Headlines below the fold

China says: NO BIBLES to the Olympics...wonder if they will ban rosaries, icons, and Korans?
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And the Pope told off the Saudi King, reminding him of the "invisible man" (and women) should have freedom of religion too...
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And what does the MSM do when a dictator has his supporters shoot non violent protesters?
Myamar: headlines.
Pakistan: Headlines.
Venezuela? Ignore, and report the glowing comments of the latest bimbo who goes there...
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And now the really important news: Lileks says Tribbles is on line PDF
He also discusses marrow flan and mubblefubbles...

Photo of the day

From Michael Yon's website:

Thanks and Praise: I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome.

A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers. (Videotape to follow.)

Joke of the day

A nice, calm and respectable lady went into the pharmacy, walked up to the pharmacist, looked straight into his eyes, and said, "I would like to buy some arsenic."

The pharmacist asked, "Why in the world do you need arsenic?"

The lady replied, "I need it to poison my husband."

The pharmacist's eyes got big and he exclaimed, "Lord have mercy! Are you crazy? I can't give you
arsenic to kill your husband.That's against the law! I'll lose my license! They'll throw both of us
in jail! All kinds of things will happen. Absolutely not! No way!"

The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist's wife.

The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied,

"Well now, you didn't tell me you had a prescription."

Your email of the day from Tia Maria

Exciting video of the day

Watching food rot...

Video: Time lapse footage of the egg-cam experiment After more than 50 days, a pioneering online experiment to test a suggestion made by a Nobel prizewinner has vindicated his prediction that egg white is amazingly resistant to decay.

Craft item of the day

How to make a pop up bunny

pdf

Gift Item of the day

LINK
but the bad news is that it is one of a kind collector's item...and not for sale...

Red Wine Headache: The culprit revealed

The culprits are biogenic amines, such as tyramine and histamine, and are naturally found in wine and other fermented, aged and pickled foods such as chocolate, cheese, olives, nuts and cured meats. They can also cause high blood pressure, heart palpitations and elevated adrenaline.

and there is a device to detect the culprits...
LINK
says: "Oddly enough, the technology the amine detector is based on was originally funded by NASA to try to find life on Mars..."...

The bad news? right now the device is the size of a briefcase...

Biggest structure in the universe

The Sloan Great Wall...

Of course, others insist the great blob is bigger...

Anatomy lesson for today

Ballon anatomy by Jason Freeny
from Streetanatomyblog...

memo for today

Headlines below the fold

I know it's around here somewhere:
Big Chunk of the Universe is missing....

No, nothing going on folks, just ignore...
North Korea dismantles nuclear reactor....my take on it on BNN HERE
now if they could only figure out what the NorthKoreans were doing at that Syrian reactor that the Israelis bombed...

What's wrong with this picture?
Mural on Phillipine press freedom gets censored...story has photos of the alterations...

And here is a nice fuzzy headline: Pirates free Taiwanese ship...LINK2

Why bless their little hearts...but of course, don't mention the reason they released the ship was that the big bad US Navy sort of said: Go ahead, punk, make my day...

The latest fishing vessel freed by the U.S. Navy had two Taiwanese and 12 Chinese crew members aboard when it was hijacked 137 miles off the coast of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, in May....
Two other boats hijacked by Somali pirates in May were freed after U.S. Navy personnel spoke to them by radio.

Good news from Afghanistan

The public health infrastructure is slowly being built, and as a result the children's death rate is down. The UKTimes estimates that 90 000 kids stayed alive last year due to improvements.

Interesting stuff on the net

The Freeper Archeology page has lots of nice links this week. (political site probably not work friendly..so I'll post the original article links)

They have the Tut Photos...FRLINK...APLINK...
Best comment: Worst case of athlete's foot I ever saw.

They link to this 3D computer tour of Persipolis...LINK

30 000 years ago, people started living longer...the latest theory is that the "grandmom" effect allowed elders to pass down their wisdom to the young, and led to strengthening community ties...
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Using numbers to predict the future? LINK


And then an article on the genetics of Jewish ancestry...

American 9-11 hero controversy

Screwloosechange Blog has a discussion on the controversy about what caused the Pulmonary fibrosis death of 9-11 responder/hero Zadroga.

There is evidence on autopsy that he must have injected pills, since talc etc was found inside blood vessels. On the other hand, glass and dust were found in his lungs...and inhaled particles is of course a known cause for various occupational lung diseases.

Both sides are arguing, since if it was drugs that caused his disease his family won't get compensation...yet it ignores another question: was his "recreational drug use" actually self treatment of post traumatic stress syndrome?

Not all druggies use it to get high...many have severe mental problems before they use drugs, and the drugs compound the problem...

That is why the VA treat alcoholism in war veterans as a service connected disability...

PODCAST OF THE WEEK

Father Greeley has a podcast...

Craft item of the day

a LIFESIZED JABBA THE HUT PUPPET

Recipes of the day

What do you do with leftover candy?

Well, if it's chocolate, make candy cookies. LINK
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Recipe of the day: Potatoes/veggies India style...LINK

Gift Item of the day

Want to recycle your old vinyl records?

Well, "Vling!" fashions them into jewelry.
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Hiro is a geek and a Hero

"...Masi Oka, also known as "hey, that's the guy from Scrubs", has just been "chosen" to be the OLPC Global Ambassador. His qualifications? Being a huge nerd kid (he was on a cover of Time for genius kids because his friend's dad was the photographer), working as a nerd at ILM (even while shooting Heroes), and looking like a nerd—three qualifications we meet as well...
(for non geeks, ILM is a special effects company).


Businesswire has this:

OLPC was founded by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte to design, manufacture and distribute laptop computers that are sufficiently affordable to provide every child in the world access to new channels of learning, sharing and self-expression.

“Being a part of a global effort that is enabling children to learn, grow and succeed in life is both tremendously gratifying and important to me,” said Masi Oka. “I’m very excited about this opportunity to represent One Laptop per Child and bring my love of technology and education to the global community.

Shhh...good news on ...

The UK Times notices good news: Things are improving in Iraq and as for the rest of the world, there have been no major terror attacks for awhile...
Yup. Terror attacks keep getting thwarted...even last week's Manila Mall explosion was sewer gas, thanks to the PNP breaking up a terrorist safe house in the southern suburbs of Manila that was planning to place high tech bombs in malls during the holidays.

The more conservative UKTelegraph notices that the press is starting to notice the downward curve of violence in Iraq too....

Howie Kurtz notices the press noticing Hillary playing the "little girl" card...hopefully she will ignore her advisers and start showing her strength. I mean, if she can't take on Tim Russert, how will she fare against the Mullahs?

Bad news: Indonesian volcano ready to explode...may cause global cooling like MT. Pinatubo...but unlike Pinatubo they haven't managed to evacuate everyone...