Prison is for Other People

I don't think so

Those misunderstood financial titans, Madoff and Stanford (Porlock passim), probably didn't enjoy Christmas much this year. Bernie discovered that if you put a sociopath and a psychopath in an enclosed space, it's usually the former that gets the kicking, whilst ex-Sir Allen drummed up tear jerking letters from his family to the court, in an attempt to find a more conducive environment than the downtown Houston Federal Detention Center in which to study seven million documents with "Guilty" written on them.
Victor Scarano, a Houston psychiatrist and lawyer who offers detailed bio-psycho-social-spiritual evaluations, examined Stanford in jail, and concluded “If the present set of circumstances persist, Mr. Stanford's spiraling downhill course will continue to the point where he will suffer further serious physical disorders and, more likely than not, a complete nervous breakdown.”

What does getting soaked feel like?

Bernie's battering, although in itself a widespread prison tradition, is yet another example of individual personal violence being dealt on the rich, odious and famous.

Berlesconi and the Pope, the shoe'd Shrub, John Prescott with an English egg: Rise up The Oppressed, The Exploited and The Downtrodden, and smack the Devil in his eye!

Ratzinger Rushed Off his Feet

From the Belfast Telegraph just now,(slightly edited)

A woman jumped barriers and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI at Christmas Eve Mass, a Vatican spokesman has said.

The sudden commotion in St Peter's Basilica happened as the pontiff walked down the main aisle to begin the traditional ceremony. As the procession made its way towards the altar, gasps rang out through the public and a commotion could be seen among a group of clergymen.
The procession came to a halt and bodyguards rushed to the trouble spot and filled the "demented woman" (they're everywhere) full of bullets.
The Pope appeared unhurt and continued calmly on his way to start the Mass.



Earlier, it was decided that The Midnight Mass become the Ten O'clock Mass in order to:
a) give the Sacred Father more sleep before opening his presents

b) help him clear his head of the recurring nightmares before Absolving Himself of Guilt

c) allow his Cardinals extra time out on the piss

Answers, before the Interregnum, to: pbenedictxvi@vatican.va

Meanwhile in Ireland, it was business as usual

Aaah, to be 18 again.........

Workers' Playtime

Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Man

Numbers, Big Numbers.

A googolplex is the number 10^googol, which can also be written as the number 1 followed by a googol of zeros (i.e., 10¹⁰⁰ zeros).

1 googolplex

= 10^googol

= 10^(10100)

= 10^{10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000}

Writing it in numerals would be physically impossible, since doing so would require more space than there is in the known universe.

An average book of 60 cubic inches can be printed with 5 x 10⁵ '0's (5 characters per word, 10 words per line, 25 lines per page, 400 pages), or 8.3 × 10³ '0's per cubic inch. The observable universe contains 6 × 10⁸³ cubic inches (1.3 × π × (14 × 10⁹ light year in inches)³).

This implies that if the universe is stuffed with paper printed with '0's, it could contain only 5.3 × 10⁸⁷ '0's, far short of a googol of '0's. In fact there are only about 2.5 × 10⁸⁹ elementary particles in the observable universe so even if you could write a zero on each elementary particle, you would still have to make the universe's mass about a trillion times larger to complete the number.

The time it would take to write such a number also renders the task impossible: if a person writes two digits per second, it would take around about 1.51 × 10⁹² years, which is 1.1 × 10⁸² times the age of the universe, to write a googolplex.

That's pretty fucking big, but a bright chap called Graham has an even bigger one named after him, notated here as G.

The number of arrows in each layer, starting at the top layer, is specified by the value of the next layer below it; that is,

G is calculated in 64 steps: the first step is to calculate g₁ with four up-arrows between 3's; the second step is to calculate g₂ with g₁ up-arrows between 3's; the third step is to calculate g₃ with g₂ up-arrows between 3's; and so on, until finally calculating G = g₆₄ with g₆₃ up-arrows between 3's.

