Today's Cool News

Can't Quite Put My Finger On This Story

If you're planning an Italian vacation, you might want to take along a pair of handcuffs.  That way your hands won't "involuntarily" grab your crotch.

From the Guardian:

In a landmark judgement with far-reaching social implications, Italy's highest appeals court has ruled it is a criminal offence for Italian men to touch their genitals in public.

The judges of the court of cassation stressed that the ban did not just apply to brazen crotch-scratching, but also to what might be termed superstitious pre-emption. Anyone who has seen a hearse go past in Italy, or been part of a discussion in which some terrible illness or disaster is mentioned, will know it is traditional for men to ward off bad luck with a quick grab at what are delicately called their "attributi".

(snip)

The court was ruling on the appeal of an unnamed 42-year-old workman from Como near Milan. In May 2006, he was convicted of indecent behaviour for "ostentatiously touching his genitals through his clothing". His lawyer said it was merely a "compulsive, involuntarily movement, probably to adjust his overalls".

The third penal division of the Rome court was having none of it. It said that public genital-patting "has to be regarded as an act contrary to public decency, a concept including that nexus of socio-ethical behavioural rules requiring everyone to abstain from conduct potentially offensive to collectively-held feelings of decorum".

The judges said such actions risked generating "awkwardness, disgust and disapproval in the average man", unexpectedly perhaps failing to mention the average woman.

This Place Blows But You Still Gotta Go Back

It's been nearly 12 year since a volcano blew the island of Montserrat to smithereens.  Okay maybe not that far.

But refugees from the blast who went to America now have to go home.

From the Montserrat Reporter:

The news came fast for an official number of 292 Montserratians residing in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program that the end of TPS was near. No less surprising, three weeks later, in spite of efforts to change the decision or find new ways of avoiding what seems to be inevitable, there appears little hope and the disappointments continue.  Now Immigration activists are trying to draw attention to the decision by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to send these Montserratians back home eight years after they were forced to evacuate.

(snip)

Although they concede the conditions in Montserrat continue to warrant concern, they based their determination on scientific reports from Montserrat and Britain which said: that "eruptions of the type that have occurred at Soufriere Hills generally last 20 years, but the volcano could continue to erupt sporadically for decades…there is only a 3.2-percent chance that this period of volcanic activity will stop within the next six months. There is a 50-percent probability that the volcanic activity will last another 14-15 years, and a 5-percent chance that the volcanic activity will continue for over 180 years."

(snip)

Meanwhile, Richard Aspin, Governor's Press Officer, told The Montserrat Reporter on Tuesday, "The UK Government has requested a list of the names of the persons who are affected. An attempt is being made to find out who will eventually be forced to leave, who are desirous of going to England or return to Montserrat."

What is Fox News?

Comic
by luvnews

The tease at the end proves the dude's point!

Hearing the Call of the Forest (As long as the trees don't all call at once)

Up until now, telemarketers have had two options for annoying you during dinner.  Either the call would come from a real live bored and desperate to make a living human being or it would come from a real dead bored and desperate to get oiled machine.

Soon, your phone could ring and it's your plants on the other end.  "Honey, could you bring home some extra fertilizer?"

I shit you not.  Here's how Botanicalls work:

Each plant on the Botanicalls system is equipped with sensors connected to an Arduino microcontroller which contains code particular to that plant type. When a plant's microcontroller determines that the plant needs to make a phone call based on current sensor information, it sends data through an Xbee wireless radio to an Xport gateway. This gateway connects to the internet, where it contacts a PHP script with the plant's ID number and type of need. PHP then packages this information and passes it on to Asterisk, an open-source telephone system, which generates the call. When the call is placed, a prerecorded audio file is played, expressing the particular desire of that plant.

Okay, that sounds rather geeky... but it appears the makers of Botanicalls have either a messianic vision for the future of human plant interactions or just a healthy sense of humor.

Botanicalls was developed to provide a new way for plants and people to communicate in order to develop better, longer-lasting relationships between them. Instead of using an automatic watering system or developing methods for plants to text or email people, the Botanicalls team has created the means for a more personal relationship. Each plant has a unique voice based on its botanical characteristics, and each has the ability to tell people when they are in need of assistance. They're also polite: they make sure to call and say thank you when they get a good watering.

I wish I had someone to call when I got a good watering.

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How Not to Steal a Snowmobile

"Hey Buddy, I've got this great idea for making lots of easy money on the side, let's set up a snowmobile chop shop.  We should steal people's snowmobiles and drive them here to our garage."

"Drive them huh?  You mean steal 'em and put them on the back of a flatbed truck and drive them here?"

"Uh, why do that when we can just scoot across the snow from there to here?"

From CBS2 in Chicago:

Police say the man discovered Saturday that his snowmobile was missing from his home in Van Buren County's Arlington Township in southwest Michigan.

The man, whose name was not released, called police and set out on a borrowed snowmobile following tracks in the snow for about 10 miles through fields and along roads.

Relatives and friends followed by car as he trailed the tracks to a home in Bangor Township.

"The tracks that they had followed led right up to a garage door," Michigan State Police said in a news release.

Inside the garage, police found the man's snowmobile, already disassembled, plus three others and many snowmobile parts.

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Oh Yes Tracy, This is VERY Cool

Disclaimer:  I know Tracy.  In fact I worked for her in Sacramento.  She and I never got along very well... so perhaps I'm enjoying this wayyyyy too much!

