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Looking for Bigfoot in Minnesota

bigfootkahuna.jpg

Yesterday, while flipping through my Minneapolis Continuing Education fall catalog, I noticed a class on the Great Mysteries of Science, which turned out to be lake monsters, Sasquatch and UFOs. The class was to be taught by a retired University of Minnesota professor who has since participated in an expedition to study said Sasquatch.

White tiger turning black


A white tiger cub born at the Vandalur zoo in Chennai, India is tur

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, 9/2/2010

* The President spoke with FEMA Administrator Fugate today at 1:15p.m.EDT about Hurricane Earl.

* The President was briefed on the oil platform fire in the Gulf and the government response today by Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan. 

12:20 P.M. EDT

MR. GIBBS:  Good afternoon.  Let me begin with one just quick statement on Hurricane Earl.

German "secure" ID cards compromised on national TV, gov't buries head in sand

A German TV programme showed hackers from the Chaos Computer Club using off-the-shelf equipment to extract personal information from the government's new "secure" ID card, which stores scans of fingerprints and a six-digit PIN that can be used to sign official documents and declarations.
In an interview with the show, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said he saw no immediate reason to act on the alleged security issue.

Meanwhile on Tuesday the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) rejected the Plusminus' criticism of the new ID card.

Bartenders Looking For Greater Intellectual Property Protection For Drinks

Copycense points us to yet another story about another person in another industry whining about not getting enough monopoly privileges from the government. This time, believe it or not, it's bartenders wanting to protect mixed drink recipes. Seriously.

United Airlines and Dulles security treat Pakistani military officers as terrorists

United Airlines threw nine high-ranking Pakistani military officers off a Washington-Tampa flight on Sunday and turned them over to Dulles security, who detained and grilled the men. The officers were on a junket in the USA, and had been travelling extensively; one of them said words to the effect of, "I hope this is my last flight." This was interpreted as a terrorist threat by a flight attendant.

Mainstream press throws Wikileaks under a bus in journalist shield debate

A new proposed federal journalist shield law is under debate in the USA, which sounds like a great idea, except that the traditional press have agreed to amendments that would exempt Wikileaks from any protection for its confidential sources, on the grounds that Wikileaks isn't journalism (ORLY?).
More generally, Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee, criticized WikiLeaks as "not journalism."

"It's data dissemination, and that worries me," she told Time magazine.

Gardener fighting village busybodies for the right to grow tomatoes in her front garden

Dora Lyakhovetsky, a gardner from Northbrook, IL, is fighting her village Board of Trustees for the right to keep tomatoes and flowers in her front yard instead of turf. The local code prohibits growing anything but grass out front, even though Lyakhovetsky's back yard is overshadowed by big trees and can't be used to grow anything.

Lyakhovetsky showed up at the Board meeting with a basket of tomatoes for her neighbors and asked them to reconsider.

Golf company has Ping trademark, domain (UPDATED: There's a deal)

ping1.jpg Apple's name for its new social network, Ping, is interestingly generic. With a long association to the sport of table tennis and a computer networking utility whose function resembles it, it carries a natural association with communication, responsiveness, and so on.

When Suing A Website For Libel, It Helps To Actually Sue The Right One

Last week, a story caught my eye, about a website being ordered to pay $11 million for failing to respond to a lawsuit claiming libel. The story caught my attention for a few reasons: first, I'm always interested in libel lawsuits involving blogs and second... the name of the site that was sued was TheDirt.com, which... er... seemed close enough to Techdirt.com that I had to pause for a second and make sure it wasn't us.
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