(3^^^3 = 3^^(3^^3) is 3^^7,625,597,484,987 = 3^(7,625,597,484,987^7,625,597,484,987), which makes a tower of exponents 7,625,597,484,987 layers high.)

Even n, the mere number of towers in this formula for g₁, is far greater than the number of Planck volumes (roughly 10^185 of them) into which one can imagine subdividing the observable universe. And after this first term, there are still another 63 terms in the g sequence before Graham's number G = g₆₄ is reached.

That's really fucking big, but size isn't everything. It's not perfect, unlike these few examples of the Perfect Number, starting with our humble 6 (no-one knows how many more there are):

6, 28, 496, 8128, 33550336, 8589869056, 137438691328, 2305843008139952128,2658455991569831744654692615953842176,191561942608236107294793378084303638130997321548169216,13164036458569648337239753460458722910223472318386943117783728128,14474011154664524427946373126085988481573677491474835889066354349131199152128,23562723457267347065789548996709904988477547858392600710143027597506337283178622239730365539602600561360255566462503270175052892578043215543382498428777152427010394496918664028644534128033831439790236838624033171435922356643219703101720713163527487298747400647801939587165936401087419375649057918549492160555646976,141053783706712069063207958086063189881486743514715667838838675999954867742652380114104193329037690251561950568709829327164087724366370087116731268159313652487450652439805877296207297446723295166658228846926807786652870188920867879451478364569313922060370695064736073572378695176473055266826253284886383715072974324463835300053138429460296575143368065570759537328128, 54162526284365847412654465374391316140856490539031695784603920818387206994158534859198999921056719921919057390080263646159280013827605439746262788903057303445505827028395139475207769044924431494861729435113126280837904930462740681717960465867348720992572190569465545299629919823431031092624244463547789635441481391719816441605586788092147886677321398756661624714551726964302217554281784254817319611951659855553573937788923405146222324506715979193757372820860878214322052227584537552897476256179395176624426314480313446935085203657584798247536021172880403783048602873621259313789994900336673941503747224966984028240806042108690077670395259231894666273615212775603535764707952250173858305171028603021234896647851363949928904973292145107505979911456221519899345764984291328.

And then, of course, you've got infinity a.k.a. Aleph Null. Sort of.

It can't be annotated but Albert Einstein, who knew a thing or two about numbers, said

"Only two things are infinite, the Universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

What are you afraid of?

Let's start with A:

Ablutophobia- Fear of washing or bathing.
Acarophobia- Fear of itching or of the insects that cause itching.
Acerophobia- Fear of sourness.
Achluophobia- Fear of darkness.
Acousticophobia- Fear of noise.
Acrophobia- Fear of heights.
Aerophobia- Fear of drafts, air swallowing, or airbourne noxious substances.
Aeroacrophobia- Fear of open high places.
Aeronausiphobia- Fear of vomiting secondary to airsickness.
Agateophobia- Fear of insanity.
Agliophobia- Fear of pain.
Agoraphobia- Fear of open spaces or of being in crowded, public places like markets. Fear of leaving a safe place.
Agraphobia- Fear of sexual abuse.
Agrizoophobia- Fear of wild animals.
Agyrophobia- Fear of streets or crossing the street.
Aichmophobia- Fear of needles or pointed objects.
Ailurophobia- Fear of cats.
Albuminurophobia- Fear of kidney disease.
Alektorophobia- Fear of chickens.
Algophobia- Fear of pain.
Alliumphobia- Fear of garlic.
Allodoxaphobia- Fear of opinions.
Altophobia- Fear of heights.
Amathophobia- Fear of dust.
Amaxophobia- Fear of riding in a car.
Ambulophobia- Fear of walking.
Amnesiphobia- Fear of amnesia.
Amychophobia- Fear of scratches or being scratched.
Anablephobia- Fear of looking up.
Ancraophobia- Fear of wind. (Anemophobia)
Androphobia- Fear of men.
Anemophobia- Fear of air drafts or wind.(Ancraophobia)
Anginophobia- Fear of angina, choking or narrowness.
Anglophobia- Fear of England or English culture, etc.
Angrophobia - Fear of anger or of becoming angry.
Ankylophobia- Fear of immobility of a joint.
Anthrophobia or Anthophobia- Fear of flowers.
Anthropophobia- Fear of people or society.
Antlophobia- Fear of floods.
Anuptaphobia- Fear of staying single.
Apeirophobia- Fear of infinity.
Aphenphosmphobia- Fear of being touched. (Haphephobia)
Apiphobia- Fear of bees.
Apotemnophobia- Fear of persons with amputations.
Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.
Arachnephobia or Arachnophobia- Fear of spiders.
Arithmophobia- Fear of numbers.
Arrhenphobia- Fear of men.
Arsonphobia- Fear of fire.
Asthenophobia- Fear of fainting or weakness.
Astraphobia or Astrapophobia- Fear of thunder and lightning.(Ceraunophobia, Keraunophobia)
Astrophobia- Fear of stars or celestial space.
Asymmetriphobia- Fear of asymmetrical things.
Ataxiophobia- Fear of ataxia. (muscular incoordination)
Ataxophobia- Fear of disorder or untidiness.
Atelophobia- Fear of imperfection.
Atephobia- Fear of ruin or ruins.
Athazagoraphobia- Fear of being forgotton or ignored or forgetting.
Atomosophobia- Fear of atomic explosions.
Atychiphobia- Fear of failure.
Aulophobia- Fear of flutes.
Aurophobia- Fear of gold.
Auroraphobia- Fear of Northern lights.
Autodysomophobia- Fear of one that has a vile odor.
Automatonophobia- Fear of ventriloquist's dummies, animatronic creatures, wax statues - anything that falsly represents a sentient being.
Automysophobia- Fear of being dirty.
Autophobia- Fear of being alone or of oneself.
Aviophobia or Aviatophobia- Fear of flying.

Hobbes, the cleverest Englishman ever, said:

"My Mother gave birth to twins; myself and fear."

Go on....String a sentence together.

Sarah Palin's 'book' has sold c.700,000 copies. Instaputz.blogspot.com reviewed "Going Rogue", they weren't terribly impressed:

"If you are in a hurry, here is the succinct version of this review: Going Rogue is shit. It is groundbreaking in its banality and disregard for facts. If you are sentient, it will pain you to read it. Imagine watching your parents 69 one another while John Madden sits behind you and bellows out color commentary and you will have some idea of how excruciating and profoundly scarring it is to plow through each page of this wholly fictional monument to self-aggrandized mediocrity. Going Rogue is to the art of writing what the Holocaust is to the concept of a just God – the piece of disconfirming evidence so overwhelming that we are left questioning whether it can exist at all.
Going Rogue is not without merit. It certainly delivers what its intended audience wants. Readers who already like Palin will love it, much as America’s pedophiles will find the latest Jonas Brothers DVD to their liking. The authors’ talent for communicating the ex-Governor’s unique rhetorical style in print is remarkable – the Sesame Street cadence of her delivery and the intermittent Tourette’s-like winks leap off the page. The book, recession priced at just $9, is also an ideal gift for the Aunt or Uncle who assaults your email inbox with a dozen weekly communiqués on the President’s Kenyan birth and the constitutionality of income taxes.
Unfortunately that is an exhaustive list of its strengths."

So you think nobody listens to You?

For 23 years (that's about 200 million breaths) Rom Houben was imprisoned in his own body. He saw his doctors and nurses as they visited him during their daily rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died. But he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could only listen.
Doctors presumed he was in a vegetative state following a near-fatal car crash in 1983. They believed he could feel nothing and hear nothing. For 23 years.
Then a neurologist, Steven Laureys, who decided to take a radical look at the state of diagnosed coma patients, released him from his torture. Using a state-of-the-art scanning system, Laureys found to his amazement that his brain was functioning almost normally.

