In the News

'Why Believe in a God?' goes on D.C. Buses

'Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake,' could be coming to a bus stop near you — just in time for the holidays.
Ads proclaiming, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," will appear on Washington, D.C., buses starting next week and running through December. The American Humanist Association unveiled the provocative $40,000 holiday ad campaign Tuesday.
In lifting lyrics from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," the Washington-based group is wading into what has become a perennial debate over commercialism, religion in the public square and the meaning of Christmas.
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Fat Kids Found to Have Arteries of 45-Year-Olds
NEW ORLEANS — Obese children as young as 10 had the arteries of 45-year-olds and other heart abnormalities that greatly raise their risk of heart disease, say doctors who used ultrasound tests to take a peek inside.
"As the old saying goes, you're as old as your arteries are," said Dr. Geetha Raghuveer of Children's Hospital in Kansas City, who led one of the studies. "This is a wake-up call."
The studies were reported Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference.
About a third of American children are overweight and one-fifth are obese. Many parents think that "baby fat" will melt away as kids get older. But research increasingly shows that fat kids become fat adults, with higher risks for many health problems.
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Man Charged With Stealing Communion Wafers During Mass
Police in Florida say they arrested a man after he tried to steal communion wafers during a church service.
The Martin County Sheriff's Office says 33-year-old John Samuel Ricci of Canton was cornered by fellow churchgoers when he grabbed a handful of wafers from the priest during communion services Saturday.
Ricci was being held down by six or seven offended parishioners when deputies arrived at St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church in Jensen Beach. Police say two parishioners, ages 82 and 61, received minor injuries in the scuffle.
Ricci was charged with two counts of simple battery, theft and disruption of a religious assembly. He was being held Tuesday on $2,000 bond at the Martin County Jail.
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Smile! Get A Ticket, Get Your Picture Taken, Too
If you get pulled over by the police in Ormond Beach, Florida you'd better smile.
"An officer has the capability of taking a picture of the driver the vehicle and where the violation occurred," said Sgt. Jamie Gogarty of the Ormond Beach Police Department.
If a driver tried to fight an expensive ticket, police could use these pictures in court. The devices also cut down on the time it takes cops to write a ticket. The machines read drivers' licenses, instantly get driver information and a portable printer prints the tickets.
Some drivers question why police need pictures of speeders. "(I'd feel) my privacy was invaded," said Peggy Nardone. "I wouldn't feel safe. How do I know what they're going to do with that picture now?"
Ormond Beach police said the pictures gives them more evidence in court and even protects drivers whose cars might have been used without their knowledge. "If you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't mind a picture being correlated with your identity," said Patrice Stoves. In three months, the city has only had one complaint.
The Florida Highway Patrol also started using the ticket writers this month but troopers do not take pictures so far.
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Hannah Montana and birds blamed for power outage
Authorities blamed a "Hannah Montana" balloon and some birds for causing a power outage for hours around a Miami middle school.
Miami fire officials said a helium balloon bearing the image of young "Montana" star Miley Cyrus collided with some power lines near Jose De Diego Middle School at about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, scaring away a flock of birds.
Fire officials said the sudden weight shift from the fleeing birds caused the electrical lines to dislodge and fall to the ground, electrifying a nearby fence. The school ran on a backup generator while officials shut down the power grid, but dozens of residents lost power for a period of hours, the officials said.
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The bike that you pedal backwards to go forwards

Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know

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• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
• He was known as "O'Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball
• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili
• His favourite meal is wife Michelle's shrimp linguini
• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father
• He is left-handed – the sixth post-war president to be left-handed
• He has read every Harry Potter book
• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali
• He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can't stand ice cream
• His favorite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars
• He ate snake meat and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia
• He can speak Spanish
• While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead
• His favorite drink is black forest berry iced tea
• He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president – he didn't
• He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia
• He can bench press an impressive 200lbs
• He was known as Barry until university when he asked to be addressed by his full name
• His favorite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister's fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived
• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy
• He and Michelle made $4.2 million (£2.7 million) last year, with much coming from sales of his books
• His favorite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck
• He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.
• His favorite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees
• He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date
• He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker
• He doesn't drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol
• He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician
• As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine
• His daughters' ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)
• He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside
• He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal
• His house in Chicago has four fire places
• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita
• He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry
• He uses an Apple Mac laptop
• He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300
• He wears $1,500 (£952) Hart Schaffner Marx suits
• He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes
• He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (£13)
• His favorite fictional television programs are Mash and The Wire
• He was given the code name "Renegade" by his Secret Service handlers
• He was nicknamed "Bear" by his late grandmother
• He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds
• His favorite artist is Pablo Picasso
• His speciality as a cook is chilli
• He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were "street urchins"
• He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life
• His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government

Slinky Cat

"Build It and They Will Use It"

Click to Enlarge

This is the actual turnoff from Banff to the #1 highway to Calgary.

They had to build the animals (especially the elk) their own bridge crossing because that was where the natural crossing was and after the highway was built there were.

It didn't take the animals long to learn that this was their "road."

Cyclist goes around the world on penny farthing

A cyclist has completed a 22,000-mile cycling trip around the world on a penny farthing. Joff Summerfield pedaled his handmade replica of a Victorian bicycle into Greenwich Market, south-east London, where his journey began two-and-a-half years ago.Mr Summerfield, 40, visited 23 countries in four continents after setting off from 0 degrees latitude at the Greenwich Observatory. He averaged 11mph and covered up to 40 miles a day as he cycled across Europe into Turkey before riding through Australia and New Zealand.
In Australia, he raced in the Penny Farthing World Championships and came second in one of the 'novice' categories. From China - where he cycled without the correct permits - managed to sneak across the border into Tibet he despite his bike's giant front wheel that is 1.2 meters in diameter.
He then took in India and Nepal, where he crossed the Himalayas at 17,000ft (5,200m) and made it to Everest base camp.Mr Summerfield, who was forced to abort two previous attempts through injury, next rode through south-east Asia, the USA and Canada before heading for home. En route, he took in landmarks including India's Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple complex and the Grand Canyon in the USA.
He believes he is the first man to complete the circumnavigation on a penny farthing since Thomas Stevens, who was British, in 1887.

