KID'S HEALTH QUIZ

With classes starting soon, find out what kind of grade your family's wellness gets.

1. How many consecutive push-ups should 9-year-olds be able to do?
a) None; they don't have enough muscle yet
b) 1 to 10
c) 12 to 18
d) 25-plus
2. Which essential vitamin are 70 percent of kids not getting enough of?
a) Vitamin C
b) Vitamin A
c) Vitamin D
d) Vitamin B12
3. Which is the biggest source of calories in a youngster's diet?
a) Baked Desserts
b) Pizza
c) Soda/fruit drinks
4. What common medication has the FDA recently warned against giving to children under age 2?
a) Benzocaine
b) Ibuprofen
c) Acetaminophen
d) Hydrogen peroxide
5. Which of the following is an actual medical condition that kids can develop?
a) Guitar Hero Wrist (also called Guitarthritis)
b) iPod Finger
c) Nintendinitis
d) Cell Phone Elbow
e) All of the above
6. Your child's backpack should never exceed what percent of his weight?
a) 5 to 10 percent
b) 10 to 20 percent
c) 20 to 30 percent
7. To be alert and healthy, how many hours of sleep do teens need?
a) 6 to 8
b) 8 to 10
c) More than 12
8. True or False ?  Most parents are unable to assess whether their child is overweight.
9. Which of the following childhood diseases has been eradicated and no longer requires immunization?
a) Polio
b) Measles
c) Mumps
d) Whooping Cough
e) None of the above
10. What's the most common chronic childhood disease?
a) Tooth decay
b) Diabetes
c) Obesity
d) Asthma


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Answers : 1. b  ; 2. c  ; 3. c  ; 4. a  ; 5. e  ; 6. b  ; 7. b  ; 8. True  ; 9. e  ; 10. a

POP QUIZ (President's Monumental Moments)

Sunday August 28th had planned a dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial, with President Obama presiding, has been postponed because of Hurricane Irene.  Still, in this quiz, see if you can match the monument with the president (for one vice president who later moved up) who attended its dedication.

1. District of Columbia World War Memorial
2. Ulysses S. Grant Memorial
3. Jefferson Memorial
4. Lincoln Memorial
5. Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
6. Theodore Roosevelt Island
7. U.S. Marines Corps War Memorial
8. Washington Monument
9. World War 2 Memorial

a) Chester A. Arthur
b) George W. Bush
c) Bill Clinton
d) Calvin Coolidge
e) Dwight D. Eisenhower
f) Warren G. Harding
g) Herbert Hoover
h) Lyndon B. Johnson
i) Franklin D. Roosevelt


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Answers : 1. g  ; 2. d  ; 3. i  ; 4. f  ; 5. c  ; 6. h  ; 7. e  ; 8. a  ; 9. b

POP QUIZ (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MTV)

MTV turned 30 this month.
See if you can arrange some of the channel's most poplar programs ----- some of which pushed music videos out of the lineup ------ in the order they premiered.

1. Beavis and Butt-Head
2. Headbangers Ball
3. Jackass
4. The Jenny McCarthy Show
5. Jersey Shore
6. The Osbournes
7. 120 Minutes
8. The Real World
9. Road Rules
10. Total Request Live
11. Yo! MTV Raps

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ANSWERS :
1. 120 Minutes, 1986
2. Headbangers Ball, 1987
3. Yo! MTV Raps, 1988
4. The Real World, 1992
5. Beavis and Butthead, 1993
6. Road Rules, 1995
7. The Jenny McCarthy Show, 1997
8. Total Request Live, 1998
9. Jackass, 2000
10. The Osbournes, 2002
11. Jersey Shore, 2009

F. Y. I.

Table Tidbits
In 1860, "Godey's Lady's Book" advised U.S. women to cook tomatoes for at least three hours to remove their unpleasant raw taste.

Quotable
by Henry David Thoreau, American author and philosopher (1817-1862)
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

Lore Has It
To dream of a lizard is a sign that you have a secret enemy.

Behind the Magic
Cinderella''s Golden Carousel was built in 1917 as the Liberty Carousel and ran for many decades in New Jersey before being asquired by the Walt Disney Company in 1967.

Name Change
The real name of the notorious English pirate Blackbeard was Edward Teach.

Still on the Books
In Canada, you may not pay for a 50-cent item with only pennies.

So Named
The mackintosh is named after Charles Macintosh, the Scottish chemist who invented and patented the first practical waterproof cloth in 1823.

Cold Truth
A scorpion can survive frozen for up to three weeks.

POP QUIZ (HAVING YOUR OWN HOOTENANY)

With David Crosby turning 70 on Aug. 14, and the 50th Philadelphia Folk Festival starting Friday, this seems like an appropriate time to celebrate some of the best in folk music. 
Match the folkies with their classic albums.

1. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young               a) Highway 61 Revisted
2. Ani DiFranco                                        b) Rites of Passage
3. Bob Dylan                                            c) For the Sake of the
4. Emmylou Harris                                       Song
5. Indigo Girls                                          d) Not a Pretty Girl
6. Arlo Guthrie                                         e) Blue
7. Joni Mitchell                                         f) I Ain't Marching
8. Phil Ochs                                                 Anymore
9. John Prine                                            g) Deja Vu
10. Townes Van Zandt                               h) Bruised Orange
                                                               i) Alice's Restrauant
                                                               j) Quarter Moon in a
                                                                    Ten Cent Town

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Answers : 1. g   ; 2. d   ; 3. a   ; 4. j   ; 5. b   ; 6. i   ; 7. e   ; 8. f   ; 9. h   ; 10. c

F. Y. I.

Feeding Time
Baby elephants can drink more than 80 liters of milk a day.

Back Then
Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.

Actually Said
by  Sir David Frost, British talk show host
"For those of you who haven't read the book, it's being published tomorrow."

Global Party
Every 23 seconds, a Tupperware party starts somewhere in the world.

Did You Know?
Eels have two hearts.

Still on the Books
In Wisconsin, it is illegal to serve apple pie in public restrauants without cheese.

New BMW app lets drivers share top scenic routes

 Life is short -- so why not take the scenic route? That is the message BMW Financial Services seems to be encouraging with its new app, The Ultimate Drive.
Released last week, the free app allows users to discover, share and rate the world's most interesting driving routes contributed by users worldwide. By incorporating GPS, the app is also able to find routes surrounding a particular location, and will alert users when new routes are discovered in their neighborhood.
"There are plenty of sites that will show you the top roads to drive", said Pawan Murthy, of BMW Group Financial Services, which provides financing for BMW and MINI vehicles.
"The roads that are filtering up (in the app) include others that very few people have ever heard of, and that's what makes it so exciting."
So far more than 600 routes had been added to the app.
Murthy said the most interesting routes are those with the best scenery and, for drivers with sporty cars, include many twists and turns. Points of interest and restaurants or cafes with good food, also get a lot of mentions.
One user, who added a route just west of Denver that runs along North America's highest elevated public road warned drivers to "watch for bighorn sheep".
Another route takes drivers along a trip that concludes at Arkansas' oldest continually operating general store.
"It starts getting very granular from a user-experience standpoint as to what people will share on the app," said Murthy.
He said this release is the first iteration of an app moving further toward "gamification," -- introducing game play elements to increase customer participation. A future version set for release in early October will be more interactive and include a point system aimed at giving customers greater incentive to participate.
"We wanted to get Version 1 out so we could expose it to the world and initiate crowd sourcing of routes. Succeeding versions will have a closer connection with financial services", said Murthy.
Most car companies provide free apps for a wide variety of purposes. One from Nissan, for example, allows owners to remotely manage and maintain their vehicles. Another from Mazda puts drivers in direct contact with roadside assistance.
One drawback to The Ultimate Drive is that directions are not provided natively within the app. But routes can be exported to Facebook or through email, and can also be ported to another GPS-based maps application for directions.
The Ultimate Drive is currently only available in North America.

Art thieves nab $250,000 Rembrandt from hotel

 Investigators were examining hotel surveillance video on Sunday for clues to the disappearance of a drawing by Rembrandt from a private exhibit near Los Angeles, officials said. The pen-and-ink drawing known as "The Judgment" by the 17th century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn, vanished on Saturday night from the Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey while the curator was "distracted" for about 15 minutes, said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office.
"When he turned back, the pen-and-ink drawing was gone," Whitmore said.
"We believe there was more than one person involved," he added.
The drawing, which is valued at $250,000 and measures about 11 by 6 inches, was part of a weekly exhibit hosted at the exclusive hotel by the Linearis Institute, Whitmore said.
Sheriff's officials were reviewing hotel surveillance tape on Sunday, he said.
"We believe this to be well planned and well executed," Whitmore said, but he said investigators have some "strong leads."

Swedish woman who left baby outside restaurant investigated

 A Swedish woman who police say left her baby unattended outside a Massachusetts restaurant while she ordered food inside was reported to a state agency for possible child maltreatment, officials said on Monday. Police said they were summoned to the Bueno Y Sano eatery in the western Massachusetts college town of Amherst on Friday after the 1-year-old boy was left alone in his stroller on the sidewalk for about 10 minutes.
The woman, who authorities did not identify, said she "found nothing wrong with the situation" and that it was common in Sweden to leave young children alone outside a restaurant, said police.
The boy reportedly was in good health after the incident.
Amherst police contacted the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families to file a report of potential abuse or neglect, said DCF spokeswoman Cayenne Isaksen.
The agency is investigating the matter.
A similar incident made international headlines and sparked a transatlantic debate in 1997 when a Danish mother was arrested after leaving her baby daughter in a stroller on a New York City sidewalk to go inside a restaurant for a drink.
A federal jury in Manhattan later rejected her claim that police had falsely arrested her but did award her $66,000 in compensatory and punitive damages following the ordeal.
DCF's Isaksen said the agency received more than 110,000 allegations of child maltreatment in 2009, the latest year for which data were available.

In-flight film "explains" mysteries of female pleasure

 The in-flight entertainment on some planes run by Australian airline Qantas currently contains a somewhat unusual offering -- a movie that purports to elucidate the mysteries of female sexual pleasure.
The 50-minute French film "The Female Orgasm Explained," which includes naked scenes, is carried on long-haul "Video on Demand" aircraft in the airline's "The Edge" channel -- complete with a warning that it is for mature audiences only.
"In general programs are selected according to quality of content, box office/ratings, topicality and Qantas customer demographics," Qantas said in a statement, adding that programs were screened by their program team before licensing.
"With the Edge, we source programs that are out of the ordinary across all genres."
Airline crews are able to block content to the seats of minors and at the requests of their parents, it added.
The film will be run until November.
The choice of film may be a bit risky given the fact that airlines are usually quite careful about what they show, said Catriona Eider, an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Sydney University.
"I think sociologically it's interesting they are showing something that has the potential in that quite confined space to have people say 'Oh, what are you watching?' or shows that might be understood as titillating as porn," she said.
But she added that changing social norms mean that off-limit topics have shifted.
"'In Sex and the City', the orgasm is something pretty much spoken in everyday levels. It's no longer the taboo subject it was."

Giant South American rodent spotted in California

 A giant South American rodent weighing at least 100 pounds (45 kgs) was spotted at a waste-water treatment facility in California recently before disappearing in the brush, according to a wildlife official. The animal, which was identified as a capybara, is the world's largest rodent and feeds on vegetation.
"If you think a giant guinea pig is cute, then you probably would like it," said Todd Tognazzini, of the California Department of Fish and Game.
The capybara is believed to be an escaped pet, Tognazzini said. It was last seen about two weeks ago at a waste-water treatment facility in Paso Robles, 175 miles northwest of Los Angeles, he said.
An employee at the plant took photos of the animal as it crawled out of a pond.
The capybara's South American habitat ranges from Panama to northeast Argentina, east of the Andes, according to a description on the website of the San Francisco Zoo.
The animal spotted near the Salinas River and a hot spring, a watery habitat that in some ways resembles the regions where capybaras live in South America, Tognazzini said.
A capybara can hold its breath under water for up to five minutes, and the animal spends much of its roughly four-year lifespan near the water, he said.
The latest spotting of the capybara comes two years after another sighting of the animal a mile away.
Officials believe it was the same animal last seen at the waste-water treatment facility in Paso Robles, and that there are no other capybaras in the area.
In California, the capybara cannot be held as a pet without a special permit. But that does not mean that some people do not keep them as illegal pets.
"The Internet is fraught with examples of people scratching them on the belly and thinking they're cute and making pets of them," Tognazzini said.
The California Department of Fish and Game do not view the animal as dangerous.

Montana dog becomes local celebrity for his math skills

 Labrador Retrievers are known for their hunting skills and friendly dispositions, but Beau, a black Lab who lives in Montana, is winning acclaim for his math abilities.
Owner David Madsen says if he tells Beau there are six dogs at the park and three dogs leave, and then asks him how many are left, the dog replies: "Woof, woof, woof."
Beau has achieved a degree of celebrity for his counting skills, becoming a star on visits to shops, restaurants and cabins in the Flathead Lake resort in Montana where the Madsen family spends summers.
"He counts, he adds and subtracts, he can do some division and has memorized square roots," Madsen said.
Although a dog with math skills better than plenty of humans seems incredible, the local fire chief says he vouches for the dog's talents.
"Dave will say, 'What's two and three?' Then the dog will go, 'Bark, bark ... bark, bark, bark,'" said Chris Ricciardi, chief of the Finley Point-Yellow Bay, Montana Fire Department.
He said the dog performs impromptu demonstrations at his family's restaurant, Ricciardi's, near Flathead Lake.
"This dog is amazing," the fire chief said.
Madsen, a retired AT&T executive, adopted the puppy a dozen years ago and began teaching him math basics when he showed signs of being intelligent. As a puppy, Beau invented games and crafted intricate strategies to avoid capture, he said.
"I've had dogs all my life, but this dog is different. He's super smart," Madsen said.
He taught Beau to count using dog biscuits, laying out a handful and rewarding the dog when the number of his barks corresponded to the number of treats.
"He caught on that rewards were associated with the correct number of barks," Madsen said.
The dog had a chance at nationwide fame when he auditioned in Savannah, Georgia for the "Stupid Pet Tricks" segment on the CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman."
Beau didn't make the cut, but a local station showed clips of his performance and he became the talk of the town.
Madsen, who says his canine calculator is accurate about 85 percent of the time, said he was not signaling the dog in any fashion and has allowed others to quiz Beau in his absence.
Brandon Bretz, manager of Bretz RV and Marine in Missoula, Montana, said he recently watched Beau in action.
"A group of us were standing there and Dave asked Beau, 'How many girls are here?' There were two and Beau barked twice," Bretz said. "Next, Dave asked, 'How many boys?' Beau barked five times even though there were only four guys.
"Then it dawned on us. Beau is a boy, and he was counting himself," he said, adding that he has booked Beau as guest speaker next spring for his company's annual customer appreciation barbecue.
"There's no trick to Beau's tricks. That dog is on the up and up," Bretz said.

Motorized beer cooler lands driver in court

 An Australian man had his driving license suspended for 10 months and was fined after he was caught driving a scooter made of a motorized beer cooler capable of carrying several dozen drinks -- after knocking back a few. The unconventional scooter featured a cooler box mounted on a wheeled frame and powered by a 50 cc engine, complete with a steering handlebar. The cooler doubled as a driver's seat and was able to hold up to 48 bottles of beer.
Chris Petrie, 23 and from the northeastern state of Queensland, bought the vehicle over the internet for $A600 ($630). While assembling it at a friend's house the two sampled a few beers before Petrie decided to drive it home, according to a local television station.
"By the time we built it, it was quite late so we thought we'd go for a bit of a test run," he told Network Ten.
He was caught by the police en route and found to be more than three times over Australia's legal blood alcohol limit, and was charged with drink driving and driving without a license.
In court, the judge asked if the cooler was fully loaded and was told it was full of canned rum and Cokes, Network Ten added. The sentence included an A$500 fine. ($1 = 0.953 Australian Dollars)

Depardieu outrages passengers by urinating in plane

 French actor Gerard Depardieu outraged fellow passengers by urinating in the aisle of an Air France flight as it prepared to take off on Tuesday, forcing the plane to turn back to its parking spot.
A passenger on the flight said Depardieu, 62, the star of movies such as "Jean de Florette" and "Green Card," appeared to be drunk and insisted he be allowed to use the bathroom during takeoff, when passengers must remain seated.
When he was asked by a hostess to return to his seat, Depardieu urinated in the aisle, the passenger told French radio station Europe 1 on Wednesday.
"You could see that he had been drinking, but there were no comments. The hostess was shocked but there was no argument, nothing," said the passenger.
"I was outraged. When you are an actor, you are not like other people, you do not have to abide by the rules. He could have waited, all the same."
A spokesperson for national carrier Air France confirmed the passenger's version of events.
"I confirm the fact that he (Depardieu) did indeed urinate in the plane," the spokesperson said.
Depardieu's agents were on vacation and his PR office had no comment to make.
The evening flight AF5010 operated by CityJet, a subsidiary of Air France, was forced to return to the terminal where a team boarded the plane to clean the carpet.
A spokesperson for CityJet said a passenger was escorted from the plane and the flight resumed after a delay of an hour and 15 minutes. He declined to confirm the passenger's identity.
Depardieu is one of France's best known actors internationally with more than 100 films under his belt, including the "Asterix" series.
He was awarded a Cesar -- the French equivalent of an Oscar -- for best actor for his interpretation of the large-nosed romantic Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1990 movie of the same name.

Bachmann tribute to Elvis marks wrong anniversary

 Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann offered a "happy birthday" message to the late singer Elvis Presley on Monday, even though August 16 is the anniversary of his death in 1977.
"Happy Birthday, Elvis!" Bachmann shouted from the stage at a campaign stop in the parking lot of The Beacon, a South Carolina drive-in restaurant famous for its fried food and sweet tea.
After her stump speech, the congresswoman from Minnesota told a group of reporters that she was happy to be in South Carolina "on the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death."
"He's still alive. He's alive in our hearts," Bachmann said.
Later, a campaign organizer who did not want to be identified said with a wink: "You celebrate Elvis because he never died."
Presley was born on January 8, 1935 in Tupelo, Mississippi.

