Category: News

OJ Simpson was found guilty of all charges this evening. He will be sentenced to 15 years to life. He could die in jail. The verdict comes “13 years to the day after Simpson was cleared of murdering his ex-wife and a friend of hers in Los Angeles in one of the most sensational trials of the 20th century”.

For your amusement:

As you may know, there is a gas shortage in the southeastern United States at the moment. Gas is in short supply in Atlanta, Greenville, and my adopted hometown of Charlotte. If you’re looking for gas in the Charlotte area, I thought you might appreciate a couple of resources provided by the Charlotte Observer:

Here is a Google Map with gas stations listed. Pink pins are stations that have gas; blue pins are out.

Here is a Twitter feed called #cltgas that has updated lists of gas stations that have gas available.

Legendary actor Paul Newman died of cancer today at his home. He was 83.

Read the full obituary at the BBC here.

Jammie Thomas, the first “victim” of the RIAA’s legal jihad, is temporarily off the hook. Thomas, who was found guilty of copyright infringement and ordered to pay $222,000 in damages to the RIAA last October, was given a reprieve by Judge Michael J. Davis, who decided to overturn his previous ruling due to an “error” he made in giving instructions to the jury. As Ars Technica reports:

In a 43-page decision released late Thursday, Judge Davis wrote that the jury instruction in question was inaccurate. At issue was what he described as the “plain meaning” of distribution. “The Court’s examination of the use of the term ‘distribution’ in other provisions of the Copyright Act, as well as the evolution of liability for offers to sell in the analogous Patent Act, lead to the conclusion that the plain meaning of the term ‘distribution’ does not includ[e] making available and, instead, requires actual dissemination,” reads Judge Davis’ opinion.

The legal issues under consideration are far too complex to get into here. Suffice it to say that the RIAA’s main legal weapon – that simply having a file in a shared folder is copyright infringement, whether anyone actually downloads the file or not – has had a wrench thrown into it by Judge Davis.

Popeye’s Chicken and Biscuits, a popular fried chicken chain here in the South, is getting a makeover. The restaurant will now be known as “Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen”, in order to better reflect its Crescent City roots.

Man… I’d kill for some of their spicy chicken, red beans and rice, green beans, and mac and cheese right now! Sadly, we don’t have any Popeye’s in Charlotte (we do have Price’s, the home of the world’s best fried chicken, but it’s too damn far away… and they don’t make a spicy version… and it’s take out only). Charlotte does have a single Church’s Chicken, but I stopped eating there once the Muslims bought it and took all the pork off the menu. Fuckers. Sigh. Bojangles it is, I guess.

For the record, Popeye’s was named after Popeye Doyle, Gene Hackman’s character in The French Connection, and not the spinach-lovin’ cartoon character.

The Obama campaign is showing its ugly side with this ad:

Prominent in the ad are the words “[h]e admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail…” This, my friends, is bullshit, plain and simple. Of course John McCain knows how to use a computer and send an email. He was Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee, and more recently served on the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Innovation. This Forbes article from 2000 says that McCain is

regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy.

But here’s the thing: due to the injuries he received while being tortured by the Vietnamese, it is excruciatingly uncomfortable for him to type or use a mouse. So he normally has his wife or a staffer type out his responses while he dictates to them. He can use a computer all by himself, but normally doesn’t.

Way to keep it classy, Obama!

Oh, now this is just horrific: when 57-year-old Teresa Olaya died, her husband Miguel arranged for the body to be shipped to her hometown of Guayaquil, Ecuador. Unfortunately for Migel, American Airlines lost the body for 4 days. When American finally found Teresa’s remains, she was “so badly decomposed… [that he] had to forgo a traditional open-casket funeral”.

It’s unclear what, exactly, happened here. Migel and his daughter Laura flew to Guayaquil ahead of the body to make arrangements. When the body didn’t show up, he was given contradictory information from American personnel, who told him at times that the body was in Miami, other times that she was in Guatemala City. What’s absolutely clear is that the body was not refrigerated. At all. “When I opened the casket, it was a terrible shock,” said Olaya. “I still can’t get it out of my mind”. It’s unclear whether Teresa’s body had been embalmed (it was picked up from a mortuary in Brooklyn, but the original article doesn’t say if embalming took place there or not). I also don’t know if embalmed bodies need refrigerating.

Dear God, people! What the hell happened here? This isn’t your average Samsonite bag we’re talking about here… it’s a giant fucking cardboard box with “HUMAN REMAINS” stamped in big letters on the side! American isn’t talking – Migel is suing for millions, and American won’t comment on “pending litigation”.  So we have no idea if the body was shuffled from airport to airport, held up in customs, or misplaced in an unheated warehouse for those four days.

This is, quite frankly, one of the most pitiful stories I’ve ever heard. It seems that American Airlines can even screw you over in death!