AUSTRALIA could be on the brink of a startling underwear revolution, thanks to Gold Coast couple Jan and Chuck Digney ("just your average mum and dad") and their invention: the backless brief.
Jan had a visible G-string problem and asked her daughters for advice.
"They said they freebag it, basically, `We don't wear undies Mum."
"Well," says Jan, speaking after a champagne-fuelled lunch to celebrate the launch, "there's got to be something out there to stop people from doing that".
She worked through 50-odd prototypes before arriving at a design that replaces the back with two bra-style straps under the bottom.
"It's like freebagging but you're protected," she says.
The challenge, says Chuck, is to get people to believe they stay up.
The couple has spent $300,000 on the first run of 35,000 and patenting the invention across the world.
A woman was sentenced Thursday to 10 days in jail for defying a court order not to smoke around her children. Tamara Silvius was banned last year from smoking around the youths, now ages 8 and 10, as part of a custody arrangement with her ex-husband. She allegedly violated the order during a trip to South Carolina for Thanksgiving. For that, Silvius was fined $500 and was given a 10-day suspended sentence on the condition she not do it again. But Silvius was back in court Thursday for violating the order a second time in June. Silvius, a pack-a-day smoker, claims the restriction violates her rights. A judge upheld the order in January, citing medical evidence of the effects of secondhand smoke on children. Silvius has appealed to the Virginia Court of Appeals. Mark A. Murphy, an attorney representing the children's father, noted that Silvius is free to smoke on days when the children are not with her.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/13/2004 16:51 Comments ||
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#2
I'm a pulmonary physician. I hate cigarettes. If I had my way I'd invent the perfect tobacco phage virus, and then learn to fly an agricultural biplane, the kind with the sprayer tanks. I'd fix the tobacco problem real quick.
That said, this is idiotic. We should NOT throw people in jail for being addicted to tobacco. The "evidence" of second-hand smoke is, in my estimation, er, a lot of smoke. It's nebulous, not done very well, and all we really know for sure is, "a lot of second hand smoke might be bad for you. Or not."
Far better use of our resources would be to give this woman a few months supply of nicotine patches and Zyban.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/13/2004 21:19 Comments ||
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#3
I can't believe that the Nanny Police State of Liberalism has gotten its claws so deep into our country, but I guess it has.
Pitiful.
Land of the Free? Think again.
They say tobacco can ward off Alzheimerâs. Is that true? Is it just cigarettes (with all their additives that are cancer causing)? Can you get the benefits, without the risk, by smoking cigars/pipes with ânatural, unalteredâ tobacco? Just really curious.
Regarding this story, I agree these guys are going overboard â health and moral choices should not be bench decisions. However, the real problem is that this lady apparently agreed to a custody order whereby she would not smoke around her kids (e.g., "banned . . . from smoking . . . as part of a custody arrangement"; most likely a divorce settlement, with negotiated terms and conditions, later approved as an order). Now, I would guess, the issue is more one of contempt of court than the science of smoking. What this lady shouldnât have done was agree to the entry of an order, and then go ahead and violate it. What she should do now is either abide by the order, or go back into court to get the order modified.
Dedicated to Muck4doo
Hikers in Australia are being warned about a fierce new breed of half-dingo wild dog stalking the country's mountains and forests. Insert joke about Australian women here: Dedicated to .com.
Abandoned or escaped domestic dogs such as rottweilers, bull mastiffs and Rhodesian ridgebacks have interbred with Australia's native dog to produce a new strain of "super-dingoes". So...now...they are basically horses that attack, right?
The cross-breeds are bigger and more powerful than ordinary dingoes. One animal recently shot dead by a farmer reportedly weighed 154lb. They are killing livestock and menacing walkers, horse riders, Australian men, and campers along the Great Dividing Range, a chain of mountains, gorges and national parks extending from Queensland through New South Wales to Victoria. "They are extremely ferocious," Brian Tomalin, of the New South Wales Farmers' Association, said. "There's a real possibility that someone is going to be killed by one of these things, especially if they stumble on a den." So, really, why all the concern?
The dogs have killed so many sheep that in some areas farmers have had to switch to cattle. Eeeew. That's not an image I want to be left with! Oh, he meant that the farmers were farming. Sorry I thought he meant...