"Vampire" arrest sparks discussion on pop culture

 The arrest of an American man who broke into a woman's house and tried to suck her blood over the weekend has sparked discussion about the impact of vampire books and movies on youth culture. Whether pop culture played a role in the attack remains to be seen, as 19-year-old Lyle Monroe Bensley awaits a psychiatric evaluation in jail on burglary charges in Galveston, Texas.
Found growling and hissing in a parking lot and wearing only boxer shorts, the pierced and tattooed Bensley claimed he was a 500-year-old vampire who needed to "feed," Galveston Police Capt. Jeff Heyse said.
Vampires have been a focal point of literature since Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, "Dracula". But fascination, particularly among young people, has peaked in recent years with the popularity of the "Twilight" books about teenage vampires and the television series, "True Blood."
"I think the vampire is a metaphor for the outsider and the predator in all of us," said author Anne Rice, whose Vampire Chronicles series has captured the imaginations of horror fans since the 1970s.
"We're all conscious at times of being alone, of being alienated, of being a secret self that fears exposure to the judgments of others. So we feel like vampires," she told Reuters.
Bensley is now being held in the Galveston County Jail on a $40,000 bond for home burglary with intent to commit a felony.
The woman, who lived near Bensley and did not know him, escaped the attack unharmed, Heyse said.
Kevin Petroff, chief of the Galveston County District Attorney's office, told Reuters no defense attorney has been appointed to date, and if Bensley had hired a lawyer privately, no notice had been filed.
YOUTHFUL FOR ETERNITY
Dr. Thomas Garza, who teaches a course in vampire lore at the University of Texas, said young people might aspire to be like vampires because they cheat death and are able to stay beautiful, powerful, and youthful for eternity.
The modern vampire in popular culture is more attractive, suave, and fashionably dressed than the Old World Slavic vampires, adding to the resurgence of their appeal, he added.
"I would say that it is the Twilight saga in particular that has brought out the younger teen fans. In that connection, Edward is a very 'safe' vampire, a kind of 'starter vamp' for beginners, if you will," Garza said.
"He's pretty, yes, so the seduction's there, but he's more than reluctant to act on his and Bella's sexual desires. He can go out in daylight - and even 'sparkles' in the sun, giving him a completely non-threatening character. He drives a Volvo, for goodness sake."
While Bensley's Texas antics have captured international attention, the delusion of actually being a vampire has been a contributing factor in other criminal cases as well.
In 1996, a 16-year-old Kentucky youth obsessed with the role-playing game, "Vampire, the Masquerade," enlisted three other teenagers to go with him to Florida to help kill the parents of his former girlfriend.
Two years later, a San Francisco man claiming to be a 2,000-year-old vampire was arrested for slashing the necks of four homeless people, one fatally. A serial killer arrested in England in 1949 allegedly drank a cup of blood from each of his six victims.
Rice has interacted with thousands of fans of her Vampire Chronicles novels, but said such intense personal identification with vampires was "quite beyond me."
"My readers are romantics. They're into the poetry and the romance of vampires; they don't think they themselves are vampires," Rice said. "I have never personally met anyone in all these years who claimed to be a vampire."

Reindeer herder finds baby mammoth in Russia Arctic

 A reindeer herder in Russia's Arctic has stumbled on the pre-historic remains of a baby woolly mammoth poking out of the permafrost, local officials said on Friday.
The herder said the carcass was as perfectly preserved as the 40,000-year-old mammoth calf Lyuba discovered in the same remote region four years ago, authorities said, adding that an expedition had set off hoping to confirm the "sensational" find.
"If it is true what is said about how it is preserved, this will be another sensation of global significance," expedition leader Natalia Fyodorova said in a statement on the Arctic Yamalo-Nenetsk region's official website.
Scientists planned to fly the mammoth's remains to the regional capital Salekhard, where it would be stored in a cooler to prevent the remains from decomposing.
Giant woolly mammoths have been extinct since the Earth's last Ice Age 1.8 million to around 11,500 years ago.
Scientists worldwide were stunned by the discovery of Lyuba, named after the wife of the hunter who discovered her.
Arctic ice kept the extinct specimen so immaculately preserved that although her shaggy coat was gone, her skin and internal organs were intact.

Student arrested, accused of having gun on school bus

 An Anchorage high school student was arrested on Thursday after he was found carrying a loaded gun on a school bus, authorities said. The 19-year-old had a .22 caliber handgun with him as he rode a bus from a local high school to a nearby vocational-education center, Anchorage School District officials said.
"As the student was getting off of the bus, the driver noticed the student had a weapon," said Heidi Embley, the district's spokeswoman, adding that police were called and the student was turned over to their custody.
The incident comes a day after Florida police arrested a 17-year-old boy who they said had material to make pipe bombs at his home and planned to cause mass casualties at his Tampa high school.
In that case, Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor told reporters that Jared Cano had hoped to "cause more casualties than were suffered at Columbine."
In the Alaska incident, no injuries or threats were reported, the school district said.
The Anchorage student, identified as Bryan Briggs, was in jail on Thursday facing a charge of misconduct involving a weapon, Anchorage Police Department spokeswoman Marlene Lammers said.
The school district said in a statement it would be seeking to expel Briggs under a zero-tolerance policy concerning weapons.

Trojan horse t-shirts trick neo-Nazis

 Festival goers at a nationalist, right-wing concert in Germany were taken by surprise when souvenir t-shirts they were given had a secret anti-far right message that emerged only after being washed.
The slogan on the shirts first read "hardcore rebels" along with a skull and nationalist flags. But once washed the slogan turned into a message from a group offering help to right-wing extremists break away from the neo-Nazi scene.
"If your t-shirt can do it, you can do it too -- we'll help you get away from right-wing extremism," reads the slogan on the shirts after their first washing.
The anti-far right shirts were handed to 250 people at a "Rock for Germany" concert in Gera by organisers after they had been donated anonymously. They were provided by EXIT, a group which helps people disassociate themselves from the far-right.
Festival organiser Gordon Richter of the far-right NPD party said the stunt was a waste of money.
"It's kind of pathetic that anyone spent money for something like that," Richter told Reuters. He said many who got the Trojan horse shirts thought it was a creative idea.
Bernd Wagner, founder of EXIT, said the t-shirts were designed to reach their main target group: right-wing extremists contemplating getting away.
"We wanted to raise awareness about our program, especially among the young and less committed," Wagner said.

Feared criminal takes short walk to freedom

 One of South Africa's most wanted criminals appears to have made one of the most mundane of escapes when he slipped from police custody by walking out of a Pretoria court door along with the public.
Bongani Moyo, arrested this year after a much publicised manhunt where his picture was plastered over nationwide media, was due at a hearing related to the armed robbery of nearly three dozen banks.
Police would not comment on the incident, but correctional services, which placed Moyo under police care for the hearing, had a few choice words.
"He was picked up by the police so he could go to court, and escaped under the nose of the police. We warned the police that this person had escaped before and therefore they should tighten their security," correctional services spokesman Phumlani Ximiya told Reuters.

Man allegedly stole, swallowed client's ring

 A Chicago-area home repairman was charged with felony theft on Tuesday after he allegedly tried to hide the evidence by gulping it down, presumably without chewing first.
Prosecutors say 30-year-old Wilfredo Gonzalez was helping remodel a home in Cicero, Illinois, last Friday when he allegedly stole a diamond ring the homeowner had left in her bathroom.
When she realized the ring was missing, the homeowner had her husband confront Gonzalez, according to the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.
The repairman at first denied taking the ring. But when the confrontation turned into a struggle, prosecutors say he pulled the ring out of the place he had hidden it and swallowed it.
Police were called and took Gonzalez to a hospital, where a stomach X-ray revealed the missing ring working its way down his gastrointestinal tract.
The officers subsequently retrieved the missing ring.
Gonzalez faces up to three years in prison if convicted.

Judge rules inmate has no right to matzoh

 A federal judge has ruled that a Jewish inmate in a New York jail does not have a constitutionally protected right to matzoh and grape juice.
Christopher Henry, who was charged with first-degree sodomy, claimed permanent trauma and malnourishment and requested nearly $10 billion in damages for what he called a violation of his First Amendment right to religious freedom.
Henry didn't request matzoh for Passover, the Jewish holiday during which it is traditionally eaten. Instead, Henry claimed he had a right to have the unleavened bread served daily and grape juice every Friday.
But on August 2, U.S. Southern District Judge Shira Scheindlin held that the Rikers Island jail could deny Henry his request in the interests of maintaining order and keeping costs reasonable.
"Providing individualized meals to a single inmate might well foster an impression of favoritism, which could lead to jealousy and resentment among the inmate population, which in turn could cause tension and threaten prison security," she wrote.
"Similarly, providing individualized meals to one or several inmates would involve a substantial increase in administrative costs."
Scheindlin noted that Henry already receives Kosher meals and is allowed to meet with a rabbi.
Henry, who represented himself, has filed a number of lawsuits against the department of corrections, including claims based on the permitted length of phone calls and lack of conjugal visits.

Corrects second paragraph to say Henry was charged, not convicted.

