You smell so good I could eat you up... If you were wearing Flame, anyway.Burger King Corp. may have just the thing. The home of the Whopper has launched a new men's body spray called "Flame." The company describes the spray as "the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat."
The fragrance is on sale at New York City retailer Ricky's NYC in stores and online for a limited time for $3.99.
I know... You want to know when the lady's version is coming out, right?
Oliver Twist wouldn't have needed any more gruel in real life, scientists said Thursday.
The picture painted by Charles Dickens of starvation rations in an 1830s workhouse north of London is wide of mark, according to an analysis of menus and other historical evidence.
Dickens' eponymous hero famously asked for more of the "thin gruel" doled out three times daily in the grim institution for the poor where he grew up.
In fact, contemporary recipes suggest such workhouse gruel was substantial, with each pint containing 1.25 ounces of best oatmeal, and servings supplemented by wholesome coarse bread.
Historical data also shows large quantities of beef and mutton were delivered to workhouses, pediatric dietician Sue Thornton of Northampton General Hospital in central England and colleagues wrote in the British Medical Journal.
Such a diet, comprising three pints of gruel a day, would sustain growth in a nine-year-old child like Oliver, unless he was exceptionally active.
"Given the limited number of food staples used, the workhouse diet was certainly dreary, but it was adequate," they concluded.
Hmm. Let's consider what a big business 'resale' was during Victorian times. Next, we can consider that a lot of people had no problems putting children in dangerous environments.
Taking all of that into account, I'm forced to wonder if some enterprising work house directors didn't figure out exactly how much food a child could survive on.
I wonder how much of that fat government delivery of grains and meats wound up in the kids' bowls v.s. how much wound up in the director's bank accounts.
Just sayin'.
Well, maybe he isn't quite the baby in the manger, but it appears Barack Obama is making a cameo appearance as a wise man in some Italian-made Nativity scenes...NAPLES (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle are appearing in Italian nativity scenes this year, alongside the baby Jesus and wise men, according to Naples craftsmen selling figurines in the run-up to Christmas.
The production of handmade figurines for nativity scenes is big business in this southern Italian city and has been for centuries.
But beyond the thousands of angel, sheep, Mary and Joseph figures filling market stalls before Christmas, craftsmen say Obama has become a top seller.
"The ones we are selling the most of are those of Barack Obama, America's new president, along with his wife Michelle," said craftsman Genny Di Virgilio.
Tradition requires that the nativity scene be built up over time until Christmas Eve, when baby Jesus is put in the manger as the very last element of the display.
As always, figurine-makers provide a chance to choose a more light-hearted approach for the scene providing replicas of personalities who have made the news during the last year.
Beyond Obama, they are also selling figurines of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni and even Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
While cherished by many, some people say the arrival of celebrity figurines spoils the traditional sense of Christmas.
One nun, Angelica, scoffed at what she called a "cartoon version of a nativity scene."
Grandfather Pasquale Oliva, looking into a shop window in Naples agreed with her.
"Something as beautiful as the traditional nativity scene shouldn't be spoiled by these figurines of personalities and I don't think children like them."
However, his young grandson Francesco was quick to disagree, snapping "yes" when asked if he liked the modern twist on tradition.
I tend to agree with the Sister. What a farce!
Oh, that Blagojevich...
For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if a federal proposal to charge fees for air-polluting animals becomes law.
Farmers so far are turning their noses up at the notion, which is one of several put forward by the Environmental Protection Agency after theU.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases emitted by belching and flatulence amounts to air pollution.
"This is one of the most ridiculous things the federal government has tried to do," said Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, an outspoken opponent of the proposal.
It would require farms or ranches with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs to pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog.
The executive vice president of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Ken Hamilton, estimated the fee would cost owners of a modest-sized cattle ranch $30,000 to $40,000 a year. He said he has talked to a number of livestock owners about the proposals, and "all have said if the fees were carried out, it would bankrupt them."
Sparks said Wednesday he's worried the fee could be extended to chickens and other farm animals and cause more meat to be imported.
"We'll let other countries put food on our tables like they are putting gas in our cars. Other countries don't have the health standards we have," Sparks said.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The fee would cover the cost of a permit for the livestock operations. While farmers say it would drive them out of business, an organization supporting the proposal hopes it forces the farms and ranches to switch to healthier crops.
"It makes perfect sense if you are looking for ways to cut down on meat consumption and recoup environmental losses," said Bruce Freidrich, a spokesman in Washington for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
"We certainly support making factory farms pay their fair share," he said.
US Rep Robert Aderholt, a Republican from Haleyville in northwest Alabama, said he has spoken with EPA officials and doesn't believe the cow tax is a serious proposal that will ever be adopted by the agency.
So to Hell with the farmers and to Hell with YOUR CHOICE about what to eat.
You'd better learn to like soy milk and salad three times a day, folks.
Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman Catholic school, church leaders have said.
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales also want facilities in schools for Islamic pre-prayer washing rituals.
The demands go way beyond legal requirements on catering for religious minorities.
