Publicity is right.... it amazes me that so many people still think comic books/graphic narrative is strictly a kids' medium about superheroes. This will help people realize it's just another artistic medium, hopefully.
The pool can be a dangerous place: Kids can get sunburned or slip on the wet deck. But can the pool get you pregnant?
Magdalena Kwiatkowska of Poland thinks you can. She is suing an Egyptian hotel because she claims her 13-year-old daughter became impregnated after swimming in its pool during their recent holiday. Ms.Kwiatkowska says that there must have been errant sperm floating around just waiting to implant themselves in an unsuspecting female taking a dip. She swears that her daughter did not meet any boys during their vacation, so the mysterious sperm in the pool had to be the culprit.
Surely this lawsuit will be thrown out of court on inconceivable (pun intended) grounds. First off, wouldn't the chlorine kill any random sperm? But even further, did Ms. Kwiatkowska follow every moment of her vacationing daughter to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she spent absolutely no time with anyone of the opposite sex during their Egyptian holiday?
The only reassuring thing about this story, perhaps, is that frivolous lawsuits are not exclusively an American thing.
I posted this in here because it's amusing how incredibly naive parents can be sometimes.
New York's WCBS puts it in a way that just can't be better expressed: "It was an accident waiting to happen."
15-year-old Alexa Longueira was wandering along the street in Staten Island last week, obliviously tapping text messages into her phone as she walked. Distracted by her phone, she failed to notice the open manhole in her path, and plunged into it, taking an impromptu bath of raw sewage along with receiving moderate injuries. Longueira called the dive "really gross... shocking and scary."
It's not all Longueira's fault. The manhole shouldn't have been left uncovered and unattended, and no warning signs or hazard cones had been set up near the work site. A worker with New York's Department of Environmental Protection, who was preparing to flush the sewer, helped her out, and the department later issued a formal apology for the incident.
Nonetheless, observers are harshly divided over who's to blame here. The DEP is certainly at fault for failing to secure the manhole, but to what extent should the girl be held accountable for failure to be aware of her surroundings? If she'd stepped into traffic and been hit by a car, would her reaction (that is: anger and a potential lawsuit) be any different?
Detachment from one's environment due to electronic gadgetry is a growing problem -- and a hazardous one of that. The government is even trying to get involved, with multiple laws on the books across the country outlawing cell phone use and text messaging while operating a motor vehicle in the wake of serious accidents involving distracted drivers. One New York senator even tried to criminalize the use of handheld devices (including phones, music players, and game consoles) by pedestrians while they are crossing streets in major New York cities, due to concerns over the number of auto vs. pedestrian accidents.
Following a substantial outcry, that legislation appears never to have been formally introduced.
But did Kruger have a point?
Intriguingly (to me, at least), is the nugget at the end of the story linked above that Longueira lost a shoe in the sewer... but since it isn't reported at lost, I'm guessing she appears to have managed to keep her grip on her phone during the ordeal. Hmmm.
She is totally to blame. If you can;t see a fucking hole in the ground you deserve what you get. People are oblivious no matter what you do. I saw a girl talking on her cell phone step over the yellow caution tape and step on a freshly smoothed sidewalk of wet concrete. The guy who just finished was pretty pissed. I've been pulled over on the side of the road in my big white truck with orange and yellow reflective stripes with my 3 bright orange strobe lights and cascading rear light strip and hazards all on and still had an asshole pull behind me and get pissed when he realized I was parked there and wasn't moving. There's absolutely no helping some people.
If you or your parents are of a certain age, then you may understand the unique terror of suddenly drawing a blank — that unexpected moment when you can't remember the name of a lifelong friend or what you had for lunch that day. You wonder, anxiously, "Have I stepped down the long, slow, inexorable road to losing my mind?"
There is, of course, no cure for memory loss, and no preventive vaccine. Yet a rapidly growing body of evidence suggests that certain behaviors may reliably slow the effects of age-related cognitive decline. Chief among them: eating right, exercising and engaging in social activity and mentally challenging tasks.
It's that last item that most interests psychologists Anne McLaughlin and Jason Allaire at North Carolina State University. The duo are part of a team that was just awarded $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation to fund a four-year study of cognitive decline in the elderly — specifically, whether playing certain video games might help slow the effects of aging. The theory is that the strategy, memory and problem-solving skills necessary for mastering certain games may translate into benefits in the real world, beyond a glowing screen computer screen.