Tarantula fright at rail station

 A tarantula gave officials at Berlin's crowded Ostbahnhof rail station a scare when it crawled out of a bag left on a train, police said on Thursday.
A Berlin police spokesman said a 20-year-old German man had forgotten the bag on an in-bound train from the airport after returning from a trip to Mali and Mozambique.
When the man went to retrieve his bag from the station's lost and found department he reached in to pull out some identification and a hairy scary tarantula crawled out.
The spokesman said the spider was poisonous. Police turned the tarantula over to a police animal care unit

Spoilers don't ruin stories or films?

 If you are angry that someone spoiled the plot of a movie or revealed the ending of a book, don't be. A new study by researchers from the University of California at San Diego shows spoilers may enhance enjoyment, even for suspense-driven story lines and film plots.
After studying three types of stories -- ironic-twist, mystery and literary -- by authors such as John Updike, Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie, they found readers preferred versions with a spoiling paragraph written into the story.
"I was quite surprised by the results," researcher Nicholas Christenfeld said in an interview. "Like most people, I don't turn to the end of a book to see who dies or what happens."
For the study each story was read by up to 30 people and presented in two formats -- in the original version and with a spoiling paragraph inserted in the story.
Readers of all three story types preferred the spoiled versions of the stories more than the unspoiled originals.
"Plots are just excuses for great writing," Christenfeld explained. "Nonetheless, plots are important, like a skeleton or a coat hanger. You need it to display the things that are important but the plot itself isn't critical."
Christenfeld said in many cases a book or movie can be re-read or seen multiple times and still be enjoyable.
"As a film director, your job isn't really to come to the conclusion that the butler did it. A single line would do that," he said.
Once viewers know the ending of a film, they may want to view if again to see things that had meaning or didn't have meaning the first time they saw it.
The researchers said in the study, which will be published in the journal Psychological Science, they found that the success of entertainment does not rest on suspense alone.
"Stories are a universal element of human culture, the backbone of the billion-dollar entertainment industry, and the medium through which religion and societal values are transmitted," they wrote in the report.
Christenfeld and his co-author Jonathan Leavitt added that the findings could mean that commonly held perceptions about suspense may also be incorrect.
"Perhaps," they said in the study, "birthday presents are better when wrapped in cellophane and engagement rings are better when not concealed in chocolate mousse."

Judge rules bus line wrong to deny atheist ads

 A federal judge ruled on Thursday that the free speech of a coalition of atheists had been violated when Little Rock's public bus line denied them the right to place $5,000 worth of ads on city buses. Judge Susan Webber Wright ruled that the Central Arkansas Transit Authority and its advertising agency should not have denied the group the right to place the ads on 18 publicly-funded city buses during Memorial Day weekend.
Washington-based United Coalition of Reason filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Arkansas group in June after the transit authority and its advertising agency rejected an ad that would have read, "Are you good without God? Millions are."
"This was a victory for all of us whether you believe in God or not, because it's a victory of free speech," United Coalition of Reason's attorney J.G. Schultz told Reuters.
The transit authority and its advertising agency, On The Move Advertising, had required payment of a $36,000 deposit to run the ad. The group then changed that to a $3 million insurance policy in case of bus vandalism by angry Christians.
Webber Wright ruled that the United Coalition of Reason would need to place a $15,000 bond to be filed with the court in case of any damage that may occur to a bus.
Schultz said the group had initially offered a $10,000 deposit before any lawyers got involved.
"It wasn't because we thought it was okay but rather because we wanted to get these ads on during Riverfest so we were willing to do a little more," Schultz said, referring to a Little Rock music and art festival.
Attorneys for the Central Arkansas Transit Authority or On The Move could not be immediately reached for comment.
Out of 36 markets where ad campaigns have run, only four have seen vandalism, according to UnitedCoR's website. Last year, UnitedCoR placed ads on outdoor billboards and buses in Fayetteville, Arkansas, without incident.
In 2009, the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers, a group of atheists who are also involved in the bus ad campaign, successfully sued the state of Arkansas to erect a Winter Solstice display on the grounds of the State Capitol near a nativity scene.
"The freethinkers have been out in the open here in Arkansas without any incident," said LeeWood Thomas, a spokesman for the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers.
Thomas said the group would now refocus the bus campaigns on bus routes near the city's colleges.

"Grease Devil" panic grips rural Sri Lanka

 Panic over nighttime assaults blamed on "grease devils" has struck across rural Sri Lanka, leading to the deaths of at least three people this week, prompting women to stay indoors and men to arm themselves, police and local media said.
Historically, a "grease devil" was a thief who wore only underwear and covered his body in grease to make himself difficult to grab if chased. But lately, the "grease devil" has become a nighttime prowler who frightens and attacks women.
"The story we hear is he comes and bites young women's necks and breasts. Despite several complaints, the police have failed to act on that and in fact in two places have released the culprits," a 36-year-old airline ticketing agent from the Hill Country district of Matale said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting authorities.
On Friday, police said they fired tear gas to disperse dozens of people who besieged a police station in the eastern town of Potuvil, demanding the release of four men who had captured and planned to lynch a suspected "grease devil."
Police had arrested the four after they beat officers who rescued the suspect from the mob.
Two men whom villagers identified as "grease devils" were hacked to death on Wednesday by a mob in the central Sri Lankan village of Kotagala, in a tea-growing area, police said.
A 22-year-old man hunting for a "grease devil" in the jungle died after stepping into an electric trap set for wild boars, the Tamil-language newspaper Sudar Oli said on Friday.
At least 30 incidents have been reported across seven districts from Sri Lanka's east coast and across its tea-growing regions in the central Hill Country. Police have arrested 47 people since last month.
"There is no grease devil as such. It is a human among us with an ulterior motive of stealing or to engage in some illegal activities," police spokesman Prashantha Jayakody said.
Jayakody also said some people with "mental disorders" were posing as grease devils: "In one instance, a person was arrested wearing more than 20 (pairs of) women's undergarments."
The panic has nonetheless been enough to prompt men to arm themselves with clubs and sticks to stand guard at night, and women to stay at home.
On Tuesday in the eastern village of Ottamavadi, six people including two police officers were injured in a melee after angry residents stormed a police station after the release of a suspected "grease devil."
Traditional Sri Lankan beliefs about spirits and devils remain strong in some areas, where invocations upon them to cure illnesses or curse enemies are common. Traditional devil masks remain favorite tourist souvenirs.
State TV has been broadcasting a photo of a man the police say is a suspect, his face covered in white greasepaint, with the message that the grease devil is not real.

POP QUIZ (THE KINGS OF SWING)

Four years ago Sunday, Barry Bonds of the Giants, whom the Phillies that they played last weekend, became the all-time home run king.  Match this list of players with their career home run total.

1. Hank Aaron                                a) 563
2. Barry Bonds                               b) 660
3. Ken Griffey Jr.                            c) 586
4. Reggie Jackson                          d) 762
5. Mickey Mantle                           e) 714
6. Willie Mays                               f) 630
7. Frank Robinson                          g) 521
8. Babe Ruth                                 h) 755
9. Mike Schmidt                             i)  536
10. Ted Williams                           j) 548


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Answers : 1. h  ; 2. d  ; 3. f  ; 4. a  ; 5. i  ; 6. b  ; 7. c  ; 8. e  ; 9. j  ; 10. g

F. Y. I.

Back Then
In 1845, Boston had an ordinance banning bathing without a doctor's prescription.

Still on the Books
In Alaska, moose may not be viewed from an airplane.

Did You Know
The United States produces the world's largest crop of soybean's.  China is the second largest producer.

Going Breathless
A sea lion can hold its breath for nearly two hours underwater.

Actually Said
by  Greg Norman, golfer
"I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father."

Small Wonders
At about 16 inches tall and 2 pounds the little Blue Pengiun is the smallest of the short-legged flightless birds.

Vonnegut library offers banned book to students

 Up to 150 students at a Missouri high school that ordered "Slaughterhouse-Five" pulled from its library shelves can get a free copy of the novel, courtesy of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, library officials said on Thursday. The offer for students at Republic High School comes on the heels of the Republic School Board's decision to remove Vonnegut's novel and Sarah Ockler's "Twenty Boy Summer" from the curriculum and the school library shelves.
"All of these students will be eligible to vote and some may be protecting our country through military service in the next year or two," Julia Whitehead, the executive director of the Vonnegut library in Indianapolis, said in a statement.
"It is shocking and unfortunate that those young adults and citizens would not be considered mature enough to handle the important topics raised by Kurt Vonnegut, a decorated war veteran. Everyone can learn something from his book."
Slaughterhouse-Five, considered Vonnegut's most influential and popular work, is a satirical novel centered around the bombing of the German city of Dresden during World War Two.
The Republic School District took the move at its April 18 meeting following a complaint lodged by local resident Wesley Scroggins in the spring of 2010.
In his complaint, the Missouri State University associate business professor called on district officials to stop using textbooks and other materials "that create false conceptions of American history and government or that teach principles contrary to Biblical morality and truth."
Neither Scroggins nor Republic School Superintendent Vern Minor were immediately available for comment.
Whitehead said she was talking with the American Civil Liberties Union in Missouri and Indiana to support the First Amendment rights of the students at Republic High School.
The offer of a free book to any Republic high school student who requests one is a way for the fledgling 7-month-old library, located in Vonnegut's hometown, to show support, she said.

