Category: Commentary

From the international news centre here at jimcofer.com… let’s do the news!

– Governments are at it again! Britain’s Race Relations Act 2000 apparently requires teachers to report any racist language thoughtcrimes committed by children as young as three, even if the kids have no idea what they’re saying; the U.S. Department of Energy apparently thinks it alone can decide what appliances Americans can buy in the future; and legislation has been introduced in Congress that would give the US government the power to shut down any piracy site anywhere in the world by invalidating their domain registration. One wonders how the U.S. would feel if say, China, could do the same to US sites. Regardless, more freedom down the drain, and no one seems to care.

– The Commonwealth Games are a sort of “mini-Olympics” held between nations of the (British) Commonwealth every so often. India is up to host the games this year, and it looks to be a complete disaster so far. The linked article has several pictures showing filthy bathrooms and beds with animal footprints in the athletes’ quarters, exposed electrical cables and giant holes in buildings, and child laborers working furiously to get stadiums ready for the games. Epic fail, India!

– On the other hand… the Chinese are known for ripping off the intellectual property of Western companies… but now China has duplicated an entire British private school, even down to the uniforms and house names.

– I have vague memories of seeing Burger Chef restaurants on interstate highways during family car trips when I was a kid, although we never stopped at one. Did you know that the chain was once America’s second largest fast food chain, second only to McDonalds, and then only by a couple hundred restaurants? What’s more amazing, the chain completely vanished almost overnight in the 1980s. Read more about it here.

– UNC is considering installing rails on the 8,500 bunk beds on campus after a woman rolled off one and died recently. No word on whether the “university” is considering requiring binkies, naptime and Baby Einstein videos as well.

– Remember Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who went nuts and left down the emergency slide not too long ago? Well, it seems that two different government agencies have interviewed everyone who was on that plane, and no one – not a single passenger or crew member – backs up Slater’s version of the story.

– One of the huge downsides to the smoking ban in restaurants here in North Carolina is there’s no longer that informal barrier between smokers (without kids) and families (with kids). So now you go out to eat and someone’s demonspawn runs around yelling and screaming, making dining out a far less pleasurable experience than it once was. However, a restaurant in Carolina Beach is fighting back, banning screaming children from the premises. Can I get an AMEN?

– When you were a kid, did you ever sort through a box of Lucky Charms to get a bowl full of mostly marshmallows? Well, sort no longer, my friends: a company is now selling bags full of just the marshmallow bits. Prices start at $7 for two 7 ounce bags of the glorious stuff and go all the way up to $400 for a 95lb bag. Man, if I ever win the lottery, I’m so buying a 95lb bag of cereal marshmallows!

– For some time now, I’ve been for abolishing the penny and nickel. It’s just simple math, folks: it costs the US Mint 1.7¢ to make each 1¢ coin, and it costs the mint 9¢ to make each 5¢ coin. And not only that, pennies and nickels are basically worthless. I challenge anyone to go to a store and find anything for 1¢ and anything for 5¢ that isn’t “penny” candy! But don’t just take my word for it, watch this video from a guy who understands economics… and talks really fast:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77C47XYm_3c&feature=player_embedded

From the “Holy Crap I have 84 tabs open in Firefox!” Department:

– Glass-bottomed boats are old school and boring. How about a glass-bottomed hot air balloon instead? Looks like freaky fun to me!

– Michael Dick (yes, that’s his real name) hadn’t seen his daughter since he divorced her mother a decade ago. Of course he’d looked for her, but all he knew was that she’d moved to Suffolk (the one in England). He gathered his two other daughters and they went looking for her. Michael contacted the Suffolk Free Press newspaper for help, and they sent out a photographer to snap some photos and get his story. Little did they know that Dick’s daughter ended up in the background of the picture!

– You’ve probably already heard this by now, but a man from Brewster, Massachusetts named Ron Sveden accidentally inhaled a pea one day (it “went down the wrong road”, as my grandma used to say). When Ron later complained of chest pains and difficulty breathing, his doctors were shocked to find that it had sprouted and was growing in his lungs!

– Archaeologists in the UK have found a house that is around 10,500 years old, making it the oldest dwelling ever found in Europe.

– Hey Google… whatever happened to “not being evil“?

– The Smoking Gun has pictures of the weed seized from Willie Nelson’s tour bus a while back. Yep, it’s a lot!

– Lastly, the Cassini spacecraft has captured some incredible pictures of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The moon has geysers that send water and ice into space, and it seems that Saturn’s faint G ring was created by those geysers. The pictures are beautiful – you should really check them out!