see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more dog and puppy pictures

Ta much, dear Edosan

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Ta much, dear Edosan

Makes mah head hurt! -- Brak

Ta much, dear Ar0cketman

Ta much, dear Edosan

My pal Dogs came over tonight, and we watched Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (orig. title, Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie). He'd never seen it before, but Your Humble Narrator has seen it at least four times and is a big fan. We discussed the surrealism of the film many times as we watched it, and how well Buñuel's dream sequences use elements of actual dreams. The washed-out colors (Bar one or two, I've always dreamed in color, but it rarely looks like Kodachrome©), curious perspectives, disappearing people, strange and sudden changes, etc are all trés a propos.

I looked around in the guide to see what else was on, and was delighted when I found TCM was showing Fellini's 8½! We went straight from one surreal film to another; and Dogs'd never seen 8½ either, and I'd only seen bits and pieces. It's not the pleasantest film in places, but for the most part it shifts into silliness when needed.

Dear MSiegel found this story, and posits the theory that The Stig is Col Sanders.

Film at eleven.

The Loch Ness Stig gets pixellated
Sinister Street View censorship shenanigans
By Lester Haines
1st February 2010

Those readers who live close to Loch Ness are invited to keep an eye out for circling black Google helicopters, since the Great Satan of Mountain View has inexplicably decided that this recent loch-side sighting of Top Gear's The Stig...

...would benefit from the application of Street View's "Swiss pixellation" filter:

Chilling stuff indeed. As ever, we welcome wild conspiracy theories as to what exactly Google is trying to hide... ®

Innocent victims of the subprime crisis
In spite of a law protecting tenants, people who rent across the US are being illegally evicted even if their finances are fine
Sasha Abramsky
6 February 2010

"What happens often is that after a foreclosure, a broker or an agent comes to the house and, as though the law didn't exist, tells renters the house has been foreclosed and they have to leave," says Judith Liben, senior housing attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.

The law Liben is referencing is the federal Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, passed in spring last year and intended to remain on the books until 2012. It was intended to mitigate the collateral damage from the foreclosure epidemic by making banks give tenants on month-to-month leases 90 days notice before evicting them following the home owners' foreclosure; and by ensuring that tenants in good standing with year, or multi-year, leases couldn't be evicted mid-lease following a foreclosure. The new owners would, according to this act, have to honour the terms of the lease, keep up repairs on the property, and repay the tenants' security deposits upon completion of the lease.

Housing advocates cheered the law as representing a signal victory for struggling tenants in an increasingly brutal real estate environment. In the months since it was passed, however, many have concluded that in practice it is a largely toothless wonder: most tenants don't know about its existence, many banks – desperate to evict tenants living in foreclosed homes so that they can more easily sell the properties – have continued sending out illegal eviction notices; some even hire bailiffs to change the locks and to throw possessions out onto the street. And the federal government has no real mechanisms to enforce the act's provisions.

It is not uncommon for tenants in these situations to come home and find intimidating, anonymous, and legally misleading, posters stuck to their doors. One such starts with "Attention!! This property has been foreclosed and is now bank-owned. The eviction process has started. The property is being monitored." The words are in bold and the text is circled for emphasis. Another begins: "To whom it may concern: We were informed this property was vacant. We have changed the locks." Another resorts to financial intimidation: "The eviction process has been started by the bank. It is in your best interest to avoid having an eviction added to your credit report. It is very difficult to rent a property with an eviction on your credit report."

That homeowners have been hammered by subprime mortgages, by the collapse of real estate value, and by the broader economic malaise, is well-documented. But, out of the spotlight, more and more rented homes go into foreclosure: many tenants continue to pay rent to delinquent landlords, only to subsequently find they have been giving their money to a person who no longer owns the property. Others have been summarily evicted, having to scurry to find new homes – or ending up homeless. Many have lost the security deposits on their old rentals to owners who have simply disappeared. Others have seen their credit records [affected] by being evicted, despite the eviction not being the result of their own financial failings. ...

Manchester police are first to wear named badges on their uniform
Police in Greater Manchester have become the first in the country to wear name badges on their uniform.
05 Feb 2010

All 8,227 officers employed by the force, along with the 4,128 civilian staff, have been told they must display the magnetic badges which spell out their name and rank.

The move is part of a drive to improve the force's image with the public.

Plain clothes officers will also have to wear the badges – similar to tags worn by shop staff – but police working undercover or wearing riot gear will be exempt.

At present police can only be identified by the number on their uniform.

The Metropolitan Police announced last month that some of its officers would wear name badges in response to criticism levelled after April's G20 demonstrations in London. ...

Three Labour MPs and one Tory peer face expenses abuse charges
Keir Starmer announces Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield will be charged with fraudulently claiming expenses
Andrew Sparrow
Friday 5 February 2010

Three Labour MPs and a Tory peer will be charged with false accounting in relation to their parliamentary expenses, it was announced today.

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, revealed that Elliot Morley, a former minister, David Chaytor, the MP for Bury North, Jim Devine, the MP for Livingston, and Lord Hanningfield, a former Conservative business spokesman, will be charged under the Theft Act.

Morley, Chaytor and Devine are Labour MPs; Hanningfield is a Conservative peer and was leader of Essex county council until he resigned this afternoon following the statement from the DPP. Starmer said the four would be charged with offences under section 17 of the Theft Act relating to false accounting.

Starmer said the four were being charged following a "careful and detailed" police investigation and that the CPS had reviewed the files carefully before deciding there was "sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges". ...

February 6, 2010
Accused MPs argue they are above the law
Sam Coates and Francis Elliott

Three Labour MPs charged yesterday with theft over fraudulent expense claims declared that they were above the law and would fight attempts to put them on trial.

Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine each face up to seven years in jail after Keir Starmer, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, announced that he was charging them under the Theft Act 1968.

Lord Hanningfield, the Tory frontbencher and leader of Essex County Council, faces six charges over his expense claims.

In a joint statement, the three MPs announced that they would fight the charges by claiming parliamentary privilege over their expense claims. It said: “We maintain that this is an issue that should be resolved by the parliamentary commissioner, who is there to enforce any breach of the rules.” ...

Expenses claims: MPs not above the law, say legal experts
Lawyers say bid to test legal immunity in the courts will fail because alleged offences at Westminster are criminal deeds
Afua Hirsch
Friday 5 February 2010

Senior legal figures say there is no basis for MPs and peers to be above the law following the statement by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, saying the four parliamentarians charged over expenses claims had raised a defence of parliamentary privilege.

"We have considered that question and concluded that the applicability and extent of any parliamentary privilege claimed should be tested in court," Starmer said when announcing charges today.

Hugh Tomlinson QC, at Matrix chambers, said: "MPs don't enjoy any kind of immunity from the ordinary criminal law. It seems to me that any privilege arguments are unlikely to be successful because the alleged offences are in substance just ordinary criminal offences. They are no different from the kind of offences any member of the public could also be accused of through their work." ...

One in three members of the public matched a picture of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, with the name of Peter Griffin, the protagonist of the cartoon sitcom.

The survey of 1,498 people found more were able to identify a picture of Alex Reid, the new husband of Katie Price, than recognised Gordon Brown, the prime minister. ...

BAE deal with Tanzania: Military air traffic control – for country with no airforce
Claire Short and Robin Cook had tried to stop the sale of a hugely expensive radar to the poverty- stricken Tanzanians
Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
Saturday 6 February 2010

Tony Blair was at the centre of controversy over BAE's arms deal with Tanzania, just as he was in the Saudi contracts.

Cabinet ministers Claire Short and Robin Cook had tried to stop the sale of the hugely expensive radar to the poverty- stricken Tanzanians. But, as prime minister, he overruled them and insisted that the deal had to go through.

It left Cook ruefully muttering that it seemed that Dick Evans, BAE's then chairman, seemed to have "the key to the garden door of No 10".

The World Bank and the International Civil Aviation Organisation judged that the 2001 purchase was unnecessary and overpriced.

But the £28m deal started to look even worse when the SFO discovered that a third of the contract's price had been diverted into secret offshore bank accounts.

The SFO believed that this money was used to pay bribes to Tanzanian politicians and officials.

