NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - Mexican fishermen captured a 7.5-foot crocodile in the Rio Grande, the river that divides part of Mexico and the United States, authorities reported on Sunday.
Illegal migrants from Mexico frequently swim or ride inner tubes across the Rio Grande to reach the United States. Crocodiles do not normally inhabit the river, and authorities suspect it may have been brought to the area as a pet and then released into the river by its owner.
#2
Ick. No doubt Tom Cruise believes he needs to control production of his image in matters both great and small, lest it become generic like Kleenex or Xerox, but still.
although Mr. Cruise endorses regular high colonic cleansing and Vitamin K enemas, he is offended by the notion of butt plugs in general and of those with his face on them in particular."
Trey Guccione, CEO of Holesome Fun, responded angrily to Mr. Cruise' lawsuit.
"Like I'm sure Tom's never been shitfaced before," said Mr. Guccione. "He can take his lawsuit, hold it sideways, and stick it where the sun don't shine."
This is a joke "story," right?
Please tell me it's not real.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
10/09/2006 11:28 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Please tell me it's not real.
I think it's an Onion-like mag, given the headlines in the sidebar. Or, at least, I hope...
#13
As long as the butt plugs were caricatures of the celebrities, not accurate reproductions taken from copyrighted materials, they cannot be stopped.
In fact, celebrity butt plugs could become a big deal as novelties. Imagine if just before the first democrat primary debate, someone sold these "cute little dolls" to the unsuspecting crowd.
Only later would they find out that they bought a butt plug of their favorite candidate.
Then whoever sold them could publish which democrat candidate was most popular, based on the number of butt plugs their followers purchased.
...and Karl Rove's "Bwahahahaha!" is heard, far off into the night.
In Saudi Arabia, a gawky teenager is transformed into a hulking creature. In Paris, a historian chases legends about mystical gemstones. In South Africa, a boy discovers a sparkling rock with healing powers. The characters are from a new genre of superheroes endowed with Muslim virtues and aimed at young Muslims in a comic book series called The 99. Launched in July, it is being billed as the worlds first superhero project drawn from Islamic culture.
Its creator, 35-year-old Naif Al-Mutawa, admits the series -- based on 99 heroes who embody the 99 attributes of God in Islam -- is tricky in a religion where attempts to personify Gods power can spark protests and even death threats. But the U.S.-educated Al-Mutawa hopes to create a new Islamic pop culture. His Kuwait-based company is also rolling out classic US comic books -- from Archie to Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk-- to the Middle East in the Arabic language.
On Thursday he won the crucial blessing of Muslim clerics who manage a Bahrain investment bank. It approved US$25 million ($35 million) to help finance his company, Teshkeel Media Group, and pay for plans to launch an animated The 99 series for television.
Continued on Page 49
#5
Next year, they will introduce a Snow Imam, dressed in red with a sack full of gifts for little boys and girls. He will be riding a majic carpet pulled by flying goats.
#10
"It kind of left me with the hollow feeling that we dont have any heroes in that part of the world," he said. Know how you feel, I don't have any heroes in that part of the world either
Oil has been discovered in western Uganda after years of exploration, the president announced today, saying he expected production to begin in 2009.
President Yoweri Museveni said the country plans to build an oil refinery, with Uganda initially producing between 6,000 to 10,000 barrels a day. He did not give details of how the oil will be produced, saying only that Uganda has studied various oil production contracts around the world. The government will use some of the oil to produce electricity, Museveni said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/09/2006 00:00 ||
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EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - US ex-vice president Al Gore has said he understands Europe's frustration over his country's reluctance to ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change - but insisted that both superpowers could still unite over the issue as support for green goals is rising across the US.
Speaking in Brussels on Sunday (8 October) and presenting Belgium's premiere of his global-warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," Mr Gore pointed out that despite the EU's leadership, the bloc still has a lot to do - in terms of energy saving and reducing CO2 emissions - to face "by far the most serious crisis that we have ever faced."
In line with the scientific research highlighted in his movie, Mr Gore suggested the world is currently going through a "full-scale planetary emergency."
"Our planet has a fever. And the fever has been going steadily higher and it's not going away," he added.
"I understand your frustration over the fact that the US had taken the wrong path," on this subject he said, referring to the current Republican administration's opposition to the Kyoto treaty as the country's "moral lapse."
EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, also present at the event co-organised by the Brussels-based think tank the Lisbon Council, noted that the world needed "the full involvement" of the most powerful country.
"A crucial next step will be for the United States to realise that it is in their own interest to lead the fight against climate change," he said, adding that he wished Europeans could vote in the US presidential elections to influence the country's policies that affect the globe.
The Brussels-based audience gave a loud cheer to Mr Dimas' comment referring back to the 2000 presidential elections when Mr Gore, under the Democrat administration of Bill Clinton, lost to his Republican competitor, the current president George W. Bush.
Mr Gore - who presents himself as someone who "used to be the next US president" in the movie - said there is now a growing support for the commitments of the Kyoto protocol in his country despite White House opposition.