"I had dreamed myself away," said Houben, now 46, whose real "state" was discovered three years ago, according to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel this week.
Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liege in Belgium, published a study in BMC Neurology earlier this year saying Houben could be one of many cases of falsely diagnosed comas around the world. He discovered that although Houben was completely paralysed, he was also completely conscious — it was just that he was unable to communicate the fact.
He realised when he came round after his accident, which had caused his heart to stop and his brain to be starved of oxygen for several minutes, that his body was paralysed. Although he could hear every word his doctors spoke, he could not communicate with them.

"I screamed, but there was nothing to hear," he said, via his keyboard.

The Belgian former engineering student, who speaks four languages, said he coped with being effectively trapped in his own body by meditating. He told doctors he had "travelled with my thoughts into the past, or into another existence altogether". Sometimes, he said, "I was only my consciousness and nothing else".
The moment it was discovered he was not in a vegetative state, said Houben, was like being born again. "I'll never forget the day that they discovered me," he said. "It was my second birth". Houben now communicates with one finger and a special touchscreen on his wheelchair – he has developed some movement with the help of intense physiotherapy over the last three years.
Experts say Laureys' findings are likely to reopen the debate over when the decision should be made to terminate the lives of those in comas who appear to be unconscious but may have almost fully-functioning brains. Belgian doctors used an internationally-accepted scale to monitor Houben's state over the years. Known as the Glasgow Coma Scale, it requires assessment of the eyes, verbal and motor responses. But they failed to assess him correctly and missed signs that his brain was still functioning.

Last night Houben's mother, Fina, said in an interview with Belgian RTBF that they had taken him to the US five times for reexamination. The breakthrough came when it became clear that Houben could indicate yes and no with his foot.
"Powerlessness. Utter powerlessness. At first I was angry, then I learned to live with it," he tapped out on to the screen during an interview with the Belgian network last night, AP reported.
Laureys, who is head of the Coma Science Group and department of neurology at Liege University hospital, has advised on several prominent coma cases, such as the American Terri Schiavo, whose life support was withdrawn in 2005 after 15 years in a coma. He concluded that coma patients are misdiagnosed "on a disturbingly regular basis". He examined 44 patients believed to be in a vegetative state, and found that 18 of them responded to communication.
"Once someone is labelled as being without consciousness, it is very hard to get rid of that," he told Der Spiegel. He said patients suspected of being in a non-reversible coma should be "tested 10 times" and that comas, like sleep, have different stages and need to be monitored.

Houben hopes to write a book detailing his trauma and his "rebirth".

R.I.P.Claude Levi-Strauss

Tricked by the Eternal Trickster.

Girls! Guns! Bikes!

If the doors of perception were cleansed......

My entry in The Naked Plagiarism of Huxley Competition 2010

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would

appear to man as it is, infinite."

—William Blake

'IT was in 1886 that the German pharmacologist, Louis Lewin, published the first systematic study of a cactus, to which his own name was subsequently given.

Anhalonium lewinii was new to science, but.....

TO primitive religion and the Indians of Mexico and the American Southwest it was a friend of immemorially long standing. Indeed, it was much more than a friend. In the words of one of the early Spanish visitors to the New World, "they eat a root which they call peyote, and which they venerate as though it were a deity."
The Tarahumare believe that when Father Sun left earth to dwell above, he left peyote, or hikuli, to cure man's ills and woes; that peyote sings and talks as it grows; that when gathered it sings happily in its bags all the way home; and that God speaks through the plant in this way.

Why they should have venerated it as a deity became apparent when such eminent psychologists as Jaensch, Havelock Ellis and Weir Mitchell

oops-began their experiments with mescalin, the active principle of peyote. True, they stopped short at a point well this side of idolatry; but all concurred in assigning to mescalin a position among drugs of unique distinction. Administered in suitable doses, it changes the quality of consciousness more profoundly and yet is less toxic than any other substance in the pharmacologist's repertory.
Mescalin research has been going on sporadically ever since the days of Lewin and Havelock Ellis. Chemists have not merely isolated the alkaloid;
they have learned how to synthesize it, so that the supply no longer depends on the sparse and intermittent crop of a desert cactus.

Alienists

have dosed themselves with mescalin in the hope thereby of coming to a better, a first-hand, understanding of their patients' mental processes. Working unfortunately upon too few subjects within too narrow a range of circumstances, psychologists have observed and catalogued some of the drug's more striking effects. Neurologists and physiologists have found out something about the mechanism of its action upon the central nervous system.
And at least one professional philosopher
has taken mescalin for the light it may throw on such ancient, unsolved riddles as the place of mind in nature and the relationship between brain and consciousness.
There matters rested until, two or three years ago (1951), a new and perhaps highly significant fact was observed. Actually the fact had been staring everyone in the face for several decades; but nobody, as it happened, had noticed it until a Young English psychiatrist, at present working in Canada, was struck by the close similarity, in chemical composition, between mescalin and adrenalin

Further research revealed that lysergic acid, an extremely potent hallucinogen derived from ergot, has a structural biochemical relationship to the others. Then came the discovery that adrenochrome, which is a product of the decomposition of adrenalin, can produce many of the symptoms observed in mescalin intoxication. But adrenochrome probably occurs spontaneously in the human body. In other words, each one of us may be capable of manufacturing a chemical, minute doses of which are known to cause Profound Changes in Consciousness.

Certain of these changes are similar to those which occur in that most characteristic plague of the twentieth century, schizophrenia.
Is the mental disorder due to a chemical disorder? And is the chemical disorder due, in its turn, to psychological distresses affecting the adrenals? It would be rash and premature to affirm it. The most we can say is that some kind of a prima facie case has been made out. Meanwhile the clue is being systematically followed, the sleuths—biochemists , psychiatrists, psychologists—are on the trail.'

Click this, watch it, listen to that.

Picture Quiz

Is this a picture of:

a) my family
b) a group of Belgian surrealists
c) an American crime family
d) the 1935 meeting of the board of directors of Liberty's
?

A Message from the Editor

As some of you die hard readers may have noticed, my posts have slowed to a crawl.
This is because my personal life has been rather full, involving travelling, family, work and a new house.
Thank you for reading and checking in: please feel free to e mail me anything of interest, and rest assured that I will be back boring you very soon (on 2G internet at the moment).
Good Luck
Rodney

One for Jim

Why are they never ill till they get caught?

Our favourite delusional Antiguan has developed an 'irregular heartbeat' after failing to get moved from prison in Texas, where he shares a cell with 'about' 10 other innocent men.

Here's the queue of wellwishers in Antigua, see the bunches of grapes and flowers?


This old guy in Mexico was so upset to hear about Stanford's irregular heartbeat, he completely forgot that he had lost his life savings.

To Assistant Chief Constable Bill Holland, Warwickshire Police Force.

As the 23rd annual Bulldog Bash Motorcycle Festival completes an incident-free sunny weekend, a poster on the site blog brings John Cooper Clarke's angry young prose out of retirement. £1.4 million well spent, Bill.

Like a Night Club in the morning, you’re the bitter end.

Like a recently disinfected shit-house, you’re clean round the bend.
You give me the horrors
too bad to be true
All of my tomorrow’s
are lousy coz of you.

You put the Shat in Shatter
Put the Pain in Spain
Your germs are splattered about
Your face is just a stain

You’re certainly no raver, commonly known as a drag.
Do us all a favour, here... wear this polythene bag.

You’re like a dose of scabies,
I’ve got you under my skin.
You make life a fairy tale... Grimm!

People mention murder, the moment you arrive.
I’d consider killing you if I thought you were alive.
You’ve got this slippery quality,
it makes me think of phlegm,
and a dual personality
I hate both of them.

