Monday, October 31, 2005

Brits foot £500,000 cell phone bill

This phone was 'missing' for two years and nobody thought to report it??! What a pack of clowns.
Foreign Office satellite phone goes AWOL

£500,000 bill rings alarm bells
Robert Jaques, vnunet.com 31 Oct 2005

The Foreign Office has been saddled with a £500,000 telephone bill after a satellite phone belonging to a British diplomat was stolen in Baghdad, according to UK press reports. The phone may have been used to make calls from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, with some potentially relating to terrorist activity. Reports suggest that UK intelligence agents are believed to be working through the dialled numbers in an attempt to trace the recipients.

It is thought that the phone was sent from the UK to a senior diplomat in Baghdad two years ago via a courier, but that it never reached its destination and was not reported as missing. An investigation was initiated only when the Foreign Office became suspicious about calling behaviour. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was reported to be "furious" and has ordered an inquiry into how such a security blunder could have occurred in such a volatile region.

But those less keen to criticise government inefficiency are pointing out one clear upside: the phone's billing record could be a veritable Who's Who? of terrorists.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Trance scene in Japan - Redux

This sounds like it's going to be a cool party. If I find myself in Japan this weekend I'll be sure and check it out, as unlikely as that is I have to be sure that I keep my options open just in case.
THE SECOND ROOM PRESENTS

Psychedelic radar 10.28

By JEFF OGRISSEG
Special to The Japan Times Online

Saturday, Oct. 29

Solaris -- Spookadelik

Psychedelic trance meets Halloween "cos-play!" Solaris ( www.solaris-music.com) presents "Spookadelik," a spooky psychedelic Halloween party, at Differ Ariake in Odaiba. Live acts Bamboo Forest, Intelabeam, Fatali and Tri-Force, plus DJs Stef, Fatali, Sido and Oz. Starts at 10 p.m. Tickets are 6,000 yen at the door.

But for those wearing full costumes, the entrance fee is 4,000 yen. There will be an inspection at the door -- only those wearing complete costumes are eligible for the discount.

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Wednesday, October 26, 2005

2004 election stolen - GAO report

So all the reports that were previously derided as belonging in the realm of bat shit crazy conspiracy class banter are now turning out to have some merit. Bev Harris was right! According to the Government Accounting Office there were true inconsistencies and real statistically anomalies during the 2004 election. The most telling of these is the fact that in New Mexico no precinct using electronic voting was scored for Kerry. Not a single one in fact. Doesn’t that seem odd, in a natural distribution of data you rarely see anything that total and clear cut, there's usually an outlier, at least one data point that bucks the trend. Here you don’t see that and I find that extremely troubling. I’m sure were you to examine the distribution of Kerry wins in that state for every other county not using electronic voting and then compare that to the electronic voting sites it would appear even more bothersome.

We need to take the responsibility of EV vendor selection away from the individual counties and states as its plain to see that they are making awful choices that leave the door open for fraud. A federalized election system should be established capable of counting every vote accurately as the vote happens. Then we could have a website to watch the vote happen, a real time count. In America there are many companies that specialize in systems integration, one of them is my employer SAIC, they could bring this project to fruition in a timely and cost conscious fashion. A consortium of system integrators should be formed under the direction of the FEC to create a nationalized voting platform to be put into use by every voting precinct, their work should be subjected to a rigorous IV&V process. This is entirely possible and should be a priority, a HUGE priority for our nation. I’m afraid it’ll never happen. The same inexcusable shit is going to happen again in 2008.