This support includes nine states and over 300 cities that have opted to follow its goals sparking hope that a future US administration will join other nations either on Kyoto or its successor global treaty, according to Mr Gore.
The EU is responsible for around 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions today and its 15 "old" member states have committed to reducing them by 8 percent below 1990 levels until 2012.
This target has been translated into specific legally binding instruments for the EU countries.
By the end of 2003, emissions from the EU-15 were down 1.7% below 1990 levels while combined emissions from all 25 member states stood 8% lower, according to the European Commission.
An interesting perspective with actual statistics to back it up, in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com.
In one popular book about campus politics, the author writes, "We all know that left-wing radicals from the 1960s have hung around academia and hired people like themselves. . . . They spew violent anti-Americanism, preach anti-Semitism, and cheer on the killing of American soldiers and civilians--all the while collecting tax dollars and tuition fees to indoctrinate our children."
Most studies of the subject have indicated that, indeed, upward of 90% of college professors at many universities hold liberal political views. In some schools and departments, faculties are virtually 100% left-wing. It is one thing to lament this ideological lopsidedness in the academy. But it is quite another to assume that professors actually bend the little minds in their care toward a liberal point of view, or even a radical one. The evidence says, probably not: When it comes to politics, people from conservative families follow their parents, not their professors.
The most recent evidence on this subject comes from the mid-1990s, in the University of Michigan's National Election Studies. I would be interested to know how the numbers changed post-9/11. These survey data uncover two facts. First, people who go to college are more likely to vote Republican than those who don't go to college. Adults 25 and under from Republican homes are, for example, 11 percentage points more likely to vote Republican if they attended college than if they didn't. And young adults from Democratic households are 11 percentage points less likely to vote Democrat if they've gone to college than if not.
Second, nearly everybody grows more likely to vote Republican as they age--but especially college graduates. It is no shock that the vast majority of people of all educational backgrounds from Republican homes vote Republican by age 40. It may come as more of a surprise that 40-year-olds with Democrat parents are far less likely to vote Democrat if they've gone to college than if they haven't. In fact, while three-quarters of the uneducated group still vote Democrat, the odds are only about 50-50 that the college graduates vote this way. And they've not all become skeptical political independents: Fully a third are registered Republicans.
Obviously, some kids turn left in college--but this appears to be the exception, not the rule. Does all this mean that our colleges and universities are actually breeding grounds for conservatism? Hardly. What the statistics really show is that higher education by itself doesn't affect political views very much. Rather, in addition to the strong influence of parents, it is higher incomes--which typically reward a college education in America--that push people to the right politically. In Republican families, the income effect reinforces parents' influence on their kids. In Democratic families, the two effects work against each other.
While I wasn't worried about pontificating idiots actually converting the trailing daughters (they read Rantburg), that doesn't reduce the annoyance at having my [future] college fees, and the trailing daughters' learning time, thusly wasted.
Mr. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs, is the author of "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism," forthcoming in November from Basic Books.
#2
TW - Yeah, the idea of my dough being sent to bald pony-tailed idiots does gall. But my worries over the impact college professors would have over my sons while at college went away after a few weeks. During one of the all-to infrequent calls home, I asked about the professors. My oldest stated "Their &%$#@!*&$ a$$holes Dad."
#5
You spew nonsense all day to a captive audience and you will spawn two concequences (1) An ability to say what the teacher wants in order to get a good grade (2) critical thinking because at some point the nonsense will be obvious, thus making the rest of it suspect.
Critical thinking is all that I ask from our education system. Everything else is a bonus.
#6
I would tend to think that the real hysteric professors are in unmarketable disciplines like indian studies, sociology and similar crap.
In disciplines who lead to big bucks like engineering a) professors could be more conservative (otherwise they would be teaching a moonabat discipline) b) many of those disciplines don't lend well to indoctrination (eg maths, physics) and c) Pressure is greater both from alumni and university fpr professor really teaching instead of indoctrinating because ignorant and politicized students sell poorly in teh market and this affects univeristy's reputation and on the long term teacher's salary.
So I think the revenue effect is not so important for people becoming conservative than the vaccination effect. To take my own example after the Cambodian genocide I became very resentful against the people who had indoctrinated me and in addition were completely unrepentant of having supported the Khmer Rouge. Now I am a neocon.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico - Mexican fishermen captured a 7.5-foot crocodile in the Rio Grande, the river that divides part of Mexico and the United States, authorities reported on Sunday. 
In Saudi Arabia, a gawky teenager is transformed into a hulking creature. In Paris, a historian chases legends about mystical gemstones. In South Africa, a boy discovers a sparkling rock with healing powers. The characters are from a new genre of superheroes endowed with Muslim virtues and aimed at young Muslims in a comic book series called The 99. Launched in July, it is being billed as the worlds first superhero project drawn from Islamic culture.
Oil has been discovered in western Uganda after years of exploration, the president announced today, saying he expected production to begin in 2009.