Your bad breath, vamps disease, destruction, and decay.
Please, please, please, please, take yourself away.
Like a death a birthday party,
you ruin all the fun.
Like a sucked and spat our smartie,
you’re no use to anyone.
Like the shadow of the guillotine
on a dead consumptive’s face.
Speaking as an outsider,
what do you think of the human race

You went to a progressive psychiatrist.
He recommended suicide...
before scratching your bad name off his list,
and pointing the way outside.

You hear laughter breaking through, it makes you want to fart.
You’re heading for a breakdown,
better pull yourself apart.

Your dirty name gets passed about when something goes amiss.
Your attitudes are platitudes,
just make me wanna piss.

What kind of creature bore you
Was is some kind of bat
They can’t find a good word for you,
but I can...
TWAT.

You Couldn't Make It Up Pt. MCX... (De laughter echoed around de empty cell)

Robert 'Bobby' DeLaughter was a circuit judge in Hinds County, Jackson, Mississippi, until 30th July. He took bribes, lied, favoured one litigant over another and generally pissed on one of the central tenets of law; that you can have faith in the judge to be impartial and even handed. None of that will appear on his charge sheet, though. Because of the elastic priorities and flexible morality surrounding the doings of the politico-legal establishment in Mississippi he has a deal, eighteen months in jail for "obstruction of justice".
The case is part of the ongoing hubris-radiation fallout from The Scruggs Affair, which has been enthralling/boring/bemusing/ enriching people of varying interests for the past two years. A few highflyers have gone to jail, including the eponymous "Dickie" and his son Zach, and an incredibly odious ex Democratic Party chairman, all caught in flagrante delicto, but anyone hoping for a wholesale clearout of these Good Ole Boys has so far been disappointed.
Apologists and PR for this parasitical scum employ a two pronged attack on those with the audacity to challenge their earwigging, sweet potato cabal; either psuedo analytical handwringing or outright denial, whilst grudgingly conceding that a one off, totallyoutofcharacter lapse of otherwise impeccable 'bastion of society' judgement may, theoretically, have broken some unimportant law.
When a whole strata of influential society evolves an amoral, self regarding and self enriching pattern of behaviour, the ones who survive the ensuing clunky, federal retribution longest will be those who know where the skeletons are.
But even bones turn to dust.

DeLaughter (right) wondering whether he would buy a used car from this man, his lawyer.

Former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones of Birmingham said, ""Bobby DeLaughter's legacy will live long past this mistake."
Jones? Former U.S. Attorney? Rings a bell. Ah, yes.

mydailyglobalnews: Hog Flu Update 1

"Stop breathing on me." "You stop breathing on me."

My favourite news website reports:

More than 100 schoolchildren and their teachers from the UK and US have been quarantined in Beijing after 8 young kids were found to have hog flu.
The 4 UK and 4 US young kids have been being treated with colour in a Beijing sanatorium and have been pronounced to be in a fast condition. The young kids had only proposed a revisit to the nation to sense about Chinese enlightenment and language.

Chinese marines impersonating British teenagers.

Four of the 52 British pupils influenced told the BBC from their road house room which they were being great looked after. The four, pictured above, who attend Clevedon School in north Somerset, have been all in their late teenagers and have been partial of a organisation of twelve from which school, and dual teachers.
“We have been quarantined in the road house and have been all right away great as we have every day heat checks which have been all good,” they pronounced in an e-mail sent from their road house room."The road house is unequivocally great and we have correct toilets. We goal we knowledge some-more of China as we should be out inside of 4 days.”
One of the boys, Christopher Hicks, pronounced which they had been on vacation the Great Wall of China when they were called back, since they had formerly common a train with a student from an additional propagandize who had tested certain for the virus.