Anyways… read the report and draw your own conclusions.

http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/Do....
- GAO Report

http://www.freepress.org/departme... - A good summation of the report's findings.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

DJ's scam dosen't go as planned

Jeesh... What a botched caper. I can only imagine the thought process involved here. Ok, we'll hide the car at your place under a tarp and then I'll call my insurance company and say, "my car is gone!" Then we'll go cash the check for the car and go celebrate in Atlantic City. It doesn’t surprise me one of these guys works as a DJ. What would they have done with the car if their plan hadn't collapsed? I have a mercury cougar I'm trying to sell right now, it's also a '99. It never occured to me to try something like this, and I don't think that I will.
Two Utica men charged with insurance fraud

HERKIMER - Two Utica men have been charged with insurance fraud following an investigation by the state police in Herkimer and NYS DMV Investigation Unit.

James Winston Jr., 28, of 118 Riverside Drive North Utica and Richard Borowiec Jr., 26, of 723 Plant St., Utica, were both charged with third-degree insurance fraud, a Class D felony.

State Police in Herkimer report that on May 1, Borowiec reported to them that his 1999 Mercury Cougar had been stolen from the parking lot of the Backstreets Brewing Company at Charlestown while he was working there as a DJ. A police information revealed that the vehicle was hidden under a tarp at an unlicensed repair shop on Tilden Avenue being operated by Winston. Further investigation revealed details of a planned insurance fraud in which Winston removed the vehicle and was to receive a portion of the insurance proceeds from Borowiec's claim to State Farm that the vehicle was stolen.

Both men were arraigned in German Flatts Town Court and committed to the Herkimer County jail in lieu of $5,000 cash bail or $10,000 bond and will reappear in that court at a later date. The State Police were assisted by New York State DMV investigators with the investigation which also resulted in the recovery of another vehicle from Winston's repair shop which was stolen from the city of Syracuse. Charges on that matter remain pending at this time.

Quantum dots = a bright idea

neato!
Accidental Invention Points to End of Light Bulbs
By Bjorn Carey
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 21 October 2005
03:21 pm ET

The main light source of the future will almost surely not be a bulb. It might be a table, a wall, or even a fork. An accidental discovery announced this week has taken LED lighting to a new level, suggesting it could soon offer a cheaper, longer-lasting alternative to the traditional light bulb. The miniature breakthrough adds to a growing trend that is likely to eventually make Thomas Edison's bright invention obsolete. LEDs are already used in traffic lights, flashlights, and architectural lighting. They are flexible and operate less expensively than traditional lighting.

Happy accident

Michael Bowers, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, was just trying to make really small quantum dots, which are crystals generally only a few nanometers big. That's less than 1/1000th the width of a human hair. Quantum dots contain anywhere from 100 to 1,000 electrons. They're easily excited bundles of energy, and the smaller they are, the more excited they get. Each dot in Bower's particular batch was exceptionally small, containing only 33 or 34 pairs of atoms.

When you shine a light on quantum dots or apply electricity to them, they react by producing their own light, normally a bright, vibrant color. But when Bowers shined a laser on his batch of dots, something unexpected happened. "I was surprised when a white glow covered the table," Bowers said. "The quantum dots were supposed to emit blue light, but instead they were giving off a beautiful white glow."

Then Bowers and another student got the idea to stir the dots into polyurethane and coat a blue LED light bulb with the mix. The lumpy bulb wasn't pretty, but it produced white light similar to a regular light bulb. The new device gives off a warm, yellowish-white light that shines twice as bright and lasts 50 times longer than the standard 60 watt light bulb. This work is published online in the Oct. 18 edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Better than bulbs

Until the last decade, LEDs could only produce green, red, and yellow light, which limited their use. Then came blue LEDs, which have since been altered to emit white light with a light-blue hue. LEDs produce twice as much light as a regular 60 watt bulb and burn for over 50,000 hours. The Department of Energy estimates LED lighting could reduce U.S. energy consumption for lighting by 29 percent by 2025. LEDs don't emit much heat, so they're also more energy efficient. And they're much harder to break.

Other scientists have said they expect LEDs to eventually replace standard incandescent bulbs as well as fluorescent and sodium vapor lights. If the new process can be developed into commercial production, light won't come just from newfangled bulbs. Quantum dot mixtures could be painted on just about anything and electrically excited to produce a rainbow of colors, including white.

