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Las Vegas mayor suggests medieval stocks for graffiti vandals

Mayor Oscar Goodman is suggesting a strange, new punishment for graffiti vandals: bind them in a medieval-style stocks and give the public a chance to paint their faces. "This would be a great deterrent," Goodman said, adding the city attorney's office was researching whether the proposal was constitutional. "I want to see if it falls under cruel or unusual punishment. If not, great. Let's put it into effect." For months, Goodman has complained about so-called graffiti taggers and even proposed that removing their thumbs in public would serve as a deterrent. Until recently, he wouldn't back down from his proposal. "We were not going to cut thumbs off," he said. "That was to begin discussions on the issue." Michael Green, professor of history at Community College of Southern Nevada, wondered aloud if the mayor was serious. "I never expected Oscar to take a page from the pilgrims and Puritans," Green said. Stocks are pivoting boards placed around the wrists and head, which are then locked in. Sometimes also locking in place feet, they were popular in medieval and puritanical times as a humiliating form of punishment. Goodman explained that he would set out stocks in a public square and have a bucket of paint nearby. "It wouldn't be in the hot sun or anything," he said. "Let him sit out there for an hour, people can come by and put some paint on his head, and let him walk around like that for a week or two."

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Neighbor's offensive sign targets autistic teen

Carrie Heaton does her best to keep watch over her curious and cognitively disabled 13-year-old son without being too confining. Still, the Nephi teen slips out unnoticed on occasion and wanders the neighborhood, sometimes entering and rifling through people's homes, according to police. Neighbors to the south have complained. But Heaton was surprised Wednesday when long-simmering tensions boiled over and her neighbors erected a sign in their front yard warning, "CAUTION, RETARD'S IN AREA." Diagnosed with autism and other disabilities, Heaton's son functions at the level of a 4- or 5-year-old and doesn't "understand what's going on," Heaton said Friday. "He can't read the sign. But everyone else can. This not only affects him, but all the special needs people who live in Nephi, Juab County and Utah."
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Man accused of car burglary found sleeping in police van

Police in a Seattle suburb didn't have to go far to arrest a man for investigation of car burglary — he was found sleeping in a special weapons and tactics van.
Officer Greg Grannis said a municipal worker reported someone breaking into cars, including his own, shortly before midnight Monday.

Officers quickly found burglarized cars, but couldn't determine who might be responsible — until about 4:50 a.m., when two SWAT team members came to the police vehicle maintenance yard to get their van and found a 25-year-old transient asleep in the back, Grannis said.

The man, whose his last known home address was in Louisiana, was booked into the King County jail for investigation of burglary.

No damage or loss estimate was released, but Grannis said none of the burglarized police vehicles had weapons in them.

Customer at Market in Springfield Cuts Off His Hand

Igbal Asghar reached across the counter at Super Halal Meat market and passed two butchered chickens to the man with the familiar face. Then he ducked into the walk-in freezer to fetch the customer's second order, goat meat.

When the butcher stepped out seconds later, the customer's severed left hand lay on the floor by the meat saw, Asghar said. The customer ran down the Springfield store's center aisle and into the front parking lot, leaving a trail of blood and yelling repeatedly that he was "not a terrorist." Outside, another witness said, the man announced that he had used the meat saw to cut off his hand "for Allah."

Rescue workers arrived minutes after the incident Saturday evening and took the man -- and his detached hand -- to Inova Fairfax Hospital. Fairfax County police declined to comment or release the man's name yesterday, saying no charges would be filed. Those who saw the action unfold remained jarred.
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Ice-cold watermelon is less nutritious

ice-cold watermelon may be refreshing, but it can be less nutritious than watermelon served at room temperature, U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists reported on Wednesday. Watermelons stored at room temperature deliver more nutrients than refrigerated or freshly picked melons, they reported in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Penelope Perkins-Veazie and Julie Collins of the USDA's South Central Agricultural Research Laboratory in Lane, Oklahoma looked specifically at carotenoids -- antioxidants that can counter the damage caused by sun, chemicals and day-to-day living. Watermelon is rich in lycopene, an antioxidant that makes watermelons and tomatoes red and may help prevent heart disease and some cancers. Perkins-Veazie and Collins tested several popular varieties of watermelon stored for 14 days at 70 F (21 C), 55 F (13 C) and 41 F (5 C). Whole watermelons stored at 70 degrees Fahrenheit, which is about room temperature in air-conditioned buildings, had substantially more nutrients, they reported. Compared to freshly picked fruit, watermelon stored at 70 F gained up to 40 percent more lycopene and 50 percent to 139 percent extra beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin
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Book Aimed at 4-Year-Olds Graphically Describes Sex

How much do you think four-year-old's know about the birds and the bees? A new kid's book just hit the shelves that deals with that topic in pretty graphic detail. News 4 WOAI's Delaine Mathieu shows it to some parents and a child psychologist to see what they think about it.
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Sen. Clinton pushed drinking game

