Company Sponsored Lactation Breaks? WTF?!?!. I can't even visualize putting someone on hold so I could go "express".

Maybe, I'm lactation intolerant

In yet another sign that Silicon Valley is no longer the land of milk and honey, Sun Microsystems has cut much of its lactation services to breast-feeding mothers.
During flush times, Sun's lactation support program epitomized for some the best of the Silicon Valley experiment of trying to blend work and life. To others, it symbolized too much blurring of the lines. Now, with Sun struggling to become profitable after three rounds of painful layoffs, some of the outsourced lactation services went on the chopping block.

Nursing mothers at Sun are not happy. "Sun's lactation program was the flagship," said Laureen Hudson, a technical editor at Sun who has a 2-year-old son and is pregnant with her second child. Now that the program is being curtailed, Hudson is angry. "To lash out at women and children like this, I find deplorable."

Sun weans workers from healthy perk

Are they smoking crack downtown?

Drug dealers can pay the taxes without getting busted. Metro's vice squad confiscated 26 million dollars of cocaine last year. None of it could be taxed. 

But under a new law, the state plans to make drug dealers pay.  And it will give those drug dealers a way to pay before they even get busted.
 
Loren Chumley, Revenue Commissioner says, "It's a way for us to get the fruits of the crime to pay to fight the crime."

The taxation of unauthorized substances - known on the streets as the crack tax, will cost the state at least a million dollars to put in place.  It is modeled after a 1999 North Carolina law that has netted that state six million dollars so far.
...
The system will take confidentiality into consideration.  A drug user would be able to walk into the state office building and pay the taxes on their drugs - without being arrested.

Anyone want to buy some Florida swamp land? I'll throw in a case of snake oil too. This is nutZ..

New Illegal Drug Tax Would Help Fight Crime

Fearing for the financial and emotional safety of their workers, industry leaders have asked President Bush and the FCC to remove the song from the airwaves, as President Carter did during the "He Stopped Loving Her Today" crisis of 1980.

Too Funny...

Onion: Country ballad paralyzes trucking industry

Ok, I've heard of great horny toads but clawed frogs?

The African Clawed Frog is kept as a pet in some states but it is banned in California because it competes with and consumes native species.

"They are really hard to pick up because they're very slippery," said Ken Howell, Asst. Curator, California Academy of Sciences. "And if you look at the back you and see the claws -- the three claws on the back there."

Nobody knows how the outlawed amphibians got into the lily pond but they have reproduced wildly threatening to wipe out most everything else.

Foreign (clawed) Frogs Frighten San Francisco

The War Office wanted to see if flocks of kamikaze birds could be trained to carry small amounts of explosive or one of the biological agents being developed atPorton Down in Wiltshire. Wing Commander William Rayner, head of the Air Ministry's Pigeon Section, wrote: "Pigeons can carry a load of two ounces over 100 to 200 miles. They are not detectable by radar. With the latest developments of explosives and bacterial science I suggest that this possibility should be closely investigated and watched.

I've been bombed by pigeons before but never like this...

Plan for kamikaze pigeons to bomb Russia

A valet trying to park a sports utility vehicle accidentally hit a parked BMW, sending the unoccupied car halfway off a deck and dangling over the street and a parked SUV below.

The incident took place about 2 p.m. Wednesday inside and part-way outside a a Midtown Atlanta parking garage at 230 Spring Street. No injuries were reported.

The SUV and the front end of the BMW were intertwined in the collision. Emergency crews were able to pull the BMW safely back into the garage without incident.

How not to park a BMW

Police in New Jersey have seized items of Michael Jackson memorabilia, including a pair of Calvin Klein underpants.

Police say the items might be used in the child molestation case against the beleagured pop superstar.

Monmouth County prosecutor, Robert Honecker, said the items had been secured by forensic unit detectives in early March.

The seizure followed a request from the district attorney in Santa Barbara County, California, where Jackson lives.

The memorabilia belonged to Henry Vaccaro who, according to Honecker, acquired the items several years ago as part of a lawsuit settlement.

Used underware as a lawsuit settlement? WTF ?!?! Why do celeb trials have to be such a freaking spectacle?

POLICE GRAB JACKO'S UNDIES

Decius wrote:
] So newspapers all over the planet are blaring these pictures
] today on the front page, but the issue seems to be 3rd page
] news in the domestic American media and the pictures are very
] difficult to locate online. Here they are. This isn't all of
] them but its enough.
]
] The soldiers explanations about having not gotten proper
] guidance from management seems ridiculous in light of the
] photographs. It should be obvious to anyone that this behavior
] is inappropriate.
]
] In case you haven't seen the stories, the individual on the
] box has been told that if he falls off the box he will be
] electrocuted...

Despicable, Deplorable and Abhorrent! I can only hope the full weight of the UCMJ is thrown at the participants and that they are made to be an example that justice can be served upon those who abuse privilege.

It never ceases to amaze me how easily normally "good" people can be corrupted to put their morals aside when a mob mentality takes over. Regardless of why those prisoners were in our custody, there is no better time than the current to apply the golden rule, esp when the world is watching.

RE: The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos

News of the Weird:

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Lulu, a pet kangaroo that helped save the life of an Australian farmer last year, is to be honored with one of the RSPCA's highest awards for animal bravery, the National Animal Valor Award.

The 52-year-old farmer, Len Richards, was knocked unconscious by a falling tree branch on his farm in the Gippsland region of Victoria state, during a storm last September.

Lulu came to his rescue by going to the family home and making a barking noise to attract the attention of Richards' wife Lynn.

Richards went looking for her husband with a nephew and found him lying unconscious in a field.

Lulu the roo hops to bravery award

Decius wrote:
]
] (U:) Probably the point of this is not to influence the
] west, but to demonstrate to gullible people in the middle east
] that they terrorists have influenced the west.

Because the ultimate aim of the terrorist is just not to expunge westerners and western values but to take over and rule the land of Mohammad per their evil and warped sense of Islam once the west is no longer significant obstacle to their aims. While we usually tend to side with Israel, w/o us, the more moderate middle eastern states like UAE, Quatar, Egypt and even the less progressive Saudi Arabia would be extremely vulnerable. Nobody seems to see just how much we have historically protected their interests.

RE: CNN.com - Protest 'or Italian hostages die' - Apr 26, 2004