One big question remains: When a brilliant idea pops into your mind in the future, what will appear over your head?

Monday, October 24, 2005

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

naked burglar strikes again

That's right officer, I don't know how her clothes might have come off. No I have never seen this woman before in my life, honest. Perhaps she was trying to steal something from inside my house. She does look like a criminal, she looks like a reall badddd girl. uh-huh.
Homeowner Finds Dead Woman Stuck in Window
Van O'Cain, New Media Manager

(St. Louis, MO) — Homicide detectives responded to a strange scene in north St. Louis Tuesday night, involving a dead woman who was only half dressed. Police went to a house where the homeowner says he found the woman hanging halfway out a first floor kitchen window. She was naked from the waist down. She was pinned halfway inside the home by a window that somehow closed on her.

Investigators believe she might have gotten stuck while trying to climb into the home. Police say her pants apparently fell off while she struggled to free herself. St. Louis Police Lt. Colonel Roy Joachimstaler said, "From all indications from the scene, it appears she was trying to break into the house." The victim did not have any identification, but the homeowner says the dead woman did not live there.

An autopsy will determine the exact cause of death. Right now, the unidentified woman's death is classified as suspicious.

Updated: 10/19/2005 4:12:59 PM

KSDK -TV

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

tales from the brooklyn crypt keeper

Wow, this is some crazy shit. I wonder what the prices for certain organs fetch on the secondary market? Spleen? Gall bladder? Liver? 'Tissue recovery' must be code word for illegal organ monger. such craziness in the world today.
Staten Island Advance
Brooklyn man files suit in body-parts probe
Some Islanders' corpses believed included in emerging scandal
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
By SALLY GOLDENBERG
ADVANCE STAFF WRITER

Shortly after his father died from cancer on May 22, 2003, Vito Bruno brought the urn to the Bay Ridge office where he works. It contained a small plastic bag of dark gray ashes, all that remained of his father, Michael. Or so he thought.

Bruno now believes that some of his father's body parts were pilfered for profit in an emerging scandal -- which is said to include the bodies of some Staten Islanders -- that the Brooklyn district attorney's office is investigating.

"This is some real hideous, medieval stuff," Bruno, a 49-year-old concert producer, said after a news conference yesterday in the Brooklyn office of his attorney, Sanford Rubenstein. Bruno filed the first lawsuit in the widespread investigation yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court. A source close to the investigation has said parts from at least 100 bodies, including some from Staten Island, were stolen and sold without families' consent, and roughly 40 victimized relatives have been identified.

"We're not even halfway there yet," the source said, adding that exhumations are imminent. Bruno was still grieving the loss of his 75-year-old father, he said, when investigators from the NYPD's Major Crimes unit arrived at his Borough Park home last week to tell him that his dad's body parts allegedly were sold for profit to a tissue-harvesting company in New Jersey. Bruno said he never gave consent for the procedure, his signature was forged and the cause of his father's death was switched on paperwork to a heart attack.

"I just sat there in absolute stunned disbelief that this could actually happen in this day and age," he said. Bruno's suit names the English Brothers Funeral Home in Brooklyn, a New Jersey tissue-recovery firm and the two men alleged to have orchestrated the plot: Rosebank resident Joseph Nicelli, 49, and New Jersey resident Michael Mastromarino, 42, who runs Biomedical Tissue Recovery Ltd. in Fort Lee.
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Monday, October 17, 2005

Craig's list hos arrested.