If Hillary Clinton ends up running against John McCain for the presidency in 2008, the two might vaguely remember competing against each other once before. That would have been in the summer of 2004 in Estonia where, according to The New York Times, the margin of victory was not votes, but shots of vodka. The instigator of the after-dinner contest, the Times reported for its Saturday editions, was Clinton, D-N.Y. McCain, R-Ariz., readily agreed. Aides to McCain did not return messages seeking comment Friday. Philippe Reines, Clinton's spokesman, played coy. "What happens in Estonia stays in Estonia," he said Friday evening. McCain and Clinton have built a close working relationship in the Senate. They both serve on the Armed Services Committee and share interests in subjects such as climate change. Both have cultivated bipartisan images, working across party lines on common interests. The Times reported that McCain has described Clinton to his colleagues as "one of the guys." McCain and Clinton were joined in the 2004 trip by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., John Sununu, R-N.H., and Susan Collins, R-Maine. Until now, the trip was notable because McCain, while in Latvia, called Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko a dictator and said the elections Belarus' planned for later in the year were "bogus."
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Police nab smurfs for trampoline theft

Two blue smurfs were left with red faces on Saturday night after they were arrested by police for stealing a trampoline. Senior Sergeant Brian Benn told NZPA two drunk 19 year olds, "dressed as smurfs", were seen carrying the trampoline along Richardson Street, Dunedin about 1am. Smurfs are fictional small creatures who featured in the 1980s television series The Smurfs. "When they saw the police had noticed them they dropped the trampoline and took off." Mr Benn said police had to track them over several back yards. "Two were located, but a third man got away," he said. The men will appear in Dunedin District Court tomorrow. The trampoline had been taken from a garden in southern Dunedin.

Man 'shot himself' before crash

A MAN who accidentally shot himself in the groin while driving was dead before his car smashed into a power pole, Melbourne police have said. According to a newspaper report, the man was wanted by police in relation to a stabbing. The 38-year-old was driving a car on the Mornington-Tyabb Road, opposite the Tyabb Airfield on the Mornington Peninsula yesterday, when it is thought he accidentally shot himself in the groin. Senior Constable Bradi Owens from Victoria Police today said it was thought the man died from the gunshot before he ran off the road into a power pole. "That is what the pathologist has determined," she said. Sen Const Owens said she had no information the man was being sought in relation to a stabbing in Hastings on Friday. His body was found in the wreckage by a passer-by about 8am (AEST) yesterday but ambulance officers believe the man had been dead for several hours before he was discovered. "Investigations reveal the firearm has accidentally discharged hitting the man in the groin area before the collision occurred," a police spokeswoman said. Initially, police said the man had crashed into a tree after he lost control of his car, and his death was counted in Victoria's official road toll count. But police later took the death off the road toll figure, bringing Victoria's road toll this year to 179, compared to 210 at the same time last year.

Minimum wage increase passes House

Republicans muscled the first minimum wage increase in a decade through the House of Representatives early Saturday after pairing it with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates. Combining the two issues provoked protests from Democrats and was sure to cause problems in the Senate, where the minimum wage initiative was likely to die at the hands of Democrats opposed to the costly estate tax cuts. The Senate is expected to take up the legislation next week. Still, Republican leaders saw combining the wage and tax issues as their best chance for getting permanent cuts to the estate tax, a top Republican priority fueled by intense lobbying by farmers, small business owners and super-wealthy families such as the Waltons, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune. "This is the best shot we've got; we're going to take it," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, a Republican. The unusual packaging also soothed conservatives angry about raising the minimum wage over opposition by Republican business allies. The House passed the bill 230-180 before leaving for a five-week recess. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid vowed Democrats would kill the hybrid bill, along with its 10-year, $300 billion-plus cost. "The Senate has rejected fiscally irresponsible estate tax giveaways before and will reject them again," Reid said. "Blackmailing working families will not change that outcome."

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Type O Negative - Everything Dies

(This Song Is Respectfully Dedicated To Mikes Mom Rosemarry, Tim Write, Fran & Joe Wagener and Jim Peasley Rest In Peace)

Lee Evans Trio

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"COOL" Car

Spy seeds

The next time you tiptoe through the tulips, keep an eye out for rocket-assisted sycamore seeds. Apparently this is the latest cunning idea from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Last August, DARPA asked US defence contractors to start thinking about "Nano Aerial Vehicles", or NAVs, which should be no more than 5 centimetres wide, weigh less than 10 grams, and ought to be capale of carrying a 2-gram payload. Now, according to details released here, Lockheed Martin has just received $1.7 million from DARPA to develop a NAV "similar in size and shape" to a sycamore - or maple - seed. The idea? A tiny rocket enclosed in its one-bladed wing would project the machine up to 1 kilometre, and it would then perform a slow helicopter-like descent, filming targets all the while. Neither DARPA nor Lockheed Martin have been able to confirm the project or provide any further details. But I spoke to Darryll Pines of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office last year and he told me that most NAVs should be able to flying unobtrusively around buildings, through open windows and even deep inside caves. No prizes for guessing who they're looking for there, then. Other researchers are already on the case though: the magnificent ProxFlyer looks a great miniature helicopter, and Ron Fearing’s Micromechanical Flying Insect project looks promising, too.