Volume 12, Number 35, September 9, 2007

Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First, can you say ‘addiction’? The Reno Gazette Journal recently reported that addiction “experts” (everybody’s a specialist) at an American Medical Association meeting discussed whether they should consider "video game addiction" as a distinctive mental illness (ultimately deciding to await further study), but just a month later, in Reno, Nev., a couple in their early 20s were under arrest and charged with abusing their two little ones by ignoring them for long stretches of time while playing the game Dungeons & Dragons (uh, guys, the kids come first). According to prosecutors, the couple had plenty of food in their house, but both babies were found quite malnourished and doing poorly in a home filled with squalor except, of course, for the expensive computer equipment that occupied the couple nearly all their waking moments.

Next, I never got my invite. CNN carried a Bit earlier this year about the luxurious Lebua hotel in Bangkok, where organizers brought in six master chefs from around the world to prepare the most exquisite dinner they could imagine for the 40 specially invited international gourmets, who dropped in to dine for $25,000 a person (some of us have much better things to do with out money [like buy gasoline]. Among the fare: Perigord truffles, "tartare of Kobe beef with imperial Beluga caviar and Belon oysters," creme brulee of foie gras and 10 of the best wines of the 20th century, including 1961 Chateau Palmer. (Of course, the Webmaster knows I wouldn’t eat most of what was offered anyhow as my tastes are pretty narrow.)

Finally, oops! The Rocky Mountain News reported that efforts to save a rare fish suffered a bit of a setback when scientists realized they'd been restocking rivers and lakes with the wrong species (maybe it is rocket science). Researchers at the University of Colorado have been trying to restore the cutthroat trout, Colorado's official state fish, to its native habitat since the early 1970s. "This was a very surprising result," said Jessica Metcalf, a researcher at CU who led the study. "It's not at all what we expected." The greenback cutthroat, named for the brilliant crimson slashes behind its jaw, was named Colorado's state fish in 1994. It had been declared endangered in 1973 when the scheme was launched to restore the species using sperm and eggs from what were believed to be nine relic populations. However, using DNA analysis, researchers recently found that five of those nine relic populations weren't greenback cutthroats at all, but Colorado River cutthroats.

I note with sadness the passing of the Weekly World News, (with stories like “Bat Boy meets secretly with Bush on the Moon [okay, maybe that one is not so far-fetched]”) but all is not lost. The Sun (UK) may come close. Two sisters have kept their dead mother in an undertaker's fridge for ten years - so they can visit her every weekend. The sisters could not bear to bury their mum after she died in 1997 at age 84. Instead, they have shelled out more than $26,000 to keep her in cold storage at a funeral parlor. They make separate weekly visits to sit with their mum in the parlor’s chapel. They have paid $40 a week to keep her body in the fridge at the undertaker’s. They have also coughed up more than $4,000 on five wooden coffins - as four have rotted away over the years. Another $1,600 has been spent on make-up. Funeral director Phillip Saville said: "There are no laws saying people can't keep a corpse for years after registering the death, though it is normal to bury the body after just two weeks." (Perhaps the operative word here is “normal.”)

From the BBC News, Stupid People are everywhere! An 18-year-old burglar who vandalized a children's campsite structure was caught because he wrote his name on a wall at the scene. Peter Addison, of Heaton Mersey, Stockport, and his friend smashed dinner plates and set off fire extinguishers. Addison received a conditional discharge (whatever that is) and was ordered to pay about $1,500 compensation and $40 in costs. Besides writing his own name in black marker pen, he also left his gang's name on the wall - The Adlington Massiv!. The teenager vandalized a “Garden Birds of Britain” poster by adding "R Gay". He then left a final message to the campsite owners - "thanks for the stay". Police found him after entering his name in a computer system.

Chinese merchandise took a new hit recently when car maker Nissan said it was recalling tens of thousands of mugs it gave away in Japan because the paint contains excessive lead (now there’s a real surprise). It said it took the action after one car-shopper fell ill after drinking from one of the mugs and complained. Nissan Motor said the cups, which it was giving to anyone who test-drove one of its cars in Japan during a sales initiative that started a few weeks ago, had a lead content that was more than 30 percent above the permissible level. Japan's third-biggest carmaker said it would recall the mugs, which it said could have reached as many as 87,000 potential customers. It did not know the identity of the manufacturer in China (that’s good record-keeping). Chinese products have come under intense scrutiny over safety concerns in recent months, prompting recalls of products from toys and toothpaste to seafood and tires. (Hey, but labor is cheap and profits are great!

From http://users.tpg.com.au/gaudette/86070810.html (check it out and get on his mailing list), a few idiots who fit in here just fine, thank you. (1) AT&T fired President John Walter after just nine months saying he lacked intellectual leadership. He received a $26 million severance package. (You get that? He lacked intellectual leadership and they give him $26 million. Hey, I won’t work there at all; you can give me $50 million….) (2) In Modesto, CA, Steven Richard King was arrested for trying to hold up a Bank of America branch without a weapon. King used a thumb and a finger to simulate a gun but unfortunately he failed to keep his hand in his pocket. (Banks should keep Monopoly money on hand for these bright crooks.) (3) Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn't control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words, "Give me all your money or I'll shoot", the man shouted, "That's not what I said!"  Sigh.

Finally, from Yahoo News, an actor who really gets into it (or got it into him)! Julius Caesar lay dead and Brutus was talking to his co-conspirators about swords and blood when he paused and excused himself, saying "I seem to have stabbed myself." Aspen actor/director Kent Hudson Reed accidentally cut his leg open with the knife he was using in an outdoor performance of "Scenes from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar." He tried to carry on, "but my boot was filling up with blood and I was flubbing my lines, wondering if I was going to pass out, wondering if the audience could see the blood." Portia (Susan Mauntel) took Brutus to a hospital for stitches and play narrator Tyson Young announced the performance was canceled. "That's what you get for trying to kill Caesar," he said. Reed said actors normally don't use real knives, but the scene was set up so none of the performers were close enough to hurt each other. "But I hadn't thought an actor might stab himself," he said. Reed said the show would go on, although Brutus might be limping for a while. Sigh.

     Later.