"Happy Slapping" spreads among British kids

Everybody has a camera phone now, right? Well, everybody but me, anyway. British teens, and even pre-teens, have found a fun new use for the popular gizmos. It’s known as “Happy Slapping”:

But now there's a disturbing new trend emerging with the way some teens overseas are using these phones to videotape themselves slapping innocent bystanders.

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Indications that "happy-slapping" may be spreading. British transport police investigating 200 incidents in the last six months.

Most, they say, go unreported.

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The attackers then upload the video straight from the phone and onto the web, where there are dozens of images of slap-hapless victims.

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Authorities say the craze was born in the club music scene, before catching on in school playgrounds.

I can see only one way to deal with this strange craze. I’m going to start a fund to send British kids to France for their summer vacation.

Small changes can make a big difference

I got this in an e-mail, so unfortunately I don’t have a link for you.

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.Here are this year's {2005} winners:

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an ass.

Climate changes threaten world food supply

Consider the following, warnings from the scientific community concerning the effects of the changing climate on the world’s food supply:

There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth.

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The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant over-all loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in thirteen U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather.

I’m no alarmist, no tree-hugging, whale-saving, bike-pedaling, candle-using environmentalist whack job, but those are sobering thoughts.

Those words are from the April 28, 1975 issue of NEWSWEEK magazine. You can view a PDF of the article here, as reproduced at Junk Science.

Incidentally, the next sentence after the spot where I left off the quote above reads as follows:

The central fact is that after three-quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.

Yessirree Bob, just thirty years ago it was a scientific “fact” that the earth’s climate was cooling down, and global cooling was going to cause mass famine and storms and floods and tornadoes and maybe another ice age and OH MY GOD THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD JUST AREN’T DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT!

Is any of this getting through to you “global warming” advocates out there?

HAPPY TAX DAY!

6.6 BILLION hours just to do the paperwork!

AP) - People scurrying to meet Friday's tax deadline might consider this: It's taking you and your fellow Americans 6.6 billion hours to do all that paperwork. The basic tax return -- the Form 1040 filed by most people every year -- accounts for 1.6 billion hours. The Internal Revenue Service furnished those statistics to the White House budget office, which keeps tabs on the government's bureaucratic demands.

And when you're done contributing your chunk of that 6.6 BILLION hours and looking at how much of YOUR paycheck government takes and spends for you, go visit Citizens Against Government Waste and spend a few minutes looking into what government does with YOUR money.

The CIA had an opening...

The CIA had an opening for an assassin. After all the background checks, interviews, and testing were done, there were three finalists. Two men and a woman.

For the final test, the CIA agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. "We must know that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances. Inside this room, you will find your wife sitting in a chair. Kill Her!!!" The man said, "You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife." The agent said, "Then you're not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home."

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about five minutes. Then the man came out with tears in his eyes. "I tried, but I can't kill my wife." The agent said "You don't have what it takes, take your wife and go home."

Finally, it was the woman's turn. She was given the instruction to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one shot after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman. She wiped the sweat from her brow.

"This gun is loaded with blanks", she said. "I had to beat him to death with the chair".