While funding is flowing quickly to new studies similar to McLaughlin and Allaire's — the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for example, has pledged $8.5 million to study the impact of video games on everything from Alzheimer's disease to driving skills — there is little existing evidence that gaming, which is widely dismissed as an elaborate form of mind rot, really holds any potential to slow the effects of aging. "I think it is silly for someone to run out and buy a game with the hope that it is going to help them age better. There is no proof that it is going to be effective," says Columbia University neuropsychologist Yaakov Stern, who specializes in cognition in older adults and is conducting a video game study of his own. "We know that cognitive stimulation is good but we don't know what type or the amount."
The claims made by many brain-boosting websites and digital games, however, would have you believing otherwise. HAPPYneuron, a $100 Web-based brain-training site entices visitors to "give the gift of brain fitness" and claims that its users saw "16% + improvement" through exercises such as learning to associate a bird's song with its species and shooting basketballs through virtual hoops. Nintendo's bestselling Brain Age game promises to "give your brain the workout it needs" through exercises like math problems and playing rock, paper, scissors on the handheld DS.
Skeptics of such products say these claims are about as credible as a slicer-dicer infomercial. But others point to video game research that suggests digital diversions have many advantages over similar analog training tools. "Video games are very integrative in nature. You have to multitask a lot," says Chandramallika Basak, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. In the PC-based game Rise of Nations, on which Basak published a paper last year in Psychology and Aging, multitasking involves managing an empire with multiple cities in which you must simultaneously defend one locale from attack while reviving the sinking economy of another. But the question is whether learning how to play Rise of Nations has any tangible cognitive benefits — aside from just making you a better Rise of Nations player. That is, can gaming really improve memory, reasoning, analysis and the process of thinking?
In one study, presented last year at the Cognitive Neuroscientist Society's annual meeting, psychologist and neuroscientist Helena Westerberg of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm compared the cognitive abilities of 45 young adults (average age 25) with those of 55 older adults (average age 65). She found that after five weeks of computerized training on tasks ranging from reproducing a series of light flashes to repeating digits in the opposite order that they were given, the older group was able to reach the same level of working memory, attention and reaction time that the younger group had at the outset. (Notably, the younger group had even greater improvements by the end of the training period.) "The program is always pushing them to do better," says Westerberg, who notes that an advantage of video game training is that the programs' difficulty level continually adjusts upward to match players' evolving abilities. "They have feedback and can see their scores."
McLaughlin and Allaire's new study will follow 270 seniors as they play the Wii game Boom Blox. Gameplay involves demolishing targets like a medieval castle or a space ship using an arsenal of weapons such as slingshots and cannonballs. While those particular skills may not seem transferable to off-screen life, McLaughlin says she and her colleagues chose Boom Blox specifically because it does require a wide range of real-world skills, including memory, special ability, reasoning and problem solving.
Ultimately, the researchers hope to determine which aspects of Boom Blox produce the largest gains in real-world cognitive functioning, such as the ability to multitask, then incorporate those elements into a new game of their own design. They will then study the effects of the new game in the same group of elderly players. "One of our main goals is to produce guidelines for producing games for older adults. Part of it is making it fun so it does not feel like work," adds McLaughlin.
McLaughlin and Allaire say they intend to identify exactly what components of video gameplay may help preserve mental fitness into old age. "Is it because it is novel, the level of attention required, or the collaboration with other players?" asks Allaire, 35. He says he hopes that by the time he is a senior citizen, playing video games will be as commonplace for those over 65 as it is for young people today. "I think World of Warcraft will always be cool and kids will think their grandparents are cool for playing it." They might not be too pleased, though, when Grandpa beats them at their favorite game.
Also alternately, you could be This guy. Best PvP video ever.
That really kind of makes me want to start playing WoW again. I'd have to roll a new rogue to play on a PvP server, but my server kind of sucked anyways.
Granted, I have been out of most of the rpg gaming scene for a few years now, but using the term "rolling" in this context feels wrong to me. Your stats as new characters in wow aren't rolled. They are not variations of attribute points within 3-18. They're all fixed. You don't roll anything, the computer doesn't roll anything.
Why back in my day, rolling meant something. Kids these days just don't understand, they've got no respect for the elders...
Record albums are called albums because they were originally collections of single-song discs packaged in books similar to photo albums. They're not done that way any more but they're still called albums.
Isn't it time to dismantle the metal detectors, send the guards at the doors away and allow Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights by being free to carry their firearms into the nation's Capitol?
