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Global Economic Slump



©Funny Times

Bomb

Dolphin's toy mistaken for a bomb

WINDLEY KEY, Fla. - A dolphin's toy that resembled a bomb scared spectators Wednesday and prompted officials at a marine park to call 911. A dolphin playing in a tank at Theater of the Sea surfaced with several items, including one that looked like a homemade bomb.

Recycle

The right to Stone. Town to immigrants: you can't kill women

Immigrants wishing to live in the small Canadian town of Herouxville, Quebec, must not stone women to death in public, burn them alive or throw acid on them, according to an extraordinary set of rules released by the local council.

The declaration, published on the town's Web site, has deepened tensions in the predominantly French-speaking province over how tolerant Quebecers should be toward the customs and traditions of immigrants.

"We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here," said the declaration, which makes clear women are allowed to drive, vote, dance, write checks, dress how they want, work and own property.

Bizarro Earth

The right to Sunbath: Dogs get own beach on holiday island

Dogs are to get a beach of their own on the sun-kissed Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

Dogs are strictly prohibited from the holiday island's shoreline to keep the beaches clean for bathers, but Cypriot authorities have decided enough of the dog's life.

Bomb

Back to the Future - Aftermath: Day 2 of the War With Iran

In the first fierce day of war, when coordinated air strikes on Iranian targets destroyed most of the Iranian air force and navy, the US military appeared invincible again. Wrecking a second-rate military power does that for an imperial war machine.

By the second day of the war, however, most American and Iranian citizens wished for peace. Unfortunately, wars are always easier to get into than out of. While the war planners in the Pentagon and Israel had devised a workable plan to force Iran into war, using a fake attack on US warships by Iranian gunboats (as the faked Tonkin Gulf attack initiated the Vietnam War), the US Navy fared far worse than the planners wished.

Calculator

Amazing!! Brain Man

Twenty-four years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie "Rainman." George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited.

Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called "Brain Man" in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain.

Better Earth

Bulb huggers: Eiffel Tower to switch off lights as scientists finish major report on global warming

On Thursday evening, as scientists and officials put finishing touches on a long-awaited report about global warming, the Paris landmark will switch off its 20,000 flashing light bulbs that run up and down the tower and illuminate the French capital's skyline.

The Eiffel Tower's lights account for about 9 percent of the monument's total energy consumption of 7,000 megawatt-hours per year.

The five-minute blackout comes at the urging of environmental activists seeking to call attention to energy waste _ and just hours before world scientists on Friday unveil a major report Friday warning that the planet will keep getting warmer and presenting new evidence of humans' role in climate change.

Bomb

Sour puss sweetened by a dose of Prozac

It was a classic case of clinical depression.

The patient would not go out for fear of being bullied, moped around the house and sought comfort in eating.

Eventually there was nothing for it. Twiglet the cat had to be put on Prozac.

Comment: Yeah, right. And if it is good for the cat, it's even better for humans! So step right up and getchyer Prozac!


Eagle

Eagle flying with a deer head causes power outage

JUNEAU, Alaska - About 10,000 Juneau residents briefly lost power after a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines.

Comment: Hmmmm - if we live in a 'symbolic reality', what might this say about the Eagle and its overestimation of its own power?

;)


Padlock

For skeptics, no topic is taboo - except Iraq

In a meeting of 800 skeptics and freethinkers at the Riviera, the taboo topics of polite American life, the stuff no one in their right mind brings up at the office or at a family dinner, were open for discussion.

And everyone pretty much agreed with each other at Saturday's "The Amazing Meeting 5," sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation. It brings together skeptics from across the country - and a handful from abroad - for three days of lectures and socializing.