This has been going on for a long time, look in that section on craig's list and you'll see many ads that seem to be selling sex. It's a shame these ho's got arrested, they were just doing their jobs.
Women Arrested, Accused Of Alleged Internet Prostitution
Sting Operation Conducted

POSTED: 8:22 am EDT October 17, 2005
UPDATED: 8:45 am EDT October 17, 2005

BOSTON -- Police in Braintree, Mass., arrested five women on suspicion of allegedly selling sex on the popular Web site "Craigslist.com." The arrests were part of a sting operation. Undercover officers called and allegedly met up with the women at local hotels after reading their ads under a section called "Casual Encounters." Police told the Boston Herald that they believe some of the women were also involved in a prostitution ring.

Copyright 2005 by TheBostonChannel. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Harriet Miers is a fuckin' idiot

Wow, what a dumb fuckin' bitch. Her prose reminds me of the awful essays brought to me by classmates during college. Mostly girls seeking help with their writing, young women completely incapable of formulating coherent sentences. I would ask them to suck my dick, swallow my seed and I'll write the paper for you. It actually only worked out once and she was a fatty and gave bad head, might have torn my foreskin now that I think about it, she got a C on the paper so it was a bad deal all around. Worst yet, I managed to offend a couple of cute girls that I really liked and who honestly needed help with their writing by offering this filthy proposition, and as such they refused to talk to me or make eye contact for a full three years of classes. Whatever.

Read these excerpts and appreciate the dunning dis-acumen possessed by this woman. A Supreme Court judge needs be a gifted wordsmith; this joke of a nominee has been found lacking. There's no way in hell she's getting confirmed, I hope.

The New York Times

October 13, 2005

In Her Own Words

By DAVID BROOKS

Of all the words written about Harriet Miers, none are more disturbing than the ones she wrote herself. In the early 90's, while she was president of the Texas bar association, Miers wrote a column called ''President's Opinion'' for The Texas Bar Journal. It is the largest body of public writing we have from her, and sad to say, the quality of thought and writing doesn't even rise to the level of pedestrian.

Of course, we have to make allowances for the fact that the first job of any association president is to not offend her members. Still, nothing excuses sentences like this:

''More and more, the intractable problems in our society have one answer: broad-based intolerance of unacceptable conditions and a commitment by many to fix problems.''

Or this: ''We must end collective acceptance of inappropriate conduct and increase education in professionalism.''

Or this: ''When consensus of diverse leadership can be achieved on issues of importance, the greatest impact can be achieved.''

Or passages like this: ''An organization must also implement programs to fulfill strategies established through its goals and mission. Methods for evaluation of these strategies are a necessity. With the framework of mission, goals, strategies, programs, and methods for evaluation in place, a meaningful budgeting process can begin.''

Or, finally, this: ''We have to understand and appreciate that achieving justice for all is in jeopardy before a call to arms to assist in obtaining support for the justice system will be effective. Achieving the necessary understanding and appreciation of why the challenge is so important, we can then turn to the task of providing the much needed support.''

I don't know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers's prose. Nearly every idea is vague and depersonalized. Nearly every debatable point is elided. It's not that Miers didn't attempt to tackle interesting subjects. She wrote about unequal access to the justice system, about the underrepresentation of minorities in the law and about whether pro bono work should be mandatory. But she presents no arguments or ideas, except the repetition of the bromide that bad things can be eliminated if people of good will come together to eliminate bad things.

Or as she puts it, ''There is always a necessity to tend to a myriad of responsibilities on a number of cases as well as matters not directly related to the practice of law.'' And yet, ''Disciplining ourselves to provide the opportunity for thought and analysis has to rise again to a high priority.''

Throw aside ideology. Surely the threshold skill required of a Supreme Court justice is the ability to write clearly and argue incisively. Miers's columns provide no evidence of that.

The Miers nomination has reopened the rift between conservatives and establishment Republicans.

The conservative movement was founded upon the supposition that ideas have consequences. Conservatives have founded so many think tanks, magazines and organizations, like the Federalist Society, because they believe that you have to win arguments to win political power. They dream of Supreme Court justices capable of writing brilliant opinions that will reshape the battle of ideas.