I've been studying the deep thoughts of senators who regularly express their undying loyalty to the National Rifle Association, and I have decided that they should practice what they preach. They tell us that the best defense against crime is an armed citizenry and that laws restricting guns do nothing to stop violence.
If they believe that, why don't they live by it?
Why would freedom-loving lawmakers want to hide behind guards and metal detectors? Shouldn't NRA members be outraged that Second Amendment rights mean nothing in the very seat of our democracy?
Congress seems to think that gun restrictions are for wimps. It voted this year to allow people to bring their weapons into national parks, and pro-gun legislators have pushed for the right to carry in taverns, colleges and workplaces. Shouldn't Congress set an example in its own workplace?
So why not let Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) pack the weapon of his choice on the Senate floor? Thune is the author of an amendment that would have allowed gun owners who had valid permits to carry concealed weapons into any state, even states with more restrictive gun laws. The amendment got 58 votes last week, two short of the 60 it needed to pass.
Judging by what Thune said in defense of his amendment, he'd clearly feel safer if everyone in the Capitol could carry a gun.
"Law-abiding individuals have the right to self-defense, especially because the Supreme Court has consistently found that police have no constitutional obligation to protect individuals from other individuals," he said. I guess that Thune doesn't think those guards and the Capitol Police have any obligation to protect him.
He went on: "The benefits of conceal and carry extend to more than just the individuals who actually carry the firearms. Since criminals are unable to tell who is and who is not carrying a firearm just by looking at a potential victim, they are less likely to commit a crime when they fear they may come in direct contact with an individual who is armed."
In other words, keeping guns out of the Capitol makes all our elected officials far less safe. If just a few senators had weapons, the criminals wouldn't know which ones were armed, and all senators would be safer, right? Isn't that better than highly intrusive gun control -- i.e., keeping people with guns out of the Capitol in the first place?
"Additionally," Thune said helpfully, "research shows that when unrestricted conceal and carry laws are passed, not only does it benefit those who are armed, but it also benefits others around them such as children."
This is a fantastic opportunity. Arming all our legislators would make it safer for children, so senators could feel much more secure bringing their kids into the Capitol. This would promote family values and might even reduce the number of highly publicized extramarital affairs.
During the debate, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) quoted a constituent who told him: "When my family and I go out at night, it makes me feel safer just knowing I am able to have my concealed weapon."
Why shouldn't Vitter feel equally safe in the Capitol? Why should he have to go out on the streets to carry a gun?
The pro-gun folks love their studies. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) offered this one: "A study for the Department of Justice found 40 percent of felons had not committed certain crimes because they feared the potential victims would be armed."
That doesn't tell us much about the other 60 percent, but what the heck? If it's good enough for Barrasso, let the good senator introduce the amendment to allow concealed carry in the Capitol.
Barrasso already dislikes the District of Columbia's tough restrictions on weapons. "The gun laws in the District outlaw law-abiding citizens from self-defense," he complained. So go for it, Senator! Make our nation's Capitol an island of firearms liberty in a sea of oppression.
Don't think this column is offered lightly. I want these guys to put up or shut up. If the NRA's servants in Congress don't take their arguments seriously enough to apply them to their own lives, maybe the rest of us should do more to stop them from imposing their nonsense on our country.
Police: Fake officer tries to stop a real one
21-year-old convicted car thief allegedly had tricked out his Ford
OAKLAND, Calif. - Oakland police say a man impersonating a police officer tried to pull over a real undercover officer and was arrested.
Police say 21-year-old Antonio Fernandez Martinez of Oakland was arrested Wednesday in the Fruitvale district after trying to pull over an unmarked police vehicle. Martinez was driving a Ford Crown Victoria outfitted with flashing lights, a microphone and speakers.
Martinez, a convicted car thief, will have his felony probation revoked and could face a prison term.
The officer, Jim Beere, says Martinez probably thought he would be an easy mark to rob
TORONTO (Reuters) – A YouTube video showing a 7-year-old boy at the wheel of a sport utility vehicle -- with his family cheering him on -- has prompted an investigation by Quebec police and family services, police said on Tuesday.
The video, apparently shot by the boy's father from the SUV's passenger seat as the boy drives and his mom and siblings watch from the back seat, was brought to the attention of Quebec Provincial Police on Monday, Sergeant Chantal Mackels said.
"We now know who the person is," Mackels said, noting charges are still being worked out.
Finding the family wasn't much of a challenge, given the father's enthusiastic narration of the video, including their location in Quebec and the boy's first name.
