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calendar   Monday - August 08, 2005

On This Day In History

August 8, 1945 ....
&187;&187; Truman Signs United Nations Charter
&187;&187; Second Atomic Bomb Dropped On Nagasaki
&187;&187; Russians Declare War on Japan

(two out of three ain’t bad)

President Harry S. Truman signs the United Nations Charter and the United States becomes the first nation to complete the ratification process and join the new international organization. Although hopes were high at the time that the United Nations would serve as an arbiter of international disputes, the organization also served as the scene for some memorable Cold War clashes.

August 8, 1945, was a busy day in the history of World War II. The United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan, devastating the city of Nagasaki. The Soviet Union, following through with an agreement made earlier in the war, declared war on Japan. All observers agreed that the combination of these two actions would bring a speedy end to Japanese resistance. Tthe Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army.

The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima by the Americans did not have the effect intended: unconditional surrender by Japan. Half of the Japanese inner Cabinet, called the Supreme War Direction Council, refused to surrender unless guarantees about Japan’s future were given by the Allies, especially regarding the position of the emperor, Hirohito. The only Japanese civilians who even knew what happened at Hiroshima were either dead or suffering terribly.

Japan had not been too worried about the Soviet Union, so busy with the Germans on the Eastern front. The Japanese army went so far as to believe that they would not have to engage a Soviet attack until spring 1946. But the Soviets surprised them with their invasion of Manchuria, an assault so strong (of the 850 Japanese soldiers engaged at Pingyanchen, 650 were killed or wounded within the first two days of fighting) that Emperor Hirohito began to plead with his War Council to reconsider surrender. The recalcitrant members began to waver.

At the same time, in Washington, D.C., President Truman took a step that many Americans hoped would mean continued peace in the post-World War II world. The president signed the United Nations Charter, thus completing American ratification of the document. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes also signed. In so doing, the United States became the first nation to complete the ratification process. The charter would come into full force when China, Russia, Great Britain, France, and a majority of the other nations that had constructed the document also completed ratification.

The signing was accomplished with little pomp and ceremony. Indeed, President Truman did not even use one of the ceremonial pens to sign, instead opting for a cheap 10-cent desk pen. Nonetheless, the event was marked by hope and optimism. Having gone through the horrors of two world wars in three decades, most Americans--and people around the world--were hopeful that the new international organization would serve as a forum for settling international disagreements and a means for maintaining global peace. Over the next decades, the United Nations did serve as the scene for some of the more notable events in the Cold War: the decision by the Security Council to send troops to Korea in 1950; Khrushchev pounding the table with his shoe during a U.N. debate; and continuous and divisive discussion over admission of communist China to membership in the UN. As for its role as a peacekeeping institution, the record of the U.N. was not one of great success during the Cold War. The Soviet veto in the Security Council stymied some efforts, while the U.S. desire to steer an independent course in terms of military involvement after the unpopular Korean War meant less and less recourse to the U.N. to solve world conflicts. In the years since the end of the Cold War, however, the United States and Russia have sometimes cooperated to send United Nations forces on peacekeeping missions, such as the effort in Bosnia.
-- Courtesy of The History Channel


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/08/2005 at 12:31 PM   
Filed Under: • History •  
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High Noon Oddities

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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/08/2005 at 11:52 AM   
Filed Under: • Odd-Strange •  
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Star Trek: The Next Generation

NASA is already working on the Shuttle’s replacement ....

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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/08/2005 at 11:41 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
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No More Noogies In Oregon

That’s right. As one 15-year-old found out yesterday, kids can no longer harass each other with “titty-twisters” or other forms of “Three Stooges” pranks. The young man in question will have to pay a $67 fine and he also has a permanent misdemeanor on his police record (which he can have removed when he turns 18). The really bad news is that “wet-willies,” “wedgies,” “swirlies,” and “noogies” are also criminal acts nowadays. You folks better hurry up and buy those “Three Stooges” DVD’s before they’re banned .... in the public interest, of course. No word yet on “cootie” infections but I assume they will have to be disallowed also ....

GOLD HILL, Ore. (AP)—A 15-year-old boy who pinched and twisted the nipples of a 13-year-old has been sentenced to three days of community service for harassment. David Thumler, 15, said the “titty-twister” was just horseplay. The mother of 13-year-old Matthew Cox counters that the incident was humiliating for her son, who saw it as an assault from an older, bigger bully. “They’re not friends,” she said. “If he was my son’s friend, it would be a different thing,” said Bobby Cox.

