Archives for March 2012

Please enjoy our History of Easter a week early.

There once was this guy named Jesus. He spent an inordinate amount to time trying to get people to be nice and respect each other. A good example would be found in this bon mot; “If anyone says, I love God, but hates the brothers or sisters, he is a liar … Whoever loves God must also love the brothers and sisters.” (I John 3:20, 21). He also tossed off these nuggets in Matthew 5:0, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” In return for his troubles he was nailed to a cross and killed. Then this guy named Joseph of Arimathea wrapped the body in a piece of linen cloth and buried him in a cave. Three days after that He either rose from the grave and went to the right hand side of His Father (Mark’s version) or He hung out for a few weeks and did dinners and parlor tricks with wounds (John’s version).

Either way a couple hundred years later this cat named Eusebius claimed that he had transcribed and translated a letter in the Syriac chancery documents written by the king of Edessa. Don’t worry, this will all tie together in the next sentence. The letter written, allegedly, by King Abgar of Edessa was to Jesus, asking him to come cure him of an illness, purportedly a venereal disease. Jesus apparently replied by letter, saying that when He had completed His earthly mission and ascended to heaven, He would send a disciple to heal Abgar. We do know that King Abgar was healed and ruled for many years after this. Tradition says that, although none of the letters mention this fact, he was healed by touching the burial cloth that bore the image of Jesus. Currently known as the Shroud of Turin.

Now you can clearly see why the holiday is celebrated with bunnies and candy.

Wait, what? You can’t? Believe it or not the seeds of bunnies and candy are in those opening paragraphs.

Confused? That’s okay. Lots of people are.

See, the cat I mentioned before, Eusebius, was one of those people who was a convert to this new religion. He was a convert because the evangelical wing of Christianity was venturing into realms they’d never been to before. Unlike the days when Saul who became Paul was preaching to the great unwashed and saying that circumcision was just a state of mind, the Christians of this later day were wandering into areas where no one had the slightest clue about monotheism. Jesus was a Jew and Jews only have one God which is what monotheism means. Many Roman citizens knew about Zeus and he was the one big god over all the lesser gods. Not really monotheism but close enough for rock and roll. It got the conversation started. And when the Caesar of the day had Mark write his gospel so they could understand what Peter was going on about, they laid the groundwork for their own conversion.

But what is now Eastern Europe was populated by a wide variety of pagan tribes. And many of them worshiped this goddess named Ostara a/k/a Eastre. She was the goddess of fertility. Not just human reproduction, but flowers blooming, sheep making lambs, crops being planted and so on.

Now we get to step to the side for a moment and talk about, oddly enough, menstrual cycles.

Don’t worry, it’s nothing creepy or weird.

You see Jews, and many pagans, follow a Lunar calendar. It’s a nice, holistic, way to stay in tune with the planet, know when to plant your crops, gauge your wife’s fertile times and so on. It also moved dates around a bit since there the full moon’s appearance isn’t exactly clockwork. It was exactly this kind of mamby pamby stuff that Christians then were trying to stop with their adherence to a solar calendar and conversion, occasionally forced, of pagans into believers.

So, while Eusebius was transcribing his famous letters, missionaries were trying to convert a large group of Germanic pagans to the faith. The problem they had was that, instead of the theological battle they expected, the pagans really thought the whole Jesus thing was great. But, and this was a big BUT for the Catholic Church, they saw no reason that Jesus and His Father couldn’t hang out with all the other gods they’d been introduced to. Amon Ra? Come on down! Zeus and Apollo? Party on guys! And so on.

And Eastre. Especially her. You see, to the pagans, Jesus’ resurrection was the same as what happens every spring to the land. It is reborn. And they celebrated that rebirth every year with festivals and symbols. And no symbols more clearly say “Let’s have lots of sex and populate the lands” better than rabbits and eggs.

And since they were already celebrating rebirth, adding a resurrected Jesus to their party just made sense. To them anyway. To the Church it was a horror. And the Church spent a couple hundred years trying to make them stop.

As you walk through your local Wal-Mart and see the baskets full of bunnies and colored eggs and so on you can tell how successful they weren’t.

It didn’t help that Passover tends to fall around the time of their spring rites. Nor did it help that the Church needed bodies for taxes and military support. To keep everything moving forward the occasional blind eye, as it were, got turned.

So, just like Valentine’s Day and Christmas, pagans are responsible for some of the most enduring symbols of modern religious holidays. There are those who argue, and I think rightly, that had the Church not let the pagans add their celebrations to the standard religious holidays there may not have been any church at all. Or, if it did exist, it would be more of a novelty religion like Zoroastrian.

Also a monotheistic religion, and older than Judaism, in case you’re curious.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

I love people. They do the funniest stuff and then are happy when I write about it. Seriously, my job often consists of waking up, having my coffee and then laughing my butt off. When I calm down I share with you. And only you. I don’t like that creepy dude back to the left. Just you. And, I know that you (and only you) really like when I talk about Florida – the state that makes your weird uncle Elroy look employable – and I can understand that. You also seem to enjoy the science stuff as long as I don’t get too carried away with it. You and I have agreed that I will avoid the political stuff as much as possible. That’s a dark place no one wants to visit. Still, that leaves me a lot of leeway when it comes to subjects. You and I have discussed the joys of sexbots, psychotic Nazis and aliens in the same article, BOOBS! and more. Much, much more.

And today will be no different. We’ll start our day with every young boy’s idea of the perfect pet. Nine pound Gambian rats that invaded Florida. Of course, you knew they would only invade Florida.

When it comes to giant rat infestations, New York gets all the attention.

But a breed of giant Gambian rats have been rapidly reproducing in the Florida Keys despite a decade-long effort to wipe them out. KeysNet reports the invasive African native species first began showing up between 1999-2001 after a local exotic animal breeder released eight of the rats into the wild.

“We thought we had them whipped as of 2009,” said Scott Hardin, exotic species coordinator for Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “We think they have not moved far but they clearly reproduced,” he said.

The rodents, officially known as the Gambian pouched rat, are the largest known breed of rats in the world. They can grow up to three feet in length and weigh as much as nine pounds. Wildlife officials fear that if the rodents make it to the Florida mainland, they could devastate local crops.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been working with Florida officials to wipe out the rodents, and there are only an estimated few dozen at large, but they can reproduce quickly and do so only five months after being born. After producing a litter, the Gambian rat only has to wait another nine months before having another litter, bearing up to six babies at a time.

Officials thought they had successfully gotten rid of all of the Gambian rats back in 2008, but several of the burrowing creatures recently began showing up in the yards of local residents. “We were skeptical but went back and talked to people and [saw] there were rats that we missed,” Hardin told KeysNet.

Using cantaloupe and peanut butter as bait, officials plan to distribute another 200 traps in an effort to clear the keys of the Gambian rats, some of which are larger than the average house cat.

“We’re going to try to trap at least that often until we see signs that we have knocked them back,” Hardin said.

Trap? Alive? To what end? Oh, yeah, this is Florida, they need more vermin.

Like the guy who got arrested for calling the cops. How does that work, you ask while laughing? Easy, call 911 to whine that she’s screwing up your “hands on breasts” viewing pleasure. That’s right, she interrupted his Facebook time and he called 911. Even in Florida that’ll get you arrested.

Of course not all morons live in Florida. God was kind enough to sprinkle them all over the world so everyone could enjoy one. For example, this nice Austrian man comes to mind. He got a job, he didn’t want a job so he sawed off his foot and cooked it.

In a desperate bid to keep collecting unemployment, an Austrian man reportedly sawed off his own foot — and then cooked it, just to be sure it couldn’t be reattached and foil his plan.

Just before he was due for a health check with jobs officials, Hans Url, 56, of Mitterlabill, held his leg to his circular saw and sliced off his foot at the ankle, the Daily Mail reported.

He then tossed his severed foot into an oven to prevent doctors from possibly reattaching in his bizarre bid to remain on unemployment.

“The planning was meticulous,” police spokesman Franz Fasching said. “He waited until his wife and his adult son had left the house and he was alone.”

After he hacked off the foot, a profusely bleeding Url was airlifted to a hospital in Graz and almost died en route, according to a hospital spokesman.

“The food was too badly burned to reattach. All we could do was seal the wound,” the spokesman told the Mail.

That might not help the 56-year-old stay out of work, though, according to a spokesman for the Austrian Public Employment Service’s local job center.

“Even now losing a foot does not automatically mean he will not be able to work,” the spokesman, Hermann Gossinger, said.

“We will see what work we can find for him,” Gossinger added. “This is a tragic case but it will not help the man.”

According to the Daily Mail, Url had been required to come in that day for a medical exam to prove he was not fit for work, after Public Employment Service officials had become suspicious of his claim of a bad back.

Way to go from “being committed” to “should be committed” in record time. This is exactly the kind of deadbeat that Fox News is always warning us about. Well, except for the fact that he’s white and has a sexy Austrian accent (just like Hitler did) and doesn’t wear a hoodie.

Close enough I guess.

The whole “celebrity moms” who are rearing future serial killers is a blog for another day. Let’s just say that January Jones, Mayim Bialik or Alicia Silverstone should each have their children taken from them immediately.

If not sooner.

Because, as every World News Center reader (and that means you) knows, it’s just a tiny step from being fed like a demented bird to dressing up like a ninja to steal pot.

A pot delivery man in southern California said two men dressed as ninjas ambushed him while he was making a delivery of doctor-prescribed cannabis to a patient Friday night.

The man, reportedly in his 40s, told West Covina police he dropped a bag of marijuana and cash, which the ninjas took.

The two assailants were allegedly carrying batons and not a ninja’s trademark shuriken throwing stars, nunchucks or katana blades, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported.

Police said this is the first instance of a ninja-related crime in the area.

Let’s go through this step by step, shall we?

“A pot delivery man.” This is his job. He gets up in the morning, puts on a paper hat and gets in his pink and blue weedmobile and commences to avoid being unemployed.

Good for him.

Then he gets attacked by Ninjas.

Sure, and how many times did he use the word gnarly in his report to the police? And how do you call the insurance company and say “My weedmobile was attacked by Nijas and …”

That sound you hear is an insurance agent hanging up.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Yesterday we took a look at some incredibly dense people who clutter up our world. And I heard from people who really, really, wanted everything I wrote to be satire. Sadly, it wasn’t. There really are United States citizens who can’t find the U.S. on a map. There are also people who think that Back to the Future is a documentary. These people are, to be polite, morons. What kills me about each and everyone of them is that, when presented with proof that they are 100% wrong, they’ll just shrug and say “we agree to disagree.” No, no we don’t. Facts are not opinions. They either are or are not. You do not get to say “Ohh, I like this fact but not that one.” That’s not how facts work. Facts are what we build opinions on. Without them everything you say is meaningless. Which, as it turns out, applies to one out of five grown adults.

So let’s take a peek at some people who can declare, with 100% unshakable conviction, that they saw President Barack Obama rob a McDonald’s.

Or it might have been former President Ronald Reagan.

Was he Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama? Seems the people who witnessed a masked man robbing a Burger King restaurant in Lake Park, Fla., weren’t so sure.

Employees initially reported that a man wearing all-black clothing with red gloves and sporting a Ronald Reagan mask held up a Burger King at gunpoint on Tuesday morning, Palm Beach County sheriff’s office spokeswoman Teri Barbera told The Palm Beach Post News.

The robber, who had a woman accomplice also wearing a mask (president not specified), demanded money from the cashier and made off with about $400, according to the Miami New Times.

Detectives who reviewed the restaurant’s surveillance video determined the gunman was actually wearing a mask resembling Obama, the Palm Beach Post reported.

There was no explanation for the presidential discrepancy.

It’s not the first time a masked Obama bandit has struck a fast-food restaurant.

On Jan. 28, a man robbed a McDonald’s in Riviera Beach, also in Palm Beach County, while dressed in black wearing an Obama mask, according to the Palm Beach Post. This time, he had white gloves.

Sheriff’s officials didn’t immediately return a call to msnbc.com about whether they think the same person is responsible for both holdups.

All them there prezzidense look alike to me.

Oy freaking vey.

And, obviously, that can only happen in Florida. Just like getting bit in the butt by a bear while taking out the trash.

Also in Florida a woman seemed hell bent on setting the record for being the stupidest criminal in history by trying to smuggle tainted urine IN to a drug test.

A vagina, while typically thought of as an organ used for reproduction or sexual activity, has many uses, as is evident by the studious criminals often profiled on The Huffington Post. We have covered everything from the hiding of knives and marijuana pipes, to an innovative 27-year-old woman who allegedly stashed more than 100 items — including 54 bags of heroin and loose change — in her vagina.

So while the act itself comes of little surprise, the items female criminals will hide in their lady bits still tends to raise an eyebrow or two at the HuffPost Crime desk. Case in point: Mischelle Lindy Salzgeber, a 20-year-old woman from Dade City, Fla.

According to police in New Port Richey, Salzgeber, who is on probation for dealing in stolen property, attempted to thwart a drug test using someone else’s urine.

Salzgeber’s alleged crime may not be unique, but her technique is certainly interesting.

Authorities suspected something was amiss when they conducted a body scan of Salzgeber. The X-ray scan revealed Salzgeber had what appeared to be a pill bottle hidden deep inside her vagina.

Questioned by police, Salzgeber allegedly said the item was actually a small vodka bottle. The young woman said the bottle, which was empty, had contained another person’s urine and that she had tried to use it to pass a drug test at the probation office, police said.

Unbeknownst to Salzgeber, the urine that she allegedly used in place of her own was found to be dirty. The failed drug test led to Salzgeber’s arrest.

Salzgeber was arrested on a felony probation violation. She is being held without bond at the Land O’ Lakes Detention Center.

Of course, as you may already know, anything a Floridian can do a Nigerian can do better. Or, if not better, at least with a cooler accent.

Want to get noticed for a rock-solid stomach? Try ingesting almost five pounds of heroin pellets.

During a patdown, customs agents spotted a Nigerian woman at a D.C.-area airport on March 14 who had what was described as an “abnormally rigid” stomach, by U.S. Custom and Border Protection officials.

Security personel working at Washington Dulles International Airport became more suspicious of 52-year-old Bola Adebisi when she gave vague answers about her destination, according to authorities

That led to a brief, forced stay in a nearby hospital where an X-ray allegedly revealed that 180 drug-filled pellets gave her the firm tummy.

Adebisi was hospitalized until she passed all the drugs, which weighed in at 4 pounds, 12 ounces — touted as the largest bellyful of drugs found in the D.C.-area.

Customs officials put the street value of the drugs at $180,000.

This seizure crushes the previous record, set by in 2011 when Yomade Aborishade, 46, of Lagos, Nigeria expelled 100 pellets with a combined weight slightly over four pounds.

“The amount of pellets and heroin this woman ingested is incredible, a serious health risk, and very troubling if these numbers become the new normal,” CBP Port Director for the Port of Washington, D.C. Christopher Hess said in a press release. “We’re hopeful that this arrest sends a strong signal that CBP officers are proving to be successful at detecting internal concealment methods, and that we remain committed to working with our law enforcement partners and intercepting this deadly poison before it can reach our communities.”

Adebisi faces criminal charges.

“touted as the largest bellyful of drugs found in the D.C.-area” …. I did not know there was a competition between various “areas” for finding the moist prolific drug mules. What could they possibly win?

No, I really don’t want to know, but thanks anyway.

Let’s wrap this day up with proof that there’s hope for humanity. First, let’s take a look at a nice young lady who got good grades and was, therefore, promptly expelled from school.

A school that barred a sixth grader after she dyed her hair pink with her parents’ blessing to celebrate her good grades lifted its ban on Tuesday following an outcry from civil rights advocates.

After missing three days of classes, pink-haired Brianna Moore headed back to Shue-Medill Middle School in Newark, Delaware, on Tuesday after administrators reversed their decision after a call from the Delaware branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“We’re on our way right now,” said Kevin Moore as he drove his 12-year-old daughter to school.

At his daughter’s request last week, he helped dye her hair a shade called crimson storm, which has a pink hue, as a reward for improving her grades.

But when she showed up for school the next day, she was sent home and told not to return until her hair met school policy mandating a “natural color, brown, blond, black, natural red/auburn.”

The ACLU soon got in touch with attorneys for the school district and asked, “Don’t you think this is unconstitutional?” said Kathleen MacRae, ACLU executive director in Delaware.

Moore was invited back to school with assurances she would not be punished, said Wendy Lapham, school district spokeswoman.

“The hair is not going to be an issue,” Lapham said.

Next schools will regulate skin tone.

“I’m sorry Ms. Whiffenpooof, you’re too tan to learn today.”

Of course schools exist not only to teach our young but to crush their dreams and rip their souls out of their chests.

First the story of the happy youth who was trying to better himself and the world around him.

This prom season, Minnesota student Mike Stone is on a mission to bring a special lady to his high school dance: a porn star.

The situation might call to mind scenes from the 2004 movie “The Girl Next Door,” in which three teens take porn stars to prom as part of a plan to film a modern sex-ed video. But it seems this Minnesota student just wants to stand out on his special day.

In an interview with the Daily Dot, Stone said many of the girls he asked to prom were already going with someone else. So, he took a different route and hopped on Twitter to contact some adult film stars.

After nearly 600 Tweets, at least two porn stars have offered to take Stone up on his offer.

Megan Piper, who never made it to her senior prom, said she’d be willing to attend the dance as long as Stone took care of the travel costs from Los Angeles.

“If you can get me there, then yes :),” she tweeted.

And adult film star Emy Reyes was honored by Stone’s proposal and responded by saying, “Awww that’s reappear [sic] hun and i would love tooo.”

Now, the teen’s next mission is to raise about $400 to buy his possible date — who, as of late Tuesday afternoon, appears to be Megan Piper — a plane ticket to Minnesota for the big night on May 12.

Piper said she’s excited about the possibility of attending the dance with Stone.

“I thought it was really cute, and I thought it would make his night by saying ‘yes’,” she told The Huffington Post.

The 19-year-old moved from Georgia to Kansas during her senior year of high school and couldn’t attend her own prom. She even had a navy dress with a corset top picked out for the occasion.

“It was so cute,” she recalled. However, if she does fly to Minnesota, Piper says she’s using the opportunity to shop for a new gown.

When asked about the possibility of Emy Reyes attending the dance, Piper said she was open to sharing the spotlight with her friend.

“If she decided she wanted to go, too, that would be really cool,” Piper said.

As of a couple of hours ago, Stone, who says he’s 18, did not have a PayPal account set up to receive donations, but that might soon change with the amount of exposure he’s been getting.

However, the teen’s special date might very well be a surprise to his parents and principal, who reportedly have no clue what Stone has been planning, the Daily Dot reports.

As for Piper, the adult film star isn’t keeping her boyfriend in the dark about her potential date.

“He knows I love him so he doesn’t mind,” she said.

Regardless of how Stone’s plan pans out, he now joins the ranks of several teens who have taken extraordinary measures to secure a date to prom.

Much like Stone, 18-year-old Kevin McGuire used social media to secure a date with Taylor Swift. And although the songstress won’t be able to attend McGuire’s prom, she invited him to the Academy of Country Music Awards as her date.

Brady McHale, on the other hand, took advantage of his position as volunteer firefighter and executed his prom proposal atop a ladder truck positioned outside of his high school’s windows.

Ashley Shay decided to take a more public route, pitching her prom proposal on a local billboard.

**Sniff** Makes me proud to be a man. The youth does his “Y” chromosome proud. Naturally his dream was crushed some estrogen fearing flunky.

A Minnesota high school has reportedly barred one of its students from taking a porn star to prom.

Mike Stone, 18, said he scored his dream date after firing off tweets to celebrities and porn stars including former Charlie Sheen gal pal Bree Olsen.

Another porn star, Megan Piper, said she’d attend the May 12 event at Tartan High School in Oakdale on condition that Stone pay for her plane ticket from California, the Minnesota Star-Tribune reported.

But the plans were scuttled after a local community website got wind of the plans and Stone was hauled into the principal’s office, according to the Daily Dot Internet newspaper.

“He was saying that it’s not a good thing to do that,” Stone told the Daily Dot. “I said, ‘I was just doing it to see what actually happened.’”

In a statement to the Star-Tribune justifying the ban, the superintendent of Stone’s school district cited a policy that restricts those whose “visit is not in the best interest of students, employees or the school district.”

Stone told the Daily Dot he wasn’t punished by school officials, though his mother was furious with him after receiving a call from his principal.

Yeah, I can see a mom having an eensy weensy bit of an issue with the whole “My baby’s boinking a porn star” thing. Because, let’s face it, that’s where this whole thing was headed.

Bless his soul.

One thing’s for sure, neither he nor the pink haired lass above will ever fall prey to the whole “world is flat” brigade.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Mitt Romney, in an attempt to prove that the vampire minority was gaming the health care system with their demands for sunscreen, had himself bitten and transformed before a NYC rally. When he took the stage during the day to highlight how harmless UV radiation was to vampires he promptly exploded into millions of tiny, bloody, pieces. Several hours later Roger “Scooter” McDaniels – the only openly gay member of Romney’s campaign – burst into song, began dancing the Funky Chicken and screaming financial updates in Babylonian. He also, loudly, claimed that Mrs. Romney’s vagina was nicknamed “Love Puppet,” a fact she demurely confirmed as it became apparent to all that Scooter had been possessed by Mitt. Oddly enough, while Romney may have been unelectable while alive – due to his many conflicting views, slavish dedication to a financial philosophy that nearly bankrupted the nation three times and inability to truly understand that Americans need food to survive – the dead vampire / snappily dressed gay guy version of Romney has captured the country’s imagination. Polls show him now leading President Obama 53% to 42% with 5% of the country believing that The Hunger Games is a documentary.

The above is funny because it’s satire. The below is scary as hell because it’s not.

One in five Americans can’t find the US on a map. It’s that big blob just above Mexico if you’re still not sure. If that doesn’t help, ask a Mexican.

The same amount believe witches are real. The nice thing about these people is that you can tell them anything, no matter how outrageous, and they will believe you. They are really that stupid.

“No, it’s true, the only way to prevent your son from catching the measles is for your 19 year old daughter to have wanton sex with me for a month.”

“Whew, I’m so glad you got here in time!”

Not surprisingly the same number believe that the sun revolves around the Earth. These people are so bone crushingly dense that it defies logic. On the other hand you can bang their daughters too without fear of recrimination.

One if five Scots think the Loch Ness Monster is real. This in spite of a century’s worth of nothing to even remotely support that belief.

One in five humans think aliens are living among us. Because, as any scientist can tell you, all sentient life will have two arms, two legs and so on. Hell, some of them will even vote Republican. You’ll never be able to know.

“Mary, why does Bob keep a tank of methane in the bedroom?”

“It’s from his doctor, It helps him sleep at night.”

“Hmmm, maybe I should try that. My apnea is horrible.”

One in five Swedes believe in ghosts. Well, look at the bright side, one quick trip across the pond and you can be banging Swedish bikini team wannabes.

One in five Brits think light sabers are real. This story I have to share.

Light sabers from “Star Wars,” time travel and hover boards from “Back to the Future.” Many people in the U.K. believe all these things from science fiction and fantasy are, in fact, reality.

The results of a survey that opened National Science and Engineering Week in Britain last week reveal a fine line between science and fiction in the public’s eye.

Here’s what the survey reveals, according to Birmingham Science City, which created it. Note that in all cases, the respondents incorrectly believe the following:

• More than a fifth of adults believe light sabers exist.
• Almost 25 percent of people believe humans can be teleported.
• Nearly 50 percent of adults believe that memory-erasing technology exists.
• More than 40 percent believe that hover boards exist.
• Almost one-fifth of adults believe they can see gravity.

“We commissioned the survey to see how blurred the lines between science fact and fiction have become,” said Pam Waddell, director of Birmingham Science City.

“While films and TV can be acknowledged as creating confusion, it is also worth highlighting how advanced science has now become, and many things deemed only possible in fiction have now become reality or are nearing creation due to the advancements of science,” she added.

Some amazing feats of science have already started to bring us closer to science fiction than ever before.

While 78 percent of Britons believe that an invisibility cloak, such as the one seen in the Harry Potter movies, is merely fiction, University of Birmingham researchers are inching closer to making objects disappear.

And most people — seven out of 10 adults — think it’s impossible to move objects with the mind. But researchers at Coventry University’s Serious Games Institute collaborated with NeuroSky in California to develop a headset to read brainwaves and turn them into digital signals. Users of these “brainwave readers” will be able manipulate images on a screen through the power of their minds.

When the British survey asked what inventions people most wanted to see become reality, men voted for time machines and teleportation, while women hoped for something more practical: a universal cure for all diseases.

If you’d like to test your knowledge of science fiction and fact, take this very short Birmingham Science City quiz, and then compare your answers to how 3,000 others did.

National Science and Engineering Week runs through March 20 in the U.K.

“Jeez Bob, knock off the doughnuts, I can see your gravity from here.”

Of course, these are the same people who believe that Sherlock Holmes was a real person and God controls the stock market.