The woman in the back seat also calls out the father's name, apparently urging him not to distract the child. During the video, the father calls out to "Samuel" to smile for the camera. The boy, chewing gum, obliges.
The father also panned the camera into the back seat of the vehicle to show the mother, with an unrestrained young girl on her lap, and an older boy.
Police are considering both criminal charges and traffic violations and have also contacted the province's department of child protection to investigate the family, Mackels said.
And while she's seen cases of children driving under the legal age of 16 years before, Mackels said she's never come across a case where the evidence is supplied online, by the perpetrator's proud father.
"Like this, on YouTube? No. This is a new one for me," Mackels said.
JOLIET, Ill. — Drowsy spectators in one suburban Chicago courtroom might want to stifle their yawns from now on. Clifton Williams, 33, of Richton Park, is facing six months in jail for making what court documents call a yawn-like sound in Will County Judge Daniel Rozak's court last month. The yawn happened as Williams' cousin, Jason Mayfield, was being sentenced for a drug charge on July 23.
Rozak found Williams in contempt of court and sentenced him to six months in jail. However, Rozak could free Williams after a status hearing Thursday, if Williams apologizes and the judge accepts. By then, Williams will have served 21 days.
Witnesses disagree about whether Williams' yawn was out of line.
Charles Pelkie, spokesman for the Will County state's attorney's office, said the prosecutor in the courtroom at the time told him that what came out of Williams' mouth could hardly be called a "yawn."
"This was a very loud, boisterous, deliberate attempt on the part of this individual to disrupt the proceedings and show disrespect to the court," Pelkie said. "It was not a guy who involuntarily yawned. This guy was making a statement — a very loud statement — in court."
Mayfield disagreed, saying it was "not an outrageous yawn." Williams has written his family to say that he can't believe he's in jail "for nothing."
A message left for Rozak Tuesday was not immediately returned.
Six months is the maximum sentence judges can give for criminal contempt without a jury trial.
MIAMI (Reuters) - Police in a Florida city used the promise of economic stimulus checks to lure 76 people to their arrest on a variety of outstanding warrants.
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department set up "Operation Show Me the Money" to round up people wanted on charges ranging from second-degree murder to guns and drug charges to failure to pay child support.
Using the name of the fictitious "South Florida Stimulus Coalition," police mailed letters asking the suspects to call an undercover phone line and make appointments to claim their money. When they showed up at an auditorium and presented their identification, they were led to an area where uniformed police were waiting to arrest them.
Police said such roundups are safer and more efficient than serving warrants at people's homes.
"You totally control the environment whereas when you're walking up to someone's home there's an unknown factor there," Police Sergeant Frank Sousa said on Friday.
The operation ended on Thursday night and Sousa declined to say how much money the suspects were offered.
"They were not large dollar amounts," he said. "No one was promised thousands of dollars."
Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Governments charge taxes for all sorts of things such as earning money, buying property, flying in airplanes and getting gas. Now the French have come up with a new idea: a tax on being stupid.
This could be a huge windfall if applied generally. The French Foreign Ministry is proposing a very narrow law requiring citizens foolish enough to wander into international danger zones, regardless of public warnings, to pay at least part of the cost of their own rescue.
It’s an excellent concept. Teenagers who miss the last train home are told by their parents to pay the cab fare out of their own pocket money. So why shouldn’t thrill-seeking travelers pick up the tab for such obvious recklessness as sailing into the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden?
That kind of stupidity is what propelled the French into action. On three occasions since April 2008, French naval forces have had to save their citizens while sailing off the coast of Somalia. In a rescue operation earlier this year, one French hostage died as commandoes stormed his commandeered yacht. Three pirates were killed.
Diverting navy frigates and mounting raids like these cost a lot of money, at a time when France is trying to keep its deficit under control. No wonder Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner aims to spread the burden and share the responsibility.
Given the recent spate of diplomatic incidents caused by U.S. travelers in such far-flung places as Myanmar, North Korea and Iran, the U.S. might consider doing something similar.
“Proceed at your own peril” is a good motto in all sorts of situations, which should be expanded to “Proceed at your own peril, and on your nickel.”
Indiana Jones
This isn’t about aid workers, diplomats, soldiers or journalists, who take calculated risks to do dangerous and essential jobs. This is about amateurs doing risky things in countries that have little tolerance for mistakes.
The costs aren’t only financial. U.S. officials, including an ex-president, have had to clean up the mess created by our Indiana Jones wannabes. In some cases, the people who suffer most are the ones whom the intrepid travelers aimed to help.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s democracy movement, had 18 months added to her house arrest just because a 53-year-old Mormon from Missouri decided to swim across a lake to her doorstep. It’s not surprising that her supporters called John Yettaw the “wretched American,” or “the imbecile.”