In addition to the community service, Thumler has been ordered to pay a $67 fine and the misdemeanor has been placed on his permanent record. He can request to have it removed when he turns 18. Ken Chapman, a Jackson County juvenile probation supervisor, said Oregon law defines physical harassment as “offensive physical touching.” That includes such adolescent antics as “wet-willies,” “wedgies,” “swirlies,” “noogies” and all other forms of “Three Stooges” behavior, Chapman said.

According to David, the two boys were in line at a local deli when Matthew jokingly made an embarrassing remark to the female clerk about David. In retaliation, David counterattacked with the “titty-twister,” the 15-year-old said. “It’s a thing of camaraderie,” David said. “If he’s going to assume our friendship is on that level, then so am I.”

A lawyer hired by the 15-year-old’s family called the juvenile court’s actions “Orwellian.” “They call this ‘baby assault,’” said Michael Kellington, a criminal defense attorney in Medford, hired by the family. Even Bobby Cox said she was surprised to hear that her husbands’ call to Gold Hill police resulted in court time for the boy. “Nobody informed me it would be a full-blown trial,” she said.

According to Kellington, the incident was blown out of proportion in part because David’s mother refused to let him show up for an initial hearing in juvenile court. Christine Alford, David’s mother, said she did not let her son attend the hearing because she had seen photos of teenagers in handcuffs on the county’s Web site. Kellington said that Alford’s refusal to let David go upped the ante and brought down “unfair, Draconian measures” upon her son. What should have been a discussion between first-time-offender and a representative of the juvenile justice system became a court trial.

“The mom is understandably fearful,” said Kellington. “You shouldn’t retaliate for the decision of a parent upon the child.” Chapman, the juvenile probation supervisor, said the mother should have known better. “‘Hearing’ doesn’t mean ‘taking into custody,’” he said. “When we take someone into custody, we don’t make appointments. If there’s a consequence for not coming in informally, well, that’s one they chose.”


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/08/2005 at 08:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Politically-Incorrect •  
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Congress Screws Up Technology

You may all have heard that Daylight Savings Time (DST) will be extended by a month in the Fall and another month in the Spring. The bill is set to be signed by President Bush this week. What you may not know is it is going to screw up everything from computers to VCR’s to DVR’s to cell phones in the spring of 2007. Why? They are all hard-coded with DST start and stop dates. It’s going to be a freaking mess in March of 2007 ....

NEW YORK (AP)—When daylight-saving time starts earlier than usual in the United States come 2007, your VCR or DVD recorder could start recording shows an hour late. Cell phone companies could give you an extra hour of free weekend calls, and people who depend on online calendars may find themselves late for appointments. An energy bill President Bush is to sign Monday would start daylight time three weeks earlier and end it a week later as an energy-saving measure. And that has technologists worried about software and gadgets that now compensate for daylight time based on a schedule unchanged since 1987.

“It is unfortunately going to add a little bit of complexity to consumers,” said Reid Sullivan, vice president of the entertainment group at Panasonic Consumer Electronics Co. “In some cases, depending on the product, they may have to manually increase or decrease the time.”

The upcoming transition evokes memories of Y2K, the Year 2000 rollover that forced programmers to adjust software and other systems that, relying on two digits for the year, never took the 21st century into account.

“It wouldn’t be a society-wide catastrophe, but there would be a problem if nothing’s done about it or we try to move too quickly,” said Dave Thewlis, executive director of a group that promotes standards for calendar software.

Newer VCRs and DVD recorders have built-in calendars to automatically adjust for daylight time. Users would have to override them, switching to “manual” to ensure shows continue to record correctly. Computers with Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating systems would need to obtain updates. Though most affected applications would likely be taken care of by the Microsoft fix, calendar systems will need to be checked to ensure that appointments already entered get properly adjusted.

Some electric utilities have advanced meters to adjust rates based on peak and non-peak hours, and studies would be required to determine if any modifications are needed. The telecommunications industry, meanwhile, must ensure that its clocks are properly adjusted to bill customers properly. Adding to the complications is the fact that many computer programs now treat U.S. and Canadian time zones as the same. If Canada doesn’t adopt the new dates, too, Windows, calendars and other software would have to learn additional zones.


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/08/2005 at 08:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
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Canadian Humor

There are at least five jokes in this story. See if you can find all of them ....

Americans Didn’t Flock To Canada After Bush Win

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians can put away those extra welcome mats—it seems Americans unhappy about the result of last November’s presidential election have decided to stay at home after all. In the days after President Bush won a second term, the number of U.S. citizens visiting Canada’s main immigration Web site shot up sixfold, prompting speculation that unhappy Democrats would flock north.

But official statistics show the number of Americans actually applying to live permanently in Canada fell in the six months after the election. On the face of it this is not good news—Canada is one of the few major nations seeking to attract immigrants—but Immigration Minister Joe Volpe was philosophical.

