Clipmarks | Monkfishy's clips

Wheelie Bin Murder

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 05:12:22 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: Only the British could write such a tongue-in-cheek article about a man murdering his father.

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

Benjamin Holding, 29, killed his 70-year-old father by repeatedly smashing his head against the floor and a metal cat bowl at their home near Banchory, Aberdeenshire.

When he realised what he had done, he wrapped the body in a sheet and dumped it head-first in a wheelie bin in the garden shed, where it went unnoticed for nearly two months.

Advocate-depute Alastair Brown, for the prosecution, told the court: “The accused had begun to commit fraud within, at most, an hour and a half of the murder.”

Holding, who was described by police as a “skilful and accomplished liar”, claimed that he had been driven to the killing by his “domineering” father who, he said, viewed him as a “waste of space”.

The judge told Holding yesterday: “I appreciate there may have been an atmosphere of tension between your father and yourself.

Benjamin Holding confessed to his wife and later told detectives: “Two months ago I had an argument with my father. I killed him and he's in the shed.”

Tags: crime, british, humor

Woman stuck on toilet for 2 years

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:23:10 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy

Clip Source: www.nydailynews.com

WICHITA, Kansas - Deputies say a woman in western Kansas became stuck on her boyfriend's toilet after sitting on it for two years.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old woman's skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "The hospital removed it."

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

"And her reply would be, 'Maybe tomorrow,'" Whipple said. "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.

British Airways not guilty of religious discrimination

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:57:35 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: "What can appear to be a case of discrimination at first glance is often nothing of the sort. It is often more about Christians attempting to gain special privileges and exemptions."

Clip Source: commentisfree.guardian.co.uk

She was portrayed in the press as a victim of cruel religious discrimination - a poor persecuted Christian who had been "banned" by British Airways from wearing a simple cross at work.

But hang on a moment. The employment tribunal, to which she complained, has just published its judgment, and it tells a rather different story. Not only did it kick out all her claims of religious discrimination and harassment, it also criticised her for her intransigence, saying that she:

"... generally lacked empathy for the perspective of others ... her own overwhelming commitment to her faith led her at times to be both naive and uncompromising in her dealings with those who did not share her faith."

"Like many of the other claims of discrimination being made by Christians, this has turned out to be false. People should be aware that behind many such cases there are groups whose interests are served by stirring up feelings of discrimination of marginalisation amongst Christians.

George McGovern: Impeach Bush/Cheney

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:45:25 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: George McGovern outlines the case for impeachment. As he says, "the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon" in 1972.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law.

Tags: optional. separate by commas., democracy, politics

Huckabee: Change the Constitution to be "in God's Standards"

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:02:31 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: Forget gay marriage and abortion - how'd you like to live in a country where all religions are illegal except for Christianity, where it's illegal to have a statue of Buddha or to use certain swear words, and where attending church is mandatory? Sounds a lot like the Taliban to me.

Clip Source: rawstory.com

The United States Constitution never uses the word "God" or makes mention of any religion, drawing its sole authority from "We the People." However, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks it's time to put an end to that.

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

When Willie Geist reported Huckabee's opinion on MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski was almost speechless, and even Joe Scarborough couldn't immediately find much to say beyond calling it "interesting,"

Revisionist History Week

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:01:57 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: "While the recent House of Representatives 'Christmas resolution' was being covered and discussed ad nauseum on countless websites, blogs, and elsewhere, another far more heinous resolution was introduced, one which, unbelievably, does not appear to have been noticed by anyone." ~ Chris Rodda

Clip Source: www.talk2action.org

On December 18, 2007, Congressman Randy Forbes (R-VA) introduced H. Res. 888,

This resolution, which purports to promote "education on America's history of religious faith," is packed with the same American history lies found on the Christian nationalist websites, and in the books of pseudo-historians like David Barton. It lists a total of seventy-five "Whereas's," leading up to four resolves, the third of which is particularly disturbing -- that the U.S. House of Representatives "rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or purposely omit such history from our Nation's public buildings and educational resources," a travesty of the highest magnitude, considering that most of the "history" this resolve aims to promote in our public buildings and schools IS NOT REAL!

Thirty-one representatives have already embarrassed themselves, demonstrating their lack of knowledge of our country's history by becoming co-sponsors of this resolution.

Growing New Hearts

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:18:15 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: Approximately 50,000 people die annually waiting for a heart donor. That doesn't include those who die waiting for other organ transplants, like lung, liver, or kidney.

Clip Source: seattletimes.nwsource.com

Medicine's dream of growing new human hearts and other organs to repair or replace damaged ones received a significant boost Sunday when University of Minnesota researchers reported success in creating a beating rat heart in a laboratory.

The researchers removed all the cells from a dead rat heart, leaving the valves and outer structure as scaffolding for new heart cells injected from newborn rats. Within two weeks, the cells formed a new beating heart that conducted electrical impulses and pumped a small amount of blood.

With modifications, scientists should be able to grow a human heart by taking stem cells from a patient's bone marrow and placing them in a cadaver heart that has been prepared as a scaffold, Taylor said. The early success "opens the door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas — you name it and we hope we can make it," she said.

Taylor is conducting similar experiments on pigs as a step toward human work.

The Bush doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:30:57 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: Click on the link to read the full article. This snippet barely scratches the surface.

Clip Source: www.harpers.org

Among the precepts of the “Bush Doctrine”—as loyalists to the current president call the set of foreign-policy principles by which they, and no doubt he, hope his tenure will be remembered—by far the most widely admired has been his stance on democracy in the developing world. The clearest articulation of this stance can be found in a November 2003 speech at the Washington headquarters of the United States Chamber of Commerce, when Bush sharply denounced not just tyranny in the Arab states but the logic by which the West had abetted it.

Notwithstanding President Bush’s new “forward strategy of freedom,” the United States has marshaled nothing more than a few hollow demurrals against the antidemocratic abuses by its allies, and it maintains close partnerships with all of America’s old authoritarian friends in the region.

Above all, America has refused to engage with Islamic opposition movements, even those that flatly reject violence and participate in democratic politics.

The Top 10 Intelligent Designs (or Creation Myths)

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 01:22:56 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: You'll have to click on the link at the top to get to the start page for the top 10.

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

When the founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States, they chose to include the separation of church and state. This was to ensure that the state-sanctioned religious persecutions that plagued much of Europe during the 16th century would not despoil the young, yet grand experiment in democracy that was to become this Republic.

Scientists now believe that there is an intrinsic logic to our reality, that there are absolutes, laws of nature. Much remains a mystery, and as one question is answered, many others arise. The question that faced Pennsylvania's Dover School District was whether or not the imposition of one creation belief on a multi-ethnic, secular student body is in keeping with the law that prohibits the creation of a state religion. If they allow one belief system to be taught, surely they must also teach others?

To help out with this dilemma, LiveScience presents a list of those Creation Myths that helped define civilizations both past and present.

White House told to answer questions on missing e-mails

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:49:50 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

(CNN) -- The White House has five business days to say whether its computer backup system is possibly storing millions of old e-mails that the Bush administration said were missing, a federal court ordered.

Tuesday's order, by a magistrate of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, comes as a part of a suit brought against the White House by the National Security Archive.

The archive alleges the e-mails were improperly deleted, violating laws requiring the preservation of government records.

"The White House has evaded answering questions about whether it permanently destroyed over 5 million e-mails about such issues as Hurricane Katrina, the firing of United States attorneys and the exposure of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent," said Meredith Fuchs, an attorney for the Security Archive.

The order gives the White House five business days to submit a sworn declaration answering questions such as, "Do the backups contain the e-mails said to be missing?"

The best of the worst holiday sweaters, 2007

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 01:57:30 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy

Clip Source: seattletimes.nwsource.com

The thrift stores are used to the calls by now. Do they have any ugly Christmas sweaters? Cliff Huxtable sweaters? Big ol' knitted sacks, preferably with bears wearing scarves?

Indeed, the once-loved, then-maligned Christmas sweater is popular again, making appearances at office parties, on Christmas cards, in frat houses and, yes, newspaper contests. Last year we asked readers to send us photos of themselves posing in the ugliest holiday sweater they could find. We got so many responses we decided to bring back the idea this year.

Christmas sweaters have been around since the invention of the loom (and probably earlier). But the celebration of the tacky Christmas sweater is a recent phenomenon, traceable in part to the 1989 classic, National Lampoon's "Christmas Vacation," in which heavily sweatered Clark Griswold was the butt of the joke.