But the bishops - who acknowledge 30 per cent of pupils at their schools hold a non-Christian faith - want to answer critics who say religious schools sow division.
Indian Muslims say they do not want the gunmen killed by the security forces during the attacks in Mumbai to be buried in Muslim graveyards.
Community leaders believe the militants cannot be called Muslims because they went against the teachings of Islam and killed innocent civilians.
One leader said the militants had "defamed" the religion.
Nine militants died when they stormed targets in India's financial capital, killing at least 172 people.
'Unprovoked'
In what is perhaps their first openly defiant act against "Islamic terrorism", Muslims in India have decided they will not allow the militants to be buried in Muslim graveyards anywhere in the country.
They said that they could not believe that the assailants, who they said had "killed innocent civilians unprovoked", were true followers of Islam.
Ibrahim Tai, the president of the Indian Muslim Council, which looks after the social and religious affairs of the Muslim community in India, said that they had "defamed" his religion.
"These terrorists are a black spot on our religion, we will very sternly protest the burial of these terrorists in our cemetery," he said.
Other Muslim groups have written to their local assembly representatives to say that if the authorities force the militants to be buried in a Muslim graveyard, they too will come out on the streets in protest.
Thanks, guys. It's about time!
The firm in question is Game Power 7 and it has made a few adjustments to Gala's role-player Rappelz to make it supposedly more appealing to customers in Islamic countries.
Music switched
As well as changing the background music, the noises monsters make (really?) and taking out non-Muslim religious symbols, such as crosses, Game Power 7 has given some characters a little more to wear.
We're told that female players will be properly covered up so that they're no longer showing too many flesh-coloured pixels. Arms and legs get special attention, with chainmail and long stockings pasted on.
The new version of Rappelz is online now and aimed at 19 countries that include Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Thank goodness Islam has prioritized which problems to take on! We can all sleep better at night now.
President George W. Bush has granted pardons to 14 individuals and commuted the prison sentences of two others convicted of misdeeds ranging from drug offenses to tax evasion, from wildlife violations to bank embezzlement, The Associated Press learned Monday.
The new round of White House pardons are Bush's first since March and come less than two months before he will end his presidency. The crimes committed by those on the list also include offenses involving hazardous waste, food stamps, and the theft of government property...
On the latest pardon list were:
_Andrew Foster Harley of Falls Church, Va. Harley was convicted of wrongful use and distribution of marijuana and cocaine...
_Geneva Yvonne Hogg of Jacksonville, Fla., convicted of bank embezzlement. (Maybe the pardon came with a bailout, too!)...
_Robert Earl Mohon Jr. of Grant, Ala., who was convicted of conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
_Ronald Alan Mohrhoff of Los Angeles, who was convicted for unlawful use of a telephone in a narcotics felony...
Bush also commuted the prison sentences of John Edward Forte of North Brunswick, N.J., and James Russell Harris of Detroit, Mich. Both were convicted of cocaine offenses.
Great. So President Bush has unleashed a bunch of drug dealing buddies, a la the last days of President Clinton. I suppose the scumbags listed above have the connections to get their indulgence.
Hey, asshat... How about doing something right and pardoning the political prisoners Ramos and Compean instead?
War veteran Johan Jambor made the revelation to a priest in the 1960s, who wrote it down.
The priest’s document has now come to light – 23 years after Johan’s death.
The war tyrant’s medical condition has been mocked for years in a British song.
The lyrics are: “Hitler has only got one ball, the other is in the Albert Hall. His mother, the dirty b****r, cut it off when he was small.’
Until now there has never been complete proof Hitler was monorchic – the medical term for having one testicle.
But the document tells how Johan saw the proof with his own eyes. In the account, he relives the horror of serving as an army medic in World War I.
He died aged 94 in 1985, but had told his secret to priest Franciszek Pawlar, who kept a note of their conversation.
Johan’s friend Blassius Hanczuch confirmed the priest’s account of how the medic saved Hitler’s life. He said: “In 1916 they had their hardest fight in the Battle of the Somme.
“For several hours, Johan and his friends picked up injured soldiers. He remembers Hitler.
“They called him the ‘Screamer’. He was very noisy. Hitler was screaming ‘help, help’.
“His abdomen and legs were all in blood. Hitler was injured in the abdomen and lost one testicle. His first question to the doctor was: ‘Will I be able to have children?’.”
Blassius said that when the Nazis swept to power Johan began to suffer nightmares and blame himself for saving Hitler.
I guess this is why the rest of the world was never "blessed" by a Hitler Jr.
HA!
It
isam Adwan, who is accused of grooming young and vulnerable women for bomb attacks, has told police in Baquba that so many
others are following her lead that they will not be able to stop them.
Last week a suicide bomber who blew herself killing five Iraqi guards at a checkpoint was revealed by police to have been just 13 years old - making her the
youngest such attacker so far in a spate of such bombings in the city, capital of the troubled Diyala province.
---------------------------------------------------
Captain Ahmed Jasim, a spokesman for the Baquba police, said that the 38-year-old had described how a group of women, mainly widows of terrorist "martyrs", who are grooming younger relatives and acquaintances for death.