“We’ll take talent from wherever it is resident in the world. I was absolutely elated to see the number of hits and then my staff said ‘You know what? A hit on the Internet is after all just a hit’,” he told Reuters on Thursday. “I guess I’m happy Republicans and Democrats have found a way to live together in peace and in harmony,” he said.

Canada generally tilts more to the social and political left than the United States. Data from the main Canadian processing center in Buffalo, NY shows that in the six months up to the U.S. election there were 16,266 applications from people seeking to live in Canada, a figure that fell to 14,666 for the half year after the vote. A spokeswoman for Canada’s federal immigration ministry declined to speculate in the reasons for the drop. Toby Condliffe, who heads the Canadian chapter of Democrats Abroad, did have an explanation of sorts.

“I can only assume the Americans who checked out the Web site subsequently checked out our winter temperatures and further took note that the National Hockey League was being locked out and had second thoughts,” he told Reuters. Last year, Canada, which has a population of about 32 million, accepted 235,808 immigrants from all over the world.


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/08/2005 at 07:15 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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Monday Morning New Bytes

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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/08/2005 at 06:06 AM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs •  
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The Bear Facts

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Steve Breen, The San Diego Union-Tribune


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/08/2005 at 05:58 AM   
Filed Under: • International •  
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calendar   Sunday - August 07, 2005

Suds Trivia

How many of you can name the device the young lady is using to open the cans?
10 points extra if you have one around the house or in your car!
This technology has been improved twice again since this ad. How?


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/07/2005 at 11:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
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Are We Hungry Yet?

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about food in America ....


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/07/2005 at 11:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Fine-Dining •  
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Asshat Of The Day Award

Ya gotta hand it to this clown, he has an abundance of chutzpah (even if he ain’t Jewish) ....

imageimage(DAILY MAIL - UK)—An extreme Muslim cleric whose family have been living on benefits in Britain for 20 years says it would not be ‘fair’ to deport him. Speaking after the Prime Minister announced his clampdown, father-of-seven Sheik Omar Bakri said: “I have wives, children, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law. It would be hard on my family if I was deported.”

Since Syrian-born Bakri settled in Britain, he and his extended family have raked in benefits amounting to at least £300,000. He is registered disabled because of an injury to his leg during his childhood, and was recently supplied with a £31,000 Ford Galaxy under the Motability scheme. Bakri, who lives in a £200,000 home in North London, tops up his £250-a-week benefit payments with an extra £50 incapacity allowance.

He has praised the September 11 terrorists as ‘magnificent’, called Israel ‘a cancer’ and said homosexuals should be ‘thrown from Big Ben’. In January, he declared that Britain had become a ‘land of war’, and called on Muslims to unite behind Al Qaeda. He has supported suicide bombings and urged his followers to kill non-Muslims ‘ wherever, whenever’. He also claimed he has no wish to stay in Britain, but his family would suffer if he was deported.

“If they want to change the law and say that people who are here must live within the framework of those rules, then that is fine,” said the 45-year-old cleric. “But they cannot punish people by backdating it for 20 years or so. That is not a smart or fair system. Tony Blair should have charged me years ago if that was the case. He did not because I had done nothing wrong.”

This is one sheet-head who towel is wrapped a wee bit too tightly around his headbone. I say drop him in the channel and tell his sorry ass to start swimming. Fwance could use a few more like him.


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/07/2005 at 07:40 AM   
Filed Under: • OutrageousRoPMA •  
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Pirates In My Neighborhood?

DANG! I got a real live movie pirate right here in my neighborhood - at least he’s a few miles north of me .... and I didn’t even know it. The pirate in question, is a 19-year-old teenager who has been making “cam-jobs” of first run movies. These “cammers”, as they are called, secretly film movies with hidden cameras and upload them to the internet “warez” groups. This kid, however, is probably going to jail .... for filming (at least what I heard) are two really lousy movies ....

(AP) --A Missouri teenager is the latest to be indicted by a San Jose federal grand jury in a string of prosecutions involving members of a secretive computer-piracy group. Curtis Salisbury, 19, of St. Charles, Mo., was charged Wednesday with using a video recorder to make copies of newly released movies and uploading them to a computer network for distribution. He is the first person to be prosecuted under the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which was signed by President Bush in April.

Salisbury is charged with conspiracy and copyright infringement for copying two movies, ``The Perfect Man’’ and ``Bewitched.’’ The films were then distributed through ``warez’’ sites on the Internet—secretive, member-only sites where illegal copies of software and pirated entertainment are available for download. He is also accused of downloading ``Madagascar’’ and computer programs sold by Sony and Adobe Systems. He is scheduled to appear before U.S. