Oddities and Humor

If that's the case... perhaps I should drop my cell phone plan as well. Not much incoming activity going on there.

Go to the I Need a Friend thread and offer the number to the guy that desperately wants to have some friends. Then you should have a useful purpose for the phone.

I'll have to think about that one.
~
Inspire:
Al Qaida's glossy print and online magazine.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128286027

I'm confused. No one called you on your landline. Who's calling you on your cell phone?

Oooh SNAP!

Sometimes the boss or my lead man. Sometimes my wife. Occasionally one of my children. Point is, they only called my cell phone. The other was totally wasted, but for the occasional telemarketer.

Snopes on the new mercury containing light bulbs
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp

AP - Authorities in Iceland have exhumed the body of American chess champion Bobby Fischer to determine whether he is the father of a 9-year-old girl from the Philippines.

http://www.theonion.com/audio/kentucky-legislature-bans-gay-pet-weddings,12454/
Kentucky Legislature Bans Gay Pet Weddings

edgar, that Onion thing was hilarious. Loved it, Texas.

Hmmm. I have one of those light bulbs in the lamp on my monitor. The kid from Georgia told me about them. Guess I'll have to be careful.

I was looking for the classical piece (Dance of the Hours) upon which Sherman's Camp Grenada was based and found this odd and funny thing.

http://www.freakingnews.com/Dancing-Animals-Pictures----1710.asp

That's a strange and odd collection, letty.

When I come to this thread, I often think of gelisgesti (sp?). He had a thread similar to this that he fed for years. His visits gradually tapered off. Miss him.

Now, that's just plain weird!

For the rest of the blogpost:
http://murderousmusings.blogspot.com/2008/12/super-squirrel.html

That's neat.

Houston -
A man who died near downtown this morning when he jumped from the the cab of his moving 18-wheeler was apparently trying to stage a wreck early this morning to collect from his insurance company, police said.

The man died when he slammed onto the pavement in the 4200 block of the northbound Eastex Freeway feeder road near Cavalcade about 2 a.m., police said.

The victim, whose name has not been released, had head injuries. No other injuries were reported.

Police said the man's business partner told investigators the trucker was staging an accident to file a fraudulent claim with his insurance company.

The business partner said he was following the truck in a sport utility vehicle when the driver jumped through the door of the big rig just as the truck it hit the curb. He hit his head and later died.

The man said the trucker was attempting to intentionally drive the white Volvo truck into a freeway column on the feeder road beneath the 610 North Loop.

The truck was traveling at about 50 mph, police said. The driver was alone in the cab and was not pulling a trailer.

The witness said he stopped his SUV, ran after the truck as it slowly rolled on the street, climbed inside and put on the air brake to stop it.

darwinism at it's best...

What a maroon. He won't do that again.

Nothing humerous about this one:

(CNN) -- The son of an Iranian woman who faces execution by stoning appealed to Iran's courts Wednesday in hopes of sparing his mother's life.

A lawyer for Sajjad Mohammedie Ashtiani traveled to Tehran to persuade judiciary officials to commute the sentence of Sakineh Mohammedie Ashtiani, who was convicted of adultery and condemned to death by stoning, a method deemed barbaric by human rights activists.

Sajjad Ashtiani also penned a new open letter to the international community in which he points out the legal discrepancies of his mother's case.

The letter comes after a human rights activist Mina Ahadi told CNN that only an international campaign designed to pressure the Islamic regime in Tehran could save Sakineh Ashtiani's life.

"Legally, it's all over," said Ahadi, who heads the International Committee Against Stoning and the Death Penalty. "It's a done deal. Sakineh can be stoned at any minute."

But Sajjad Ashtiani refuses to give up.

In freshly penned letter, he wrote there was neither evidence nor legal grounds for his mother's conviction and sentence. He said the family has traveled six times from their home in Tabriz to Tehran to speak with Iranian officials, but in vain.
If the sentence is carried out, Sakineh Ashtiani, 42, will be buried up to her chest, according to an Amnesty International report citing the Iranian penal code. The stones that will be hurled at her will be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately.

She was convicted of adultery in 2006 and forced to confess after being subjected to 99 lashes, human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei told CNN. She later recanted that confession and has denied wrongdoing.

Her conviction was based not on evidence but on the determination of three out of five judges, Mostafaei said. She has asked forgiveness from the court but the judges refused to grant clemency.

Iran's supreme court upheld the conviction in 2007.

The circumstances of Ashtiani's case make it not an exception but the rule in Iran, according to Amnesty International,

The corpse flower is so rare that only 28 have ever been known to bloom in the United States. The 29th is poised to open any day now at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

The lime-green bud, which resembles an oversized endive, was nearing 5 feet tall on Wednesday in the museum's Cockrell Butterfly Center and has been growing about 4 inches a day. Cockrell director Nancy Greig says it could open Friday or by early next week. Once open, the corpse flower will last about two days.

"Is it pretty?" a visitor to the museum asked Greig.

"I'd say it's spectacular," she answered.

The bloom of the Amorphophallus titanum, which can stand 10 feet tall and measure up to 5 feet across, is one of the world's largest. And, as its common name implies, stinkiest.

The only other one to bloom in Texas came in 2004, when a 61-inch specimen nicknamed Big Jack put on a show at Stephen F. Austin State University's Mast Arboretum in Nacogdoches.

The botanical name is the first clue that this is one weird, horticultural wonder: Amorphophallus translates to "shapeless phallus." Titanum means "giant."

Native to Sumatran rainforests, the endangered and unpredictable species produces the world's largest unbranched inflorescence. It's technically not a single flower, but a cluster of flowers on a stem.

The bloom structure consists of a central, fleshy spadix, or stem, that stretches taller than a man. Thousands of male and female flowers surround the base. The spadix is sheathed in a pleated, leafy spathe that opens like a frilly, raw-liver-colored Elizabethan collar.

Related to jack-in-the-pulpit, calla and caladium, the corpse flower grows from an underground corm that can weigh up to 200 pounds. A $75 walnut-sized corm six years ago, the museum's plant — nicknamed Lois after a former staff member's mother - now weighs 30 pounds.

As its common name warns, the corpse flower is a smelly thing, with the withering stench of rotting flesh. As the spathe begins to unfurl, the spadix becomes a gas chamber, heating its natural oil and emitting noxious fumes for eight to 12 hours to attract pollinating carrion beetles.

Greig is asking other institutions that grow the plant, also called a titan arum, for pollen to help Lois set viable seed. The male and female flowers don't open at the same time, discouraging self-fertilization.

Flowering takes tremendous energy, and after her big act, Lois will collapse; the corm will drop weight and rest.

The authorities in Iran have announced that a woman convicted of adultery will not be stoned to death. But it is not clear whether they have lifted the death sentence against Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who has been in prison in Tabriz since 2006.