News

[Nightshade]

yeah I turned on the tv and they were discussing it

[smilingtearz]

over 100 die in Delhi,India: due to the sudden decrease in temperature...
temp 0.2 on sunday at 8:30 in the morning, the lowest ever recorded in 70 years
frost and icy deposits on roofs of houses and cars and dew drops on grass in ice form for the first time ever...

[Scheherazade]

The charity Keep Britain Tidy has asked footballers to stop spitting as young people are copying the habit. The group, based in Wigan, Greater Manchester, criticised players for making a "filthy habit appear macho".

In a poll of nearly 300 fans, 75% said they were upset by the incident when Bolton striker El-Hadji Diouf spat at Portsmouth player Arjan de Zeeuw.

Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson was also mentioned for spitting out chewing gum after matches.

'Spreading the flu'

Alan Woods, chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy, said spitting was the ultimate insult, and "a contemptuous gesture drowning in hate."

He added: "But it is not just revolting - it has a cost.

"Saliva and chewing gum deposited on the pavement needs to be washed and cleaned-up and when it is aimed at another person, spit can spread colds, flu, measles and mumps."

To encourage footballers to stop spitting, Mr Woods is writing to the Professional Footballers Association, to say why he thinks players should set a better example.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/m...er/4594052.stm

[Virgil]

Too funny.

Mouse thrown into fire sets home ablaze
January 8, 2006
FORT SUMNER, N.M. --A mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man's house and set it on fire.

Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner said he caught the mouse inside his house and wanted to get rid of it.
"I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house," Mares said from a motel room Saturday.

Village Fire Chief Juan Chavez said the burning mouse ran to just beneath a window, and the flames spread up from there and throughout the house.

No was hurt inside, but the home and everything in it was destroyed.
Unseasonably dry and windy conditions have charred more than 53,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes in southeastern New Mexico in recent weeks.

"I've seen numerous house fires," village Fire Department Capt. Jim Lyssy said, "but nothing as unique as this one."

[smilingtearz]

[emily655321]

That'll teach him to hurt a poor little mousey that way!

[rachel]

how dare he throw the mouse into the fire. how would he like to be picked up by a great big guy and thrown into a blazing fire. I think he is a jerk. i am not glad about his house but it does seem rather just considering how it suffered before it died.

[kilted exile]

With apologies to Rabbie Burns......

To A Man, on the occassion of burning down his house in January 2006.

Big, stompin', greetin', murd'rous beastie
Oh whit panic's in thy breastie
Ah laf tae see ye sat there cursin'
wi' tears a rollin
It is me that cud dae wi nursin'
Flames put oot

Twas yer ain belief in Mans dominion
That broke natures solemn union
An justifies ma glorius revenge
that makes yer heart twinge
At the loss o' yer ain dear hoose
Instead o jist a stupid moose

I dinna doubt yer wife wis feart o' me
Sae whit? she saw naw hide nor hair o me
Some respite frae the world, a fair request
Instead thrown to a bonfire nest
An never miss'd

Thy huge big house, is noo in ruins
Its whitewashed wa's the fires strewin'
An no time now tae build a new yin
of stone n clay
An swift approaches noo yer wifie
Wi her bitin tongue

Thou saw me scurryin quickly past
wi wifie comin up the gairden path
An' straight intae the burnin' leaves
Ye thought tae throw me
Till straight back tae the hoose ah ran
Wi flames a lickin'

That wee pile o brick an' mortar
cost thee mauny a weel earnt nickel
Noo its gaun fir aw' yer trooble
Nae hoose or hame
Tae shield ye fae yer wife
Or mither in law

But Man thou art no thy-lane
In proving foresight may be vain
The best laid schemes of men an' mice
Aft gang agley
An leave us naught but grief an' pain
For promised joy

But yer still good, dinnae ye see?
house rebuilt by the insurance company
But och, I feel the flames still burn
Aroun' ma back
Burnin doon yer hoose wis a jist return
I laugh an' cheer

[Virgil]

Hey that was great, Kilted. It all reminds me of the Talking Heads song:

Burning Down The House by The Talking Heads

Watch out you might get what you're after
Cool baby strange but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

Hold tight wait 'til the party's over
Hold tight we're in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burning down the house

Here's your ticket pack your bag; time for jumpin' overboard
Transportation is here
Close enough but not too far, baby you know where you are
Fightin' fire with fire