High temperatures

Both British and American groups were on visits organized by the Confucius Institute, an central Chinese physique which promotes Chinese denunciation and enlightenment overseas.
Speaking about the 4 UK pupils who have hog flu, the institute’s director, Katharine Carruthers, said: “They have been being intensely great looked after and cared for, to the border where they’re removing pizza delivered to where they are. They have been all happy and removing better. There have been a series of young kids in solitary confinement in really gentle conditions in a four-star road house in Beijing, who have been in tighten hit with the hog influenza cases. Everyone is in great spirits, removing concerned in activities and carrying on their Chinese learning.”
There have been 600 students from opposite the UK who arrived in the Chinese collateral this week and the immeasurable infancy have been stability their outing as normal, she said.
The BBC’s Quentin Sommerville, in Beijing, pronounced 3 of the 4 UK young kids were found to have tall temperatures when they arrived in Beijing progressing in the week.
They were taken true from the airfield to a sanatorium where it was reliable they had the virus. A fourth classmate fell sick later. The American young kids had been in hit with the UK organisation and 4 of them were additionally diagnosed as carrying the virus.
UK Foreign Office officials contend 52 British schoolchildren and their teachers have been right away quarantined in a Beijing hotel. The BBC understands a identical series of Americans is additionally underneath quarantine.
Amii outpost Amerongen, from London, told the BBC which her 15-year-old sister was one of the young kids underneath quarantine.
“She called me this sunrise revelation me which she is cramped in a road house and she is being really dauntless about the total thing. She pronounced it was utterly intimidating - they have these ‘guns’ which they indicate at your conduct which magnitude your temperature,” she said.

"One gin and tonic for you sir. Nuts?"

Chinese officials told the BBC which the young kids were being great looked after and they had unchanging hit with their families. Simon Calder, transport editor for the UK’s Independent newspaper, told the BBC which most countries were regulating “thermal imaging” at airports to exam travellers, and the UK was noticed as a high-risk area.

"We got you, Babe"

China has taken an assertive proceed to containing the widespread of hog flu. It has quarantined hundreds of unfamiliar visitors who have shown symptoms of the H1N1 pathogen or who have trafficked with people suspected of carrying the disease.

Rave-ing Mad.

Have a 30th birthday party, use Facebook to invite your friends and tell them they're welcome to stay the night. Put up a classy Woolworth's gazebo,


sort some music out, get the barbie going, sweet, everyone's happy.
Hang on, what's that noise?



Read the rest of this birthday treat in 21st C Britain here.


(And whilst you're at the excellent Register, get the real truth behind Sara Palin's disappearance from the public eye.)

The C Street Choirboys and their zipper challenges

Since we're heading into the weekend, how about a little sex-and-intrigue? Right then, siddown here and I'll spin you a story or two. Or four. Or six . . .

I don't know how closely you Brits follow U.S. politics, but you may have noticed that our Republican Party has been pursuing a gaudy self-destruction every bit as complete -- though somewhat more salacious -- than your Labour Party's. Beyond the supernova blowup of Sarah Palin, the Republicans' remarkably-constant problem is sexual hypocrisy. This is inevitable: relying as they do on the fundamentalist-Christian vote, GOP politicians feel they needs must appear holier-than-thou. Dommage.


For instance: Not long after Senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and David Vitter (R-Louisiana) co-sponsored something called the Marriage Protection Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which went nowhere), "Wide Stance" Larry got caught soliciting sex from an undercover cop in an airport gents' as little Davie engaged Washington and New Orleans prostitutes to diaper him (ewwww).

And just here recently, another goodly handful of Jesus-beating GOP office-holders have run into extramarital-nookie trouble.

Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, coulda just kissed Michael Jackson for croaking a few days after a tipped-off reporter intercepted the married Sanford flying in from a weeklong AWOL in Buenos Aires with his eye-catching "soulmate" named Maria. This occasioned a number of very unfortunate press conferences and interviews, as Sanford dug his hole deeper.

But before we could catch our breath from laughing at Don Marco de BA, Nevada's Senator John Ensign saw his credibility equally minced to flitters. He had to own up to paying off a married couple, formerly his top staffers, after screwing the wife and cuckolding the husband. Well, truth be told, Ensign himself didn't supply the pay-off; turns out the white-haired Senator's parents coughed up $96,000 to succor-and-hush the aggrieved Mr. and Mrs. Doug Hampton.

