiles," but I'm fairly confident that they weren't thinking about 8th Graders tossing french fries.

Picture of the day

This is fantastic.



I can't decide which would be better, to be the person driving the truck or be in one of the other cars watching it happen. I need to find some of those balloons...

Thanks to YSMarko for finding the picture.

If you thought your insurance bill was high...

According to this article in the National Post, a newspaper from the Toronto area, the mother of a teenager in Edmonton had a little bit of a shock waiting for her in her mailbox. It seems her son has a bad driving record. The mother knew that her son's insurance was going to go up, because "he has a tendency to speed." The 19-year-old has received 10 speeding tickets, and has been involved in two "minor" fender benders, in addition to a rear-ender that totaled his car. But when she opened the insurance bill, the premium was $104,566.63. To put that another way, she figured that her son would have to work full time, making $55 per hour, in order to afford the insurance premium.

That will put your insurance bill in an entirely different perspective.

Three Philosophies of Butter

I came across this earlier this week:

Three Philosophies


I think it would be really interesting to see which of these products people would choose based solely on the name. I wonder what generalizations we could make about them and the types of arguments or appeals they would most readily respond to based on their choice. It's something interesting to think about.

Thanks to Tweebiscuit via YSMarko.

Not my top choice from the menu

I guess when you review restaurants for a living, you need to be willing to try just about anything. Still, it's not every day that that you come across a review for a dish made of raccoon. According to the Chicago Tribune's Monica Eng, "the meat emerged pleasantly gamy with a slight chew -- not unlike venison or bison. And the sweetness of the beets and curry beautifully played off the rich savory meat and earthy artichokes. If eating roadkill is wrong, I don't want to be right."

I don't care how trendy the restaurant is, I just don't see myself saying to the waiter, "I'll take the raccoon please."

Should have seen that coming

I think it should be obvious that the last place you want to stick a gun is in the front of the waistband of your pants. According to this article, however, that's exactly what a robber of a Kokomo, Indiana, convenience store did. He demanded cash and a pack of cigarettes. When the clerk turned to get the cigarette, the gun went off. I guess it's safe to say that going to jail wasn't the worst thing that happened to him this week.

It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt...

In an event that sounds more like a skit on Saturday Night Live than an actual news story, a man from Grand Rapids, Michigan, a man who had hidden knives in his pants tripped and then stabbed himself. Apparently, he was trying to steal about $300 in hunting knives by hiding the knives in the waistband of his pants. While trying to flee the store, he tripped and fell, stabbing himself in the abdomen. According to witnesses, there was blood on the full blade of the knife. Fortunately, the injuries do not appear life threatening. But the man will be facing shoplifting charges when he leaves the hospital. You can read the full Chicago Tribune story about the incident here. Thanks to Cheryl for pointing this story out.

Doomed from the start

When your last name is Moron, you're pretty much doomed. In this particular case, it lead to the headline Moron Arrested for Drunk Driving. As FoxNews reports here, a gentleman from Burleson, Texas, named Bryan Moron was arrested for drunk driving and speeding. The first sentence of the article pretty much sums it up: "Note to Mr. Moron: Don't act like one." Thanks to my brother for passing this one along.

Things you didn't know were against the law

I came across this article on CNN.com discussing unusual traffic laws. For example, in many states, even where there is no posted minimum speed limit, you can be cited for going too slowly. Or in Texas, the "stop line" for determining whether you ran a red light is determined by the location of the curb of the cross street, not the line painted on the street indicating where you should stop. But some of my favorites are in the section labeled "Ridiculous" at the bottom of the article. Did you know that in California it is illegal for a vehicle without a driver to travel at more than 60 miles per hour? Or how about that it is illegal for a sheep to ride in the cab of a truck in Montana without a chaperon? And in Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a moving vehicle. You would think that the legislatures would have had better things to do...

2007 Banned Words List

Every year, Lake Superior State University puts together a list "Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse, and General Uselessness." The list targets words that are overused and abused in everyday speech, news, advertising, technology or sports. This year's list, which can be found here, bans 17 words and phrases, including "perfect storm," "webinar," "organic," post-9/11," "it is what it is," and "under the bus." Some people take the list very seriously. According to this article from the USA Today, some people take this list very seriously. One Arizona Supreme Court justice once posted the list on a bulletin board and prohibited all attorneys from using those words. You can find previous years' lists here.

Not recognizing satire makes it even better

Last week, Press TV, "the first Iranian international news network, broadcasting in English on a round-the-clock basis," ran a story about how happy Jews living in Iran are and how recent news reports about mass emigration of Iranian Jews are lies. The problem is that at least part of that story was plagiarised from The People's Cube, which is a parody news site. So Press TV copied a parody, and then presented it as true. Check out this link to see The People's Cube's open letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran, explaining the parody.

One of the problems that countries without a free press run into is that they don't recognize parody and satire. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. For example, in one famous incident Beijing China's largest newspaper , the Beijing Evening News, fell victim to a similar mistake. It copied an article from The Onion which stated that the U.S. Congress was threatening to leave Washington D.C. for Memphis or Charlotte unless Washington built them a new Capitol with a retractable dome. You can check out a report of this incident here.

However, I have to say that the current situation with Press TV is even better. When the target of a satire or parody can't even recognize it as satire or parody, it just makes the original satire even better.