From “Police: Teen Hugs Mother, Stabs Her In Back“:

GRAPEVINE, Texas — Police say a 15-year-old Texas boy stabbed his mother in the back with a 6-inch kitchen knife while pretending to hug her after an argument.

Police arrested the teen Tuesday in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Grapevine about three hours after his mother called police.

Authorities say the woman was treated at a Dallas hospital for a non-life-threatening wound.

Police released this sketch of the suspect:

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From “Tiger leaps 16-foot fence, kills zoo worker“:

A worker was killed and another injured when a tiger jumped a fence at a zoo in Vietnam, officials said.

Duong Thanh Phi, the zoo’s director, said the workers were planting trees at the Dai Nam park in Binh Duong province Thursday when the tiger jumped the 16-foot electrified wall at his cage.
He said the tiger mauled a 47-year-old worker in the head and neck, and that the worker died on the way to a hospital.

Another worker was injured in the attack.

The tiger has been placed in a more secure cage.

The fences are electrified, right?

That’s right. But they never attack the same place twice. They were testing the fences for weaknesses. Systematically. They remembered.

The British are coming! The British are coming! - Paul Revere

Remember when Paul Revere was a hero just for riding a horse and screaming about nonsense? Well it wasn’t nonsense in the end, but at the rate we’re going, it might as well have been.

Revere was a silversmith if I’m not mistaken. Well, even if I AM mistaken, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Why, you ask? Oh, you didn’t ask. Oh, you don’t care either, WELL TOO BAD.

GETTING TO TH… *Ahem* Getting to the point: can you imagine if you heard a contemporary version of Paul Revere outside your window today? You’d probably look outside and throw a hard-cover history textbook at the little boy/girl/madman/madwoman trotting around on their horse or, more likely, trotting around in their Ferrari while rampantly trying to persuade people that there’s any sort of threat to our beloved American soil. Then you’d throw him a laptop or smart phone and suggest facebook or twitter for him to distribute his thoughts.

What if we told everyone that 9/11 was caused by two giant masturbating mastodons who each fired massive amounts of explosive reproductive matter into both buildings? Continue reading this post…

This is kind of a spin-off of my previous two posts about stories.

I had a brief discussion with Mike about stories. He said one could argue that any story had a “good guy vs. bad guy” situation - even in the news. He gave the example that most news stories have a victim or someone you are rooting for. I agreed with it and the conversation went on with its usual tangents.

I didn’t remember the conversation until recently, when my eyes darted around and saw this headline:

Wow, talk about villain. It was like I could see a bunch of news articles floating in my head:

“The guard donated money to children. Children with diseases.”
“That guy who shot the guard? White supremacist.”
“Neo-Nazi”
“Suicide bomber”
“Speaks german”
“Eats babies”
“Clubbed a seal”
“President of Rosie O’Donnell fan club”
etc

So I went further into news to see if I could dig up anything that sounded like hero-worshiping or villain-demonizing. Here’s just a few:

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GET DAT POOP

Scientists looking for lost penguins stumbled upon an effective method: Follow their poop from space.

[...]

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey found this out by accident when they were looking at satellite images of their bases. A reddish-brown streak on the colorless ice was right where they knew a colony was, said survey mapping scientist Peter Fretwell.

The stain was penguin poo — particularly smelly stuff — and it gave researchers an idea to search for brown stains to find penguins. They found the same telltale trail, usually dark enough to spot from space, all over the continent, said Fretwell by telephone from England.

Now my helmet’s on, you can’t tell me I’m not in space….doo-doo.

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I thought this would be appropriate given Mike’s recent post on loanwords. This is on the cover of the most recent issue of the New Haven Advocate:

Here’s a link to the article explaining why they did it. Here’s a snippet:

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I don’t watch TV, and I definitely do not watch reality TV shows.

I’m sure some of you have heard the buzz about Susan Boyle on the show “Britain’s Got Talent” (or the British version of “American Idol”). I heard about it too, and couldn’t help to at least check it out.

All I gotta say is, the whole thing reeks. To quote a movie, she’s

A faker! A phony! An utter fraud! A base, deceitful…!

Anyone remember Paul Potts? Even he was sort of a work because he’s actually done some amateur Opera before; they sort of built him up as just some nobody, but that’s not entirely true. Even so, I think that guy was more genuine.

But this whole thing with Boyle reeks of being a fix. A fake. A work. A gimmick. The fact that they ask her “so what’s the dream,” and she sings a song “I Dream a Dream” is strike one. A stagehand going “you didn’t expect that one now, did you,” was strike two. The responses from the judges for her compared to the response to Paul Potts is strike three.

“Overnight sensation” they’re saying…give me a fucking break. They’re all in on it, and it’s all a work. You’ve all been had.

I said it to a couple of my friends but I’ll say it here. All sports and all things entertainment related is fake. It’s rigged. There’s too much dirty business and dirty money floating around for any of it to be real.

Ironically, the only real sport is Professional Wrestling. They know it’s fake and they make no effort trying to make it real.

Texas Declares its Sovereignty

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Texas Gov. Rick Perry this week joined state Rep. Brandon Creighton and sponsors of House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 50 in support of states’ rights under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and affirms that Texas claims sovereignty under the 10th Amendment over all powers not otherwise granted to the federal government. It also designates that all compulsory federal legislation that requires states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties, or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding, be prohibited or repealed.

Link to original article.

Self-healing polymer advance could mean scratch-free iPhones
Material scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi have created a new polymer that can fix its own scratches under regular sunlight, a feat that has no end of practical applications.

When reached for comment Wolverine stated, “Yeah, but can your iPod do THIS? *snickety snick* TORNADO CLAW! DRILL CLAW!”