omg what crazy days!!!

 http://www.womples.com/

at the site above you can see what people put in the paper. i think my favorite was the "tooter" that was needed to speak and write fluently. what one did u find funny?




on a serious note-

Moscow, Russia (CNN) -- The death toll from a Russian coal mine accident has reached 52, with 38 people still missing, the RuProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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ian Emergency Situations Ministry said Tuesday.
"The rescue operation to locate and recover the missing people is being carried out around the clock," Veronica Smolskaya, spokeswoman for the ministry, told CNN.
More than 80 survivors are currently in hospitals, according to the Russian State Health authorities.
Emergency Situation Minister Sergei Shoigu said more than 700 rescue workers are now combing numerous underground tunnels of the mine, and the plan is to complete the operation within the next 24 hours, according to the ministry's website.
He was speaking at a special meeting of the rescue headquarters in Kemerovo region, which was also attended by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who traveled to the region Tuesday.
Russian officials are still displaying hope and optimism in public, but several sources at the mine told Russian reporters on conditions of anonymity that finding anyone underground who survived the explosions would be a miracle.
"Hope is always the last one to die, but there is indeed little hope left," Sergei Cheremnov, spokesman for the local regional Kemerovo governor, told CNN on the phone from the site of the accident.
Cheremnov also said the first six funerals took place Tuesday. Five miners were buried in the town of Mezhdurechensk itself, where the accident took place, and one was buried in the town of Tashtagol, also in Kemerovo region.
The gas explosion in the Raspadskaya mine occurred around 8:55 p.m. Saturday (12:55 p.m. ET), when 359 people were working at the time. The mine is located near the western Siberian town of Mezhdurechensk, more than 2,300 miles east of Moscow, Russia. Almost 300 people were evacuated shortly after the explosion.
More than 50 rescue workers had gone into the mine to recover the rest of the victims when a second gas explosion rocked the structure about four-and-a-half hours later, officials said, causing more fatalities and destruction. Dozens of miners and rescue workers were trapped as a result of that second, much more powerful explosion, and all communications with them were disrupted.
Thick smoke and high methane concentrations in the mine prevented active rescue operations underground on Sunday and most of Monday morning, Russian officials said.
The operation was further complicated by the very size of the mine: Raspadskaya is one of the largest in Russia's mining industry. It has dozens of underground tunnels with a total length of almost 200 miles, according to Kemerovo Gov. Aman Tuleyev.
Putin said on Russian state television Tuesday the investigation is closely analyzing all possible clues to determine the cause of the blasts.
"When such disasters are investigated, attention is always given to studying all aspects of the problem, including the so-called human factor, which means unsafe handling of fire," Putin said while talking to victims' families.
But once the groups of rescuers entered the mine after the first blast, he said, "there could have not been any unsafe handling of fire or equipment. It's simply out of the question," he said. "The second blast was the hardest."
The victims' families will be paid 1 million rubles (more than $33,000) in moral damages, and underage children of those killed in the accident will be paid a pension of 10,000 rubles (more than $330) every month until they reach the age of 18, the Russian government decided Tuesday.
The injured will receive 400,000 rubles (more than $13,300), and miners sustaining light injuries will receive 200,000 rubles (more than $6,600). Local authorities and the management of Raspadskaya mine will also allocate money to those affected, in addition to the federal government.

On Tuesday, the first working day in Russia following three days of the May 9 Victory Day holidays, the shares of Raspadskaya mine plummeted by 15 percent at the Moscow stock exchange.

Are Smart Meters Really Smart?

Smart meters sound like a really good idea in theory. They are electric meters that can be read electronically. This means that the electric guy no longer has to trek around to every house in the area to read the meter. The meter can simply be read by computer at the headquarters of the utility company. It should save time and money for everyone.
Sounds, good, right? However, Dave Moore over at the Norman Transcript makes a pretty good case for why smart meters are actually a really stupid idea. Why this might actually be a stupid idea:

• Your home’s electricity will be able to be turned off remotely. The idea here is that the electric company can shut off electricity as needed in case of an emergency or suspicious overuse at the home. However, the reality is that this could end up meaning your electricity goes out frequently for no reason. The electric company is bound to make mistakes in this area and consumers will have to deal with those mistakes.
• Hackers could get into your electricity. The way that smart meters work is through computers located on site. Hackers could break into the electric meters in an area and shut off the electricity or turn it up to increase your rates. There probably aren’t enough security measures in place to prevent this from happening.