Yesterday Short, who resigned from the government, said : "Every way you looked at it, it [the deal] was outrageous and disgraceful. And guess who absolutely insisted on it going through? My dear friend Tony Blair, who absolutely, adamantly, favoured all proposals for arms deals.

"It was an obviously corrupt project. Tanzania didn't need a new military air traffic control, it was out-of-date technology, they didn't have any military aircraft – they needed a civilian air traffic control system and there was a modern, much cheaper one. Everyone talks about good governance in Africa as though it is an African problem, and often the roots of the 'badness' is companies in Europe." ...

Perseverance and bluff – how the legal deal was done that sees BAE pay £285m fines
That the arms giant has finally been forced to pay substantial penalties is due to the doggedness of a small group of prosecutors
David Leigh and Rob Evans
Friday 5 February 2010

Since the Guardian first exposed BAE's worldwide system of undercover payments to secure contracts in 2003, the company has fought hard to deny its guilt, using every lobbying tool at its disposal and exploiting its influence within the offices of the then prime minister, Tony Blair.

That the arms giant has finally been forced to pay substantial penalties is due to the doggedness of a small group of prosecutors, currently led by Richard Alderman, director of the Serious Fraud Office, and his US counterpart, Mark ­Mendelsohn, at the department of justice in Washington.

Alderman's predecessor, Robert ­Wardle, stepped down from his post at the SFO in 2008, a frustrated man, ­having seen BAE and its friends persuade Blair to intervene and force a halt to extensive and long running criminal inquiries into the £43bn al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

But that turned out to be the high-water mark of BAE's political influence. The US authorities promptly picked up the Saudi case which Blair had claimed would be so damaging to Britain's "national security".

Washington officials were vigorously attempting to enforce their own Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and were long suspicious of BAE's surprising arms deals in the Czech Republic, about which they had vainly protested at the time.

Meanwhile Alderman, when he succeeded Wardle at the SFO, insisted he was no patsy. He ordered renewed investigations into BAE's remaining suspect contracts in Tanzania, South Africa, Romania and the Czech Republic. Alderman staked much of his credibility on attempts to change the lumbering SFO style of investigation. ...

February 6, 2010
Baptist Laura Silsby who set off to 'rescue' orphans left behind debts and bad wages
James Bone in New York

The leader of the American missionaries imprisoned for alleged child abduction in Haiti has a history of divorce, bad debts, and unpaid wages back home.

Laura Silsby, 40, founded her New Life Children’s Refuge charity at an address in a still-unfinished development in a suburb of Boise, Idaho, in November.

A month later the $358,500 (£230,000) house was repossessed by the mortgage holder, MetLife Home Loans.

Ms Silsby, a divorced mother of young children, organised the Christian “rescue mission” that led to the arrest of the ten American Baptists for trying to take 33 Haitian children out of the country.

Back home she runs a personal shopping service on the internet that earned her the eWomanNetwork’s International Businesswoman of the Year award in 2006.

Court records show, however, that she has repeatedly been sued for unpaid wages and bad debts — and has had at least nine driving violations since 1997.

According to the newspaper the Idaho Statesman 14 claims totalling $38,100, including two by the same employee, were filed against the PersonalShopper.com company over the past two years.

The Idaho department of labour found that $30,620 was owed to employees and also imposed a $4,000 fine. The company’s former marketing director went to court against Ms Silsby and PersonalShopper.com in October claiming five months of unpaid wages, totalling $22,016. ...



Classy broad.

Vikings vs Pirates: Film at eleven.

Well, with what else could one brush a bat?

Ta much, dear MSiegel

I often wish more costumed pets'd attack their owners: it might end the lamentable practice. ;)

Ta much, dear Edosan

Please note miniscule alien, Gentle Categorian.

Ta much, dear Edosan

Very tangy Tang horsie.

Ta much, dear Edosan

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Correction

A story on Page 1 of Tuesday’s Telegraph quoted a White House official explaining that a Q-and-A session with dozens of teenagers in Nashua High School North on Monday was “off the record.” However, the explanation about the talk being “off the record” was, it turns out, also “off the record” and should not have been quoted.



Ta much, dear Edosan, for that amusi bemusing bit of enlightenment.

Waaaaaaaaaaay better livin' thru science, duuuuuuude!

Ta much, dear MSiegel