Or, as noted on The Hub Pages, one in five people is a moron.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

We, as a planet, are living the ancient Chinese curse regarding “interesting times.” People who were once relegated to the end of the bar where they could sport their tinfoil hats and demand that “someone do something about them things that done need stuff done to them” all while pouring salt in their beer are now being elected to office. Often while wearing their tinfoil hat and carrying their salted beer. We also live in a world where cultures, despite the kicking and screaming of the raging xenophobes, are blending. This is a mixed blessing. Our differences make us stronger but assimilation helps us understand our brethren better. Often times we find ourselves attempting to figure out which pieces of our culture to keep and which to discard. For example, just because it has been a tradition for all the white kids to wear black face at Christmas events, is this really how you want the world to perceive you from now on? And for those who answered yes, could you explain why without sounding really crazy? Thanks.

But all of the above is meant to frame what is about to come. Some people have just decided that the world needs one extra slot just for them. For example, Venus Angelic has taken cosplay to a whole new level.

A lot of girls enjoy dressing up their dolls, but a 15-year-old London teenager gets her kicks dressing up like her dolls.

She’s Venus Angelic and she is becoming the latest Internet cult figure thanks to her bizarre YouTube videos. Angelic teaches viewers how to make themselves look like a ball-jointed doll and offers other strange makeup tips.

“Some people were asking me, ‘how do you do your makeup?’ and I decided to put a tutorial on YouTube,” Angelic told the cast of RightThisMinute, a daily syndicated TV show that focuses on the strangest clips hitting the Internet.

Angelic has been dressing up like her doll for two years and was inspired by a love of Japanese anime culture that started when she lived in Japan for a couple of years, according to RightThisMinute producer Betsy Gessel.

“She’s not Japanese,” Gessell told HuffPost Weird News. “But she spent some time there and it influenced her.”

It not only influenced her look, but also her voice, which sounds like a babyish version of Yoko Ono. Angelic insists it’s real.

“Yes, of course it’s my real voice,” Angelic told RightThisMinute. “I think [it sounds that way] because I speak five languages and all the accents mix together.”

Gessell, who spoke with Angelic at length is more skeptical.

“She’s not Asian. She’s western,” Gessell said. “Her mom had an almost German accent. I also think she really is a teenager, but, in some ways, she does seem wise beyond her years.”

As far as Angelic’s mom is concerned, she does approve of her daughter’s dollish ways.

“She actually thinks it’s cute to wear cute and frilly clothes,” Angelic said. “I don’t think that I will ever stop. I think I will grow in my style and just keep doing what I love.”

As Angelic grows in her style, Gessell predicts so will her popularity.

“She has influenced a lot of people,” Gessell said. “[Dressing like a doll] is something a lot of people think about and she’s making it safe.”

I’m missing something somewhere. What difference does it make if she’s Japanese or not? I know they invented cosplay, they also invented sushi, that doesn’t mean that they alone can like it. Anyway, as she grows older she’ll realize that the only money she can make with that look is in porn. Then we’ll either be gifted with some very odd porn or she’ll get a new hobby.

One young lady who has been forced to pit reality against fantasy is 12 year old Natasha Mora whose nickname is Rapunzel.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel isn’t just letting down her hair — she’s chopping it off for the first time in her life.

Natasha Moraes de Andrade, 12, has the fairy-tale nickname because her hair is 5 feet, 2 inches long. That’s less than two inches shorter than her body, the Sun reports.

The Brazilian pre-teen has never had a haircut. But the arduous task of brushing for an hour and a half each day and a $600 yearly shampoo bill have led Moraes de Andrade to finally agree to trim her locks.

“I love my long hair and I’ll be sad when it’s gone,” she said, according to the Daily Mail. “But it’s a pain looking after it. I can’t do a lot of things, like P.E. lessons at school.”

Moraes de Andrade told the publication she hopes to sell her hair for around $5,000 and use the money to refurbish her bedroom.

Though her wavy locks are strikingly long, Moraes de Andrade is a far cry from earning the world record for longest hair. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, that title belongs to China’s Xie Qiuping, whose measures a solid 18 feet, 5.54 inches.

According to the book, Qiuping has been growing her hair since 1973, when she was 13-years-old.

At least she’s using her loss for her gain as well.

Speaking of personal gains, new studies report that women experience orgasms while exercising. But only during specific exercises, so pay attention.

Women may not need a guy, a vibrator, or any other direct sexual stimulation to have an orgasm, finds a new study on exercise-induced orgasms and sexual pleasure.

The findings add qualitative and quantitative data to a field that has been largely unstudied, according to researcher Debby Herbenick, co-director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University. For instance, Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues first reported the phenomenon in 1953, saying that about 5 percent of women they had interviewed mentioned orgasm linked to physical exercise. However, they couldn’t know the actual prevalence because most of these women volunteered the information without being directly asked.

Since then, reports of so-called “coregasms,” named because of their seeming link to exercises for core abdominal muscles, have circulated in the media for years, according to the researchers.

“Despite attention in the popular media, little is known scientifically about exercise-induced orgasms,” the researchers write in a special issue of the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy released in print this month. [5 Myths About Women’s Bodies]

Herbenick and her colleagues used online surveys to gather their data, which included answers from 124 women who had experienced exercise-induced orgasms and 246 women who reported exercise-induced sexual pleasure. Most of the women, ages 18 to 63 and an average age of 30, were in a relationship or married and 69 percent said they were heterosexual.

The researchers found that about 40 percent of both groups of women had experienced exercise-induced pleasure or orgasm on more than 11 occasions in their lives. Most of the women in the “orgasm” group said they felt some level of embarrassment when exercising in public places.

The “orgasm” group mostly said during the experiences they weren’t having a sexual fantasy or thinking about someone they were attracted to.

Of the women who had orgasms during exercise, about 45 percent said their first experience was linked to abdominal exercises; 19 percent linked to biking/spinning; 9.3 percent linked to climbing poles or ropes; 7 percent reported a connection with weight lifting; 7 percent running; the rest of the first-time experiences included various exercises, such as yoga, swimming, elliptical machines, aerobics and others. Exercise-induced sexual pleasure was linked with more types of exercises than the orgasm phenomenon.

Answers to open-ended questions in the survey revealed some interesting details, the researchers found. For instance, the abdominal exercises tied to orgasms seemed to be particularly associated with the exercise in which a person supports their weight on their forearms on a so-called captain’s chair with padded arm rests and then lifts their knees toward their chest.

The open-ended questions also revealed the orgasms tended to occur after multiple sets of crunches or some other abdominal exercise rather than after just a couple repetitions; they also seemed to happen after the woman had really exerted herself.

“Many of these women talked about it happening even as children,” Herbenick said during a telephone interview, adding that some indicated an experience at age 7 or 8.

“We had at least one woman in the study who was a virgin, and she really loved that she could have these experiences at the gym,” Herbenick said. [10 Surprising Sex Statistics]

The researchers aren’t sure why certain exercises lead to orgasm or sexual pleasure, though Herbenick hopes to tease out the trigger in ongoing research.

“It may be that exercise, which is already known to have significant benefits to health and well-being, has the potential to enhance women’s sexual lives as well,” Herbenick said, adding that it isn’t clear whether these exercises could actually enhance women’s sexual experiences.

The research has various implications regarding women’s sexuality. For one, orgasm and sexual desire have topped women’s list of sex concerns, with around one out of four women not reaching orgasm during sex. The researchers suggest “it may be that physical exercise has been overlooked in clinical approaches to women’s orgasm.”

Second, scientists have long debated the evolutionary context of the female orgasm and its link to sexuality and reproduction. However, if many women are experiencing orgasm during exercises not related to sex, then exercise-induced orgasm may reveal what orgasm does and does not have to do with sex or reproduction, the researchers note.

In addition, exercise-induced orgasms may be one way for scientists, and women themselves, to learn about the process of orgasm. “It may be one way for women to learn more about how their bodies work in that regard,” Herbenick said.

As for how other scientists may react to the finding: “I think from having talked with colleagues, while some people have heard of these [exercise-induced orgasms], many of our colleagues haven’t either,” Herbenick told LiveScience. “So I think that’s going to be interesting,” seeing the reaction. She added that some might question, “‘Is this a tooth fairy type of thing or does it really happen?’ I have no doubt that it happens.”

I could have saved them a ton of money. When my ex used to work out she’d come home with a glow like you wouldn’t believe. At first I thought she was cheating on me but, no, she was working on her “core.”

She had a wonderful core.

Of course there are other ways to self induce various feelings. Nokia is hoping that people are becoming so attached to their phones that they will tattoo the ringer into their flesh.