How doubly galling for them to then find out that Yettaw, who was quickly deported from Myanmar, is planning to write a book about his ordeal. “Little did I know they were going to arrest her and put her on trial,” he told CNN last week.
Jeopardizing Sources
Stories are now emerging about how the two Los Angeles- based journalists who were rescued by Bill Clinton in Pyongyang may have jeopardized their sources in China while researching human trafficking out of North Korea. The concern is that the North Korean border guards, who nabbed the journalists seconds after they entered the communist nation, confiscated their notes, videotapes and contact numbers.
The three American hikers now being detained incommunicado by Iranian authorities, one month after they wandered across the Iran-Iraq border, need to be released before they are made to answer for getting lost in the mountains of Kurdistan. Given the stakes of the U.S.-Iranian relationship, it should be a requirement in that region to know where the border lies.
This isn’t about blaming the victims. Being held by North Korean border guards, Iranian or Myanmar interrogators is no joke. The U.S. and France are right to do everything possible to rescue their citizens.
No Excuse
Once they are home free, however, it is appropriate to ask some questions. Ignorance, inexperience -- or just being stupid -- is no excuse for taking foolish risks.
The French are right to try to make those who ignore warnings about dangerous places share the costs of their rescue, but there are other responsibilities to consider. Maybe there should be another law diverting proceeds from film rights, book deals and TV contracts to pay for their mistakes.
Former actress also claims Tom Cruise was Japanese in a previous life
TOKYO - Japan's next prime minister might be nicknamed "the alien," but it's his wife who claims to have had a close encounter with another world.
"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year.
"It was a very beautiful place and it was really green."
Yukio Hatoyama is due to be voted in as premier on Sept. 16 following his party's crushing election victory over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party Sunday. Miyuki, 66, described the extraterrestrial experience, which she said took place some 20 years ago, in a book entitled "Very Strange Things I've Encountered." Been to Venus When she awoke, Japan's next first lady wrote, she told her now ex-husband that she had just been to Venus. He advised her that it was probably just a dream.
"My current husband has a different way of thinking," she wrote. "He would surely say 'Oh, that's great'."
Yukio Hatoyama, 62, the rich grandson of a former prime minister, was once nicknamed "the alien" for his prominent eyes.
Miyuki, also known for her culinary skills, spent six years acting in the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theater group. She met the U.S.-educated Yukio while living in America.
A strong believer in spiritualism, Hatoyama said in a TV appearance earlier this year she met U.S. actor Tom Cruise — in a previous life.
"I have a dream that I still believe will come true, which is to make a film in Hollywood," she told a TV talk show in May. "The lead actor is Tom Cruise, of course. Why? Because I know he was Japanese in a previous life. Cruise encounter "I was with him then. So he would recognize me when I see him and say 'long time, no see!'" she said, though cautioned the program's young interviewer not to take her seriously.
Cruise starred in the 2003 film "The Last Samurai" which was set in Japan."I also eat the sun," Hatoyama said on the program, looking up with her eyes closed, raising her arms high as if she was tearing pieces off an imaginary sun. "Like this, hum, hum, hum. It gives me enormous energy."
She also has had a "Miracle Interview" column in the monthly spiritual magazine "Mu." Her columns were published last year in a book called "Most Bizarre Things I've Encountered," a compilation of interviews with 26 prominent people, including writers, scholars and culinary experts revealing their strange or spiritual experiences.
Comments
The good news is, publicity!
I posted this in here because it's amusing how incredibly naive parents can be sometimes.
You have sex in real life.
Why yes sir you are correct.
EDIT: Alternately, being a Death Knight / Paladin causes you to win at WoW, and lose at life and become sterile.
EDIT EDIT: Also alternately, you could be This guy. Best PvP video ever.
People have sex in WoW?
Why back in my day, rolling meant something. Kids these days just don't understand, they've got no respect for the elders...
For all of about 5 minutes...its not very interesting.
Arm the Senate!
Police: Fake officer tries to stop a real one
Fake cop. Real prison sentence.
Ill. man faces 6 months in jail for yawning
Bart: But we didn't enter any police raffle.
Homer: That doesn't matter, the important thing is we won.
Stimulus checks lure Floridians to their arrest
Stupidity Tax May Keep Dunces Out of Trouble
wait what