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One of the cool things about working in a Top 10 market these days is that we have people meters... meaning we don't have to pay attention to the inanity of sweeps... you know those three plus months a year when local TV news operations roll out their canned investigative pieces stolen from each other and from consultants (I call them insultants) and other sources.

Well it seems this February in Kansas City, several stations ended up running the exact same investigations for the book.  In one, Tracy Brogden Miller's station KCTV-5 appeared to copy a report from a competitor about local school teachers posting naughty pictures on MySpace.

Enter "The Pitch", Kansas City's "Alternative" rag.  They want to know how this happens... but Tracy won't comment on the story.  So what does the paper do?  It stages a "hidden camera ambush"... and yes Tracy, this is So Cool!

Massive Creepy Crabs

I've long been an advocate of space migration, the idea that a significant number of us need to get off this planet and explore some new worlds.

But every now and then we discover brand new (to us) worlds right here on Terra.

From the Daily Mail:

More than a mile below the icy surface of Antarctic waters scientists have discovered an amazing world of giant sea creatures, including spiders as large as dinner plates and jellyfish with tentacles that stretch more than half the length of a London bus.

They live in a dark and mysterious wilderness of thick sea grasses and coral gardens that are teeming with creatures never seen before – huge worms, giant prawns and massive, creepy crabs.

(snip)

In some places, (voyage leader Martin Riddle) said "every inch of the sea floor is covered in life".

Giantism, he said, was "very common in Antarctic waters", where his team had even found deep gouges in the sea floor, caused by icebergs scraping the coral" as they floated by.

(snip)

Marine scientists have already suspected that huge creatures live in the very deep waters of the Southern Ocean which reaches Antarctica.

Giant squid have been caught by New Zealand fishermen, but these are usually sick creatures which have risen up from the sea bed.

But Can She See the Road Through the Veil?

We're not sure if Mohammed allowed his womenfolk to ride on camels, but women these days still can't drive in Saudi Arabia.  That could soon be changing thanks to rulings from two of the kingdom's top clerics.

From Arab News:

A well-regarded Saudi religious scholar said that there is nothing in Islamic law that bans women from driving and that the fatwas issued in this regard are based on individual judgments.

“In principle women driving is permitted in Islam,” said Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, a member of the Kingdom’s Council of Senior Islamic Scholars.

(snip)

He said if certain issues are resolved, such as the problem of men’s behavior and traffic safety, then he sees no religiously motivated conflict with women driving.

Sheikh Mehsin Al-Awaji, another prominent religious scholar in the Kingdom, agreed. “No religious scholar is going to tell you differently,” he said. “But (the issue of) women driving comes as a ‘package’ and we need to fix the ‘package’ before making the decision (to allow women to drive).”

Expanding on the idea that allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia comes with a “package” of issues, Al-Awaji said there needs to be Saudi women working as police officers, mechanics and other positions. The sheikh diminished the significance of women driving, saying that myriad social reforms have higher priority, even in the realm of empowering women or encouraging public participation in important social challenges.

To me this is at the heart of what's wrong with the cultural aspects of Islam. (We'll leave the spiritual aspects for another time.)  Women are deprived of rights not because they're doing something wrong but because it's easier to restrict women's rights than it is to train men to behave decently when they see a woman's face or a woman driver or anything else that shocks their sensibilities.

Islam seems to me to be based on the principle of men are so wild an unable to control our passions that the only two possibilities are sexual mayhem or complete enforced control of behavior.

Goodhair's Gay Genius

On this day after the New York Times printed a longstanding rumor of John McCain's extra-marital affair, we at Today's Cool News feel the need to revive another old rumor of sexual indescretions, namely that Texas Governor Rick Perry might be "a little light in the loafers."

Texas politico types about four years ago were buzzing over Rick's alleged boyfriend being a fellow on the state government payroll.

It wasn't just the NYT story that brought this back to mind... now it appears the Rickster is going to write a book about gays and the Boy Scouts.

From Queerty:

Texas Governor Rick Perry describes his attachment to the Boy Scouts as “intensely personal”. That’s why he’s decided to pen a book - On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For - that defends the group’s anti-gay attitudes

(snip)

Perry makes sure to celebrate the gays, saying he values our little pink lives, but insists the Scouts should eschew sexual discussions of all types, which is really just a way of telling gay folk to keep a lid on it

There is no confirmation so far to the rumors that Sen. Larry Craig will write the introduction....

I Don't Give a Crap About Radio

All-Access gave this one a great headline: "From the You Should Lock Your Damn Door Department"

A 25-year old New Jersey man did what any of us would do if we found ourselves the perpetrator of a hit and run accident... go to the local radio station and hit the sack.  Of course, sleep begets crap... or so the story goes.

From NJ.com

A Bridgeton man who fled the scene of an accident near the corner of Oak Road and Maurice River Parkway was later found by officers sleeping inside a local radio station office, according to police.

Officers were dispatched to Clear Communications -- which owns Vineland radio stations WMIZ 1270 AM and WVLT 92.1 FM -- on Maurice River Parkway at 4:10 a.m. to find 25-year-old Alexander Ballesteros in a chair in the building's foyer.

(snip)

Rev. Eusebio Serrano was the first to discover the sleeping man, at 3:30 a.m., on his way into the building to prepare a morning sermon that would later be broadcasted over the radio.

Serrano, of Vineland Centro Evangelistic Church, initially decided to let the man sleep.

However, he decided to alert the authorities at 4 a.m., when Ballesteros suddenly got up and defecated on the bathroom floor.

No Shit...