Today’s best smartphones still can’t alert human owners about an incoming call or text without either annoyingly loud rings or vibrations that can go unnoticed. That’s why Nokia would let smartphone owners feel the vibrations on their skin through a magnetic tattoo.

The touch-based twist on cellphone alerts surfaced in a Nokia patent filing reported by UnwiredView.com. If the tattoo idea ever became reality, it could mean an end to the days when a silenced cellphone means missing calls and text messages during a movie or music concert.

Smartphone owners could specify their mobile devices to send out patterns of magnetic pulses as shorthand Morse code for different phone alerts, according to the Nokia patent filing. A series of short, strong pulses might let the owner know about messages from a certain friends, while a weaker series of long pulses might signal that the phone’s battery is running low.

The skin tattoo’s ink could contain permanent magnets ranging from iron to magnetite. It could even use rare earth elements — such as neodymium — used as powerful magnets for hybrid car motors and computer hard drives.

If smartphone users don’t like the idea of a magnetic tattoo etched into their skin, Nokia’s patent allows for other choices such as a temporary magnetic spray, stamp, sticky decal or perhaps a wristband.

Nokia even envisions the possible use of paramagnetic materials that act as magnets only in the presence of an outside magnetic field. Such tattoos could prove a better choice for people with medical implants or others who have extra sensitivity to magnetic materials.

This latest example of haptic feedback technology — based on the sense of touch — also represents another way of connecting human bodies to everyday gadgets. Past ideas for merging humans and mobile devices have included turning human skin into multitouch controllers.

For those of you worried that the evil government was going to insert chips in us it must be a great relief to realize we’re going to do it to ourselves.

Maybe not.

Of course I can’t let you go through your day without introducing you to a moron, and today’s no exception. Homeland Security arrested a drug smuggler with the license plate SMUGLER at the Smuggler’s Inn and …. oh, just read it.

You would think a drug runner would know better than to get into a car with a personalized license plate with the letters S-M-U-G-L-E-R.

Or that she would think twice before booking a room at the Smuggler’s Inn, a mere sprint from the Canadian border.

Homeland Security agents received a tip in mid-December about a cocaine deal at a Pizza Hut in Bellingham, Wash., the SeattlePI.com reported, citing recently released court documents. They set up surveillance at the Pizza Hut and watched as a GMC Yukon with a driver and two passengers pulled in. The license plate read SMUGLER.

Agents followed the SUV to the Smuggler’s Inn, pulled it over and found, in a large, white box, nine bricks of cocaine weighing just under 24 pounds, the P-I reported.

One of the passengers, Jasmin Klair, 20, admitted that the illicit cargo was hers and agreed to cooperate with law enforcement officials, according to court documents. She explained to agents that she had been told to book at a bottom-floor room facing Canada at the Smuggler’s Inn, a bed and breakfast with rooms named “Al Capone” and “DB Cooper.” Klair wanted the “Captain’s Room,” about 150 feet from the border.

While agents interviewed her, she started receiving text messages from two men who had given her the job, the Vancouver Sun reported. Authorities prevailed on her to beckon the two men to the Smuggler’s Inn.

They arrived within minutes, the Sun reported, and made a run for it when police ordered them to stop.

One of the two men, Narminder Kaler, allegedly told agents that he would have received $2,000 for the deal, according to the Sun. He sorely needed it, he is alleged to have said, to pay off a $325,000 debt for losing 115 pounds of marijuana a year and a half ago.

Klair, 20, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiring to distribute cocaine, the P-I reported. She will be sentenced on May 29. Kaler and Gurjit Sandhu are in jail and face similar charges, according to the P-I.

Boulé, the Smuggler’s Inn owner and driver of the SUV, took the recent events in stride. Last year, 57 people were arrested going through his property.

“It’s part of life on the border,” Boulé said. “The officers go through on the hour every hour. There are sensors in the yard. We’re on camera where we live.”

Wow.

I guess her “Hi, I’m a drug dealer” neon sign was in the shop.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

First off, all of us here at the World News Center wish to pass our condolences along to the family of Yoda, the world’s ugliest dog, who passed away earlier this week. Fifteen years is a long time for a mutant chihuahua to live and Yoda seems to have done better than most. Even if its owners originally thought it was a rat. On the other end of the mortality scale we have the sad story of Germany’s Til Bunny, an ear-less rabbit who was crushed to death by a cameraman on its 17th day of life. The good news is that it was “a clean kill” according to the curator who was in charge of its well being. Speaking of the deceased, there is a growing phenomena of people who claim to be receiving emails from dead people. The emails have been duly scrutinized by a, self appointed, “paranormal expert” who avoided silly things like the scientific method and instead published a blog on the subject. If it’s on the internet it must be true. Right? Just like the computer that can read your mind. I figured that one out about two minutes after I saw it 15 years ago. Yet there are people who still stare slack jawed at their monitor and wonder how it’s done. And, yes, they are allowed to procreate and vote.

Of course not everything that people do with computers is benign. Just ask Anna Vargas who recently found out she has three husbands.

A New York City woman is trying to unwind an identity fraud in which someone used her birth certificate to arrange bogus marriages to at least three men from other countries.

Anna Vargas found out about the fraud when she applied for a marriage license in 2004 and was turned down on the grounds that she was already married.

One of her supposed husbands, from Ecuador, sued for divorce in 2009, before realizing she wasn’t the same person he wed in 1996.

A judge nullified two of the marriages in January. Vargas is still working to erase another one on New York’s Long Island.

Think about that for a second. This woman did nothing wrong, wants to do so something right and has been in court for almost eight years trying to accomplish that simple goal. She is, just FYI, still not married to the one guy she wanted to marry. Here’s hoping he has a very good sense of humor.

Of course, as police in Pennsylvania discovered, being legally married is no proof of sanity.

A Philadelphia family of four were taken into custody after allegedly stripping naked and praying in a parking lot at Upper Darby High School, authorities say.

Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said Sarah Butler, 44, and her children, Joanne Butler, 23, Bessie Butler, 22, and 14-year-old son were arrested about 1 p.m. Friday after being found inside a parked van on the school grounds, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Chitwood said the family had arrived at the school about 3 hours earlier to have her biological child released from school, the Delaware County Daily Times reported.

“Because she has no parental rights, school officials would not release the child and said she couldn’t take the child out of school,” Chitwood said. “They started singing religious songs and lay prone on the sidewalk at the entrance to the building.”

When school security ordered them to leave, they returned to the van and took off all their clothes, the Daily Times said.

“They disrobed between parked cars and were running around chanting prayers to Jesus,” Chitwood said. “They were running around the lot for 5 to 10 minutes. When police got there, they were in a van and locked their arms in defiant protest. They were chanting ‘Jesus is Lord.'”

The three adults were to be charged with defiant trespass, disorderly conduct and open lewdness, with the mother also expected to be charged with corruption of a minor, the Inquirer said. The teenager was placed with Children and Youth Services.

School Principal Chris Dormer called it a “rather bizarre incident” in an announcement made on the school’s Web site, the Daily Times reported.

Okay, seriously, what Bible are these people reading? And can the rest of us get a copy just so we can play along at home?

“Jesus loves Rihanna!”

“YEAH! Now she has to get naked!”

Come to think of it, I could learn to like that Bible.

Of course not all crazy naked people need Jesus to justify their behavior. Jason Russell, for example, seems to have decided that masturbating in public would be fun to do.

Jason Russell, the co-founder of Invisible Children, the advocacy group behind the “Kony 2012” viral video, was detained and taken by police to a medical facility for evaluation on Thursday morning after he was reported to be in his underwear, yelling incoherently and disrupting traffic in a San Diego neighborhood.

Law enforcement officials say there are no charges pending against Russell.

Lt. Andra Brown of the San Diego Police Department told The Huffington Post that a 33-year-old white male was not arrested but “transported to a local medical facility for evaluation and treatment.” She would not confirm the identity of the man involved in the incident, but various media outlets report that it was the 33-year-old Russell.

In a statement posted online, Ben Keesey, the CEO of Invisible Children, also confirmed that Russell had been involved in an incident: “The past two weeks have taken a severe emotional toll on all of us, Jason especially, and that toll manifested itself in an unfortunate incident yesterday. Jason’s passion and his work have done so much to help so many, and we are devastated to see him dealing with this personal health issue.”

According to the San Diego Police Department, officers responded to reports of a male in his underwear pounding his fists on the sidewalk and yelling incoherently, disrupting traffic in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego. Police said that one caller reported that the man was nude and could have been masturbating, but officers did not confirm that when they arrived.