So, what do you think? Are smart meters a good idea? Or do their drawbacks actually make them a really stupid product that we aren’t ready to endure just yet?

the tornados are back

follow the link to see the video
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/weather/05/10/severe.storms/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

(CNN) -- At least four people were killed in Oklahoma on Monday after a severe storm system spawned multiple tornadoes across the state, the director of the state emergency management department said.
The state medical examiner's office confirmed three of the deaths as a result of the storm, spokeswoman Cherokee Ballard said. One person died in southeastern Oklahoma City and another in Cleveland County. Ballard did not know the location of the third death.
Brenda Finkle, director of corporate communications for Norman Regional Health System, said the company's hospital in Norman admitted eight patients Monday night in critical condition with crush injuries and head trauma.
At least 25 other people filled the waiting room of Norman Regional Hospital with lacerations and head wounds, Finkle said, adding hospital staff expected more patients to continue to seek treatment.
Another 20 people were either getting medical care or awaiting treatment at Moore Medical Center, just north of Norman, according to Finkle.
OU Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, received two patients with broken bones, according to spokesman Allen Poston.
The Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management reported seven injuries.
Video out of Norman showed overturned cars, snapped utility poles, downed trees and severely damaged homes. Several mobile homes were blown to pieces in one neighborhood where debris littered yards and streets alongside large trees ripped straight from the ground.
A truck stop east of Oklahoma City was demolished, taking a direct hit from one of the tornadoes, according to a spokeswoman for Love's Travel Stops and Country Stores.
Motorists pulled off Interstate 40 and sought shelter in the truck stop's large coolers and restrooms before the tornado tore the roof off the building, blew out car windows and overturned tractor-trailers, spokeswoman Christina Dukeman said.
Video showed people outside the truck stop receiving treatment for minor injuries. Laura O'Leary, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Medical Services Authority, said seven people were transported from around the immediate area to local hospitals in good and fair condition, "a miraculously low number ... considering the volume of area the tornado covered."
Love's employee Charlescie Greenway said she and two other women made it to one cooler before the twister tore through the building.
"The three of us were kind of trapped in there, holding the door shut, praying to God that we don't die and that everybody else was safe," Greenway told CNN affiliate KWTV, adding, "it was really scary -- the wind was like trying to pull the door off the latch."
Sammy Ward and his partner rode the twister out in their truck in the parking lot.
"It started hailing and then it quit hailing and then all of a sudden the wind hit and it just went dark and here went everything," Ward told KWTV. "Trucks went to rocking ... and next thing we know the whole roof and everything was gone."
Ward, who said he felt "very lucky," said the event lasted two to three minutes.
Albert Ashwood, director of the state emergency management department, said crews were working to assess the damages in at least 13 counties, adding "numerous" homes had been affected.
The American Red Cross opened at least two shelters in McCloud, Oklahoma, and Tecumseh, Oklahoma, and continued to assess needs across the state.
More than 31,000 homes were without power in the metro Oklahoma City area -- nearly 15,000 in Norman alone, according to Oklahoma Gas & Electric.
Ashwood said preliminary reports out of Norman indicate the damages are "similar to what you would see with an EF3" tornado, referring to the Enhanced Fujita Scale for measuring the strength of tornadoes. An EF3 is capable of producing winds up to 165 mph.
CNN iReporter Rebecca Barbato said tornado sirens were going off in her neighborhood in Moore, just north of Norman, when tennis-ball-sized hail began raining down on her roof.
Other tornadoes were reported in Yukon, Medford and Shawnee in Oklahoma, and in Wichita, Kansas.
The storms struck around 5 p.m. CT (6 p.m. ET).

Meteorologists warned throughout the day Monday of the potential for tornadoes.

happy mothers day? i think.....