Republicans, who these days are as likely to be members of the corporate establishment as the evangelical establishment, are more suspicious of intellectuals and ideas, and more likely to believe that politics is about deal-making, loyalty and power. You know you are in establishment Republican circles when the conversation is bland but unifying. You know you are in conservative circles when it is interesting but divisive. Conservatives err by becoming irresponsible. Republicans tend to be blown about haplessly by forces they cannot understand.

For the first years of his presidency, George Bush healed the division between Republicans and conservatives by pursuing big conservative goals with ruthless Republican discipline. But Harriet Miers has shown no loyalty to conservative institutions like the Federalist Society. Her loyalty has been to the person of the president, and her mental style seems to be Republicanism on stilts.

So conservatives are caught between loyalty to their ideas and loyalty to the president they admire. Most of them have come out against Miers -- quietly or loudly. Establishment Republicans are displaying their natural loyalty to leadership. And Miers is caught in the vise between these two forces, a smart and good woman who has been put in a position where she cannot succeed.

Don't mess with a librarian

This is a rather amazing story. That woman deserves a medal! Now if we could just do the same for the spammers and spyware hucksters... and the telemarketers, and virus writers.. etc.. Identity thiefs. sigh...
Over the course of the last few months I have received unsolicited facsimile transmissions from one particular fax blaster. The number for removal and the number to fax back the advertisements for health insurance, mortgages, hot leads, selling my business and so on is also in my area code. The telephone number is not serviced by the local exchange carrier (Verizon) but a competing local exchange carrier (CLEC)

After the first fax on August 7th I called the ‘removal’ number on the fax but it was busy. I tried about six times but it was always busy. I used nanpa.com to find out who serviced the number and complained to them (the faxer’s phone company). The faxes continued. I filed 1 small claims suit against the sender and subpoenaed the records of the CLEC (competing local exchange carrier- the faxer’s phone company) they sent me the records within 3 hours of receiving the subpoena. It seems that other had complained about the illegal faxing as well.
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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Plane theft sounds fun!

LOLZ, I think there will be more of these type of thefts once people realize how fun they are. And that no key is needed to start the engines and that the door to the plane can easily be pryed open. I know what I'm doing this weekend! Who's with me? We can party high in the skies.
Man Arrested, Charged in Jet Joy Ride

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

(10-12) 11:46 PDT Lawrenceville, Ga. (AP) --

A man was arrested on charges of stealing a charter jet and taking it on a 350-mile joy ride from Florida to Georgia, police said Wednesday. The circumstances of the theft were not clear, but nothing threatening was found on the plane, police spokesman Darren Moloney said. The incident "appears to be a joy ride."

Daniel Andrew Wolcott, 22, of Buford was charged with felony theft and misdemeanor reckless conduct, police said, adding that additional federal charges were expected. Investigators said they made the arrest after interviewing five people who said they were on the 10-passenger, $7 million Cessna Citation 7 when Wolcott flew it.

The plane, which is owned by Pinnacle Air of Springdale, Ark., was found Monday at the Gwinnett County Airport-Briscoe Field near Atlanta, police said. Moloney said a key is not needed to start the plane. The plane has a lock on the door, but it isn't difficult to pry open, he said. Wolcott has a commercial rated pilots license but is not licensed to fly that type of plane, police said. The exact circumstances of how Wolcott obtained the plane were unclear.

Bryan Cooper, assistant manager at St. Augustine Airport, said the plane was still there at midnight Saturday but was gone by 5 a.m. The plane landed at Gwinnett sometime between 9 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. Sunday. It had some damage to the front edge of one wing.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Synthetic diamonds to change world

Wow this is huge. It sure is nice to see something like De Beers squirming, hopefully the synthetic diamonds will overtake the market and the profit at the cost of human misery and suffering will end. If there's nothing else I hate in theis world its diamonds.
Man-made diamonds sparkle with potential
By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY

BOSTON — In the back room of an unmarked brown building in a run-down strip mall, eight machines, each the size of a bass drum, are making diamonds.