Yes, there’s video via the link but I’m not going to post it here.

Mostly because I like avoiding lawyers. Of course, if they were Floridian lawyers I might risk it since they are clearly dumber than your average box of rocks.

They wore orange – and got fired for it.

So say four former employees of the Elizabeth R. Wellborn P.A. law firm in Deerfield Beach who were terminated after they came to work in orange shirts on Friday, the company’s pay day, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports.

They said they’ve worn orange shirts on pay days for the past few months so they would look like a group when they went out afterward for happy hour, the newspaper reported. Janice Doble, 50, of Sunrise said she was looking forward to the gathering after a busy week.

“Orange happens to be my favorite color. My patio is orange,” she told the paper. “My lipstick was orange today.”

Unfortunately for Doble and 13 other employees, an executive viewed things very differently. He told them that he understood there was a protest involving orange, and because they were all wearing the color, they were fired, the Sun Sentinel reported.

One person immediately denied being part of a protest and explained the happy hour connection, but after the law firm’s honchos discussed the matter outside the room, they returned and said everyone was fired, said Lou Erik Ambert, a litigation paralegal.

“There is no office policy against wearing orange shirts. We had no warning. We got no severance, no package, no nothing,” said Ambert, 31, of Coconut Creek. “I feel so violated.”

A spokeswoman for the firm said it had “no comment at this time,” according to the Sun Sentinel.

Yes, there are people who wore orange in protest. It was part of the Protestant Revolution in Ireland. Which, last I checked, had nothing to do with Florida. A state so insane that they allow children to believe that drinking bleach prevents AIDS. It does, just as a bullet through the brain can help prevent migraines.

Here, watch this cool video by my homie Tobias Stretch. It will make everything sane again.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

First some facts you need to know. I am very good friends with Blago’s second cousin. In the tight knit Serbian community that is a very close family tie. Yesterday I was also pretty sick. These two facts collided and I was dragged to watch Blago issue his farewell address. I didn’t want to go but it was a rare chance to see history being made, so I bundled up and went. We got there about five minutes before his eminence emerged and caught the whole thing. As sick as I was the whole thing took on a kind of fever dream appeal. He talked about humility and then avoided showing any. He talked about prayer and then pointed out how he only prays for stuff that relates to him. He came one baby step away from saying the jury was comprised of idiots and that he would be exonerated. He talked about the law and mentioned a couple of times that he still didn’t think he broke it. He talked about his family and patently ignored how he, and only he, is responsible for their dilemma. He talked about all the wonderful things he did as governor and managed to reinforce the belief that his stint as an elected official was predicated on the “cool mom” principle.

Here’s how that works.

The cool mom allows her 13 year old son or daughter to hold beer parties in the basement. They can smoke too if they wish. The cool mom has all sorts of logic behind this decision – they’ll just do it somewhere else is the most common excuse – but rarely considers the implications. Blago was like that. He gave lots of cool stuff to the people of Illinois. Some, such as health care for women, were sorely needed. Others, such as free bus rides for seniors, had never been asked for. But the one thing they all had in common was that he made no provisions to pay for any of them. The RTA, CTA and Metra fare hikes are all due to him. The closing of many needed facilities are all due to him.

And, yes, I’m a Democrat. That does not make me clueless.

Let me tell you a story about the day Blago got arrested. My friend, and several other of his family members, held a bail party that night. They met at a local watering hole and set up an empty beer pitcher to collect donations. They drank, they laughed, they shared stories and, at the end of the night, they managed to collect under $10.00. They thought about it for a minute and then gave that money to the bartender, whom they’d been tipping anyway. They just figured it was the better cause.

CNN has a pretty solid look at the whole proceeding yesterday.

Crowded by sign-wielding supporters, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich made what’s expected to be his final speech before he heads to Colorado to start a 14-year prison sentence on a corruption conviction.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” he told the crowd. “But this is the law and we follow the law.”

Blagojevich was convicted of corruption in June 2011 after a jury returned 17 guilty verdicts against him. Among other allegations, he was accused of trying to profit as he considered whom to appoint to take Barack Obama’s open Senate seat.

Blagojevich called his impending prison stint a “dark and hard journey,” and said he should have been more humble.

“We are so grateful and will never ever forget your kindness to us,” he told the crowd, which occasionally chanted slogans such as “Free our Governor.”

His wife, Patti, remained cinched under his arm, squeezing back tears as the former governor spoke outside his Chicago home.

“This, as bad as it is, is part of a long and hard journey that will only get worse before it gets better,” Blagojevich said, telling his wife that he loved her.

His prison stint begins Thursday.

“Governor Blagojevich has always stood up and stood tall. He hasn’t hid. And he has truly enjoyed being out in public. He never considered ‘sneaking’ out of Chicago and miss an opportunity to say goodbye,” his spokesman Glenn Selig said earlier.

“It’s difficult to put into words the challenges he and his family now face. But he draws strength from the incredible support he continues to receive from the people of Illinois and beyond.”

Blagojevich’s past statements have been noteworthy for their bluster, such as a defiant news conference in April 2010 when he called his accusers “liars” and “cowards” and directly challenged a prosecutor.

Blagojevich also accused U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of hiding taped evidence that would prove his innocence during that news conference.

“I challenge Mr. Fitzgerald… Why don’t you show up in court tomorrow and explain to everybody, explain to the whole world why you don’t want the tapes that you made played in court?” Blagojevich said to reporters at the time.

“I’ll be in court tomorrow. I hope you’re man enough to show up,” he added, referring to Fitzgerald.

Ah yes, the tapes. Here’s why they didn’t play them all; most of them were about nothing. The fact that he ordered Chinese or wished his wife happy birthday were not in contention. Had he limited himself to calls like that none of this would have happened.

But he didn’t.

The “f***ing golden” remark alone showed what he was all about. And that was relevant to the case. In fact it was the reason the FBI arrested him before he could commit an act. Had he actually sold the senate seat they would have been in the unenviable position of trying to unseat a U.S. Senator at the same time as they were trying to convict Blago. It would have been a logistical nightmare.

So they busted and, eventually, convicted our governor.

And that conviction helped Illinois secure the status of the third most corrupt state in the nation. It is not the type of competition where you want to shoot for #1.

Re-flex The Politics of Dancing by CeltiemamaListen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

First off, for all of our male readers, Happy Man Day! You’ve earned it so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Anyway, today we are going to take a look at the sensitive world around us. For example, we would never sell John Wilkes-Booth bobblehead bdolls at a Lincoln museum. Oh wait. Well, never mind, they’ve been removed.

In other sensitive news, a cop filed charges against his girlfriend for beating him with a Justin Bieber doll. No steak for him.

Speaking of cops, as you all know it is our ability to deal with others in an amicable and equitable way that sets us apart from the lower life forms. It is also our ability to see reason in chaos that allows us to progress. So, when we see a city finally cracking down on illegal drug sales we applaud their attempt to right a serious wrong.

Who am I kidding? We protest our inability to sell crack.

In most cities, residents would be happy if 30 people were arrested for selling crack, cocaine, marijuana and firearms in their neighborhood.

But not in Ferriday, La.

Instead, some residents in the neighborhood are livid, saying the arrests are making it harder for them to sell their own drugs.

“You have to realize, we don’t have no jobs around here or nothing,” Derrick Brown told KALB.com. “Every time we try to make a little something to get on our feet or try to feed our family they come kicking the doors in and knocking us back down again.”

All 30 arrests came Friday in Ferriday — a town of 3,723 people most famous for being the birthplace of rocker Jerry Lee Lewis — after a yearlong joint investigation called Delta Blues involving federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

The investigation, which targeted a local gang called the Sixth Street Boys, led to the seizure of 8 oz. of crack cocaine, a half kilo of powdered cocaine, 20 lbs. of marijuana, as well as firearms, currency and three vehicles, according to the Natchez Democrat.

Concordia Parish Sheriff Randy Maxwell told the Natchez Democrat that the operation was a huge success and that he was glad to see longtime dealers off the streets.

“It was a great success and the reason was because of the great cooperation with all of the agencies,” Maxwell said. “We got a lot of the big time players and longtime dealers in the parish.”

KALB.com reporter Brooke Buford said on air that she was surprised by Brown’s reaction to the bust, but former narcotics cop Neill Franklin, the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition said this is old news to anyone familiar with the drug war.

“[Brown] made so much sense,” Franklin told the Huffington Post. “This is an economic issue. In communities like these, there is no opportunity for employment or education. These people have to make money to buy food and pay bills. If there are no jobs, what do you expect they’ll do?” The LEAP organization works to advocate for effective drug policies.