"She said she is just one of many mothers who do the same job," he said. "And there are many girls who are willing to die. The mothers tell them that they will go to heaven, where they will sit by rivers of honey and have lunch with the prophet Mohammad and live in comfort.
Now there's an incentive for blowing one's self up... Lunch with an insane pedophile.
"The girls are the wives of al-Qaeda members, so their husbands tell them that their martyrdom would be glorious and the husbands too will automatically get to heaven as a result of their wives willingness to kill themselves in the name of religion."
That's right. Molest them until they hit puberty and then dispose of them, and get yourself a free ride to Allah's brothel in the sky, too. Sounds like a win-win situation, huh?
Rania Ibrahim, a 15-year old who was captured at a checkpoint wearing a suicide vest in Diyala in August, is one of those pushed into terrorism in this way. She was a frustrated, poorly-educated teenager who had been sold into marriage with a terrorist operative. Umm Fatima, her husband's aunt, then cajoled her into attacking a police station.
"I left school at 11 and my mother spent the rest of the time trying to find a buyer to marry me," she said. "I wanted to be a doctor but my husband said he wanted me to go to paradise, where he would soon join me."
Her mother was finding a BUYER for her daughter! But Islam respects women, or so they say. Don't be a doctor, sweetie, be a homicide bomber. Now that's a career choice!
Oh, and I wouldn't hold my breath in paradise waiting for that kind, caring and respectful husband to join me... Just a gut feeling.
But Rania, who claimed she was fed pills and alcohol before her attack, attracted the suspicions of police at the check-point. She was called forward and the police cut the belt from her body. Umm Fatima, who is believed to have held the remote electronic trigger for the device, was unable to explode the bomb.
That's right... Muslim cabbies cannot pick up disabled people with seeing eye dogs or persons carrying alcohol, but you can give it to a teenage girl before you murder her.
Rania is now in prison in Baquba but her mother, Bassad Selman Mohana, lives in a dilapidated house near the centre of the once neat and prosperous central Iraqi city. She said she felt betrayed and deceived by her son-in-law, Mohammad Hassan, who was himself arrested a month after his young wife was taken into custody.
"My daughter is a good girl and I thought he was a good man," she said. "Around here, everyone makes price the first factor in determining who the girls marry. He deceived me, I did not know he was involved with al-Qaeda."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"When Muslim land is occupied by non-believers, jihad is mandatory for all Muslims, male and female," said Dr Hani al-Sibai, a London-based Islamist Sunni scholar. "Women are allowed to conduct jihad without the approval of parents or spouse."
Well, hoody-hoo. I guess Muslim women have some civil rights after all.
It has plagued scientists and politicians for decades, but scientists now say global warming is not the problem.
We are actually heading for the next Ice Age, they claim.
AGAIN?!? You mean like how we were headed towards an ice age in the 1970's?
British and Canadian experts warned the big freeze could bury the east of Britain in 6,000ft of ice.
That's a LOT of ice. I wonder from what orifice they've pulled this estimate?
Most of Scotland, Northern Ireland and England could be covered in 3,000ft-thick ice fields.
The expanses could reach 6,000ft from Aberdeen to Kent – towering above Ben Nevis, Britain’s tallest mountain.
And what's more, the experts blame the global change on falling - rather than climbing - levels of greenhouse gases.
What? But I though SUV's were evil! Is my car too small now? Am I not doing my part?
Lead author Thomas Crowley from the University of Edinburgh and Canadian colleague William Hyde say that currently vilified greenhouse gases – such as carbon dioxide – could actually be the key to averting the chill.
Fire up your coal furnaces, folks!
The warning, published in the authoritative journal Nature, is based on records of tiny marine fossils and the earth’s shifting orbit.
Earth's orbit is shifting? How did we manage to cause that? It's got to be our fault, after all.
Maybe we should try blowing up the moon or something. That would affect Earth's orbit.
The Earth has seen dramatic climate fluctuations – veering between cold and warm extremes - over the past three million years, the researchers say.
And changes in the Earth’s orbit and slowly falling levels of carbon dioxide are the cause.
The team says we are approaching a turning point, in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years, which will lead to the new ice sheets smothering much of Europe, Asia and South America.
Damn. And here I believed Ted Turner when he said we would all get to eat people in 30-40 years. Don't I look silly now?
The theory, which is based on computer models, suggests ice sheets will also slash sea levels by up to 300m, so Russia and Alaska will be connected by land.
The North Sea will become part of a huge glacier stretching from Holland and Scandinavia to the Russian Far East.
Professor Crowley said the stark findings do not mean we should stop fighting warming.
But he urged: ‘Don’t push the panic button.’
‘There’s no excuse for saying “we’ve got to keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,”’ he told Reuters.
But we have to DO SOMETHING!!! Run around in circles and wring our hands!
‘Geologically it’s tomorrow, but we have lots of time to argue about the appropriate level of greenhouse gases.’
