Baggage screeners at Newark Liberty International Airport spotted – and then lost – a fake bomb planted in luggage by a supervisor during a training exercise.

[…]

In Tuesday night’s test, a TSA supervisor secretly placed the bomb, which was designed to resemble the plastic explosive Semtex, inside a bag that was put through screening machines, [Ann Davis, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration,] said.

A baggage screening machine sounded an alarm, but workers somehow lost track of the bag, which was then loaded onto a Continental Airlines flight.

This really isn’t funny at all. But I’ve got the giggles…I just can’t get over the fact that they “somehow lost track of the bag”!

(That title was sort of a nod to Guardian 452, my beloved Bob, because I have spent the past few days watching ReBoot. But that totally has nothing to do with the following.)

Look at the name of this article:

Japan Today: WWII Chinese sex slaves lose appeal

So, what, they got ugly?

Apparently the only thing keeping me from a European vacation is the unfinished state of David’s guest bedroom.

Honda has unveiled a bipedal robot that can run at a leisurely 3 kph.

The “Nara schoolgirl killer” needs a new nickname. May I suggest “friend or close relation to the Ariyama family”? After all, now he’s targeting Kaede’s 2-year-old sister.

I want this terrorist murderer caught, tried, convicted, and punished to the full extent of the law. You watch, though. When he is caught, he’ll thank the police, saying, “I’m glad I was arrested. I couldn’t stop myself.”

I’ve been thinking about highly-structured communities and the effects they might have on people. Yesterday I was musing fondly about how it might be to go to a Catholic church–I would know what I was doing far more often, due to the rituals and the guidance from the Pope. But people who grow up in a more rigid culture seem to end up wanting to break out of it more than anything.

So I’m wondering if this killer has broken free of whatever societal constraints held him–“I was a mere salaryman, scraping for cash, drunk every day, living in a shoebox, but now I’m a murderer”–and is now searching for a way back in. Having grasped the “freedom” he wanted, he just kept going until it got out of hand, and now he doesn’t know what to do other than grow so radical that the system finally stops him.

(Please bear in mind that I have never even attended a psychology course.)

Here‘s the original article on how a man in Australia lanced through his stomach with a jetstream of beer, but I prefer how Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing explained it.

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough – Taxi Driver Shoots Man in Bin Laden Mask

Leonel Arias, 47, told police he was playing a practical joke by donning the Bin Laden mask, toting his pellet rifle and jumping out to scare drivers on a narrow street in his hometown, Carrizal de Alajuela, about 20 miles north of San Jose.

Arias had startled several drivers that way on Monday afternoon. But when he jumped out in front of taxi driver Juan Pablo Sandoval, the motorist reached for a gun and shot him twice in the stomach.

Go Sandoval! Too bad it wasn’t really Bin Laden ;P

Seriously, if Osama Bin Laden jumped out in front of your car waving a gun, what would you do? (Since I don’t have a gun, I’d probably just run him over.)

Police declined to detain Sandoval, saying he had believed he was acting in self-defense.

Damn straight he was.

Yahoo! News (UK Reuters): Oddly Enough – Thin immigrants get fat in U.S

This isn’t really surprising, but it’s good that a study like this has been done. It underlines the inherent problems in our dietary culture.

Now we just need to understand more completely what they are, and how to combat them…

MSNBC: Officials warned of concerns about AIDS drug

But U.S. sent medication to Africa anyway, documents show

Weeks before President Bush announced a plan to protect African babies from AIDS, top U.S. health officials were warned that research on the key drug was flawed and may have underreported severe reactions including deaths, government documents show.

The 2002 warnings about the drug, nevirapine, were serious enough to suspend testing for more than a year, let Uganda’s government know of the dangers and prompt the drug’s maker to pull its request for permission to use the medicine to protect newborns in the United States.

But the National Institutes of Health, the government’s premier health research agency, chose not to inform the White House as it scrambled to keep its experts’ concerns from scuttling the use of nevirapine in Africa as a cheap solution, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

It’s nice to know we’ve got fine, ethical people working at the National Institutes of Health.

Jesus.

Also, isn’t it nice how drugs with potential side effects are okay for Africa, but not for the US? Nice little double standard there.

[T]he German-owned company [Boehringer Ingelheim] no longer is seeking FDA permission to use nevirapine for protecting U.S. infants because better treatments have emerged, [Dr. Patrick Robinson, a top Boehringer AIDS specialist,] said.

I guess our babies are more important than African babies.

What a load of shit.

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough – Retiree Duped by Naked Invitation

An 81-year-old German dropped his trousers and lost his wallet when two young women asked him to join them in a nude photo shoot but they fled with his belongings as he stripped, police said Monday.

All I can think of is when that happened to George in Seinfeld. (Well, I can also think about what a horrible sentence that is. But you should expect that from me by now.)

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough – U.S. author Wolfe wins bad sex award

American author and journalist Tom Wolfe has won one of the world’s most dreaded literary accolades — the British prize for bad sex in fiction.

The prize is awarded each year “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel”.

Maybe someday I’ll win that!

(But yow, read those example passages…they are uniquely horrible.)

Organisers said Wolfe, who is based in New York, was the first writer in the 12-year history of the competition to decline his invitation.

Awww…he’s probably pouting.

Here’s a really nice (and amazing) piece:

Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough – After 233 Kids, Foster Parents Quit

“We had been married 20 years, and life was good,” Imogene Gorsuch wrote in a diary, describing the decision to start taking in children in the late 1950s. The pair also raised three sons and a daughter of their own.

