In the winter of 2002, with the federal budget stretched thin, President George W. Bush asked Congress to give back money that lawmakers had earmarked for local projects so it could be used instead to fund the Pell grant program, which helps needy students pay for college. One of the local projects that had drawn particularly harsh scrutiny was a $273,000 federal grant that U.S. Rep. Sam Graves had procured to study goth culture in Blue Springs, Missouri. "It's one of those priorities that my constituents asked me to fight for," Graves told an Associated Press reporter at the time.

Kansas City - News - Black Hole - pitch.com

JOBLESS Steve Cooper has found work at last — as an Indian GODDESS who thousands of Hindus believe can cure their infertility.

Pilgrims head to a remote jungle temple to be blessed by Steve, 32, from Tooting, South West London.

He places his third finger on the their foreheads and mutters: “The goddess is here”.

...

A eunuch called Sudha said: “He is a fake. I checked and he still has a penis.

“He is a male so can’t be a goddess. He shouldn’t give blessings.” Steve, who has a tattoo of the goddess on his arm, just insisted: “I am both male and female.”

Um.. Is this the result of outsourcing?

The Sun Online - News: Tooting man is Hindu goddess

March 20, 2007 — Doors will soon open to reveal one of the mysteries of the Great Pyramid in Giza, Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News in an exclusive interview.

Hawass, one of the world's leading Egyptologists, said he will show what lies behind secret doors inside the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum by the end of this year.

"Finally, people all over the world will know what is behind the second door in the southern shaft and the third door in the northern shaft," Hawass said.

...

Widely believed to be ritual passageways for the dead pharaoh's soul to reach the afterlife, these 8-inch square shafts remained unexplored until 1993, when German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink sent a robot through the southern shaft.

Thats right, because robots aren't afraid of curses or mummies.

Discovery Channel :: News :: Pyramid's Secret Doors to Be Opened

See.. I knew the sushi restaurants around here were holding out on us... They need to put "dolphin roll" on the menu.

(warning, this might not be pleasant to watch for those who'd rather not see dolphins treated like fish)

glumbert.com - Dolphin massacre in Japan

U.S. Patent Application #20050038718 details the use of RFID readers that American Express calls "consumer trackers" to closely watch people in stores. The idea is that RFID-embedded objects carried by the shopper would emit a "consumer identification signal" when queried by consumer tracker devices in the environment. Businesses would pick up this signal and use it to identify shoppers, track their movements, and observe their behavior.

...

In an application reminiscent of a scene from Minority Report, the American Express patent would not only track and observe shoppers, but it would also spam them with purchasing "incentives," advertisements, and even odors:

I wonder how a lack of response to these ads will effect your credit rating.

American Express RFID People-Tracking Patent

Police and prosecutors in northern Italy are wrestling with a mystery that brings together a man with memory loss, evidence of devil worship and a blood-drenched apartment.

...

He has since been identified as a 22-year-old called Daniele - investigators have not released his surname - who, until recently, worked in a nearby factory. His family said his only real hobby was UFOs.

They told police that, last September, he had suddenly broken with his past. He had left his job and spent his savings, though his relation with his parents, whom he now says he cannot recognise, continued to seem normal.

Among the puzzles vexing investigators are how a man who had lost almost seven pints of blood could have made his way 70-odd miles across country - and what happened to him in the at least three days that he was missing.

Aliens must be using death metal for mind control. I think I finally understand people's fascination with power point.

Bloody, satanic, amnesia case baffles Italian police | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

These guys havent seen my refrigerator.

YouTube - Peanut Butter, The Atheist's Nightmare!

The head of a California company hired by the U.S. government to help build a fence along the Southwest border to curb the flow of illegal aliens into the United States has been sentenced on charges of hiring illegals for the job.

And now from the irony department...

Fence firm hired illegals - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

New York (Reuters) -- A life-size sculpture of a naked Jesus made out of chocolate has angered a Roman Catholic organization and forced a Manhattan art gallery to reconsider exhibiting it during Easter week.

The sculpture "My Sweet Lord" by Cosimo Cavallaro was to be exhibited for two hours each day next week in a street-level window of the Roger Smith Lab Gallery in Midtown Manhattan.

...

"They would never dare do something similar with a chocolate statue of the prophet Mohammad naked with his genitals exposed during Ramadan," she said.

Tom Waits must be proud.

Chocolate Jesus stirs bitter controversy - CNN.com

Someone on Presidential hopeful John McCain’s staff is going to be in trouble today. They used a well known template to create his Myspace page. The template was designed by Newsvine Founder and CEO Mike Davidson (original template is here). Davidson gave the template code away to anyone who wanted to use it, but asked that he be given credit when it was used, and told users to host their own image files.

McCain’s staff used his template, but didn’t give Davidson credit. Worse, he says, they use images that are on his server, meaning he has to pay for the bandwidth used from page views on McCain’s site.

Davidson decided to play a small prank on the campaign this morning as retribution.

John McCain’s MySpace Page “Enhanced”