An Animal That Poops Gourmet Coffee

This came in a forward today. This link is to the the original article.

An Iwo Jima Relic Binds Generations

Three people came to me and asked if the letter was mine; I said yes, I was so surprised that my father had cherished the letter so much. I think he kept it with him to feel like his family was close.
Chie Takegawa [Daughter of the fallen Japanese soldier]

McDonald's loses trademark fight against McCurry
Malaysia's highest court rules that McDonald's does not have monopoly on ‘Mc' prefix

Trust McDimbulbs to go to court on this rubbish case. Trust the McLowercourt to grant McDonald's McWishes. McThank the appeals court for overruling the 2006 McLowerCourt McJudgement.

McCurry lawyer Sri Devi McNair said the ruling means McDonald's does not have a monopoly on the prefix ‘Mc,' and that other restaurants could also use it as long as they distinguish their food from McDonald's.

We are very much relieved. We hope to expand. This is what we wanted to do from the beginning and we were stalled for eight years.
A.M.S.P. McSuppiah, owner of McCurry.

McCongrats McCurry;-)

A night with new wife may have cost Mehsud his life

You would have heard of this Talib clown who died when a Hellfire missile smashed into his rear end. The article tells the why and the how of it:-)

No tears
from
Roger Federer!

Federer was simply unable to break a single one of Roddicks servers.... except the last one. Jeez what a last set 16-14!

I also liked the post match talks!

Roddick: "Sorry Pete, I tried to hold him off." [to Pete Sampras who had come to watch his record of 14 grand slams being broken.]

Federer: "It feels great but you know, Roddick don't be too upset, I was in your shoes last year, I know how you feel". [Trying to console Roddick]
Roddick: "But you won 5 times!" [smart retort from a crestfallen Roddick]

Tel Aviv search for mattress containing $1M life savings

A woman in Tel Aviv, Israel, gave her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise gift, throwing out the old tattered bed her mother had slept on for decades. The gesture ended up bankrupting Annat's mother, who had stuffed her savings of nearly $1 million inside her old bed for decades, Annat told Israel Army Radio.

Last Titanic survivor dies in Britain, aged 97

Dean, who never married, said she had no memory of the disaster but was told about the event at the age of eight when her mother was about to remarry.

Dudes! She was only nine weeks old!

Last month the stars of the Hollywood blockbuster movie "Titanic" - Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and the film's director James Cameron - donated $30,000 to support Dean in her last years after it was reported that she had resorted to selling her autograph to pay her nursing home bills.

The 1997 drama "Titanic" made more than $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office, making it the highest-grossing film of all time in figures not adjusted for inflation.

Hmm! At least hopefully she doesn't leave behind any unpaid bills. Any un-paid bills maybe sent to Kate Winslet.

We Do Not Trust Machines
The people reject electronic voting.
By Evgeny Morozov | NEWSWEEK

Similarly, the 2004 elections in India were notorious for gangs stuffing electronic ballot boxes in villages.
Wrong! That used to happen prior to EVMs being introduced in India. EVMs are calibrated just to prevent such things from happening, if people start "stuffing" them the EVM lock up and prevent any further voting from that location.

One way to reduce the risk of fraud is to have machines print a paper record of each vote, which voters could then deposit into a conventional ballot box.
Dude if you don't want electronic voting say so, don't give rubbish ideas to introduce them in a way you think they will be safe.

Each step in the life cycle of a voting machine—from the time it is developed and installed to when the votes are recorded and the data transferred to a central repository for tallying—involves different people gaining access to the machines, often installing new software. It wouldn't be hard for, say, an election official to plant a "Trojan" program on one or many voting machines that would ensure one outcome or another, even before voters arrived at the stations.
This would be possible in a place with a tinpot dictator running it. Even a corrupt place like India has shown that electronic voting can be used without any malpractice taking place. Europeans saying this completely amazes me, since they are very high up in the least corruption index.

I’m not a monster, I was shot in the face’

Finally yesterday they showed the face transplant victim on TV. At first I was wondering it it was a stage show doll or something, like the NDTV political puppets we get to see. Then to my horror I realise that is the person whose identity was kept a secret. Of course she is not a monster, the monster is her husband who shot her in her face. Man can be really cruel.