Mostly from Pravda.ru:
There is a disease called Porphyria cutanea tarda that presents clinically as a pathological sensitivity of skin exposed to light causing scarring, hair growth and disfiguration. Additionally, it was believed that the patients’ missing heme could be absorbed through the stomach, correlating with the legends’ hematophagy.

This is a rare disease – only 1 in 20000 people suffers from it. The body doesn’t produce red corpuscles and thus a person’s blood lacks oxygen and iron and this leads to hemoglobin breakdown under the sunshine. Soon blisters and ulcers pop up; a person starts to have sun energy and can even die. This disease can also cause nose, ears and cartilages deformation. His fingers start to convolve; the skin around mouth gets dry and reveals gums, which turn yellowish because of porphyrine deposition on the teeth. Garlic that stimulates red corpuscles emission in the body of healthy person causes the exacerbation of symptoms among the ill people. This goes hand in hand with harsh pain, so these people also often suffer from mental disability.

If you sum up all the symptoms of this disease, you get the exact same picture of a vampire shown on TV. In France only in the 17th century 30 thousand people were declared werewolves according to the signs described by Illis. All of them were hanged. The Czech archeologists found the burying that dates back to the 11th century. There were 13 people lying with tied hands, chopped off heads and stakes in the chest.

As you can see, vampires of a sort do exist.

In England a 17-year teenager killed his neighbor, cut her heart out heart and sucked the blood to gain immortality. –I doubt that his dementia? has anything to do with the disease. However, when you combine the deed of a single individual with the physical signs caused by extreme cases of the disease belief in monsters becomes a given.

Even with the diagnostic science available to modern medicine I would wager that quite a number of otherwise intelligent individuals still believe in vampyres and werewolves.

Even well educated individuals can be found who still believe in curses, witchcraft, and an unbelievable amount of “unexplained phenomena.”

The best example of people’s insistence in their belief in the supernatural is best demonstrated by a psychological test in which a group of individuals is told that a “psychic” has done a reading on each of them and they are each given the results. These “results” are all identical.
When the volunteers are shown this, a certain percentage will get angry and insist that in spite of this basic demonstration, that not only must such things exist but that this somehow proves it.

Welcome to the human race.

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A man I know is back in the world for a little while.

I’ve known him since he was a child. I always called him kid, now I call him brother.

His laugh is wrong.
His eyes move every time there’s a noise.
Shooting hoops has become a full contact sport.
He doesn’t sleep through the night.
He doesn’t like to talk much, but he doesn’t like to be alone.
The part that affects me the most is that look he gets when he does talk about this war, I’ve seen it in his fathers eyes and in the mirror.

— Why? —
There were no weapons of mass destruction.
There were no ties to Al Quaeda.
Have thousands died or worse just so Haliburton and their ilk could turn a profit?
— Why? —

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The Do Not Fly list gets longer every day. It’s apparently at nearly 1 million names.
— Yes that’s 1,000,000 names. — Including the 14 of the 19 9/11 hijackers who happen to be dead.

The reason for the use of the word “apparently” is because the list is classified. Even congress has trouble seeing it.

The ACLU maintains a counter and information here.
The DOJ has a report here that includes the following:

Failure to Modify and Remove Watchlist Records
According to HSPD-6, each nominating agency involved in the
watchlist process is responsible for, on an ongoing basis, providing terrorist information in its possession, custody, or control, thus ensuring watchlist
information is current, accurate, and complete. Additionally, nominating
agencies should generally provide information to remove an individual from the watchlist when it is determined that no nexus to terrorism exists.
During the course of an investigation, the FBI may acquire additional
identifying information on watchlisted subjects. FBI policy includes
requirements for updating and removing watchlist records of investigative
subjects and states that it is “essential” that this additional information be
used to enrich an existing record. To accomplish watchlist record revisions,
the FBI uses the same process for initially nominating an investigative
subject to the terrorist watchlist.
However, several FBI personnel informed us that the modification of
watchlist records is not being performed on a regular basis. NCTC personnel
also stated that they see very few modification requests from the FBI.
Moreover, many of the FBI employees with whom we spoke were not aware
of the standards for determining when a modification of the watchlist record
is necessary. As a result, certain watchlist records are likely missing useful
information.

