"Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others." - Jonathan Winters

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The 10 most historically inaccurate movies - "10,000 BC, 2008: This tale of a mammoth hunter travelling across the prehistoric globe to rescue his bride, features some surprising revelations. Were sabre-tooth tigers bull-sized? Could man train Woolly Mammoths to help build pyramids? Did we invent sailing boats so early? Unfortunately the answer to all these questions is no. In fact, the filmmakers incorporated so many animals then extinct, or yet to evolve, and so many future technologies and geographical impossibilities that Archaeology magazine was compelled to review - and pan it: “Unsurprisingly, this tribe is starving, but it is hard to have sympathy for them because any culture that tries to hunt mammoths with a net gets what it deserves.”"

Study finds women directors damage profits - "Daniel Ferreira, from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Renée Adams from the University of Queensland, said their research showed how “meddling” with boards could produce unexpected results. Their study, which was based on a survey of nearly 87,000 directorships at 2,000 US companies between 1996 and 2003, concluded that boards with more women were more effective at tasks such as executive supervision and monitoring... Yet while those traits often helped badly governed companies, the Ferreira and Adams study suggests that increased monitoring can have a negative effect on well-governed businesses."
I wonder what the feminists' reaction is.

Christian Leaders Pray for Nation's Welfare - "The small mix of top executives and church figures were exhorted by Dr Thio Su Mien to “contend for righteousness”... She took out a passage from the Bible telling of how God sent a plague among the Israelites because of immorality and stopped it only after a righteous man Phinehas punished the guilty couple... “If the people do not rise up and speak, it will be too late,” she warned, convicted that there are still a few more years for believers to do so."
Funny - decades of legalised prostitution have not doomed this country

Study: Religiosity of Humanities Students Most Likely to Wane - "Results from a recent study on the impact of a college student's major on their religiosity have led researchers to conclude that postmodernism, rather than science, is the greatest antagonist of religiosity... Findings show that students who entered the Humanities were highly religious but they came out of the major less religious than they started. Those who switched into the Social Sciences were on average less religious and maintained or strengthened their already low religiosity. Majoring in the Biological Sciences and the Physical Sciences did not affect students' religious attendance but the Physical Sciences negatively affected the level importance of religion in their lives. Surprisingly, majoring in education was found to increase religiosity both in terms of religious attendance and importance. Researchers also found a rise in religiosity for students in business. Other findings show that students in the Sciences and Engineering experience large decreases in their trust in God compared to business majors"

A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush - "President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse. Honest. This isn’t a joke... Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”"

delanceyplace: risk - "[A colleague of mine], in one of his diligent moments, had taken it upon himself to vet my carefully crafted description of one of our products for a PDS. 'What is this shit?!' He thundered. 'If I read this crap I wouldn't know what I was buying.' I took this as the highest compliment. A small army of lawyers had vetted the PDS and had passed it as legally correct. In some countries, regulators had also reviewed it and passed it fit for investor consumption, but it was unreadable gibberish... Our tax lawyer, a 50-something woman from the most expensive law firm in town, was my role model. On her wall was a framed excerpt from a judgment in a case concerning a clause that she had drafted. The judge had commented that he had found the clause to be of 'stupefying legal density beyond human comprehension'. She was pleased with her efforts. I had a long way to go."

Rap Wannabe In "Street Cred" Stickups - "Meet Steven Gilmore. The wannabe rapper tried to rob a Florida convenience store Friday night and shot an employee in the head with a BB gun in a bid to establish "street cred" for his nascent hip-hop career"

'Silver lining' in Fox Lake standoff - "Martin said an officer spotted Shurpit, who had a civil arrest warrant issued through Jefferson County for failure to support a child, mowing his lawn at 103 W. State St., in Fox Lake at 6:15 p.m. When the officer approached Shurpit to discuss the warrant, "Mr. Shurpit lunged the mower toward the officer to keep the officer away from him. The officer actually had to put his foot up against the motor of the gas lawnmower to protect himself." Martin said the officer and Shurpit scuffled in the yard before Amond joined in, and provided Shurpit with a rifle before she fled the scene in a vehicle... Police fired rounds of tear gas into Shurpit's home, which Martin said some neighbors mistook for gunfire."

Police: Beer pong + dare = homicide - "After they got into a dispute over a beer-pong game, Joseph Jimenez, 24, and Scott Riley, 25, met in a Bridgeport alleyway and Riley made a dare, investigators said. "Shoot me, shoot me," Riley said to Jimenez and a companion. "You guys ain't got the . . . " Jimenez accepted the challenge, police said, and yesterday he was being held without bail at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility on murder"

The Straight Dope: Has martial arts training ever helped anybody defeat a mugger? - "Another ten-year study of victim response in 27,595 crimes (assault, sexual assault, robbery, larceny, and burglary) showed across the board that resisting resulted in less injury than not resisting. Similarly, studies have found that resisting reduces the likelihood of an attempted crime succeeding. For example, the chance of a would-be robber pulling it off drops somewhere between 20 and 48 percent."

Police: Woman was teaching boy, 11, to drive when she was run over

A Nose for Trouble - Weird News Story Archive - "A researcher at the University of Minnesota studying the effects of cocaine apparently tried some of the drug himself. Repeatedly. Dr. Keith Kajander used grant money to buy 140 grams of cocaine over a seven-year period before dying from a cocaine overdose. The university has said it will refund $11,000 in grant money to the National Institutes of Health that Kajander used to buy the drug after admitting it didn’t know how many of the 140 grams went to research and how many went up Kajander’s nose."

YouTube - FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful - "I used to think, why am I the only one trying to set up single friends with each other. And now I realize that I was sick"