Lobsters liberated by Buddhist intervention

 Instead of plunging headfirst to their death in a pot of boiling water, 534 live lobsters escaped the dinner plate and belly flopped to freedom into the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
A group of Tibetan Buddhists flanked the sides of a whale-watching boat at dusk on Wednesday, sprayed the lobsters with blessed water, clipped the bands binding their dangerous claws and released them one by one into the deep water below.
The 30 Buddhists of all ages trekked to this northern Massachusetts fishing hub to buy 600 pounds of lobster from a seafood wholesaler and save the critters from imminent death.
The lobster liberation was scheduled for August 3, which is Wheel Turning Day on this year's Tibetan lunar calendar, the anniversary of the first sermon Buddha taught. On this holiday, the merit for positive actions is multiplied many times.
"Even if they get captured again, they've had a longer life," said Wendy Cook, former director at the Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in Medford, north of Boston.
Buddhists from the center typically liberate masses of the expensive seafood a couple times each year.
Cook, a yoga instructor, led a ceremony that included prayers, mantras and walking boxes of the lobsters in a circle around blessed objects. This develops a karmic connection for the animals' future lifetimes and help ease future suffering, she said.
Monk Geshe Tenley, Kurukulla Center's resident teacher, who was wearing a saffron robe, released the first lobster.
In India, Geshe Tenley said, cows, sheep and even goats are purchased and saved from slaughter. But here in New England, saving the lobsters and extending their lives -- even if just for an hour -- is most practical and a real way the group can make a difference in the lobsters' existence and their own.
"It's rethinking the way you normally see these creatures," said Victoria Fan, a graduate student who participated in the ceremony steps away from a sign for $15.99 lobster dinners.
"You're supposed to view them equally. Their happiness is as important as your happiness, their suffering is as important as your suffering," Fan said.

Busy NYC Starbucks block sockets to free up seats

 Some busy Starbucks coffee shops in New York City have started blocking electrical outlets to discourage laptop users from hogging space, and to free up seats for other customers. "Customers are asking (for it) .... They just purchased a latte and a pastry and there is nowhere to sit down in some of these really high-volume stores," said Starbucks spokesman Alan Hilowitz.
He said the decision is made on a case-by-case basis by individual stores, and to his knowledge is limited to some cafes in New York City.
"If this is what the store needs to do to support the business, then they're allowed to make the decision to do that," Hilowitz said. "It really is all about the balance."
Starbucks offers free Wi-Fi access to all of its customers. While inviting customers to linger can result in repeat purchases, it also can have unintended consequences.
Seating is scarce in some cafes frequented by students, freelancer workers and other computer users who sometimes stay for hours.

"Lucy" look-alikes honor Lucille Ball's 100th birthday

 More than 900 red-lipsticked, redheaded women -- and men -- gathered near a "Vitameatavegamin" sign in the hometown of "I Love Lucy" star Lucille Ball to mark her 100th birthday on Saturday with a world record for most Lucy look-alikes.
Sporting upswept hairdos and blue and white polka dot dresses, the crowd of 915 Lucy Ricardos set to establish the first Guinness world record in her honor. It was all part of the annual Lucy Fest in Jamestown, which drew fans from as far away as Australia to the normally sleepy town of 30,000 people in upstate New York.
"This is a once in a lifetime experience. It has to be the best time in my life," said Cindy Wilson, 22, of Cleveland, Ohio.
Wilson started watching the "I Love Lucy" show in reruns when she was 7 years old and has a Lucy stick figure tattoo on her left foot, while sitcom husband Ricky adorns her right. She said her fiance's name is Ricky, and joked that's one reason she is marrying him.
Across generational and gender divides, those who love Lucy milled about a downtown plaza under a mural painted with the word "Vitameatavegamin" in three-foot-high letters. For Lucy fans, the well-known tincture made famous on her long-running TV sitcom needs no explanation.
Some revelers recited the word in unison, others sang "Happy Birthday" in honor of what would have been Ball's 100th birthday on August 6.
Amid the hoopla, a man proposed to his girlfriend, both wearing nightshirts imprinted with the image of a polka-dot dress and holding cardboard cutouts of Lucy up to their faces in accordance to Guinness' qualifying guidelines. She said yes and the crowd roared.
Kelly Wright, a natural redhead from Grand Valley, Pennsylvania simply wore one of her own polka dot dresses to look the part.
Local resident Steve Waterson donned a patterned shirt but was missing the lipstick participants needed to be considered a true Lucy.
Floating among the waves of Lucys were some people dressed as Ricky, played on the show by Ball's real life husband Desi Arnaz, and their TV neighbors Fred and Ethel Mertz, who often baby-sat for Little Ricky Ricardo.
"I Love Lucy" ran for 179 episodes from 1951 to 1957 and has been seen in reruns for decades since.
A fact sheet distributed by the festival sponsor, the Lucy-Desi Center, says 40 million people tuned in to watch the birth of Little Ricky in 1953. That's compared with the relatively modest 29 million who watched the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower the following day.
Michael Stern, whose new book "I had a Ball, My Friendship with Lucille Ball" is the only such account authorized by the children of Ball and Arnaz, told Reuters the relationship began when as a 12-year-old boy growing up in Los Angeles, he got a chance to meet Ball.
"I brought my scrapbook of pictures to her mother and she said 'how'd you like to meet her?'" Stern said.
The two formed a sort of mother, son relationship for years afterward, he said. "She said 'look Michael, you can be my No.1 fan but you've got to get a job and stay in school.'... She was very serious, very down to earth."
The two would often catch reruns of the show in the 1980s. Ball, he said, never laughed at herself on screen.
"She would not critique herself. She would watch Ethel and Fred and Ricky and laugh at the jokes," he said.
The five day festival, which wraps up on Sunday, included performances by comedians including Joan Rivers and Paula Poundstone and cake with a cast of professional actors who impersonated Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel in a re-creation of Ricky's Cuban-themed TV nightclub "The Tropicana."
"Oh, that's a good one," Lucy said, taking forkfuls from other guests' desserts and speaking through a mouthful of cake as the audience roared. "We'll have to get you another one."
Ball died in 1989 and was buried in California. Her daughter Lucie Arnaz had her moved to Jamestown's Lakeview Cemetery, fulfilling her wish to be buried next to her mother, said Lucy-Desi Center Head of Tour guides Susan Ewing.

First tax-free holiday in Arkansas a boon for business

Arkansans shopped until they dropped on Saturday, braving temperatures deep into the triple-digits to take advantage of the state's first sales tax holiday weekend.
"I have never seen anything like this," said Clancy Graham, a manager at Little Rock's RK Collections Boutique, an independently owned store. "If we could do this three times a year, it would be amazing. It has done crazy good stuff for our business."
Arkansas lawmakers approved the holiday in February to give parents a tax break on their back-to-school shopping for items such as uniforms, clothing and school supplies.
The tax-holiday also covers items not necessarily needed for school including wedding apparel, girdles and costumes.
Officials have estimated it would cost Arkansas about $2 million in revenue.
Texas, Mississippi, Florida and other states have had such a holiday for several years to ease the tax burden on families just before the school year, and to encourage consumers.
Rebecca Simpson of Little Rock braved the crowds and heat to buy school uniforms for her five-year-old son. The thermometer stood at 107 degrees Fahrenheit Saturday evening.
"I had to get them there so it seemed like a good idea to wait for the tax holiday," Simpson said. "If I hadn't been limited in where I could get his school clothes, I probably wouldn't have been out in the insanity today. It took forever to check out because they all had special codes to enter to remove the tax."
Graham said sales were phenomenal on Saturday.
"We have tripled our daily goal," Graham said. "We've made more today than we have made in this whole month because it's been so hot no one is getting out."
Graham said customers visited the store earlier in the week to "pre-shop" and returned Saturday to buy their favorites. The store also put summer items on sale to lure buyers.

Needles are the enemy for balloon dress

 The latest in dresses from one Japanese designer is feather-light, see-through and comes with an unusual warning: watch out for needles.
It's a dress made from balloons -- 200 of them, to be exact.
The crystal-clear creation is the latest in balloon couture from balloon artist Rie Hosokai, who has won international prizes at Belgium's annual "The Millennium Jam" balloon festival for her skill at twisting and weaving the light, latex toys into dresses.
"There are latitude and longitude balloons to be woven together, so it's quite similar to fabric," said the 35-year-old Hosokai recently, as she deftly manipulated balloons into a transparent mini-dress.
All the work is done by hand, and Hosokai said it can be hard to account for the amount of air when adjusting the size and volume of the dress.
The garment, worn with white underwear and co-designed by Hosokai's husband Takashi Kawada, was modeled for photographers with the warning, "Watch out for needles."
Despite the inexpensive materials, 7 yen($0.09)for each of the 200 balloons she used, the bubbly creation came with a price tag of well over a thousand dollars, reflecting Hosokai's determination to puncture the stereotype of balloons being something cheap.
Most of Hosokai's dresses carry price tags ranging from 150,000 to 300,000 yen($1,930 to $3,860), but she has sold a set of balloon dress, headpiece and bouquet for 1 million yen.
Each dress lasts only 24 hours at most before it starts to deflate, while some change color depending on the temperature and humidity.
Hosokai, who began her career as a florist before expanding into balloon art and opening her "Daisy Balloon" office ten years ago, hopes to lift the profile of balloon fashion and attract customers eager for unusual party wear.
She has sold more than 20 wedding dresses since entering the business two years ago and would be pleased if her ephemeral garments helped lift spirits in the wake of Japan's March 11 disaster by reminding people of their childhood dreams.
"You can wow people at parties or weddings with a balloon dress. They'll be surprised, " she said.
($1 = 77.670 Japanese Yen)