60 Minutes ran this story.
(This segment was originally broadcast on Oct. 8, 2006. It was updated on June 7, 2007. )

Just a few oddities from the ACLU site:

U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (D, Mass.) After repeated delays at airport security, the senator had trouble getting removed from the airline watch list despite calls to Homeland Security and eventually a personal conversation with the Secretary of DHS.

Marine Staff Sgt. Daniel Brown was blocked from flying while on his way home from an 8-month deployment in Iraq. He was listed as a suspected terrorist due to a previous incident in which gunpowder was detected on his boots, most likely a residue of a previous tour in Iraq.

Major General Vernon Lewis (Ret.); a recipient of the Army’s highest medal for service, the Distinguished Service Medal who served in the Korean and Vietnam wars, Lewis had problems flying.

And my personal favorite:

Sister Glenn Anne McPhee, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ secretary for education. Sister McPhee sought redress and removal from the watch list for nine months in 2004 and 2005 and it wasn’t until she was able to elicit help from White House connections (Karl Rove) that DHS addressed her problem.

As soon as I heard they had started a new organization called the Department of Homeland Security, I thought heard the sound of jackboots and Wagner.
I was right.
If you have faith in the DHS read the Patriot Act closely and remember that everything in it applies to you, not just some other guy. You should also go to this site.

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The Dutch Cycling Federation said a study showed that 60 lives could be saved a year if air bags were installed on the hoods of cars, where cyclists are typically hit in accidents. External air bags could also cut 1,500 serious injuries a year.
“In the past many measures have been taken to protect those sitting inside cars but hardly anything has been done to protect people outside cars,” it said in a statement on Monday.
Your on something that weighs just a few pounds and you are sharing the road with something that weighs a couple of tons.
I doubt that these external airbags will do anything except make some company rich.

And I suppose they want us to pad all the light poles as well…. No wait that’s been done. Click Here. Then click here.

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In keeping with the name of this blog, I bring you the Senate of the great state of Florida:

TAMPA - With gasoline skyrocketing and the housing slump pulling down Florida’s economy, legislators this week found time to talk about fake bull’s testicles that hang from the rear bumpers of vehicles.

Often, they hang from the backs of pickup trucks.

The state Senate this week opened discussions on the squeamish subject. One senator wants the owners subject to a $60 fine.

The move comes as the vehicle accessories are growing in popularity, thanks in part to the Internet sales of brands such as Your Nutz and BullsBalls.

BullsBalls owner John Saller said he has been selling the product for more than 10 years and now ships about 500 sets a month.
“Florida is not the first state to do this,” he said. Virginia and New Jersey legislators have tried similar sanctions, and so far all attempts to reel in the replicas have failed, he said.

We all know politicians tend to be a bit eccentric? but this so incredibly weird that it sounds like a stall to avoid discussing something important that would cost their campaign contributers money.
Or perhaps it’s a simple as a Senator’s child or grandchild asking them a question they were embarrassed to answer.

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She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people.

I found this on the BBC.

This woman was hitchhiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote peace. She left her partner in Istanbul and was supposed to meet up with her in Beirut. Instead her body was found nude in the bushes near the city of Gebze, Turkey on Friday.

This is the trouble with being a “true believer.” The rest of the world remains a hostile environment, and a pacifist is ill equipped to deal with it.

No matter how much they smile, those people out there are strangers and need to be approached accordingly.

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Every single Metropolitan police officer will be ‘microchipped’ so top brass can monitor their movements on a Big Brother style tracking scheme, it can be revealed today.

The new electronic tracking device - called the Automated Personal Location System (APLS) - means that officers will never be out of range of supervising officers.