CNN) -- For one group of women in Chicago on Sunday, Mother's Day was marked not with flowers, but with a stark reminder of their loss.
One by one, they filed toward a newly unveiled sculpture at the city's St. Sabina Church, placing small white cards emblazoned with names such as Blair Holt and Matthew Michael Rodriguez at the foot of the two figures in the sculpture.
For some of the women, the realistic work of a faceless, gun-wielding assailant killing a young girl was too much to bear, CNN affiliate WGN reported.
Instead of being celebrated by their children this holiday, these mothers were mourning the deaths of their children -- all victims of gun violence on Chicago's streets.
"Today, as I woke up, instead of what a lot of mothers get, which are flowers or Happy Mom's Day or a kiss, I didn't get any of that," said Maria Ramirez, whose son, Matthew, was killed at 16. "I don't even get to hear anybody say 'Mama' anymore. I'll never hear that again."
The sculpture's artist, J.S. Kenar, said he was trying to "show the pain, to show that something unhuman is going on here."
The city has been plagued by bloodshed on its streets this year, including a particularly deadly stretch last month in which seven people were killed and 18 wounded in a 12-hour period.
Statistics released Sunday by Chicago police show that while the overall violent crime rate has decreased by 11 percent this year, the city's homicide rate has risen 8 percent. As of Saturday, 127 killings have been recorded this year -- three more homicides than the 2008 yearly total.
"We cannot ignore the destructive nature of guns, and how their presence can escalate a volatile situation into a tragic one," police Superintendent Jody Weis said in a statement announcing the statistics.
Annette Holt knows firsthand how destructive gun violence can be to a family. Her son, Blair, an honor student at Chicago's Percy L. Julian high school, was shot on a city bus in 2007. He was killed in a hail of gang bullets when he jumped into the line of fire to save the life of a teenage girl. He was 16.
At Sunday's unveiling, Holt implored other mothers to do all they can to stop the cycle of violence.

"Do something to make a difference now before you're like us (and) your child is either in the cemetery for Mother's Day or birthdays, or your child is in jail for 100 years," she said.

PT

Happy mothers day! i guess. i tried to find something for mothers day in the news but this is all i could find. sorry its a sad story.

kid tasered at a philli game!?!

 

Philadelphia police say an officer appears to have acted appropriately when he used a Taser to subdue a teenager who ran onto the field during a Phillies game.

Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman, says Commissioner Charles Ramsey reviewed the tape and felt the officer had acted within the department’s guidelines, which allow officers to use Tasers to arrest fleeing suspects. Vanore says internal affairs is still investigating.

The teen ran on the field at the top of the eighth inning of Monday night’s game against St. Louis. He dodged two security officers and ran around the outfield before the officer subdued him.

Police say the teen is charged with defiant trespass, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. 

PT-

Lawsuits? public apology's? what do you see coming out of this

this lady is crazy

A Christian nurse moved to a desk job after refusing to remove her crucifix at work has lost a discrimination claim against her employers.

Shirley Chaplin, from Exeter, had argued the cross "ban" prevented her from expressing her religious beliefs.
But an employment tribunal ruled that the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospitals NHS Trust, where she worked, had acted in a reasonable manner.
Mrs Chaplin said it was a "very poor day" for Christians in the workplace.

The law doesn't appear to be on the Christian side Shirley Chaplin Crucifix case - have your say

Jane Viner, the trust's Acting Director of Nursing, said it was "absolutely satisfied" with the tribunal's decision.
She said: "These were very serious allegations of direct and indirect discrimination and we're satisfied that the tribunal has completely dismissed them."
She said Mrs Chaplin, 54, was a respected nurse and had a future at the hospital.
Mrs Chaplin, who is intending to appeal against the decision, said: "The law doesn't appear to be on the Christian side."
She said Christians in the workplace would feel "quite persecuted" by the ruling.

hand and arm as a touch screen?!?

more about it here->  http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/19/microsoft.skinput/index.html




Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- In Chris Harrison's ideal world, mobile phones would be the size of matchbooks. They'd have full-size keyboards. They'd browse the Web. They'd play videos.
And, most importantly, you'd never have to touch them.
Sound like too much to ask? Maybe not.
Harrison, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University and a former intern at Microsoft Research, has developed a working prototype of a system called Skinput that does just that, essentially by turning a person's hand and forearm into a keyboard and screen.
"People don't love the iPhone keyboard. They use them. But they don't love them," Harrison said in a interview at the recent Computer-Human Interaction conference. "If you could make the iPhone keyboard as big as an arm -- that would be huge."
Using Skinput, a person could tap their thumb and middle finger together to answer a call; touch their forearm to go to the next track on a music player; or flick the center of their palm to select a menu item.
All of these sign-language-like movements, which are customizable, would control a gadget in a person's pocket through a Bluetooth connection.
When fitted with a pico-projector, the Skinput system could display an image of a digital keyboard on a person's forearm. So, using Skinput, someone could send text messages by tappProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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g his or her arm in certain places -- without pulling the phone out of a pocket or purse.
"You could pretty much do a lot of what you do on your iPhone," said Harrison, who says Skinput "is [like having] your iPhone on your palm."
The system, which has been under development for eight months, won't be commercially available for two to seven years, said Dan Morris, a Microsoft researcher who is working with Harrison on Skinput.
Before that can happen, Skinput's sensors need to get more accurate, he said. In a 13-person trial in Seattle, Washington, Skinput was found to be 96 percent accurate. But that test only used five buttons. The system would have to improve for people to make use of a full keyboard, which would be the "holy grail," Morris said.
"The accuracy is good, but it's not quite consumer-level yet," he said.
Skinput is one of a number of prototypes, ideas and near-products aiming to make computing more natural.
These devices seek to move beyond the mouse and physical keyboard, letting people communicate with their gadgets by gesturing, using sign language or, in the case of Skinput, tapping on their hands, fingers and forearms.

High Holy Day for Potheads 4/20

April has two days when many Americans, en masse, engage in something that's plainly illegal but is, they swear, OK to do anyway because everyone does it and it doesn't hurt a soul and it makes you feel just so very happy.
The first of these days has already passed: April 15, tax day, when millions of Americans, according to the latest research, fail to pay billions in taxes. The other day is April 20 -- Saturday -- a day when thousands, if not millions, will "mow the grass." That's a polite way of saying that these folks get baked, blitzed, paggered, blazed, obliterated, perved, shmacked ... in other words, they get high, as 4/20 is recognized by many as "national smokers day."
The term "420" and its attendant traditions date back to the 1970s, but at least some evidence exists -- enough to convince any stoner, at least -- that the term has experienced something of a resurgence in our electronic times.
On message boards and community sites across the Web, it's possible to find people who are "420 friendly," meaning that they'd love to meet you and smoke your dope.
And for such people, 4/20 is the recognized day to get your smoke on. And especially at 4:20 a.m. or p.m. on 4/20, and especially while listening to Phish. This year, dozens of celebrations are planned across the globe.
In San Francisco, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, NORML, will finish up its two-day conference "celebrating persoProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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l freedom."
"Once again we have scheduled the conference to coincide with '4/20,' that date that has become associated in the popular culture as a special day for marijuana smokers -- sort of what 'It's Miller time' has become to beer drinkers," the group said on its site. "We hope to build on that tradition and encourage supporters from across the country to joinProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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s in San Francisco as a way to celebrate 4/20."
The event comes after a week of attention focused on NORML, which spent half a million dollars to run ads (PDF) in New York City asking Mayor Michael Bloomberg to fine and ticket -- rather than arrest -- people caught smoking marijuana in the street. The ads feature Bloomberg's response to a New York magazine reporter's query about whether he'd ever used marijuana. The mayor said, "You bet I did. And I enjoyed it."
Given the nature of the celebration, of course, not all of the scheduled events are so political. Most, it seems, are music festivals that might have been going on anyway, but which promise to have some added pep in honor of the day.
The Web is rife with speculation regarding the origin of the term "420." An old yarn has it that 420 was a California police code cops used when they'd spotted someone getting high, and that drug users co-opted the word. Some think it has to do with Hitler's birthday, April 20th -- which is, not entirely coincidentally, also the day in 1999 that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 13 people, and themselves, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
But the consensus opinion has come to rest on a theory put forth by Steven Hager, the editor of High Times, in the magazine in 1998. Hager told the story of the Waldos, a group of San Rafael High School kids who gave Hager evidence -- letters, and so on -- to show they had created the term 420.
This is how the term began, according to Hager's article: "One day, while (the Waldos) were sitting on the wall, a friend gave them a treasure map to a pot patch on nearby Point Reyes Peninsula. 'His brother grew the patch,' said Steve (one of the Waldos).
"The Waldos decided to meet after school and pick the patch. Since school got out at 3:10, and since some of the Waldos had after-school activities that lasted approximately one hour, someone decided they should meet at exactly 4:20 p.m., at the statue of Louis Pasteur, which was located near the entrance to the school parking lot."
After that, the Waldos -- who have their own site at Waldo420.com -- naturally began using 420 as shorthand for cannabis. The Waldos were big fans of the Grateful Dead, and, as Hager explains in his article, "the 420 expression leaked into the Deadhead community and spread from there."
In an e-mail message, Hager said that the Internet further aided the spread of the term, as "Deadheads were the first big group of Internet users."
Asked what he would be doing to celebrate this year's 4/20, Hager wrote that he will be "in Magic Meadow, near the top of Overlook Mountain, which is just above Woodstock, New York."
And what will people do after 4/20, when pot day is over? They'll smoke more, according to one post on the Bay Area Community site, Craigslist.
"A bunch of 420 worshipers who didn't get enough on 4/20 are meeting at Raleigh's in Berkeley on Telegraph (Avenue at) 5:30 on Sunday," it said. "Come burn in summer with us."