In the News

Charity worker finds $7,500 among donated shoes
This stacks up among the better finds at a Goodwill store: $7,500 in cash stuffed in a shoebox. A recent Bulgarian immigrant found the money during her first day on the job last week at a Goodwill near St. Louis in Glen Carbon, Ill.
Teodora Petrova didn't hesitate after finding the cash with a pair of donated shoes - she turned the money over to a manager who told executives for the nonprofit charity.
The president and chief executive of the area's Goodwill organization says it's eager to find the owner of the money. The charity figures it may have been left with the shoes accidentally.
If the owner isn't found, Goodwill says the money will go toward the charity's job-placement efforts.
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Parrot credited with choking tot rescue
DENVER, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- A Denver area babysitter said her pet parrot may have saved the life of a 2-year-old girl by raising a ruckus when the toddler started choking.
The babysitter, who gave her name as Meagan, said she was using the bathroom in her home while babysitting for the 2-year-old, Hannah, when she heard her parrot, Willie, screaming wildly,
"Willie started screaming like I'd never heard him scream before and he started flapping his wings," Meagan said. "Then he started saying 'mama baby' over and over and over again until I came out and looked at Hannah and Hannah's face was turning blue because she was choking on her pop tart."
Meagan said she performed the Heimlich maneuver and stopped the young child's choking.
"If (Willie) wouldn't have warned me, I probably wouldn't have come out of the bathroom in time because she was already turning blue, her lips were blue and everything," Meagan said.
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Weight violation prompts elevator rescue
Seven people had to be rescued from a stalled elevator in New Bedford, Mass., City Hall after the vehicle's weight restriction was surpassed, an official says.
John Perry -- the New Bedford Department of Public Facilities superintendent of facilities, maintenance and construction -- said the elevator had an approximate weight capacity of 1,700 pounds, and the weight of 10 people was just too much for the elevator car to handle last week.
Perry said riders packed into the elevator despite the weight limit warning and stalled the transport for two hours Thursday.
"Some people just don't want to listen to the elevator operator," Perry said.
Three of the trapped riders chose to leave the stalled elevator using a ladder but the remaining seven had to wait in the elevator car until rescuers could free them.
Officials would be more stringent regarding the use of the elevator, which was manufactured in 1912 and is the nation's oldest continually operating elevator.
"We will be kicking people off from now on," the superintendent said.
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Feinstein Urges Web Sites Not to Sell Scalped Inauguration Tickets
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is overseeing Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony, is asking Web sites like eBay not to sell scalped inauguration tickets -- which could be sold for up to $40,000 online.
WASHINGTON -- The senator overseeing Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony said Monday she's writing to Internet sites like eBay asking them not to sell scalped inauguration tickets.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also said she's crafting a bill that would make a federal crime of selling tickets to the historic event Jan. 20.
Feinstein, who chairs the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said she foresees overwhelming demand for the 240,000 available tickets and has heard reports they may be sold for as much as $40,000 online.
The tickets are supposed to be free to the public and distributed through congressional offices.Lawmakers' offices won't get the tickets until shortly before the inauguration, to try to prevent scalping. In-person pickup will be required.

Nice Try

Chopper shocks shoppers

Romanian shoppers were shocked when a helicopter landed between cars in a supermarket car parking area.
The light helicopter dropped off two men who went into the Real supermarket in Bacau and came back an hour later to pick them up again.
Eyewitness Georgeta Stoica, said: "That thing just landed there, no security or protection, nothing.
"It was really windy outside and the helicopter could have easily hit the electric poles or wires. Who knows what could have happened?"
Radu Bondar, the head of the airport in Bacau said the landing was legal only if the pilot had the permission of the supermarket.
But Romanian civil aviation laws say light helicopters are not allowed to land in populated areas without precaution measures.
Adrian Enescu, who works near the supermarket, said: "It's the third time I've seen people coming shopping in their helicopters. I heard they are important persons but I think they're a little snobbish too."
The incident was filmed by an amateur cameraman who sent the film to a local television station.

In the News

Marines to the Rescue at California Motel Fire
Six off-duty Marines who raced through a burning motel warning sleeping guests that it was on fire were hailed as lifesaving heroes.
Everyone escaped the Americas Best Value Inn motel, in Lake Forest California, including one elderly man who required oxygen after he was carried to safety by one of the Marines. The cause of the fire, which ignited shortly before 8 a.m., was under investigation.
Marine Pvt. Colton Oliver said he and two colleagues were walking along a second-floor landing about 8 a.m. when they saw flames and smoke. They rousted their fellow Marines and all six began knocking on doors and windows of rooms, urging people to leave.
"Everybody was out by the time the firefighters got here," Oliver said. "It's what we're trained to do."
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More cockroaches expected in Florida
Florida researchers say a hissing cockroach that grows as big as 5 inches inadvertently could be released in the state and, if so, would thrive.
The Madagascar hissing cockroach is one of four species of roach readily available on the Internet to lizard owners who purchase them illegally, said Phil Hoehler, an entomologist with the University of Florida.
Roaches are a good replacement for crickets as reptile food because they are less expensive and don't smell as bad as crickets.
The Turkestan cockroach, lobster roach and the orange spotted roach also are potential invaders, though they have yet to be spotted, Koehler warned pest-control operators in a recent magazine article.
"This is not good news for anybody," said Hoehler, noting where there are cockroaches, there will be escapes and Florida has the perfect climate for them.