Ferriday Mayor Glen McGlothin told The Huffington Post that Buford’s piece didn’t tell the full story, but adds, “I would like to think that’s because she is young.”

“There are lots of people who are happy about the drug bust, but they are people who believe in law and order and were scared because of all the drugs.”

He said that the people who are complaining that the only jobs available involve selling drugs don’t see that they are part of the problem. “I assume people would rather start businesses in areas where drugs aren’t being sold,” he said.

Robert Housman, who was assistant director for strategic planning in the White House drug czar’s office during the Clinton Administration, said the notion that selling drugs is the only option for Ferriday residents is “nonsense.”

“There have been studies on the economics of drug-buying,” Housman told The Huffington Post. “When you consider things like the risk and the costs of the drugs, you don’t make a lot of money. Most people who sell are not eking out a living, they’re merely supporting their own drug habit.”

Franklin said he believes that providing economic and education opportunities to people in poor neighborhoods is the key to reducing the drug trade, but Housman said drug-buying habits are the reasons there are fewer opportunities.

“People don’t want to open up businesses in neighborhoods like this,” he said. “But many of these people selling drugs do have good business minds and could succeed if they applied themselves.”

Amway anyone? Before they try and turn those nice people into sales reps they really need to help alleviate the many other problems that are besieging their city. If almost all your residents are dealing drugs that means the customers are coming from somewhere else.

Of course, while we claim that we want to be tough on crime we still cringe when we read about 9 year old kids who got tasered for ditching school.

An Ohio police officer says he used a stun gun twice on a 9-year-old who skipped school because the child refused to cooperate with his commands.

Details of the incident, which resulted in the shutdown of a village police force, were released Monday, The Columbus Dispatch reported. The Mount Sterling officer went to the boy’s home on a truancy complaint last week. He says the child’s mother warned the boy, who weighs between 200 and 250 pounds, to obey the officer or he’d be shocked.

According to a copy of the police report provided by the mayor’s office to msnbc.com, the officer wrote that the boy “dropped to the floor and became dead weight” and lay on his hands to prevent being handcuffed.

Wait? This kid weighs as much as me? At freaking 9? Didn’t his mom get the memo? Hot dogs cause butt cancer.

A billboard is bluntly telling Chicagoans that hot dogs cause “butt cancer” — and the hot dog industry is not amused.

The billboard is one of a series of ads being put up in major cities by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, or PCRM, urging people to stop eating hot dogs, which it says are a leading cause of colon and other cancers.

The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council — which you can find at the wonderful URL hot-dog.org — reacted immediately to the billboard, which went up recently on the Eisenhower Expressway.

Calling the ad “outrageous” and “inflammatory,” the trade group dismissed the PCRM as a “pseudo-medical animal rights group” bent on turning all Americans into vegans.

I guess the one thing we can do is thank God that racism is finally dead.

Oh hell, never mind. A clerk working at a Radio Shack issued a receipt for a refund to an African-American woman claiming she lived in Ghettohood USA.

That’s just outside of Dayton.

Receipts are supposed to prove that a customer bought an item at a store.

However, one Radio Shack employee allegedly gave a woman an additional message on her receipt: One calling her an “ugly itch” from “Ghettohood, USA.”

Shanae Lewis of Baltimore got the disturbing message on Monday when she went to a Radio Shack in nearby Montgomery County, Md., to buy a $20 cassette adapter for her car.

The county has a five-cent bag tax on top of sales tax that Lewis was unaware of, so, according to WUSA-TV, she went back and forth with the clerk before deciding not to buy the adapter at all.

She said what happened next is one of the worst examples of bad customer service anyone has ever seen, according to Consumerist.

It seems when the salesman gave Lewis back her money, he also gave her a receipt for the refund, at the bottom of which he apparently typed in “ugly itch, ghettohood, usa, tattoville, Maryland.”

The salesman reportedly claimed he was only kidding, but Lewis was, and remains, unamused.

“I was shocked more so than anything, and then I became angry,” she told WUSA-TV.

At first, she tried to complain to the store manager, who reportedly wanted nothing to do with her complaint, so Lewis contacted Radio Shack’s corporate office about the ordeal hopes the associate will be fired, WTVR reported.

A RadioShack official told WUSA that after seeing the story, it took “the strongest possible disciplinary actions,” but did not specify what they were.

In an email response to the station, RadioShack wrote: “Based on descriptions we’ve seen in the media, this incident obviously does not meet RadioShack’s expectations for customer service.”

It added, “The Company has made several attempts to contact the customer involved and offer her a personal apology. So far we’ve been unable to connect, although we have conveyed our regrets to another person in her household.”

Lewis may be able to forgive, but not forget. She said Radio Shack has lost a customer.

“I want nothing to do with Radio Shack ever again,” Shanae said.

Radio Shack continues to win friends the world over, just like on this site dedicated to people who will never set foot in one again.

They need a new PR company. Maybe the same one who works for the Jet Strip Strip Club which saved youth baseball in Los Angeles.

Little League baseball players from an unincorporated area of Los Angeles will reportedly get to play ball this season thanks to a charitable donation from the unlikeliest of donors.

Jet Strip, a gentlemen’s club in Lennox, has donated $1,200 to the Lennox Little League, which has been strapped for cash after the Lennox School District imposed some new regulations, according to the Daily Breeze.

A call to the district was not immediately returned.

The donation, along with those from other businesses, will allow 300 little leaguers to play at least one more season, but the league’s president, Roberto Aguirre, still isn’t optimistic about the long-term future of the league.

“It feels good to be from Lennox when people do stuff like that,” Aguirre said to the paper. “At the same time, the future is very scary for us, because [the donation] is a one-time deal.”

James Wallace, Jet Strip’s general manager, is also a 15-year member of the Lennox Coordinating Council, comparable to an unofficial city council of the community.

Wallace told the paper that he likes to keep the gentlemen’s club’s donations quiet.

“We don’t really like to brag about it,” he said.

The school board has also received donations of $1,000 and $600 from the little league in Westchester and the council, respectively.

But Aguirre told the paper that the bigger problem facing the league is the inability to sell food at games.

Citing health concerns, the K-8 district stopped the league from selling grilled foods, like hamburgers and hot dogs, though it has installed a drain, and a local non-profit, YouthBuild, has promised to build a snack bar for free.

“People don’t want candy, candy, candy – chips, chips, chips,” Aguirre said. “They want hamburgers, hot dogs and french fries.”

But raising the $65,000 necessary for materials to build a snack bar will be tough for a community that is economically depressed.

Lennox is a small, mile-by-mile community adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport that is so impoverished, the league offers families a payment plan so that some can afford the annual $85 it costs to play in the league.

“We’re looking up in the sky and hoping for something great,” Aguirre told the paper. “If this snack stand happens, it’s going to be the best thing that could happen for our league.”

You hear that Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine? People want freaking hot dogs. And they’ll gladly put up with a little butt cancer to save a little league team or two.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Florida is an interesting place. I have noted, on numerous occasions, that it is where the gene pool has gone to die. While crimes and idiocy happen everywhere they just seems to be more conspicuous in Florida. That being said, even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while so we must laud Florida when it has a good idea. Barbara Hijeck is reporting that Floridians are replacing flash mobs with cash mobs to support local businesses.

Flash mobs?

So yesterday.

Meet the Cash Mob.

The first cash mob is believed to have hit in Buffalo, NY then spread like an cash epidemic across the country.

Tampa’s Secret Cash Mob made its first hit last month at a boutique in Carrollwood where 40 mobsters armed themselves with at least $10 and showed up when the store opened to spend, spend, spend, reports WTSP News-10 in Tampa Bay.

On Friday, Feb. 10, 2012, Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett, along with an estimated 700-800 others from Knox and surrounding counties, took part in the first-ever Knox Cash Mob. The mob hit Emery’s 5 & 10 to show support for local small businesses.

You have to admit that this is an easy idea to duplicate and one that only has positive results. Someone will screw it up, I’m sure, but until then go for it.

Why am I so cynical, you ask, because this is a state that screws up beer.

After receiving a call, deputies found a 69-year-old woman with a swollen, cut and bruised face walking in the middle of a Dunnellon road, reports the Ocala Star-Banner.

She told the deputies that her hubby, Daniel Mofford, had been auguring with her over beer.

Deputies found Mofford, 55, asleep in the back of a pick-up truck that was parked in the back of a barn.

Yes, it’s a sad, sad truth: They’ll kill you for a beer in Florida.