Mystery woman in iconic Elvis photo identified

 A U.S. magazine has identified the mystery woman seen kissing singer Elvis Presley in a backstage theater stairwell in an iconic 1956 photograph. Barbara Gray, now 75 and living in Charleston, S.C., told Vanity Fair magazine that she didn't reveal her identity for the money or fame.
"I just wanted to get my name on the damn picture," she said.
Gray admitted that she become fed up with being known only as the "unknown woman in the wings" with a young Elvis in a stairwell at the Mosque Theater in Richmond, Virginia.
Photographer Alfred Wertheimer said he never asked for the woman's name when he took the photograph and she never told it to him.
After newspaper coverage of Wertheimer's photography exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. in early 2010 showed him standing in front of the photograph called "The Kiss," Gray tracked Wertheimer on Facebook and sent him a message.
"I'm the girl. 'The Kiss.' Have a good story for you," she said.
But Wertheimer, who had heard from many women who claimed to be the woman in the photo, didn't respond at first. Gray's claim was aired on the radio and eventually found its way to Vanity Fair, which authenticated Gray's claim.
While Gray's own photos from the mid-1950s are nearly mirror images of the young woman in the photo and her recollections of the time and place were accurate, the clincher was her height. She is only four feet, 11 inches, the same height as the woman in the picture.
"God he's beautiful," Gray recalled thinking when she met Presley, then 21, at his hotel in Richmond. But she also found him "kind of insecure" with an accent that made him sound like "a goofy guy from the sticks."
After accompanying him to his show, Gray and Presley kissed in the stairwell. Later she found herself in Elvis' compartment on a New York-bound train. When a voice told Elvis the train was leaving, Gray said, "So, am I."

Deaf man complains nudists would not provide interpreter

 A deaf man has accused a nudist park in upstate New York of violating federal law by refusing to provide him with a sign-language interpreter at an annual festival. Tom Willard, 53, of Rochester, filed a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department claiming Empire Haven Nudist Park violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by refusing his requests for an interpreter.
"I am fed up with being turned away every time I try to do something, by idiots who somehow feel the ADA does not apply to them," Willard wrote in the complaint.
The ADA law requires businesses and nonprofit groups to provide auxiliary aids and services, including interpreters, at no additional cost to users. First-time violations can lead to fines of up to $55,000.
Willard told Reuters that in 2009 he approached a board member of the Naturist Society, which organized the festival, who told him he could hire his own interpreter. But he said the board member denied his request that he and the interpreter attend the event for free.
The six-day event costs $45 overall, plus an additional $17 for each day a person attends.
Willard filed his federal complaint on July 19.
On August 2, the festival's opening day, the Naturist Society offered to get an interpreter but said it would need three days notice to do so, Willard said.
Willard said he wanted to raise awareness of groups that ignore the ADA. He said he was also filing a complaint against a local comedy club that refused to provide an interpreter.
"I hate that I have to go through these experiences and subject myself to ridicule and derision, but the alternative is to stay home and never try to do anything in the world," Willard said.
Michael Schwartz, director of Syracuse University College of Law's disability rights clinic, said businesses often ignore their responsibilities under the ADA because it can be cheaper not to comply.
"Because of the cost (of interpreters), many places choose to say 'no,'" he said. "They are making a calculated choice that they'll get away with it."
A spokeswoman for Empire Haven, which is in the Finger Lakes region of New York state, was not available for comment, and Morley Schloss, the Naturist Society board member contacted by Willard, did not respond to several requests for comment.

NOW YOU KNOW

• On July 5, 1937,  Spam, the luncheon meat, is introduced into the marked by the Hormel Foods Corp.
• On July 6, 1942,  Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in the "secret a nnexe" above her father's office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
• On July 7, 1946,  Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini becomes the first American to be cannonized.
• On July 8, 1776,  Col. John Nixon gave the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, in Philadelphia.
• On July 12, 1962,  the Rolling Stones performed their first concert, at the Marquee Club in London.
• On July 13, 1966,  the United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
• On July 14, 1969,  the United States officially withdrew $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills from circulation.
• On July 15, 1971,  President Richard Nixon started the country by announcing he would visit the People's Republic of China.
• On July 18, 1969,  a car driven by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard; his passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned.
• On July 19, 1964,  the Great Fire of Rome started and soon burned out of control.  According to a popular, but untrue legend, Nero fiddled as the city burned.
• On July 20, 1944,  Adolf Hilter survived an assassination attempt (known as the July 20th plot) led by German Army Col. Claus von Stauffenberg.
• On July 22, 1861,  the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring the Civil War was being waged to preserve the Union rather than to end slavery, a stance that would shift as the conflict continued.  (The Senate passed a similar resolution three days later.)
• On July 21, 1983,  the world's lowest temperature was recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctiva at  -128.6 F.
• On July 25, 1961,  on the Berlin Crisis, President Kennedy bolstered the military in the face of Soviet demands that Western powers withdraw from city's western sector.
• On July 26, 1775,  Benjamin Franklin became America's first postmaster-general.
• On July 27, 1940,  Bugs Bunny made his "official" debut in the Warner Bros. animated cartoon "A Wild Hare."
• On July 28, 1981,  Britain's Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  The couple divorced in 1996.  

POP QUIZ ( What ever happened to .......?)

Thirty-six years ago this weekend, former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, so this quiz will look at some other infamous unsolved mysteries.

1. In 1483, two sons of King Edward IV of England, Edward V and Richard, were placed in the Tower of London by their uncle and never heard from again.  Name their uncle.
a) John                     b) Richard III
c) Henry IV              d) William II
2. This explorer and his fleet disappeared in 1498.
a) Juan Ponce de Leon
b) Ferdinand Magellan
c) John Cabot
d) Vasco Nunez de Balboa
3. In 1590, an expedition to the Roanoke colony discovered the settlement abandoned, with the only clue being the word Crostoan carved into a tree.  The Roanoke site is now part of what state?
a) North Carolina
b) South Carolina
c) Virginia
d) Georgia
4. This signer of the Declaration of Independence was lost at sea after boarding a ship to the West Indies in 1779.
a) Charles Carroll
b) Josiah Barlett
c) Caesar Rodney
d) Thomas Lynch Jr.
5. Twenty-three years after shooting assassin John Wilkes Booth, this former Union sergeant disappeared after escaping from the Topeka Asylum for the Insane.
a) Samuel A. Mudd
b) Richard Garrett
c) Thomas P. "Boston" Corbett
d) Edward Doherty
6. This writer of mysteries created a real-life drama by disappearing for a time in 1926.  The author returned, but the incident was never explained.
a) Erle Stanley Gardner
b) Agatha Christie
c) Harriet Stratimeyer Adams
d) Dashiell Hammett
7. In what year did aviator Amelia Earhart disappear?
a) 1925
b) 1931
c) 1937
d) 1942
8. He founded the Nation of Islam in Detroit and then vanished in 1934.
a) Elijah Muhammad
b) Warith Deen Mohammed
c) Al-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz
d) Wallace Fard Muhammad
9. The plane of this jazz musician and bandleader disappeared over the English Channel in 1944.
a) Glenn Miller
b) Benny Goodman
c) Tommy Dorsey
d) Duke Ellington
10. What Hollywood legend's photojournalist son, Sean, was last seen while on assignment in Cambodia in 1970?
a) Humphrey Bogart
b) Errol Flynn
c) Tyrone Power
d) James Cagney


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Answers :  1. b  ; 2. c  ; 3. a  ; 4. d  ; 5. c  ; 6. b  ; 7. c  ; 8. d  ; 9. a  ; 10. b

Automotive tea leaves - deciphering your car's VIN code

Tasseographers divine a person's fate from tea leaf patterns discarded from a finished cup.  Less messy and more useful is the divination of a pre-owned car's history from the patterns in its vehicle identification number (VIN).
Like most other big-ticket item purchased, a car has an identification number.  Since the 1981 model year, this VIN has been a string of 17 characters that, when deciphered, provide insights into the vehicle's manufacture and history.
The VIN is also used by law enforcement to verify stolen cars and parts once they've been recovered.  Service shops use VIN's to correlate installed engine, transmission and brake systems with replacement parts and for proper maintance.  Auto manufactures rely on VINs to recall defective models.  And you can't insure or register your car without presenting its VIN.
Usually, you can retrieve a VIN by looking in one of three easy-to-find locations:

• at the corner of the driver's side dashboard where it meets the windowshield;
• on the sticker that's affixed to the driver's side doorjamb;
• on a plate bolted to the firewall (under the hood).

Neverless, why 17 characters and what do they mean?  How much information can be revealed by decoding those 17 digits? Plenty.

