Madness Beckons

From News.com.au:

After a night on the drink, the 19-year-old Ukrainian man scaled down a cliff near Manly but got stuck half way and passed out.

After being alerted by a fisherman, rescue workers found him asleep on his back on a ledge 30m above sea level at North Head early yesterday morning.

And after all the fuss, a $10k rescue will probably cost this drunken tourist about $700.

An Australian man was justifiably sacked(fired) for repeated safety violations. But because of his lack of education and the unlikely prospect of his finding another job, the valid sacking was invalidated and the company was forced to rehire him with compensation.

www.theaustralian.com.au –The nation’s industrial umpire has ruled that a long-term employee who was legitimately sacked for repeated safety breaches must be reinstated and paid compensation because of his poor education and poor job prospects.

It would appear that in land down under being judged too dumb to find another job is the perfect form of job security.

Jesus smoked and drank. At least according to this picture found in and Indian textbook.

The controversial picture of Jesus was discovered in cursive writing exercise books published by Skyline Publications of New Delhi and being used at a private school in the Meghalaya state capital, Shillong.

State Education Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh said legal action against the publishers was being contemplated. And although private schools were not obliged to use textbooks prescribed by the Meghalaya Board of Secondary Education, his government has seized all the copies of the textbook from schools and bookshops.

In related news:
A Malaysian newspaper is facing calls to shut down after it published the image of Jesus holding a cigarette and a can of beer.

The Malaysian Muslim-led government has already shut down two publications for carrying a Danish author’s controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

By now everybody has heard about Google’s latest lack of privacy fiasco with their new MySpace wanna be, Buzz.

Google seems to have forgotten to mention that if you have a gmail account Buzz is automatically active and if you want to turn it off –oh, I don’t know, maybe to keep it from sharing your most popular contacts with the entire effin’ world– you need to navigate to the bottom of your gmail email page and look in the sub-microscopic print for a link that say “turn off Buzz.”

Google says if you don’t want the world to see your contacts you need to set your profile to private.

This is cool, except that you need to create a Buzz profile to do this, and all your contacts will still be exposed to anyone who you let see your profile.

BTW: You do not need a Buzz profile for the world to see your contacts. All you need to do is use something like reader to expose them.

Google officially dropped the “Don’t be evil” motto sometime around March of last year. —Hmmm, I wonder why?

According to an article in the RiaNovosti: A 73 year old Russian farmer planted three tripwire mines, that were armed with gunpowder and filled with salt, around his field because he was having a problem with potato thieves.

The farmer, Alexander Skopintsev, was arrested after a neighbor injured his lip when he walked down the path that separated his field from Mr. Skopintsev’s and tripped one of the devices.

Mr. Skopintsev was convicted for the unlawful construction and storage of weapons and received a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence.