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T.R. Hummer
allAfrica.com: Somalia: Puntland Information Minister Assassinated (Page 1 of 1)Mr. Warsame Abdi "Sefta Bananka," Puntland's information minister, was killed by unknown gunmen dressed in military fatigues at a restaurant in Galkayo, a trade town that links Puntland to regions in south-central Somalia, where an insurgency has been raging since early 2007.
Police officials said the killers escaped, but Puntland security forces are doing all they can to capture the assassins.
The late Warsame Abdi becomes the first Cabinet minister since Puntland's formation in 1998 to be killed in the line of duty.
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T.R. Hummer
Morbid Anatomy writes:
My friend Kelli just alerted me to a new, great, and somewhat misleadingly named website: Crappytaxidermy.com. Ostensibly a collection of crappy taxidermy, the website is much more than that and far better and broader than the name suggests; it is in fact a kind of visual collection of the many ways in which mankind's unending pleasure in preserving, depicting, and re-creating animals including taxidermy (crappy and otherwise), models, museum dioramas, and creative taxidermy is expressed. Endless fun to peruse, though--sadly--and my only complaint--no credits to find out photographer or artifact information.
Click here to visit Crappytaxidermy.com.
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T.R. Hummer
Judge clears way for dinosaur park to be seized | pnj.com | Pensacola News Journal
Kris Wernowsky writes:
A federal judge has cleared the way for the government's seizure of a creationism theme park in Pensacola owned by a couple convicted of tax fraud.
A ruling by U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers states that the nine properties that make up Dinosaur Adventure Land as well as two bank accounts associated with the park will be used to satisfy $430,400 owed to the federal government.
Kent Hovind, who founded the park and a ministry, Creation Science Evangelism, is serving 10 years in federal prison for failing to pay the Internal Revenue Service more than $470,000 in employee taxes.
He was found guilty in November 2006 on 58 counts, including failure to pay employee taxes and making threats against investigators.
The conviction culminated 17 years of Hovind sparring with the IRS. Saying he was employed by God and his ministers were not subject to payroll taxes, he claimed no income or property.
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T.R. Hummer
Rose and Laura Wilder and the Little House stories : The New Yorker“The popularity of the Little House books . . . helped create a constituency for politicians like Reagan who sought to unsettle the so-called liberal consensus established by New Deal politics.” Considering the outcome of the November election, and the present debacle of laissez-faire capitalism, that popularity may have peaked. On the other hand, it may not have. Hard times whet the appetite for survival stories.
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T.R. Hummer
Can Culture Be Encoded in DNA? New Research Says "Yes"Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory scientists isolated a Zebra Finch, preventing it from learning the songs of its parents (and probably pissing off a bunch of PETA activists). These finches are known to learn their song from elder male relatives, which is why the scientists were surprised to see the same songs emerge from a colony of these utterly isolated birds.
They didn't get it right immediately. The first isolated bird, cut off from its culture, emitted a cacophonous screeching about as melodious as nails being dragged down a pieces of broken blackboard which were, in turn, being dragged down an even larger blackboard. It even tried to teach its kids the same, but they obviously thought "that sucks" (in bird) and made a few improvements. After four generations, the original finch songs reappeared, meaning that either
a) Cultural information can be genetically encoded or
b) Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has embarrassingly bad sound insulation.
We're going to assume a) for now.
The implications are enormous: the encoded information wasn't immediately available like some kind of genetic database, but as the baby birds learned and improved what they saw they were all along being guided by built-in information. At every point, if you'll forgive the outrageous anthropomorphization, they "thought" they were working it out for themselves while dancing to the genetic tune. That's the kind of thing that would make you think very seriously about free will.
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T.R. Hummer
Al Jazeera English - CENTRAL/S. ASIA - Pakistan raid 'kills Mehsud's wife'The wife and father-in-law of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban have reportedly been killed in an air raid in Pakistan's South Waziristan region.
A missile, suspected to have been fired from a US drone, reportedly destroyed the home of Akramud Din, the father-in-law of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban, early on Wednesday.
"I confirm that the female that was killed in the strike was the wife of Baitullah Mehsud," a relative told the Reuters news agency by telephone on Wednesday.
The woman was reported to be Mehsud's second wife.
Four children were also injured in the overnight raid, local officials said.
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T.R. Hummer
Police Investigating Bizarre Crash - Phoenix News Story - KPHO PhoenixGlendale police investigated a bizarre incident Tuesday night near 67th and Glendale Avenues.
They said a man driving a pickup truck crashed into a trailer. When officers arrived on scene, they discovered the man had been stabbed repeatedly.
He was rushed to the hospital in grave condition.
Police do not yet have a suspect description, but they are expected to release more details as the investigation unfolds.
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T.R. Hummer
ON THIS DAY IN JAZZ AGE MUSIC!: AUGUST 5TH...
1907
Ernestine "Tiny" Davis, trumpet/vocals
b. USA, d. Jan. 30, 1994
Biography
~Eugene Chadbourne
A trumpeter who was often called the "female" Louis Armstrong, Ernestine "Tiny" Davis was a member of the all-female International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a popular and innovatively interracial big band that was formed in the late '30s. She was the group's best soloist, and was reportedly offered ten times her salary in the band to jump ship and go to work for Captain Satchmo, who apparently loved her playing. In the decades following the career of the band, Davis and her associates, such as her long-term partner, pianist Ruby Lucas, became adopted as cultural heroes for the gay rights movement. Davis and Lucas, who also performed under the name of Renee Phelan, ran a bar called Tiny and Ruby's Gay Spot in Chicago during the '50s. The two were the subject of a documentary film entitled Tiny and Ruby: Hell Divin' Women.
A great player, Davis was never really taken seriously simply because she was female. Even the opportunity to work steadily was denied until the Second World War took quite a few male musicians out of reach of ringing phones. This resulted in a few different female bands having the opportunity to perform, some of them such as the International Sweethearts of Rhythm amassing large followings and breaking attendance records. But because of the mixed racial grouping within the band, which not only included blacks and whites but Latinas and Asians as well, exposure was mostly limited to black audiences. Tours through the South were particularly heinous, with white players either having to put on blackface or hide beneath the skirts of one of the black players to avoid being arrested for violating Jim Crow laws.
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