World manufacturer identifier
The first three digits stand for the World Manufacturer identifier.  Position one represents the nation of origin or the final point of assembly.  VINs of cars made in the U.S. start with 1, 4 or 5.  Canada is 2, Mexico is 3, Japan is J, Korea is K, England is S, and Germany is W.  The second character identifies the specific manufacturer (e.g., A for Audi, B for BMW, L for Lincoln).  The third digit stands for the vehicle type or manufacturing division (e.g. passenger car, light truck).
Vehicle descriptor section
The six digits from positions four through nine comprise the Vehicle Descriptor Section.  The first five characters reveal the model, body type, type of restraint system, transmission type and engine code.  The ninth character is a "check" against fraudulent, invalid VINs.  Based on a mathematical formula developed by the Department of Transportation, it is included as a security feature.
Vehicle identifier section
The final eight digits, positions 10 through 17 constitute the Vehicle identifier Section.  Position 10 represents the model year.  The letters B to X (without letter I, O, Q, U or Z) sequentially correspond to the model years starting with 1981 and ending with 2000.  Model years between 2001 and 2009 were designated with numbers 1 to 9.  Model year 2010 returned to an alphabetical sequence beginning with A.  The 11th digit indicates the manufacturing plant that assembled the vehicle.  This digit is proprietary to the respective manufacturer.  The final six characters in positions 12 through 17 stand for the production sequence number, which identifies your car as it moved along the assembly line.
Short cut
If you enjoy devoting time to reading tea leaves or solving acrostic puzzles, you can decipher car codes to amaze and entertain family, friends and neighbors.  However, if time is tight, and you still want to impress with your essoteric intellect, type a VIN into the website http://www.decodethis.com/.  In a few moments, you'll have a full translation of the 17 digits.
Practical use?
Typing a VIN into an online vehicle-history-report website (e.g. Carfax.com, Autocheck.com, VINcheck.org) will produce a summary of the vehicle's predigree.  (Carfax.com and Autocheck charge for the service but provide fuller information than VINcheck.org, whose report is free.)  If you are buying a used car, these tools offer a dimension of security not previously available to past generations.  Besides giving an honest snapshot of a car's life, a VIN not readily supplied by the car's seller could tip you off to the perpetration of a scam.  Avoiding such and finding a reliable, trustworthy means of transportation through its VIN is a fortune that your next finished cup of tea may confirm.

THE SPACE SHUTTLE / END OF AN ERA

Americans in Space
The Final Mission of the space shuttle Atlantis brings to an end a program that, for more than three decades, allowed the United States to dominate the science of manned space exploration ----- at a final total cost of $196.5 billion.  The shuttles became the primary vehicles for building and servicing the International Space Station, servicing satellites and the Hubble Space Telescope, and launching interplanetary probes.  But beyond these functions, the shuttles fulfilled both the romantic notions of exploration and breakthroughs in our understanding of Earth ----- from detailed surface imaging to ozone mapping to medical and biological studies.

F. Y. I.

Back Then
During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who had a beard was required to pay a special tax.

No Kidding
Anteaters prefer termites to ants.

Did You Know?
One of Hewlett Packards first ideas was an automatic urinal flusher.

Still on the Books 
In Idaho, it is ilegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than 50 pounds.

Actually Said
spoken in response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields Cookies
"A cookie store is a bad idea.  Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."

Table Tidbits
Acorns were used as a coffee substitute during the Civil War.

Lingerie shops drag feet on deadline to hire women

 Saudi lingerie stores are dragging their feet on an official deadline to avoid embarrassing female shoppers by replacing their male sales clerks with women, saying the change will create staff problems, lose them customers and cost them money.
Women in Saudi Arabia, one of the world's most conservative societies, still have to buy their intimate clothing from male clerks, despite several petitions and two government decrees ordering businesses to hire women.
In an effort to enforce the regulations, the Labor Ministry threatened on July 11 to close any lingerie shops that failed to replace all male staff within six months.
"We read about the order in newspapers but we did not receive any instructions (from management)... This plan can work but not at the speed they are expecting. The women have to be trained from scratch," said Tarek, a store manager at a lingerie shop in Jeddah.
In Saudi Arabia's conservative society, where religious police patrol the streets to enforce segregation of the sexes, women are not allowed to work in public places where they have contact with men, such as sale clerks or cashiers.
Shops that hire females must bear the cost of training them, cover their display windows to block the view into the stores and hire a male security guard, for at least 3,500 riyals ($930) a month, during work hours to keep men from entering.
One of Saudi Arabia's leading lingerie brands, Nayomi, made the switch after the first government decree was issued in 2004, staffing their 45 stores with female clerks only to revert to male employees a year later.
"In 2004, we implemented the order and hired women ... we faced a lot of problems," said a manager at Nayomi, who asked not to be identified. "The experience lasted about a year and we lost a lot of money, over 10 million riyals."
Poor sales owing to a lack of male customers, the high cost of ensuring security, the inability to lure customers with a window display and the reluctance of some women employees to work late shifts in a country where shops stay open until 11 pm led to the losses.
The Nayomi manager estimated that a switch to women only staff now would cost over 2 million riyals.
Pressure to hire women is driven by growing unemployment among the 18 million Saudis. Unemployment reached 10 percent in 2010 but for women the rate is estimated around 28 percent.
While many lingerie shops are not taking the threat too seriously, a small number have begun preparations.
The Fawaz Abdulaziz Al Hokair Group, which has 400 male employees in its three lingerie brands throughout the kingdom, has started training 200 females to take over their stores soon.
"We have joined with a private company to train the women. There are no trained women here because they did not work in that field before," said Ahmad Sheikh El Shabab, brand manager of La Senza, one of Al Hokair's lingerie brands in Saudi Arabia.
"The decision is great because worldwide the lingerie shops are managed by women, and that is how it should be especially in this conservative country. Many women get embarrassed buying these things from men," he said.

New saggy jeans designed to improve mobility

 Men who like to sag their jeans down low but fear they could end up around their ankles may be interested in new pants that snap to special boxer shorts for support and improved mobility. Irese and Mark Davenport, two brothers from Newark, New Jersey, unveiled Sagz Jeans this week. They noticed their teenage children's movement was hampered by the look, which came to prominence in 1990s hip-hop music videos.
"They're holding their pants up not being able to play sports, basically being unhealthy because of the attire they were wearing," Mark Davenport said.
His brother invented the concept and patented it in 2006 to give sag jean wearers a active lifestyle.
With Sagz Jeans, the pants can be snapped to the waist-hugging underwear at three different heights allowing the wearer to show how low he can go without actually risking a wardrobe malfunction.
Both brothers are aware of the controversy surrounding the style, in which large swathes of the wearer's underwear are visible above their pants' low-slung waistline. Several U.S. municipalities have instituted fines or even jail time for those caught sagging.
Even President Barack Obama has weighed in, saying in 2008 that although he considers anti-sagging legislation a waste of time, he thinks "brothers should pull up their pants."
"You don't have to pass a law, but that doesn't mean folks can't have some sense and some respect for other people and, you know, some people might not want to see your underwear - I'm one of them," he said.
Dwayne Hoard, the creative director of Sagz, believes such reactions are simply the latest in an inevitable cycle of older people finding themselves unnerved by the tastes of the young.
He said young men who sag their pants are unfairly demonized as hooligans or thugs. The style is sometimes thought to have originated in prisons, where new inmates would be handed oversized pants but no belt for fear it could be used as a weapon or in a suicide attempt. Hoard prefers to date its origins to when Michael Jordan started wearing relatively baggy basketball shorts.
He said it's a form of youth expression doomed to be misunderstood by elders.
"Young folks, they will sag no matter what," he said. "What we are trying to do is offer a better alternative."
The line will sell online only for now. A pair of Sagz jeans costs about $80, including a pair of snapped-in boxers. The company aims to make between $500,000 and $1 million in sales in its first year.

Swede tried to build nuclear reactor in his kitchen

 A Swedish man was arrested after he tried to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen and documented his efforts on the Internet, authorities and the man said Thursday.
Richard Handl, 31, from Angelholm in southern Sweden, gathered materials including smoke detectors, clock and watch hands and via purchases on the Internet.
"I was just curious to see if it was possible, it is just a hobby," said Handl, currently unemployed but previously a worker in a ventilation systems factory.
He documented his efforts on a blog and his Facebook page.
He got as far as mixing some ingredients on a cooker -- americum, radium, beryllium and 96 percent sulphuric acid.
"The boiling explosion was about 3 or 4 months ago and the police came two weeks ago," he said.
After the incident, which he tagged "The Meltdown" on his blog, he said he "cleaned up the mess on the cooker and then I bought some more radium and continued the experiment."
The Radiation Safety Authority said in a statement the authorities raided Handl's flat on July 20 after hearing that he was handling nuclear materials in an unsafe way.
"There were no raised levels of radiation in the apartment and the neighbors were not exposed to radiation," research chief Leif Moberg said in the statement.
Handl reported the raid laconically on his website, writing "Project canceled!"
He was detained and shortly after freed. "I am still a suspect for crime against the radiation safety law," he said.

Bears saved from forced vodka drinking

 Ukraine's Environment Minister Mykola Zlochevsky vowed on Wednesday to free all bears kept in restaurants for entertainment purposes and often forced to drink alcohol, Interfax news agency reported on Wednesday. Captured and tamed bears were often used for entertainment in the Russian Empire, which included Ukraine, turning the animal into a national symbol.
The practice appears to have also survived Ukraine's emergence from Soviet rule, but Zlochevsky said it was inhumane and unacceptable today.
"On television, they keep showing bears suffering in restaurants and roadside hotels," Interfax quoted him as saying. "How long can we tolerate animal torture in restaurants where drunken guests make bears drink vodka for laughs?"
Zlochevsky said his ministry was building a large enclosure in a wildlife sanctuary where it would place about 80 bears it planned to liberate.