In other beer related news in Florida

Palm Bay: Alan Tanguay was only 16-years-old when he reportedly stabbed his 58-year-old Palm Bay neighbor 37 times — just so he could steal $6 for a beer

Immokalee: Man savagely beaten for his beer

Kissimmee: Tiff over beer led to stabbing, deputies say

Remember Eduardo Adolfo Gonzalez?

He pleaded guilty for murdering a man over a spilled beer.

He was also charged with putting an apparent murder plot into motion from behind bars in an effort to kill witnesses to the spilled beer murder.

I really need say no more.

Let’s see, what else could they possibly screw up in Florida? How about getting run over by a car? How do you screw that up? Run yourself over.

A woman trying to retrieve her mail was run over by her own car Thursday in the suburban Boynton Beach community of Oakwood Lakes, Fla.

The car, an older model Oldsmobile Toronado was in reverse when Gilda Bartlett, 82, stepped out to fetch her mail on Thursday afternoon.

“The door was wide open and it hit her, it knocked her down,” Bartlett’s neighbor Bob Curcio told news channel WPTV.

According to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s report, the woman was dragged backward for about 30 feet. Witnesses said Bartlett was hit several times by the car as it circled the pavement. Neighbors then dragged her to safety.

The vehicle continued in a circular motion, maintaining a speed of about 10-15 miles an hour. “It started making loops, this way, to the left, counterclockwise,” Curcio told WPTV. “It just kept on going.”

Firefighters and police responded, trying in vain to stop the car by flattening the tires.

“They tried the strip of nails and that didn’t work,” witness Tom Bilinski told WPTV.

Rammed by patrol car
Firefighter Jody Marlow tried to jump into the vehicle and stop it, but was thrown from the car and suffered minor injuries, the report said. The Oldsmobile was eventually stopped by a sheriff’s deputy, who rammed it with his patrol car.

Bartlett is in serious but stable condition at Delray Medical Center, according to the sheriff’s office.

Bartlett’s granddaughter told WPTV the woman had no broken bones, but she had a big cut on the back of her head that had to be stapled.

What else could these people screw up? Facebook. Seriously, I know it seems impossible but a … oh, just read this.

Steven Mulhall, 21, of Coral Springs, posted a photograph of himself holding a stolen nameplate, which was pried from the door of a Broward Circuit judge’s courtroom on his girlfriend’s Facebook account, according to arrest records, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

“The nameplate is like only $40, not that big of a crime, but what an idiot. He puts it on Facebook,” said Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti. “Here he is flaunting it on Facebook. He violated the terms of his parole by stealing, from a judge no less. He’s got multiple convictions for petty theft, so now this is a felony.”

But Bill, that’s just one loser, not a trend.

HA!

Sarasota: Facebook request gets man kicked off jury

Orange County: Mom sent death threats to 8th grader, deputies say

Charlotte County: Teen busted after taking pic on church roof for Facebook

Niceville: Report: Woman hacked into another person’s Facebook, send ‘provocative’ photos of ex

Lakeland: Facebook photo of stolen puppy leads to arrest

Tampa: Man posted Facebook photos of illegally killed animals, FWC says

Haines City: Man exchanged photos of illegally killed game with FWC

South Daytona: Accused fraudster taunts her victims with defiant photo on Facebook

Brooksville: Couple jailed after Facebook fracas

Palm Bay: In your face: Man arrested after fight over Facebook status

Florida Keys: Teen breaks into ICE agents’ cars, boasted on Facebook

Citrus County: Busted! Facebook photos nab deer slayers

And on and on it goes.

So there you have it, they had one good idea, that is destined to fail sooner rather than later and they have oranges.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Frank Burns, a character on the old TV show M*A*S*H, used to say “It’s nice to be nice to the nice.” Had he existed in real life you would have been pardoned had you beaten him to death with a hammer. In fact you would probably earn some award for helping cleanse the gene pool, without chlorine, of course. Obviously that’s due to the fact that Frank wasn’t really a nice guy. He used the guise of niceness to do not nice things. Such is not always the case. There are some people upon whom niceness is a mantle they carry honorably. I’m not just talking about the Mother Theresa’s of the world either. We all know people who genuinely try to make the world around them a little nicer. From cupcakes to smiles they share their niceness with you even on those days where you’d rather have a root canal. And, much to your continuing surprise, your world is a better place because of them. However, as noted above, some people wear niceness like a disguise. For example, Ms. Seattle – God there’s a resume builder, “Hmm, not qualified to work at Taco Bell but pretty enough to wear a tiara in public …” – has been forced to claim that her Tweet was taken out of context. Yes, she is really this stupid. Anyway, she Tweeted “Ugh can’t stand cold rainy Seattle and the annoying people.”

Why, yes, she did spell everything correctly.

Nevertheless, the nice people who crowned her Ms. Seattle seem to be less than thrilled. I can’t imagine why. The former Ms. Phoenix – I guess she travels from beauty pageant to beauty pageant filling her empty soul with baseless adulation – will still be allowed to compete in the Ms. Washington pageant.

So that’s nice.

But, today, we are going to look into the world of the genuinely nice. Like this guy who stole a professor’s computer but returned its contents.

A thief stole a university professor’s laptop, and then returned the contents on a USB memory stick. The professor, who teaches at Umeå University in northern Sweden, was devastated when his laptop, containing ten years of work, was stolen.

The professor had left his bag containing the laptop hidden behind a door in his apartment stairwell while he went into the building’s laundry room. When he emerged a short time later, the bag had gone. It was returned shortly after, without the laptop. However, a week after the theft, the professor received a USB stick containing all the documents – which would have taken several hours to download again.

It would have taken several hours to download if the professor had bothered to do so. I’m curious, since that amount of effort seemed to elude him, what he would have done had the thief not returned his documents?

Another thief, this one in Australia, was not to be outdone by that act of kindness. In fact, thanks to the theft of a cell phone, by the time he was done the world was actually a safer place.

Back in October 2011, a crook saw a car window that wasn’t rolled all the way up in a supermarket parking lot. The thief did what thieves do, stole two mobile phones and a wallet out of the vehicle. When he powered one of the phones on, he found child pornography images on it. The images disgusted him so much that he turned himself in to assist authorities with investigating the individual that he stole the items from. The investigation led to the arrest of a 46-year-old man.

Ballarat, Australia, magistrate Michelle Hodgson was blown away by the thief’s willingness to face charges, so that he could help bring down the man who had child pornography on his phone. She wanted the Good Samaritan thief to be publicly recognized for his deed.

The man was given one month in jail and a fine for his crimes, but his assistance led to bringing down a man who had committed a much greater crime.

You know something; I’d do a month in jail if it meant getting one more child-predator off the streets.

Of course, not every theft is about stealing your stuff. Sometimes it’s about someone securing a 10 year, no interest, loan that you didn’t realize you were sponsoring.

An unknown thief returned jewelry to its owner nearly ten years after stealing the items from a house in Saudi Arabia, saying in a letter he feels sorry for the theft and asking the owner to forgive him. The owner said he found the returned jewelry in a bag placed near the door which he opened in response to urgent knocking late night. He informed the police about the unknown bag, adding that when police opened the bag, he quickly recognized the jewelry as his.

“The thief left a letter in the bag saying he was sorry and asking the man to forgive him,” Sabq News said in a report from the western town of Taif. “He also said that he was in need when he stole the jewelry said he considered the gold as a trust returning to its owner.” The paper said the thief returned all the jewelry and “this means the man will make a big profit since gold prices have largely risen in 10 years.”

Ah yes, investment advice from a burglar, what could possibly be more useful than that?

There are, now more than ever, numerous stories about burglars who return the stolen items. The reason for this is simple; burglars now are just as likely to be down on their luck people as they are to be hardened criminals. Think Le Miserabe and not The Untouchables.

Even so, this next story is very nice.

A thief in Brazil who stole a car, returned it after the owner rang him up in the car and told the thief he was going through some financial difficulties. The butcher from Mauá in São Paulo called his own cell phone number after his car was stolen with his cell phone still inside. The thief answered and listened to the emotional man on the other side of the line. The butcher pleaded with him to return the $2250 car.

Not only did he pick up the phone, but he heard the owner’s emotional plea. The owner explained he was having financial problems and that the car was the only thing he had. The soft-hearted robber got emotional too and told him to go to a parking lot to get his car back.

So there you have it, several stories of nice people doing nice things in a nice way. Oh sure, there were those minor setbacks due to the robberies and so on, but still, all’s well that ends well as they say.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.