Though they'd all loudly demanded that Bill Cinton do so, neither Craig, Vitter, Sanford, nor Ensign resigned from office; indeed, Vitter and Ensign are running for re-election (if he weren't term-limited, Sanford probably would be too). But besides the parallels already apparent, our gropin' GOPers have something else in common -- something that, if you've previously followed links from here to Rodney's guest posts at folo.us, you may have seen.

"DC Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey (may she R.I.P.) only later learned that her infantile client was a United States Senator; she knew him as "David from C Street." But as Rodney explained in February, "C Street" is one of several names for a secretive, far-right "Christian" group -- also called the Family or the Fellowship -- that reveres the likes of Mao and Hitler, cultivates Third World dictators (the more murderous the better, seemingly), and hosts Washington's annual National Prayer Breakfast. Rodney told us foloers all about it on the day Barack Obama and Tony Blair led the guest list at this year's breakfast.

But Ensign and Sanford are only two of numerous current or former members of Congress who live/d -- for below-market rents -- at the Family's townhouse, a former convent now identified as a "church" for tax purposes, on C Street near Capitol Hill. Why, just yesterday the State of Mississippi contributed another name to both the GOP’s and the Family's burdens.

Boyish-looking former congresscritter Chip Pickering had been all set to assume Trent Lott’s U.S. Senate seat when Trent up-and-resigned in late November 2007, one year into his latest six-year term. (A small digression here: two days later, Sen. HelmetHair Lott's brother-in-law, the fearsome mass-tort plaintiff's attorney Dickie Scruggs -- plus Dickie's son, another law partner, and two other Mississippi operators -- got busted by the Feds for bribing a little ol' country judge. Since I'm Mississippi-born, this smelly coincidence started me posting about it on then-new folo. Long-story-short, the bribers eventually went to prison -- but not before making my little folo a website that attracted a sizeable international crowd that included a certain Man from Porlock.)

But back to this saga. The next news was that Chip P and his wife, the parents of five little boys, were separating and he was leaving the House of Representatives; though Chip soon filed for divorce, the decree isn't final yet.

Now come to find out, via folo's and TMfP's friend Ducky, that Mrs. Chip has just commenced an alienation-of-affections lawsuit against one Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, a telecom heiress who was not only Chip’s college girlfriend but, according to Mrs. Chip's complaint, his longtime mistress. Where did Chip bunk on weeknights (and, allegedly, boink Beth BigBucks) while Congress was in session? You guessed it: in the famous C Street townhouse convent church.

And things might have rocked merrily on -- except that, Mrs. Chip alleges, when Mississippi governor Haley Barbour was on the verge of naming Chip to the Senate, Beth issued a “Senate seat or me” ultimatum that he couldn’t resist (maybe they're soulmates too?). They’re a hot item to this day, Mrs. Chip claims, with Chip now living in Jackson, quite near Beth but 30 miles from wife-and-kiddies, and making his living as a lobbyist for Beth's family's company. (Oh honey, what I'd give to be a fly on the wall around Mississippi's bridge tables and nineteenth holes this weekend!)

Call it "C Street" or "the Family" or whatever, this-here boys' club just hates hates hates the publicity its horny members are drawing. Oh, it ain't the sex that bothers them (obviously), but the exposure of their agenda. For that is none other than invisible world dominion in Jesus' name. Listen to Jeff Sharlet, the guy who literally wrote the book on the Family, explaining to our best interviewer, NPR's Terry Gross, how it rolls. Thanks to Ensign, Sanford, and now Pickering, Sharlet has appeared three nights in a row this week on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, and Pickering's Problem has splashed onto the pages of TalkingPointsMemo.

With any luck, before this is over, 2009's edition will have proven to be the last National Prayer Breakfast that Barack Obama, Tony Blair, or anyone else has to attend. ThainkyaJeezes.

-- lotus