Read More http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2002/04/51986#ixzz0ledqBG8D


PT- when people smoke every day i dont get why one day has to be called pot day? can some one explain?

Air planes go night night?!

LONDON — A cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano shut down much of air travel to and from Northern Europe for a third straight day and flights were likely to be disrupted through Monday morning as a massive transportation gridlock spread around the world.

 Europe’s major airports — crucial hubs for international travelers and cargo — were closed. Eurocontrol, the European organization for the safety of air navigation, said that about 16,000 flights were canceled on the continent on Saturday.

France’s Prime Minister, François Fillion, who held an emergency meeting on Saturday, announced that Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris, among others in northern France, would be closed until 8 a.m. Monday. Airports in Northern Italy, including Milan’s Malpensa, were also ordered shut until 8 a.m.,

Actual evidence of the ash was being detected in Britain, where British Airways also canceled all of its short-haul flights until Monday morning.

In addition to shutdowns in Germany, where one Lufthansa official questioned the government’s use of British data for guidance, airports were closed in Belarus and Ukraine as the cloud spread eastward. Adding to the confusion was that scientists were uncertain when the plume, which presents a severe threat to aircraft, would dissipate. Volcanic ash is primarily made up of silicates, akin to glass fibers, which when ingested into a jet engine can melt, causing the engine to flame out and stall.

And one German meteorologist noted that the fine spring weather that reigned much of Europe — perfect flying weather under other circumstances — prolonged the ban on air traffic. The high pressure zone that delivered the sunny skies also helped hold the ash cloud in place, said Helmut Malewski, a meteorologist at the German Weather Service in Offenbach near Frankfurt.

One Icelandic geologist, Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson of the University of Iceland, told The Associated Press early Saturday that activity was increasing at the volcano Eyjafjallajokull (pronounced EY-ya-fyat-lah-YO-kut), whose eruption on Wednesday began disrupting air travel the next day. But in a statement released shortly after noon, a spokesman for Iceland’s Foreign Ministry, Urdur Gunnarsdottir, said that the force of the volcanic eruption under the glacier had been constant during the night until 4 a.m., when it appeared to decrease.

In extending its ban on flights to and from Britain until at least 7 a.m. Sunday, the National Air Traffic Services said that the cloud was “moving around and changing shape.” The British organization said that it had hoped that the cloud would move southward to open some air space, but instead new ash was coming from Iceland.

Britain’s Met Office, the national weather service, said on Saturday that the volcano is still erupting in pulses and evidence of ash dust over the country were now being detected. It said European air travel could be disrupted as a result for several days.

“The volcano has become rather more active this morning,” Barry Gromett, a spokesman for the Met office said Saturday. “We’re getting reports about thin ash deposits from all over the country. People expect to throw back the curtains and to see an apocalyptic cloud but that’s not the case. It’s more like a thin layer on cars.”

The Met Office in London said that a strong westerly wind forecast for the next 12 hours would move the ash initially away from Britain, but it then “curves around” and affect Britain, Scandinavia and Russia. “There’s not much that would indicate a change,” Mr. Gromett said. As Germany entered a second day when every airport in the country was closed to air traffic, the airline Lufthansa expressed impatience with what it suggested was excessive caution by authorities.

Instead of accepting data from British authorities, “it would help to look at other parameters,” said Amelie Schwierholz, a Lufthansa spokeswoman in Frankfurt. German authorities should do their own measurements of the density of volcanic particles, she said.

Ms. Schwierholz noted that a Lufthansa long-distance passenger jet with only a flight crew on board flew from Munich to Frankfurt on Saturday without incident, albeit at a much lower altitude than usual. Lufthansa plans other such “positioning flights,” which are allowed by regulations, so that aircraft will be where the airline needs them when commercial service resumes, she said.

But German officials defended their decision to close the skies. “What’s more important, the safety of passengers or business?” asked Mr. Malewski of the German Weather Service