SNIPPETS

MAY 1,  2010

FASHION STATEMENT:  From the New York Daily News:   Casio watches are cheap, dependable - and the timepiece of choice for bombmakers.  The watches have been used so often in terrorist plots that the feds have urged airport screeners to look out for them.  They've been cited as evidence that Guantanamo Bay detainees need to be locked up.  There are, of course, millions of Casio watches sitting innocently on the wrists of upstanding citizens, but they have also been tied to numerous bombing attempts, with terrorists rigging the circuitry to make them into timers.  Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the foiled plot to blow up 11 U.S.-bound airliners in 1994, chose Casios.

Well, I guess it's some kind of recommendation.  But how can you name drop?

APRIL 30,  2010

CARACAS, April 29 (Reuters) - Delighted at his cyber success, Venezuela's new Twitter convert President Hugo Chavez on Thursday invited Cuba's Fidel Castro and Bolivian President Evo Morales to join the micro-blogging site too.  After several months grumbling that social networking sites in Venezuela were dominated by opponents of his socialist government, Chavez opened his own account this week and was clearly elated to have gathered 106,000 followers in two days.

Let's take all those 160,000 followers and put them on the no-fly list.

APRIL 29,  2010

ST. MONANS, Scotland, April 28 (UPI) -- A former Scottish police station is being sold as a vacation home, with the seller calling it "the ideal place to hide your mother-in-law."  John Bankhead, management partner at selling agents J and E Shepherd in Anstruther, said the former police station in St. Monans includes a holding cell, a reception office, a waiting room and a restroom, The Scotsman reported Wednesday.

For an extra $100,000 it comes with Bonnie and Clyde.

APRIL 28,  2010

From London's Telegraph:  A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical Christians said they had uncovered remnants of Noah's Ark on its legendary mountain resting place in Turkey.  Noah's Ark Ministries International, a Hong Kong-based documentary outfit, said they recovered wooden specimens from a structure on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey that carbon dating proved the material was 4800 years old, around the same time the ark is said to have been afloat.

No word of animal remains.  Kinda messes up the story, but the tourists will go for it.

APRIL 27,  2010

Social networking news, from London's Telegraph:  Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President, has announced that he will start using Twitter, the microblogging site which will test his ability to deliver a concise message.

Not good enough.  I want him to have a Facebook page.  Then we can check all his "friends."

APRIL 26,  2010

Social news, from The Times of London:   A Bournemouth student emerged this weekend as the unlikely wedge that drove apart a princess and her playboy fiancé, ending one of Europe’s most glamorous royal romances.  The wedding of Princess Madeleine of Sweden and Jonas Bergstrom, a lawyer, was called off on Saturday after Tora Uppstrom Berg, a 21-year-old photography student at Arts University College Bournemouth, claimed that she had had an affair with the prince-to-be.  “They have decided that the best for them is to go their separate ways,” the palace said in a statement...

This is Sweden?  This was supposed to be the free, liberated society?  I guess no one told the royals.  Of course, under the Swedish welfare system the jilted princess is now eligible for free psychiatric care because of her emotional distress.