Rat thoughts

The UN has announced they are building a satellite powered by feces.

Houston, this is Shitstar 1.  My God, it stinks up here!

[Error: unknown template qotd] I receive the San Jose Mercury News on my Kindle (despite the fact that I've never lived in the Bay Area) and I also get the dead tree version of Newsweek.  I also sometimes browse the News Channel on the Wii.  When I check news online, I usually use Google News.

People of Lesbos take gay group to court over term 'Lesbian'

By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS
Associated Press Writer

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women.

Three islanders from Lesbos - home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women - have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.

One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

"My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris Lambrou. "Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos," he said.

The three plaintiffs are seeking to have the group barred from using "lesbian" in its name and filed a lawsuit on April 10. The other two plaintiffs are women.

Also called Mytilene, after its capital, Lesbos is famed as the birthplace of Sappho. The island is a favored holiday destination for gay women, particularly the lyric poet's reputed home town of Eressos.

"This is not an aggressive act against gay women," Lambrou said. "Let them visit Lesbos and get married and whatever they like. We just want (the group) to remove the word lesbian from their title."

He said the plaintiffs targeted the group because it is the only officially registered gay group in Greece to use the word lesbian in its name. The case will be heard in an Athens court on June 10.

Sappho lived from the late 7th to the early 6th century B.C. and is considered one of the greatest poets of antiquity. Many of her poems, written in the first person and intended to be accompanied by music, contain passionate references to love for other women.

Lambrou said the word lesbian has only been linked with gay women in the past few decades. "But we have been Lesbians for thousands of years," said Lambrou, who publishes a small magazine on ancient Greek religion and technology that frequently criticizes the Christian Church.

Very little is known of Sappho's life. According to some ancient accounts, she was an aristocrat who married a rich merchant and had a daughter with him. One tradition says that she killed herself by jumping off a cliff over an unhappy love affair.

Lambrou says Sappho was not gay. "But even if we assume she was, how can 250,000 people of Lesbian descent - including women - be considered homosexual?"

The Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece could not be reached for comment.

This scares me.

http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/200812/483/FBI-conducts-raids-and-makes-arrests-for-clicking-on-hyperlinks

Summary:  The FBI is posting fake links to kiddie porn on various chan sites and other forums.  Click on one of the fake links and you get a visit from the Party Van.  But they aren't recording the referrer, so they have no idea if the victim was genuinely trying to download kiddie porn or if someone had been tricked into accessing the files via a META refresh, Iframes, URL spoofing or TinyURL, or if they'd used a browser with a pre-fetch function (like Firefox) which downloads links automatically.

Drug agents seize candy-flavored cocaine at mall

Federal drug agents have seized cocaine in a variety of designer flavors and arrested three men in Modesto after a 10-month undercover investigation, authorities reported Monday.

The cocaine, in strawberry, lemon, coconut and cinnamon flavors, may be aimed at women and a younger, club-going clientele, said Gordon Taylor, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Sacramento. It costs about twice as much and is less potent, he said, but dealers bank on its novelty and taste to sell the product.

The second to the last American WWI veterans died yesterday.  Harry Richard Landis of Tampa, FL died at age 108.

The last German WWI vet, Erich Kaestner, died New Years Day at age 107.

The final remaining US WWI vet is Frank Buckles of Charles Town, WV, age 107.  The last remaining Canadian WWI vet is John Babcock, now living in Spokane, WA, also age 107.  There is also one remaining Austro-Hungarian vet, Franz Kunstler, age 107, and one Ottoman vet, Yakup Satar, age 109.  There is one Australian vet, John Campbell Ross, 108,  one French vet, Lazare Ponticelli, age 110, and two Italians, Delfino Borroni and Francesco Chiarello, both 109.   There are six British WWI vets still alive, Claude Choules, 106, Sydney Lucas and William Stone, both 107, Gladys Powers (also the only surviving female WWI vet), 108, Harry Patch, 109 and Henry Allingham, 111.

There are only 14 people still alive who served in the War the End All Wars.