Greyfriars Bobby was a scam to lure tourists

The most faithful dog in the world, which kept a 14-year vigil at his master's grave in Edinburgh, Scotland, was nothing but a Victorian business stunt, according to historian Jan Bondeson.
The 140-year-old story of Greyfriars Bobby continues to draw tourists to the graveyard that was once inhabited by the Skye Terrier commemorated by a bronze fountain erected in his memory in the cemetery and immortalised on the silver screen by Walt Disney in a 1961 film.
But Bondeson, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University, claims that Bobby was far from the dependable dog portrayed in the tale of undying Scottish devotion.
He says the story was a fabrication, created by cemetery curator, James Brown, and restaurant owner, John Traill, to drum up custom for local businesses -- and that Bobby was a stray mutt, bribed with food to stay in the graveyard.
"The entire story is wrong --the account of the dog on the drinking fountain who supposedly kept vigil at his master's grave in all kinds of weather is not accurate. Bobby would go out hunting rats in the church and was kept well fed by the locals. He was not a mourning dog at all -- he was a happy little dog," Bondeson told Reuters.
The trusty terrier - as the story goes- kept watch over the grave of his beloved master, Edinburgh policeman John Gray, from his death in 1858 until the animal died in 1872.
However, after studying drawings and contemporary accounts of Bobby while researching his book, "Amazing Dogs," Bondeson also realised that he was looking at two different pooches.
"I noticed that the two dogs looked quite different. The first Bobby was quite an ugly dog but in later paintings he looks just like the statue on the drinking fountain," Bondeson said.
The first Bobby, an old mongrel, died in 1867, leaving Brown and Traill with a problem on their hands, Bondeson said.
"A dead bobby was no good for business, so they replaced him with a pure-bred Skye terrier who lived for a further five years until 1872 -- after which it time did not take long for the fountain to be erected," said Bondeson.

To start life afresh, Thais "practice" death

 For those facing a run of bad luck and wanting to start things over, one Thai temple has an unusual solution: "rehearse" death with a mock funeral, including lying down in a coffin. Pram Manee temple in Nakorn Nayok province, 107 km northeast of Bangkok, holds two of the rituals every day: at exactly 9:09 a.m. and 1:09 p.m., since the number nine is believed by Thais to bring good luck.
Participants in a recent ritual stood in front of their designated coffins, holding flowers and praying for bad luck to go away, then asked to receive good luck.
All had paid 180 baht ($6) for the flowers, a white sheet and "merit set" -- a collection of necessities sometimes including toothpaste, toothbrushes and food -- to be offered to monks, and the promise of a better life.
"First we pray for the 'dead,' to wash away the bad things. They will go away when the monk draws a sheet over the coffin," said Rin Manaboom, a monk at the temple who conducts the ceremonies.
"The monk will turn the sheet over and pull it back, like pulling the good things back in. First we push the bad luck away, then we put the good things in."
While the participants lie in their coffins, monks chant prayers. After this, they emerge from their resting place to be blessed with holy water by a monk.
Krisda Netmanee, a 39-year-old police officer, said he wanted a fresh start after a series of bad work assignments.
"I had bad luck this year. I'm here to wash my bad luck away, and ask for blessings for good things to come," he added.
Others take part in the ritual regularly.
Farmer Ra Damthanin said she has lain within a coffin at least six times in the hopes of a long life.
"I wish to live very long with my children, my neighbors, my sisters," the 62-year-old said.
"I wish to live a very long time."

Drunk father lets 8-year-old son drive pickup?

 A drunk father allegedly allowed his 8 year-old son to drive his pick-up truck on a southeast Louisiana highway on Saturday while he slept, until patrol officers pulled over the boy, police said.
The boy was driving the Chevrolet truck on Interstate 12 near the town of Holden, with his father in the passenger seat and his 4 year-old sister in the back seat, Louisiana State Police said in a statement.
A passing motorist noticed the pick-up truck was being driven erratically and called police.
When Louisiana state troopers pulled over the truck in Livingston Parish, they found the 8 year-old boy behind the wheel and interviewed the father, 28 year-old Billy Joe Madden of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, police said.
Police said they determined Madden was drunk and that he had been sleeping while his son drove the vehicle, en-route to Dallas, Texas.
Madden was arrested and booked into jail on two counts of child desertion, parent allowing a minor to drive, open container and two counts of no child restraint and no seatbelt.
Madden remains in jail at Livingston Parish Detention Center in lieu of $1,474 bail, said sheriff's deputy Dustin Sanders at the facility.
Both of Madden's children were turned over to child welfare authorities and were awaiting the arrival of a family member who could take custody of them, police said.

Rate your priest on new Website

 You can rate your restaurant meal, your make-up, your teacher online and now in Germany your priest.
Hirtenbarometer (http://hirtenbarometer.de/) or the "shepherds' barometer" is the first online platform where priests can be rated for their performance at church services, on projects for youths and the elderly, on their credibility and on how up to date they are.
"Pastoral work should be qualitative," Andreas Hahn, one of the founders said of the original idea behind the site, adding they hoped "to stimulate dialogue to improve pastoral work."
Also, "many parishes work well but their performance doesn't become public," Hahn said of the platform's function.
He hoped the site could also contribute to some kind of an early alert system, so that potential problems might be recognized before they become actual problems.
Launched in April, the site has been well received by users. "We are overwhelmed by our own success," Hahn said. With 25,000 parishes and some 8,000 priests registered so far and the option to add more, the site's reach is growing.
But while the site has proven a hit with users, reaction from the Roman Catholic church, which has been rocked by abuse allegations in the past year and witnessed a record number of parishioners leaving the church, has been more muted.
Neither the archbishopric in Berlin nor the German conference of bishops wanted to comment on the website.
The protestant church said that it found the rising interest in public feedback as embodied by the hirtenbarometer concept a "positive development," according to a recent press release.
Ratings for priests on the site are represented by sheep, whose woolly coats range from white to black to visually express a priest's rating. The pope and other prominent German priests so far sport light to middle grey wool.

Stop wearing bunny suit, police tell Idaho man

 Police in Idaho Falls have told a man to stop wearing a bunny suit in public after people complained he has been frightening children.
Residents in the northwestern city of 54,000 people also reported William Falkingham, 34, occasionally wears a tutu with the bunny suit, police said in a statement on Tuesday.
Police warned Falkingham after a woman said she saw him dressed in the costume, peeking at her young son from behind a tree and pointing his finger like a gun.
While a police report said other residents were "greatly disturbed" by his activities, one neighbor defended Falkingham as eccentric but otherwise harmless.
"He's got the bunny outfit, a cowboy suit and a ballerina dress but you don't see him except where he's tripping through his backyard," Deborah Colson told Reuters. "He's got a strange lifestyle at home but we all do weird things at home."
Falkingham told officers he "enjoys wearing the suit" but understands the concerns and that he could be cited as a public nuisance, police spokeswoman Joelyn Hansen said.

Half of men would ditch woman who gained weight?

 Men are more concerned with their partner's body type than women but they also seem to value family more highly, according to a new survey released on Tuesday.
Nearly half of men questioned in the poll of 70,000 people said they would ditch a partner who gained weight, compared to only 20 percent of women.
Two-third of men also said they had fantasized about their partner's friends, while only one-third of women had done so.
"Even as men are getting more comfortable with meeting their girlfriends online and less anxious about who she's 'friending' there, other romantic behaviors have proven to be timeless ones: chivalry isn't dead, size matters, and women forgive while men forget," said James Bassil, editor-in-chief of AskMen, which conducted the poll jointly with Cosmopolitan.com.
While only 18 percent of women said they would want their mate to be better endowed, more than 51 percent of men said they wished they themselves were.
But the survey also found 39 percent of men chose family as their top choice of the ultimate status symbol. By contrast, 43 percent of women selected a beautiful home, compared to only 6.5 percent of men. One-quarter of women named a successful partner as a top status symbol.
But men were more likely to lie about the number of sex partners they had had (50 percent) than women (35 percent).
One thing both sexes agreed on was an as-yet undeveloped male birth control pill, an idea that proved popular all around. More than half of women would want their partner to take it, while more than two-thirds of men were ready for male birth control.
But the sexes differed about paying for dates, at least in the early stages. More women, 38 percent, think each should pay their own way, versus 33 percent who think men should foot the bill. But 59 percent of men think they should cover the tab, at least until a relationship is established.
Nearly 80 percent of men said they feel cheated by the divorce courts. But more women feel the sexes receive equal treatment than those who agree the men get a raw deal.
Women are also far less comfortable with their mates keeping in touch with their ex. More than two-thirds of men are okay with their partner friending an ex on Facebook, as opposed to 38 percent of women.
But three-quarters of men surveyed said they consider sexting cheating.
The full results of the poll can be found at www.askmen.com/specials/great_male_survey and at www.askmen.com/specials/great_female_survey