Dowbrigade

A while ago I bought a new used car and decided on a minivan on the
theory that with two teenaged sons the extra hauling space would certainly
come in handy, as well as offering a substantial buffer zone between
me and whatever hip-hop hi jinx transpired on long drives.

The theory was tested out early and often, as at the time I was the
coach/manager of my 15-year-olds "traveling team" in Massachusetts Bays
youth soccer.  I had quickly discovered that the "traveling" wasn’t
in name only; we traveled from the New Hampshire border to the tip of
Cape Cod, and west to the banks of the Hudson River. The minivan was
a godsend. The first weekend we had it I took the "Falcons" to Springfield,
and
other than a split tube of "Icy Hot" on the seat cover, the trip was
a cinch.

Shortly thereafter, driving on the Mass Pike, I heard the noise for
the first time.  It
was an insistent beeping, and my first thought was that it was a warning
signal for something in the car that was about to break down or explode.  I
quickly went through the usual suspects; gas, oil, temperature, brakes.  Everything
seemed to be working fine.  Then, looking out the driver’s side
window, I saw a state police car lurking behind a billboard, the steely
snout of his radar gun sticking out the window.

Eureka! The beeping must have been a radar detector! Over the next few
days I heard the beeping four or five times, and each time I spotted
a police cruiser shortly thereafter.  I searched the minivan from
stem to stern, looking for the damn radar detector.  Glove compartment,
trunk, under the seats, under the dash, behind the speakers.  Nothing.

Finally I concluded, like Sherlock Holmes, that when one has eliminated
the possible, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.  Somehow,
the radar detector WAS BUILT INTO THE ELECTRONICS OF THE CAR ITSELF.
I loved my minivan more than ever now, and felt that not only was it
carrying me where I needed to go, it was protecting me from the long
arm of the law on the way.

About three weeks later, I was again transporting the "Falcons", this
time down to Fall River, near the Rhode Island border.  We were
cruising down I-95 at about 70 when the beeping went off like mad.  I
started looking wildly in all directions for the cop. Suddenly I was
aware of a mad scrambling in the way-back seat, and then a 15-year-old
voice sang out, "My cell phone! I’ve been looking for it for three weeks!"

In Singapore a new world record has been set for the
longest domino topple. Ma Lihua, who is from Beijing, single-handedly
set up and then knocked over more than 303,000 dominos. Her figure smashes
the previous record of 281,000 set in 1984.

It took Ma Lihua more than six weeks to set up the dominos. On a number
of occasions cockroaches got into the hall at the Singapore Expo where
the record attempt was being held. They knocked down thousands of dominos,
undoing days of work and making Ma Lihua cry.

from
the BBC

Boston University is planning to construct a $1.6 billion dollar
biodefense facility in a crowded low-income neighborhood in the Boston
area. Neighbors are understandably upset, as the announced facility would
contain live smallpox, Ebola and plague viruses, as well as an additonal
assortment of the deadliest pathogens known to man.

BU announced last February its application to the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to build a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory
in BU’s BioSquare complex in the South End. Staff at the facility would
be first responders to a bioterrorist attack, and they would work in
high-security labs capable of housing pathogens deemed highly transmissible
and deadly.

In typical highhanded community oversight BU has failed to properly
advertise meetings about a lab that would play a key role in the defense
against terrorism, ignoring rising neighborhood and environmental resistence
to the plan.

Full disclosure: I am a full-time employee of Boston University, and
I don’t want the damn thing in MY back yard…..

from
the Boston Globe

An eight foot long Komodo dragon lizard in Singapore’s
zoo has been receiving traditional Chinese acupuncture treatment for
a neurological disorder.

Eight-year-old male lizard has been receiving
twice-weekly treatments for the past three
weeks.

"Tirto is now more relaxed and is beginning to enjoy his treatments," a
spokesman for the Singapore Zoo said.

from Ananova

Two British soldiers saved a newborn baby they found while searching
an munitions dump in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the Ministry of
Defense said yesterday.

The soldiers took the baby, who they found nestling in a box full of weapons,
to a military hospital, where she is recovering.

What I want to know is WHY WAS THE BABY IN THE BOX IN THE FIRST
PLACE? It would make more sense if they had found automatic weapons
in the baby’s
crib.  Hiding weapons makes sense.  But why hide a baby?  In
a closed metal box of weapons? Were they afraid the British soldiers
would take the baby? Are babies illegal in occupied Iraq? This
story is driving me crazy, and I hope details emerge later in the day.


"During a search operation in Basra, which recovered a quantity of small
arms and rocket-propelled grenades, troops from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment
found a prematurely born baby girl who had been hidden in a metal box and appeared
close to death," a Ministry of Defense statement said.

"The child was successfully revived and taken to hospital, where she is
reported to be doing well."

from
the Boston Globe

The right to an attorney is one of the most fundamental cornerstones
of the American criminal justice system.  In Boston’s Suffolk County,
the Comittee for Public Counsel Sercices, which provides public defenders
to the Suffolk courts, has been threatening to stop defending clients
because they are owed $15.4 million in back pay. Yesterday they made
good on that threat, refusing to take any new idigent clients.

State lawmakers hastily passed an emergency funding bill, but the governor,
facing a billion-dollar deficit, has so far refused to sign, and the
lawyers refuse to take any new clients until he does. As the courts are
paralyzed, the pointing fingers are not, "This is a conundrum, not
of the court’s, but of the committee’s," said Suffolk Superior
Court Judge Jeffrey Locke.

from the Boston Globe