That's right — making diamonds. Real ones, all but indistinguishable from the stones formed by a billion or so years' worth of intense pressure, later to be sold at Tiffany's.

The company doing this is Apollo Diamond, a tiny outfit started by a former Bell Labs scientist. Peer inside Apollo's stainless steel-and-glass machines, and you can see single-crystal diamonds literally growing amid hot pink gases.

This year, Apollo expects to grow diamonds as big as 2 carats. By the end of 2005, it might expand to 10 carats. The diamonds will probably start moving into the jewelry market as early as next year — at perhaps one-third the price of a mined diamond.

The whole concept turns the fundamental idea of a diamond on its head. The ability to manufacture diamonds could change business, products and daily life as much as the arrival of the steel age in the 1850s or the invention of the transistor in the 1940s.

In technology, the diamond is a dream material. It can make computers run at speeds that would melt the innards of today's computers. Manufactured diamonds could help make lasers of extreme power. The material could allow a cellphone to fit into a watch and iPods to store 10,000 movies, not just 10,000 songs. Diamonds could mean frictionless medical replacement joints. Or coatings — perhaps for cars — that never scratch or wear out.
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Sunday, October 09, 2005

omg, my wallet is gone.

OH SHIT!!!! Somewheres in between the velvet lounge, promoting at FUR, and finding my way home, my wallet disapered! everyhing was in there. credit cards, social security card, draft card, voter registration, etc... I called Wachovia and there wasn't any activity on it, so it wasn't stolen. i was so out of my mind blasted that i remember nothing at all. luckily my cousin Austin had a great 21st birthday! I got him the NBA live 2006 game for the playstation, his totally amped on that, as i understand it that is the title that all the kids are playing nowadays. but... the night went off so well, until i lost my wallet while skipping around dc totally blasted and senseless. WTF!!!?? When am i going to grow up and get a life. fuck it i'll be rich soon. replacing the draft card i got back in '97 not going to be as easy, tat shit may be gone for ever.

matt

Friday, October 07, 2005

Drunk driver misplaces exotic wildlife

Lol, the title of this story is just silly, what sort of person keeps zebras anyhow? Sucks the zebras had to be put down, their lives ended due to this woman's criminal negligence. I would rather hear that she died in a single car accident as a result of her reckless behavior. Instead these animals suffer. Sucks, yo.
Woman who lost zebras arrested for drunk driving

By Martin E. Comas | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted October 6, 2005, 11:01 AM EDT

MOUNT DORA -- A woman, whose two zebras were struck by a car last month after escaping from her compound, was arrested this morning on a charge of drunken driving, police said. Police said Carol A. Dorner, 41, knocked over at least one mailbox while driving on Heim Road, which turns into 11th Avenue, just after 1:30 a.m. today.

She was booked into the Lake County Jail on $500 bail. On Sept. 28, two zebras ran off Dorner's property on Future Farm Drive and were struck by a Chevrolet Suburban on Britt Road near State Road 44. The collision broke the front leg of one zebra and injured the rear leg of the other one, according the Florida Highway Patrol. Both animals were later euthanized.

Dorner holds permits to keep zebras and giraffes. The permits, which cost her $50, require 6-foot-high fences for zebras and 8-foot-high fences for giraffes, said Lt. Rick Brown with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

rectory theft continues

WOW, a crooked priest! We haven't seen this one before. This thief in the frock's name is Falotico. That makes me think of blow jobs, and raptors. This article mentions the suspect's prior assignment in the town of Pleasantville, I thought that was only a movie, guess I was wrong about that. Only $7K though? Jeesh, this guy's a lightweight. Is that even a felony?
Priest, suspected in theft, is ousted
Posted on Thu, Oct. 06, 2005
By Sam Wood
Inquirer Staff Writer

An Atlantic County priest has been removed from his post after police named him as their primary suspect in the theft of about $7,000 from a rectory safe, church officials said. The Rev. Ronald S. Falotico, 62, had been pastor of Queen of Angels in Buena Borough's Landisville section since December. He previously led St. Peter's Church in Pleasantville, said Andrew Walton, spokesman for the Diocese of Camden.