Some officers are concerned that the system - which will be able to pinpoint any of the 31,000 officers in the Met to within a few feet of their location - will put a complete end to community policing and leave officers purely at the beck and call of control room staff rather than reacting to members of the public on the ground.

The basic premise is good. With this system if they lose contact with an officer in an emergency they can locate him.

The problem is quite simply: Human Nature.

What pencil pushing, desk-jockey, wouldn’t like to know where everyone was and what they were doing every minute of every day?
With the added bonus of justifying the jobs of people who were promoted beyond their level of competence, and generating more worthless reports that the brass can pretend mean something.

A further question: Does anyone believe that big brother will quit watching just because the officer is off the clock?

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I came across this on Wired’s Danger Room:
Night-vision goggles, armor vests, F-14 fighter components that could only be used by Iran — these and other sensitive military items, some stolen from the U.S. military, have been purchased by undercover government officials . . . on Craigslist and eBay, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The vests and goggles you can buy through the civilian market. These are classified only because somebody wanted to try out their brand new “classified” rubber stamp.
However I would imagine that if you could arrange delivery of any F14 parts to an Iranian embassy or consul you would make a rather nice profit.

Some years back 60 Minutes did a piece on government auctions. One company built a Cobra attack helicopter for use in the movies from parts obtained through auctions. Including, if I recall the story correctly, the missile guidance system.
This part is still a highly sensitive item that was not stolen, but made it’s way into the system and was purchased by an honest company at an open auction.

I wonder how many classified parts are actually sold every year and how many find their way into the wrong hands.

And if the F14 has been retired, why do we need all those spare parts?
It’s not like we have a shortage of warplanes in the arsenal.

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“As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.”— George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb10, 2008

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

“George Bush has combined mediocrity with malevolent policies and has thus seriously damaged the welfare and standing of the United States,” wrote one of the historians, echoing the assessments of many of his professional colleagues. “Bush does only two things well,” said one of the most distinguished historians. “He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.”

With his approval among the rank and file voters down to 28% this delusional oaf falls back on history to judge him.

His presidency will be remembered as an autocracy, with no regard for rights and a penchant for making the rich richer.

While I consider the current administration to be evil incarnate. I blame the Congress and the courts for our problems.
Not once did our faithless representatives stand up to these bullies.
They allowed them to put people in place who have eviscerated the watchdog organizations that were intended to protect us from such abuses.
They allowed the multinational corporations to profit at the expense of American jobs.
They allowed our rights to be trampled.
They allowed the destruction of a healthy economy.
The list is virtually endless.

Politicians are the same regardless of party. The Democrats came to power swearing they were going to change the way the committee system works. The day they arrived in Washington, they reconsidered their position on such matters and decided to keep power for themselves.

Watching politics at work reminds me of the scene in Bladerunner where Decker was told. “If you’re not one of us, you’re little people.”

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This is a cautionary tale.

A man I’ve known for some years just had a major falling out with his long time business partner.

When we spoke he disclosed that the two of them were no longer speaking.
The partner seems to have managed to control all the financial aspects to point that when the IRS garnisheed certain sources of income, my friend was completely unaware for at least a year.

They have an online business that has it’s servers in London and it’s LLC in the British Virgin Islands.

Questions that spring to mind are:
Who owns the Domain Name?
How much control does the partner have over the corporation?
What about physical assets, if any?
Is his name on any paperwork that will commit him to continue to pay various and sundry bills after the partnership dissolves?
Who’s names are on the bank accounts?
Does he know the locations of all bank accounts?
Are there any funds in the accounts?
How are invoices handled?
Is any money being diverted?
Etc.

This is a partnership of more than 10 years.
Most of my questions are being researched?!? A partner should know these things without the need for lawyers, audits, or any other outside intervention.

Do you know what you just signed or did you blindly trust whoever asked you to sign on the dotted line?

Partnerships are exactly like marriages. They start out all hugs and kisses and then reality sets in.

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