"The passengers on board the Vatican’s first flight to Lourdes may have been pilgrims in search of spiritual healing, but they still had to obey anti-terrorism rules, it has emerged, after several of them had their holy water confiscated.

Headrests read: 'I search for your face, oh Lord'
The Vatican’s new service, a Boeing 737 painted in yellow-and-white papal livery, took off from Rome’s Fiumicino airport on Monday, serving swordfish canapes to 148 pilgrims reclining on headrests stamped with the message: “I search for your face, oh Lord”.

While the outward journey was smooth, turbulence struck on the return when anti-terror rules were strictly applied by the French police.

No bottles containing more than 100ml of liquid were allowed on board unless checked in, meaning passengers were forced give up the holy water they had just collected at Lourdes.

Many hoped to ferry the water back to sick relatives."

Vatican Air Passenger's Holy Water Confiscated

The beautiful women celebrated by centuries of artists, morphed into one long stream of the female face.

Beautiful Women of Fine Art (This is spellbinding)

"On Wednesday, August 8th, 2007, a civil complaint was filed in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York by JOHNSON & JOHNSON and JOHNSON & JOHNSON CONSUMER COMPANIES, INC against THE AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS and its commercial licensees, LEARNING CURVE INTERNATIONAL, INC., MAGLA PRODUCTS, LLC, WATER-JEL TECHNOLOGIES, INC., and FIRST AID ONLY, INC.

The goal of this civil complaint is to restore the long-held legal boundaries surrounding the use of the Red Cross trademark."

WTF, it is the RED CROSS! Next they might go after Christ because he uses that cross symbol too. HA!

That's like the most generic 'symbol' on earth, just the color red - and they say THEY own it. Wowsers.

Interestingly, in looking at this, I find that the Red Cross didn't even 'pick' that symbol - it was assigned to them by the US CONGRESS.
SEE- section 6 and related provisions
* http://www.redcross.org/images/pdfs/charter.pdf

Johnson & Johnson Says THEY own the RED CROSS of the Red Cross

This is crazy. This is what boys DO. Come ON.

Boy, 13, suspended for drawing a gun

I'm not sure if I should file this under intellectual property, civil liberties, or crime. lol

This happened to me recently. I bought a copy of Rosetta Stone in March. Paid 200.00 for it. About that time, our library got it online - for free. So I sold my copy. Or tried to. Well, Rosetta Stone didn't like it, and claimed that I had bought a nontransferrable service and not software, and that it was all in the EULA, that I never saw. I've got a box of books and 3 disks that are mine forever. I looked all over their site - on all their authorized retailer sites - I don't see anything about a service, only software.

SO I, for one, and many other homeschool parents who have purchased 200-500.00 software only to be told we didn't buy software after all, just a NON-TRANSFERABLE serivce....some service resembling a Lewinsky I guess...after the fact, will be pulling for the EFF on this one.

If you take this sort of despotic thinking, and you apply it to books, movies, music, ect....there would be no more record collecting....no more used bookstores...no more libraries.

I hope the courts do right by the American consumer on this one. First-sale simply HAS to be upheld, and fortified.

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation has taken up the case of a California man who has been sued by Universal Music Group for selling promotional CDs. Like other record labels, UMG distributes free CDs to radio stations and music reviewers in the hopes of drumming up publicity. The CDs come stamped with the label "promotional copy, not for sale." Based on this notice and the fact that the copies were given away rather than sold, the labels argue that these "promo CDs" remain the property of the labels and are only leased to recipients for their personal use."

Major Copyright Case to test first-sale doctrine

How sick they would do that in the first place. I am glad the court ruled justly here.

AlterNet: Federal Ruling Protects Kids of Gay Parents

"Unschooling isn't the absence of education. It's the absence of schools.

Public schools.
Private schools.
Even home schools.

There is no designated time for learning, no designated location where education takes place. Unschooling families see the world as an open classroom wallpapered with everyday experiences.

Kids express an interest, ask a question or wonder out loud whether fish breathe. Parents help them find the answer and foster discussions.

But they don't push."

My family has been moving closer and closer to unschooling. At this time I only formally teach writing and math. Reading, literature, science, art, and technology and other topics are off and running on 4 legs.
We are going to the Live and Learn Conference in a couple of weeks. I might make the complete jump soon - I am very interested in meeting the older unschooled children.

A fair article on unschooling

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of CalTech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

Virgil's on Wired. :)

(Update: Slashdotted)
Wow Virgil, you made the Drudge report!
I like your page to the press. That's great. :) I just wish more people would focus on the Diebold edits!

See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign

According to a 2005 report of the International Centre for Prison Studies in London, the United States—with five percent of the world’s population—houses 25 percent of the world’s inmates.

Because America is so freaking intolerant of anything that the majority considers 'deviant' and what is OK is getting more and more and more narrow.

Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?

Oh wow.
Pentagon and Military officials, Joint Staff - you name it -

" report released publicly on Thursday by the Defense Department's (DOD) inspector general has found high-ranking Army and Air Force personnel violated long-standing military regulations when they participated in a promotional video for an evangelical Christian organization while in uniform and on active duty."

Good video to watch. Amen. ;)

Video, Report Details Evangelism at Highest Level in Military