Posted by: Dragon Fly (on vacation) ||
08/13/2004 8:44:55 AM ||
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#2
"One animal recently shot dead by a farmer reportedly weighed 154lb."
Shot dead with a slingshot or a bow? Or did the farmer somehow manage to keep a gunpowder type weapon in Australia?
#3
I bet it wouldn't be funny if the animal was barking at your door.
Why not try to sympathize? Those poeple are afraid for the lives of thier children, and themselves, and so would anyone human.
#4
I hate it when they call ranchers "farmers". You don't plant sheep seeds or spray pesticide on neat, straight rows of cattle!
Oh, and the obligatory: Super Dingoes--Why do they hate us?
Posted by: Dar ||
08/13/2004 11:48 Comments ||
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#5
Gentle--Great points! Why don't we convert the dingoes to Islam?
Posted by: Dar ||
08/13/2004 11:49 Comments ||
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#6
Have any of you noticed that I have never verbally offended any of you.
(I know: You're offended by the mere presence of a Muslim)
I don't think its fair, thats all. (I mean the way you never endingly fail to be polite)
Don't get your feathers ruffled. You are correct on this one.
And, as much as I like dogs, people first! As I understand it, farmers can have rifles / shotguns in Australia, so I think the doggy is in the Ken-L-Ration afterworld with a bullet in his noggin.
This isn't like my German Shepherd who whimpers and sympathetically licks my 3-1/2 yr old son when he cries.
The cartoon caracter I pictured above, in spite of his appearance, is friendly, and on Disney's cable channel.
#10
Gentle--It's called "sarcasm". Deal with it. I don't follow your comments enough to bother with really posting something offensive!
Posted by: Dar ||
08/13/2004 12:09 Comments ||
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#11
Isn't that sweet of you?
I see you managed to follow my last ones very well though.
By the way:
This is not sarcasm, most of you have crossed that line a long time ago.
See? You're catching on already! I'm so proud of you!
Posted by: Dar ||
08/13/2004 12:16 Comments ||
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#13
Gentle,
this is not a gentle bunch, there are really only three ways (that I've counted anyway) to get good treatment on the forums,
the first way is to base your arguments on cold hard logic and recognizing when others make a valid counter point (even if it does not change your personal opinion). Doing so would gain you some respect and treatment will improve, though people will still jump on your arse if you say something stupid/go crazy. (this stuff really is not out of cruelty, it's in the interest of maintaining high standards in debates that we drive off people who can not form consistent logical arguments)
The second way is to make your comments humor-orientated, this takes you out of the realm of debate and folks will not be ass judgmental (though you will get snarky remarks relative to current events based on past arguments, tho just ignore it every time and they will get bored)
the third (one I frequently apply to my own posts ) is to type up your post and then close the window without hitting 'submit'(this method is important because it prevents you from making an ass of yourself and being "just another nutter" in rantburgers' eyes)
I kinda liked gargoyles too, but it has the same limitations all american cartoons have ( no set story line with an end) so I got bored after a few episodes, âs too capitalistic to be any good
#19
the third (one I frequently apply to my own posts ) is to type up your post and then close the window without hitting 'submit'(this method is important because it prevents you from making an ass of yourself and being "just another nutter" in rantburgers' eyes)
What I should do more often. To avoid the OMGDIWT Syndrome (o my gawd did I write that?).
#21
Not all farmers and ranchers in Australia can have firearms. There was an article posted (maybe here?) not long ago about a rancher in Australia whos reduced to killing injured animals with a hoe because his shotgun had been confiscated. The general population of Australia, so I understand, can not own a firearm of any kind. If I'm wrong on this please excuse me. Gentle, I understan Muck perfectly well. Muck speaks English, he just can't type very well.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/13/2004 14:46 Comments ||
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#23
Better treatment at Rotweiler? Great god awmighty, those people eat anyone alive that has politics to the left of Genghis Khan. Spit out the bones. Got no sense of humor when someone rags them either. Cruel, cruel.
#24
DB:
Shotgun confiscated?
I thing the Australian Gun LAws are too much, but if you look at the rules, unless that rancher had violated some other law, he should have been able to have a shotgun.
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.
(loony-archivist.com)