All wet hey you might need a raincoat
Shakedown thieves walking in broad daylight
Three hundred sixty five degrees
Burning down the house

It was once upon a place sometimes I listen to myself
Gonna come in first place
People on their way to work say baby what did you expect
Gonna burst into flame
Go ahead

My house S'out of the ordinary
That's right Don't want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house

No visible means of support and you have not seen nothing yet
Everything's stuck together
I don't know what you expect staring into the TV set
Fighting fire with fire

Burning down the house
Burning down the house
Burning down the house

[Scheherazade]

There are now some 8m people of Ashkenazi origin around the world
Almost half of Europe's Jews are descended from just four women who lived 1,000 years ago, a study says. Scientists studied the mitochondrial DNA - passed from mother to daughter - of 11,000 women of Ashkenazi Jewish origin living in 67 countries.

The Ashkenazis moved from the Mid-East to Italy and then to Eastern Europe, where their population exploded in the 13th Century, the scientists say.

One of the authors said the study shows the importance of Jewish mothers.

"This I could tell you even without the paper," Dr Doron Behar of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology told Reuters news agency.

Genetic signature

The four women are thought to have lived in the Middle East about 1,000 years ago but they may not have lived anywhere near each other, according to the study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

However, they bequeathed genetic signatures to their descendents, which do not appear in non-Jews and are rare in Jews not of Ashkenazi origin.

The Ashkenazis are thought to have travelled from the Middle East to Italy in the first or second Centuries.

In Central and Eastern Europe, many spoke Yiddish - a form of German, mixed with Hebrew.

Ashkenazi comes from an old Hebrew word for Germany.

By the outbreak of World War II, there were some nine million, some two-thirds of whom were killed by the Nazis.

There are now some eight million people of Ashkenazi origin living around the world, the researchers say.

Some 3.5m, or 40%, of them are descended from the four women, they say.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4611592.stm

[emily655321]

That's pretty cool. I absolutely love anthropology. A couple of years ago I watched a documentary which attempted to discover the common ancestor of all modern people. By using genetic code and inherited physical characteristics, rather than traditionally accepted paths of migration, they discovered that after leaving Africa, people migrated first up into central Asia, and then split off from there, some moving west to Europe and others east to China. They found a man in southern Kazakhstan, or perhaps Kyrgyzstan, but somewhere around there, who they believed to carry the most ancient surviving bloodline from that time (the split), and they told him, and he cried. It was pretty awesome.

[Scheherazade]

Bangladeshi authorities have ordered mobile phone operators to stop offering free calls after midnight, to protect the morals of young people.

A telecommunications regulator said it had received scores of complaints from parents that children were using the service to form romantic attachments.

They said children were losing sleep and some indulged in "vulgar talk".

Many people are conservative in Bangladesh, where arranged marriages are the norm and dating is discouraged.

Driving change

In a letter sent to all five of Bangladesh's networks, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission said the "free calls after midnight" offers were being abused by the young.

A senior official at the regulator told the BBC they had received scores of complaints from parents.

The rapid expansion of mobile phone use is driving social and economic change in Bangladesh.

By the end of last year, Grameen was signing up one million new customers every 40 days.

But many Bangladeshis are conservative, particularly when it comes to matters of the heart.

The country's biggest mobile phone operator, Grameen Phone, says it will meet its competitors to try to come up with a joint response.

The phone companies say they are surprised by the order, which the regulator says must be obeyed immediately.

One spokesman has been quoted as saying that if the authorities wish to stop young people meeting each other, by the same logic, fast food restaurants and universities should be shut down, too.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4614640.stm

[RobinHood3000]

Hmm. The concept of phone sex corrupting children. Sounds kind of like the arguments for book-burning.

[Scheherazade]

Hmm. The concept of phone sex corrupting children. Sounds kind of like the arguments for book-burning.

Yes, I agree! Children should be encouraged to take part in such activities... Earlier the better! (Brave New World style, even classes at schoosl!) On second thought, maybe the parents who are against such modern ideas should be sent courses and encouraged to do it themselves! That is sure to stop 'em objecting!

[emily655321]

I have a better idea. How about the parents decide what is acceptable behavior for their children, and impose it at a household level, instead of trying to make the corporations responsible for how they raise (or don't raise) their kids? This seems like something that could be easily solved by a "no cell phone after midnight" rule.