“Blessed with a comfortable home, adequate income and everything we needed, we had a desire to share this with others less fortunate,” Imogene Gorsuch wrote.

What a great couple. I really admire them. Being a foster parent is one of the hardest things you can do. You’ll see an example of why in the article.

Yahoo! has a funny story today about those Christmas letters you get from friends and relatives chronicling the past year. I’m of two minds about the practice–on the one hand, it’s nice to know what everyone’s up to, but on the other, as the article points out, they often seem like gloatfests. I sent a small letter with my Christmas cards last year…I’m not sure I’m going to do anything of the kind this year, simply because I’m so disorganized. I haven’t even bought cards yet (doing that today, hopefully).

What do you think of these “round robin” letters, readers? Have you ever gotten one? Have you ever written one?

Those are approximate because I paused the timer and odometer during the times I rode around looking for the trail, or stopped and walked for safety, while I was downtown.

Yes friends, I rode from the Savannah Rapids Pavilion all the way down to Broad Street, lost the trail, found it again, and continued on under a big overpass and past a rehabilitation clinic. This was Very Far, farther than I’ve gone before. I reset the odometer without checking the distance when I got to the point where I turned around, just past the clinic, so I’m not sure how much distance I covered. On the way back from there, though, taking essentially the same route (I ended up on Washington Road briefly, but that led me to an exit which led me to Eve Street which led me back to the trail), I covered 7.18 miles.

That doesn’t seem like very far, does it?

Why does it take so long to drive from where I live to downtown?

I want to look at a map.

Regardless, if I’d stayed on Broad Street, I would have come to 13th Street, and then I could have headed over to North Augusta and gotten on the Greeneway. Would that have been a hoot, or what?

I feel great. What a good workout. And I’ve been losing a pound a day for the past couple days, which I don’t mind at all. I figure today makes up for not exercising yesterday, so hopefully I’ll lose some more by tomorrow.

Yay!

He’s going to jail for 3 years, according to this article on Yahoo. A rather light punishment for killing an entire country, don’t you think?

See below for Yahoo’s headline as it appears right now, and apparently as it has appeared since 6:08 pm. Click that picture to see a full, unaltered screenshot.

You see, this is why editors are important!

Update 12/12 11:31 am: It’s still like that. You’d think someone would have noticed by now…

Yesterday was a little emotional, wasn’t it?

I’m better now. Yesterday was more productive than usual–the previous two days, I’d taken long naps in lieu of getting anything done. Too much sleep can be a bad thing.

This morning, after going to bed at 9:45 and getting up promptly at 5, I feel refreshed.

Yesterday’s schedule was interesting. I’m thinking of making it my regular routine. I got up, took my pills, got dressed, and ate my breakfast as usual. Work was typical; I left at 10. After piddling around for a couple hours at home, I went biking, and when I got home I took my first shower of the day. Then I planned this week’s dinner menus, and ran out to the grocery store to pick everything up. When I got home, Sean was there, and I started fixing dinner–a mixed greens and baked chicken salad, with a side of fettucine alfredo. While we were waiting for the chicken to cook, we snuggled in bed together.

After dinner, I got online and messed around some more, and cleaned up the dishes, and finally went to bed on time.

It was a good day. I got the grocery shopping done, I exercised, and I made dinner. Those last two are things I want to do every day, and the first should be weekly or biweekly. I’m not sure when or why I stopped doing my old routine, but this one seems comfortable. Taking a shower in the afternoon seems to revitalize me for the rest of the day, too.

I feel a little grubby this morning, though. Maybe I should do a sponge bath in the mornings, if I’m going to leave my shower for the afternoon.

Progesterone starts tomorrow. And, speaking of pills, I’ve decided to cut my multivitamins in half–that is, take half a pill a day, instead of a whole one. Getting too many minerals can be bad. I’m going to be eating more green food this next week (and hopefully permanently), and I don’t want to overdo it on anything.

So, after work today, I’ll be going biking again. I haven’t decided which trail I want to go to. If I go to the Greeneway, I may go to the Activities Center to park, instead of Martintown Road. That way, I’ll have a nice decline to ride down at the end of my workout. We’ll see. (At this point, I don’t want to try starting from the other end…though that may come in the future.)

I’m also wondering if I should try to start up my morning workout again. Maybe not as intense…maybe just some good stretching and warming up for the day. If I do that, of course, then I’ll have to shower afterwards, and I’d end up taking two showers a day. I guess I don’t mind being super-clean, but it just seems like a waste–plus, the more you shower, the less healthy your skin is, or so I understand anyway. So I’m not sure on that.

Creating a good schedule is hard now because of Sean’s new rotating shifts. One week he works 7 to 3, one week 1 to 10, and the other two weeks are his original 9 to 6. I need to stop and think about how I can break up the things I want/need to do to match that schedule…so that I can be home when he’s home, and so that I can get things done when he’s not.

And, finally, I need to decorate my Christmas tree, and organize my desks–computer, and “study”. The study desk is basically ready, but I need to get some junk out of it that I don’t need anymore, and put some supplies there so I can sit down and study Japanese whenever I want. My computer desk is just messy, as usual ;P

Oh. And I really should finish reading Getting Things Done…;P

Hai just linked me to “THE COOLEST SITE EVAR” (his words, but it’s true!). Look at that!!!

Anyone want me to try to translate it? ;P I know that at the end she’s saying “And with that, we’ve made it pretty”, but I’d have to screencap the other stuff to get an idea…I’m not so good with the listening comprehension ;_;