Hi Folks! I’m still looking for my muse, so enjoy some news whilst my writer’s block continues…
It looks like Morrissey is suing British music magazine NME for some comments he “allegedly” made. Moz was quoted as saying “Although I don’t have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. So the price is enormous. If you travel to Germany, it’s still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to England and you have no idea where you are”. Tim Jonze, the freelance journalist that interviewed Morrissey, claimed to be “offended” by the comments, but published them anyway. NME published a follow-up interview; in it, Morrissey dusts off the old “taken out of context” chesnut, but doesn’t deny making the comments.
The freedom-fighters at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published a study this week that shows that Comcast does, in fact, tamper with Bittorrent traffic. Read all about it here at Ars Technica. As to what “Bittorrent tampering” is, and why you should care, wait until next week when I publish a gigantic rant about the topic. It’ll be worth the wait, I promise!
This news is a bit old, but funny nevertheless: it seems that U.S. Air somehow never had a New Mexico liquor license. The airline realized its mistake after it was fined by the state for “over-serving” a passenger that drove himself home from the airport and killed a family of five in the process. The airline applied for, and received, a temporary license while it began the process of applying for a permanent one. But then another U.S. Air passenger was arrested for DUI – once again from drinks served in-flight. This, along with a third incident in which New Mexico liquor board members observed U.S. Air employees giving an obviously intoxicated man more alcohol, has led to U.S. Air’s liquor license being denied by the state. So, for the time being, alcohol is verboten on any U.S. Air flights coming from, or going to, New Mexico. Good job, guys!
Lastly, have you heard about the bracelet and the chicken? It seems that one Aaron Giles grew up in Fairmont, Minnesota, but often played with his siblings at his grandparent’s farm in nearby Sherburn. One day, when he was 4 or 5, he lost an ID bracelet that had his name and address on it. He never found it, and just wrote it off as something lost forever. His grandparents eventually passed away. Their barn was torn down and much of the barn’s wood was saved to build a new barn in the town of Elmore, around 45 miles away. Back in September Giles, now 31, received something in the mail… the ID bracelet! Theories abound, but the best guess is that Aaron’s bracelet somehow ended up getting trapped in the barn’s infrastructure. It survived the trip to Elmore and became part of the new barn. A chicken subsequently found and swallowed the bracelet – seeing as it was found in the guts of a chicken that had just been slaughtered. Olson Locker, the butcher that slaughtered the chicken, asked old-timers his native Fairmont about the Giles family and was eventually able to track down Aaron’s father in Scottsdale, Arizona. Aaron’s dad gave Locker his son’s address in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and the boy and his bracelet were reunited… after 25 years and one chicken’s belly!