Falotico called police Sept. 25 to report a burglary and the theft of about $7,000 that had been collected during the Sunday offerings, Buena Police Chief Douglas Adams said. "After a couple of days of investigation, we had a handful of suspects that we narrowed down," Adams said. "Then Falotico became the main suspect. When the diocese found out, they swooped down and relieved him of his duties."

In a conversation with church officials, Falotico "admitted to some kind of sickness or illness," Adams said. He said Falotico had not been charged with any crime. Church officials sent Falotico to a church facility in Maryland for treatment and counseling, and he will remain there pending the outcome of the police investigation, Walton said.

The $7,000 has not been recovered, Adams said.

Adams said the investigation had slowed since Falotico's removal to Maryland. "We have not finished our conversation with him," Adams said. "We need to do that." Falotico will remain available for police questioning, Walton said. A letter from Bishop Joseph Galante, read during Sunday services, informed Queen of Angels parishioners of Falotico's removal. Galante wrote that he would pray for Falotico, the parish and the investigators, Walton said.

The diocese named Falotico to lead Queen of Angels in a routine reassignment. Priests are commonly reassigned after five-year stints, Walton said. "They needed someone in Landisville who could speak Spanish," Walton said. Falotico, who was born in Camden, is multilingual.

Until July 2001, Queen of Angels was two churches: Our Lady of Victories in Landisville and St. Michael's in Minotola.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Interview w/ Eric Koston

This interview with famed cali skater Eric Koston is a good read, he talks about his favorite shoes for basketball, skating and just lounging around the house. One time he met shaq and kobe in the same day! pretty wild stuff. He gets into what he hates about the gravity games and why the X-games are the only big time corporate sponshorship comp keeping it sort of real.

http://www.solecollector.com/news/2005/09/intv_rk_erickoston.html

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Calvin & Hobbs; new book!

I LOVE Calvin and Hobbs, when I was younger I felt that Calvin's scatter brain antics were just like the confused mess I know as my own thoughts. I will totally purchase this retrospective compilation. $165, steep you might note, but hey this is spaceman spiff were talking about here! It's pretty neat reading this article about the series creator Bill Waterston, he seams like the total recluse. Amazing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/c....

Monday, October 03, 2005

chimp quits smoking

omg, does anybody not think this is just silly.
Chimp no longer has monkey on his back
Email this Story

Oct 3, 10:44 AM (ET)

BEIJING (Reuters) - A chimpanzee in a northwest China zoo has quit smoking after 16 years with the help of her keepers, official media reported. The staff, worried about her declining health, weaned 27-year-old "Ai Ai" off tobacco by distracting her with entertainment and a tastier diet, Xinhua news agency said.

"The zoo keepers tried every way to divert the chimp's attention from cigarettes: a walk after breakfast, a music session after lunch and gym after dinner," Xinhua said. She also got fried dishes and dumplings, as well as the usual diet of milk, bananas and rice, said one zoo keeper. "I also put earphones on her so that she could enjoy some pop music from my walkman," he said. "In the first few days, she squealed for cigarettes every now and then, but as her life became more colorful she gradually forgot about them altogether."

Xinhua attributed Ai Ai's habit to solitude and grief. Living in a safari park in Shaanxi province, she had taken up smoking in 1989 shortly after her mate died, it said. Then she had become a chain smoker after her second mate died in 1997 and her daughter was moved to another zoo. Xinhua did not say who had first given cigarettes to her or kept supplying them. The Xian Evening News said the zoo was trying to find another mate for her.