LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A fire that did $20,000 in damages to a northeast Arkansas home wasn’t caused by an electrical problem or burning food or arson, an insurance investigator concluded.

Instead, the dead plants did it, according to a report summary provided to the homeowner, Brian Duncan.

“The fire was caused by self-heating through decomposition of organic materials contained within a plastic flowerpot,” the Aug. 25 letter from State Farm Insurance Co. said.

Or, in layman’s terms, spontaneous combustion.

Full story….

One day, a disheveled young woman, in a cold police interrogation room with her face blurred to protect her identity, is on tape accusing Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger of unspeakable acts and taking what didn’t belong to him. The next day, a boyish-looking Roethlisberger, in a bucolic setting at his family’s farmhouse, is telling KDKA-TV sports anchor Bob Pompeani that he never intended “to gain the whole world and lose my soul.” Has there ever been more jarring, contradictory video? I don’t know about you, I’m on sensory overload.

It’s easy to imagine Roethlisberger as a monster after watching the tape of a 20-year-old college student telling investigators that he raped her in the bathroom of a Milledgeville, Ga., nightclub March 5. Yes, her statement, which was released Wednesday along with dozens of recordings by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, had inconsistencies. Yes, she admitted to being intoxicated at the time of the alleged incident. And yes, Roethlisberger was not charged with a crime.

Read the whole thing….

From over the transom:

This is a terrific test. And it shows results in a number of ways. It sure indicates that the majority of Americans don’t know what’s going on. No wonder our politicians take such advantage.

Interesting and simple test. It’s astonishing that so many people got less than half right. These results say that 80% of the (voting) public doesn’t have a clue – and that’s pretty scary.

There are no tricks, just a simple test to see if you are current on your information.

Click here to test yourself with 12 questions on current events, then be ready to shudder when you see how other Americans did when they took the test in Pew’s national telephone survey.

My score:

A story I missed….

Snopes says it’s true.

A Most Interesting Story

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

SOURCE: Gene Weingarten, “Pearls Before Breakfast.”
The Washington Post., 8 April 2007, (p. W10).

So, on 12 January 2007, morning commuters passing through the L’Enfant Plaza Station of the subway line in Washington, D.C. were, without publicity, treated to a free mini-concert performed by violin virtuoso Joshua Bell, who played for approximately 45 minutes, performing six classical pieces during that span on his handcrafted 1713 Stradivarius violin (for which Bell reportedly paid $3.5 million). As Weingarten described the crux of the experiment:

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?

Three days earlier, Bell had played to a full house at Boston’s Symphony Hall, where fairly good seats went for $100. But on this day he collected just $32.17 for his efforts, contributed by a mere 27 of 1,097 passing travelers. Only seven people stopped to listen, and just one of them recognized the performer.

The Washington Post won a Pulitzer in the feature writing category for Gene Weingarten’s April 2007 story about this experiment.

Feeding wild animals causes confusion and interferes with natural behavior.

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Mark Steyn NRO:

[...]

Barack Obama … video address on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall: “Few would have foreseen on that day that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent.”

Tear down that wall . . . so they can get a better look at me!!! Is there no one in the White House grown-up enough to say, “Er, Mr. President, that’s really the kind of line you get someone else to say about you”? And maybe somebody could have pointed out that Nov. 9, 1989, isn’t about him but about millions of nobodies whose names are unknown, who lead dreary lives doing unglamorous jobs and going home to drab accommodations, but who at a critical moment in history decided they were no longer going to live in a prison state. They’re no big deal; they’re never going to land a photoshoot for Vanity Fair. But it’s their day, not yours. It’s not the narcissism, so much as the crassly parochial nature of it.

Is it the only template in the White House speechwriters’ computer? “Few would have foreseen at the Elamite sack of Ur/Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow/the assassination of the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand/the passage of the Dubrovnik Airport Parking Lot Expansion Bill that one day I would be standing before you talking about how few would have foreseen that one day I would be standing before you.”

Some years ago, when Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian and ensuing episodes of her sitcom grew somewhat overly preoccupied with the subject, Elton John remarked: “Okay, we know you’re gay. Now try being funny.” I wonder if Sir Elton might be prevailed upon to try a similar pitch at the next all-star White House gala: Okay, we know you’re black. Now try being president. …

[...]

Continued….

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From Nancy Matthis

The wife of an injured policeman wants to win a trip to Disney World for her family. Cincinnati Police Sergeant Bryce Bezdek was slammed by a truck about 2 years ago while deploying “stop-sticks” to end a high-speed car chase. Given only a 20% chance to live by his doctors, with his skull broken and his brain swollen and bleeding, he lay in a coma for several weeks. Supported by an outpouring of prayer from his community, he made a miraculous recovery against all the odds. After a year of intensive rehabilitation, he was able to leave the hospital and continue his therapy at home with his wife and two children.

His wife has made a video about his journey and entered it in a contest sponsored by Modern Mom magazine, for which the first prize is a trip to Disney World. It is a well-made video, and worth watching in any event. But by clicking the link and viewing the video, you are actually casting a vote to help this family win their dream vacation. In fact, if you really want to help, you can vote once each day until the 20th. We urge our readers to watch.

Congratulations to Toni J. Bezdek, creator, composer and editor of this powerful video.

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POPSCI.COM:

Clovis-Era Tools: Douglas Bamforth

Old tools provide new evidence

Doug Bamforth had taken calls like this one before. He studies early American plains dwellers, and his employer, the University of Colorado at Boulder, regularly sends him locals who think they’ve found something. He’s often skeptical. Besides, it was also the middle of May. The semester was over, and he was about to leave town. But the caller, a bio-tech mogul named Patrick Mahaffy, kept insisting, and the next day Bamforth took a ten-minute walk from his office to the site. What he saw astonished him: right there, in urban Boulder, no fewer than eighty-three stone tools were spread out on a patio table.

The initial discovery, dozens of ancient tools buried in someone’s yard, was surprising enough, but other surprises would follow. The tools first offered a look at when and where their owners had lived, and then, a few months later, unprecedented evidence of what they had eaten.

Most of the tools were what archeologists often call unmodified flakes, sharp bits of rock that splinter free as a carver shapes a tool. But the cache also included fully-formed tools: eleven bifacial knives; a big oval knife, sharp all the way around its edge; and a mysterious double-bladed axe head, the likes of which Bamforth had never seen before. Judging by the tools’ appearances, he guessed that they were around 13,000 years old. Dating tests at the University of Colorado confirmed his suspicion. The relics belonged to the Clovis era, a 500-year period during which Asian hunter-gatherers trekked across the Bering Land Bridge and populated North America.

Continued….

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MDA Telethon 2008 – Terry Fator

2007 “America’s Got Talent” winner Terry Fator gives viewers a preview of his new Las Vegas show on the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon.

Wikipedia — “The Human Jukebox” (born June 10, 1965), is a ventriloquist, impressionist, comedian, and singer from Mesquite, Texas. Fator is capable of doing over 100 ventriloquial impersonations, and uses 16 different puppets in his act. He was the winner of Season 2 of America’s Got Talent, and received the million dollar prize. The following year, he was signed on [5-year contract] as the headliner at The Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In Dec. 2007 I posted six 90 sec. videos of Fator’s performances but NBC forced YouTube to take them down. Rational companies would use 90 sec. clips for promos.

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Australian bushfires kill 131, dozens missing; PM calls it ‘mass murder’

WHITTLESEA, Australia — Weary firefighters and rescuers pulled the remains of dozens of people from charred buildings on Monday as the death toll rose to 131 from Australia’s deadliest bushfires.

“Everybody’s gone. Everybody’s gone. Everybody. Their houses are gone. They’re all dead in the houses there. Everybody’s dead,” cried Christopher Harvey, a survivor from Kinglake where most people were killed, as he walked through the town.

Police believe some of the fires, which razed rural towns near the country’s second biggest city, Melbourne, were deliberately lit and declared one devastated town a crime scene.

“There are no words to describe it other than mass murder,” Prime Minister Kevin Mr. Rudd told local television.

More….

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