Japanese finds scorpion in jeans

Fresh from the Beeb

A Japanese woman trying on jeans in a shop got a shock when she was stung by a scorpion hidden inside a pair.

The woman, on the southern island of Okinawa, ended up in hospital for five days as a result of the sting, which was not life-threatening.

Local health officials captured the 5cm (2 inch) scorpion, which was believed to be a Chinese bark scorpion.

It is thought to have travelled inside the jeans from China, where they were made.

Officials told the Mainichi Daily News that the woman, who was not named, felt a sudden pain in her right knee as she tried the trousers on.

When she rubbed the area with her hand, the scorpion then stung her right index finger.

An inconvenient holiday

from Toronto Star, Tuesday Dec. 19

The holidays are expensive. Least of all for those who celebrate them.

The real loser of the season is the Earth.

“a very good tool”

Martha Stewart: New $1,200 ‘Vibrator’ Is ‘Very Good Tool’
Monday, December 18, 2006

By Cathy Burke
AP

She’s no prison rat. And her new $1,200 “vibrator” is “a very good tool,” ex-con domestic diva Martha Stewart confided in a raunchy riposte with Sirius Satellite Radio colleague Howard Stern.

The usually stiff-shirt Stewart showed her down-and-dirty side last week.

Creepy Claus

Santaphobia
He chums it up with prancing reindeer. He loves all things sugar and spice. But the perennial puzzle remains: Why are kids so terrified of Mr. Claus?

“to show that the Bible presents the true history of the world.”

Creation museum pushes ‘true history’
By Matthew Wells
BBC News, Kentucky

A new hi-tech temple to fundamentalist Christianity is due to open in the heart of Middle America next May, aiming to provide the grandest riposte yet to Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Staff and supporters of the Answers in Genesis organisation call it the Creation Museum.

But secular scientists would take issue with the use of either word to describe the almost completed building that stands just a few miles west of Cincinnati, on the borders of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

End Violence Against Sex Workers Day (Dec.16or17)

Going Dutch (a link to bbc article)

My Favourite Kind of Ingenuity

World’s tallest man saves choking dolphins
Dec. 14, 2006. 11:22 AM
ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIJING — The long arms of the world’s tallest man saved two dolphins in northeast China by reaching inside of them to remove plastic they had swallowed, state media reported Thursday.

The dolphins at an aquarium in Fushun, Liaoning Province, had fallen sick after swallowing the plastic from the edge of their pool, and attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because of the contraction of the dolphins’ stomachs in response to the instruments, the China Daily newspaper reported.

Tehran trip dismays colleagues

Tehran trip dismays colleagues
St. Francis Xavier prof presented paper at forum attended by Holocaust deniers
Dec. 14, 2006. 06:04 AM
MICHELE HENRY
STAFF REPORTER

Colleagues of a Canadian professor who spoke at a widely condemned conference in Tehran this week are outraged and dismayed by his presence at the event, which provided an open forum for Holocaust deniers.

Samuel Kalman, an assistant professor of European history at St. Francis Xavier University, was still reeling yesterday from the news that Shiraz Dossa, a political science professor at the Nova Scotia institution, attended the conference called “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision,” which attracted the likes of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Why are you a secretary?

originally posted on Anthropology.net

The Queen has the Power, but the Ants See the Sun, or Some Such Parable

Revisiting the anthropology of the office motif, I was thinking the other day about what it means to define a job as a “support position”. An incident comes to mind when I was having a conversation with a friend, who happens to be a professor, and I told her that I am a secretary as well as a student. She often responds straight off the hip, with pep, and she said incredulously: “Why are you a secretary?! How can you take classes?” “Well, it pays the bills, and the benefits are good,” I said.

welcome, my little monkeys!

We’re all good to go now, so let’s start with some amazing news out of the Lone Star state:

New bill for blind Texas hunters

Blind hunters would be able to use laser-sighted rifles to hunt animals in Texas, if a bill introduced in the state’s legislature is successful.

Republican Edmund Kuempel proposed an amendment to existing law that would permit “legally blind” people to use a laser-sighting device when hunting.

Current Texas law prohibits the use of laser sights, spotlights and headlights for hunting purposes.

A sighted person would be legally required to accompany the blind hunter.

“This opens up the fun of hunting to additional people, and I think that’s great,” said Mr Kuempel.