So in honor of Clark Griswolds everywhere, we bring you the best of the worst holiday sweaters, 2007.

Photo gallery | Bad Christmas sweaters

Super Secret Agent CIA Satellite Scam

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:31:19 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: These people believed that secret agents would administer medicine to them as they slept? Yeah, and if you leave $800,000 under your pillow for the Tooth Fairy, the Underpants Gnomes will make you a tinfoil tiara.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

MONROE, La. - A man was sentenced to more than four years in prison for bilking friends and family out of more than $800,000 by convincing them that his wife was a government agent who could arrange to have their medical problems diagnosed by satellite imaging.

U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington said in a news release following Monday's sentencing of Brent Finley that the couple convinced numerous people that Stacey Finley was a CIA agent and with her contacts she could schedule a medical scan of the victims' bodies by satellite imaging that would detect any hidden medical problems.

The Finley's convinced their victims that, if any medical problems were found, secret agents would administer medicine to them as they slept in exchange for payment, according to a bill of information filed when the Finleys were charged in May.

"These audacious criminals should remind all of us that scam artists will go to great lengths to take our life's savings," Washington said.

Tags: health, fraud, medical, scam

Holy Furniture of Fertility

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:23:37 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy
clipper's remarks: Maybe for laughs they should move the chair into an actual nunnery, just to see if all the nuns get pregnant. By the way, who would have thought that a fertility goddess would become a Catholic saint?

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

An ordinary old armchair under a worn blanket in a three-room flat in Naples draws thousands of hopeful pilgrims.

Childless women from all over the world flock to the "miracle" chair -- close to Speranzella street whose name suggests hope -- in the picturesque Spanish Quarter of Naples. There they ask Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds of Jesus for a miracle.

After the Mass, worshippers are led up a steep staircase and along a narrow corridor into the flat where the saint, born Anna Maria Rosa Nicoletta Gallo, spent half her life in chastity and mystical suffering until her death in 1791 at the age of 76.

"Are you married?" Sister Maria Giuliana whispers to a young woman sitting on the armchair, before touching the visitor's breast and belly with a "monstrance" or reliquiary containing a vertebra and a lock of hair from the saint. Continued...

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Our followers often send us an item of clothing asking us to intercede with the saint by placing their objects on the chair.

Tags: religion, furniture, saints, catholicism, fertility

Mystery of Antarctica's 15-Million Year-Old Lake

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 09:31:49 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Researchers have thawed ice estimated to be perhaps a million years old or more from above Lake Vostok, an ancient lake that lies hidden more than two miles beneath the frozen surface of Antarctica using novel genomic techniques to determine how tiny, living "time capsules" survived the ages in total darkness, in freezing cold, and without food and energy from the sun.

Lake Vostok is located beneath four kilometers of ice in East Antarctica. The lake is approximately 250 km long and 50 km wide. The overlying ice provides a continuous paleo-climatic record of 400,000 years, although the lake water itself may have been isolated for as long as 15 million years.

Because of the long isolation, it's believed that Lake Vostok could contain new lifeforms, and unique geochemical processes. For five years, scientists in Russia and the United States have sought to probe the ancient lake to discover the secrets lying inside this pristine body of water.

Tags: antarctica, lake, water, genomics, ice, time, life

Ferns clean up poisoned soil

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:36:41 GMT

clipped by: Monkfishy

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

August 1, 2005 — Planting ferns can be a cheaper, greener way to soak up poisons such as arsenic from the soil. Ferns absorb arsenic through their roots and store it in their leaves, which can then be cut off. Arsenic -- once used to treat wood -- can still lurk in old roofs, decks, and playgrounds.

Although arsenic is no longer used to treat wood, the chemicals from older wood decks and playgrounds may have seeped into the soil. The polluted soil can be dug up, but it's costly.

Now, soil chemists have a new, cheaper, greener way to soak up buried backyard chemicals, fern plants.

The ferns clean up contaminated soil by a process called phytoremediation. A contaminant -- like arsenic -- is absorbed through the plant's roots. The arsenic then moves up to the leaves where it's stored. The leaves can then be cut off.

Also at risk are people living on former farmland that once used pesticides. Homeowners should get a soil tester and check the arsenic levels.

Tags: health, pollution, gardening, soil