Archaeology in Europe: 02/01/2008 – 03/01/2008
“The story of Neanderthal extinction is one of the most intriguing in all of human evolution,” author Simon Underdown told Discovery News. “Why did a large-brained, intelligent hominid that shared so many traits with us disappear?”
Maybe they became zombies…
First off, the folks at Conservapedia seem mighty obsessed with hot! gay! Sex!, which sets up this most excellent quip:
Q: How many Republican politicians can you fit in the closet?
A: Evidently, all of them.
h/t to » Conservapedia: Still Obsessed » The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century : Joey deVilla’s Personal Blog.
That’ll teach him to tinkle outside – Yahoo! News
APPLETON, Wis. – An apparently drunk man picked the wrong place to tinkle. Appleton police arrested the man Friday afternoon after he reportedly relieved himself in front of the police department.
Man fired for requesting a prostitute – Yahoo! News
Hotel workers were sent to Jorgensen’s room to ask him to stop demanding prostitutes. When they arrived at his room, Jorgensen answered the door in the nude, human resources director Tim Donovan said.Jorgensen was fired the next day.
At the hearing, Jorgensen said his actions didn’t hurt the casino, and he said he’d received strong performance reviews. He also blamed the restaurant for serving him too much alcohol.
“I was absolutely plowed,” he said.
Administrative Law Judge Terence Nice turned down Jorgensen’s claim for unemployment benefits.
It’s never your fault when you demand paid nookie on the company’s dime, is it?
[tags]Odd News[/tags]
As rain shifts to snow, mushy morning rush is forecast — chicagotribune.com
Afternoon rains turned to snow Monday evening as a storm expected to bring around 6 inches of snow moved into the Chicago area.
It started snowing around 2pm today. In spite of grumbling about the cold and the piles of grey, frozen blocks of slush along the margins of the roads, I really love how pretty everything gets after a few hours of snow.
Big fat flakes came down as I drove home, and it was starting to “stick” on the parking lot and not melt away. A couple of hours later, we had more than 2 inches. And now we’ve got about 3 1/2 inches, just wet enough to stick to every little branch and twig, delineating every line of bark on the trees and covering the ugly half-melted dirty grey stuff with pretty, clean, fluffy snow. So I pulled on a pair of winter shoes and walked around the block.
The trees looked like lace curtains, hanging in every direction as far as you could see.
Lovely. Just lovely. It made that nice crrrrunch-crrrrunch noise with every step, and occasionally when I walked over a shelf of ice on the sidewalks, it crackled and made a deeper KA-RONK! KA-RONK! noise.
One neighbor was out shoveling her drive on the other side of the block.
“Are we tired of the snow yet?” I asked as I ka-ronked along.
“I like the snow,” she said with a smile as she cleared her drive old-school.
“I do, too.” Ka-ronk, ka-ronk, ka-ronk.
I’d told David to come after me if I wasn’t back in 10 minutes, and was a little worried that I’d get back to the house only to see his footprints following mine, but he was still watching an old “Enterprise” re-run (first season, Captain Archer was still a sunny optimist). I got back in plenty of time, and before too many other neighbors decided to fire up their snowblowers and spoil the nice lacy night.
[tags]snow, ice, winter[/tags]
Keith Olbermann makes it 13 times that the Bush administration used a suspiciously timed terror alert or arrest announcement to either negate unfavorable news, or neutralize positive news about political opponents. Only thirteen times? But it’s linked at One Utah:
One Utah » Blog Archive » The Nexus of Politics and Terror (and Lying)
Audio: Confessions: Online Only: The New Yorker
This week in the magazine, in an excerpt from her book “The Bishop’s Daughter,†Honor Moore writes about her father, the Episcopal bishop Paul Moore, his faith, and his secret. Here Moore talks about her father’s public service and private life.
As noted at Preludium and The Lead. Moore’s voice is warm and calm, except when she talks about her disappointment at not being able to discuss something she had in common with her father; her private life was more open, but he was a man of his generation, and not able to accept himself as he was… he was a man between worlds.
My friend Ellen’s husband runs a blog about archeology, and today it had an item about the Church of England’s current upheaval… no, not that upheaval, the one about the fancy bishop’s palaces going on the market because they’re perceived as an extravagance in an era when ordinary parish priests have trouble making ends meet.
Archaeology in Europe: 02/01/2008 – 03/01/2008
Resplendent with moats, gatehouses and banqueting halls, bishops’ palaces are among some of the grandest buildings in the country.Now, however, the historic homes, which have belonged to the Church of England for centuries, could be sold off in a bid to raise money for cash-strapped parishes.
A confidential internal review is examining whether the diocesan bishops’ houses, nine of which are palaces, are appropriate for the Church to keep. The bishops’ residences are worth about £120 million, but cost up to £9 million each year to maintain.
They are at the centre of a row between Church commissioners over whether it is justifiable to retain such opulent residences, which give the perception of bishops living in luxury while parish clergy struggle to make ends meet.
While the commissioners – who are responsible for overseeing the Church’s £4 billion of assets – are to look at all of the historic palaces over the next few years, they met last week to debate the future of Rose Castle, which has been home to the bishops of Carlisle since the 13th century and is estimated to be worth around £2 million.
The Bishop of Carlisle is NOT pleased at this development.
Did you watch the British detective series Bergerac? The building that was used as the police station used to be a children’s home. And now there’s a real mystery: child abuse and possibly murder, dating back decades, in that same building.
BBC NEWS | Europe | Jersey | Child’s body found at care home
Parts of a child’s body have been found by police in a former children’s home in Jersey.
Since I was sick week before last, we canceled the regular twice-monthly housecleaning service and deferred it to this Wednesday. Which means that in addition to more than the usual amount of clutter, there was a lot of stuff on the carpet and dirt in the front hall and a huge number of dustbunny-type junk in the upstairs bedroom.
It takes a while for my completely dormant housekeeping skilz to stir themselves, but today I’d finally had enough of looking at dusty margins and clumps of cat hair on the carpet, so I got out the vacuum cleaner. Fairly quickly, I realized why we rarely use it; it has a tendency to get clogged with pet and people hair (I have long hair, and I shed year-round; this wraps around dust bunnies like you wouldn’t believe).
There are few things in life more messy, and more satisfying to the soul, than unclogging a vacuum cleaner. I happen to be rather good at it, if I do say so myself. There is the proper sort of wire hanger to be selected, unbent, and straightened with a short little “L-shaped” crook at the end. It has to be fed down the flexible tube of the vacuum cleaner, which is an upright model with a flexible hose for use with attachments. Then there’s the rotating of the wire, in the hope that it’ll snag on the obstruction far down in the tube (this is where my having long hair pays off in the end). And then there’s the payoff, when the wire is slowly drawn out of the tube, pulling along a grey, mouselike blob of dust, pet hair, Ginny hair, bits of fluff, and other scrudimentia.
Today, I yanked several rat’s nests worth out of the vacuum, until I was able to pull the wire straight through and make sure that I’d gotten it all. The dust trap thing is a plastic compartment that snaps in and out, so that got emptied (and with it out, I could pull the wire through from the top). All gone, tossed out in the garbage in the garage already.
The vacuum was barely stirring the dust before, but it really sucks now! Wheee!
I admit that I’m kind of interested in getting a Dyson, because this clogging problem will just keep happening.