By BRAD FOSS, AP Business Writer
WASHINGTON -Ira Goldman invented the Knee Defender, a beeper-sized block of plastic that lets passengers prevent the seat in front of them from reclining.
Although the FAA has not tested the Knee Defender, it sought to discourage people from using anything that would "alter the performance of any part of an airplane."
Northwest Airlines said it will ban the Knee Defender from all flights.
George Bush's comrades eaten by their Japanese PoW guards
By Charles Laurence in New York
(Filed: 26/10/2003)
The former President George Bush narrowly escaped being beheaded and eaten by Japanese soldiers when he was shot down over the Pacific in the Second World War,
Lt George Bush, then a 20-year-old pilot, was among nine airmen who escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids.
The horrific fate of the other eight "flyboys" was established in subsequent war crimes trials...
They were tortured, beaten and then executed, either by beheading with swords or by multiple stab-wounds from bayonets and sharpened bamboo stakes. Four were then butchered by the island garrison's surgeons and their livers and meat from their thighs eaten by senior Japanese officers.
The future president escaped a similar fate because he ditched his plane further from the island than the other crews...
Americans Describe Their Views About Life After Death
October 21, 2003
(Ventura, CA) Belief in life after death, like the existence of God, is widely embraced: 8 out of 10 Americans (81%) believe in an afterlife of some sort. Another 9% said life after death may exist, but they were not certain. Just one out of every ten adults (10%) contend that there is no form of life after one dies on earth.
Moreover, a large majority of Americans (79%) agreed with the statement “every person has a soul that will live forever, either in God’s presence or absence.”
Most Americans do not expect to experience Hell first-hand: just one-half of 1% expect to go to Hell upon their death. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) believe they will go to Heaven. One in 20 adults (5%) claim they will come back as another life form, while the same proportion (5%) contend they will simply cease to exist.
More at Life After Death
Mutant Gene Linked To Ob§e§§ive Compul§ive Di§order
Could this be "it"?
Analysis of DNA samples from patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and related illnesses suggests that these neuropsychiatric disorders affecting mood and behavior are associated with an uncommon mutant, malfunctioning gene that leads to faulty transporter function and regulation. Norio Ozaki, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues in the collaborative study explain their findings in the October 23 Molecular Psychiatry.
| Shoe thief finally caught San Francisco Chronicle | "Police arrested a man for stealing shoes at a southern Japanese hospital then found a collection in his home of 440 women's shoes - all for the left foot... Ichiro Irie, 45, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of having stolen two leather shoes the previous day during one of his twice-weekly hospital visits, the spokesman said. In Irie's home, police found a box in a closet overflowing with the left mate to 440 pairs of women's shoes, including high heels, patent leather pumps, sandals and nurses shoes." | |
October 26, 2003
BY TIM BUTCHER
OKAVANGO DELTA, Botswana -- With scientists reporting a devastating collapse of the African lion population from 230,000 in 1980 to fewer than 20,000 now, the decline has traditionally been blamed on loss of natural habitat and hunting.
But advances in virology and groundbreaking field research suggest large numbers of lions could be dying from AIDS because their immune system has been destroyed by lion lentivirus, the lion version of HIV.
"Such a high mortality rate coupled with cases of pregnant lionesses losing cubs before birth and others failing to become pregnant raised our suspicions."
"In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
Richard Dawkins
--'God's Utility Function', Scientific American
FCC Gives Bono a Pass on Cursing at Awards
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - C
omplaints objected to Bono's uttering the phrase "this is really, really, f------ brilliant." ( f------ means "fucking.")The FCC said the word "may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities."
David Solomon, chief of the FCC's enforcement bureau, said in the ruling that Bono used the vulgarity as an adjective or to emphasize an exclamation and that "the use of specific words, including expletives or other 'four-letter words' does not render material obscene."
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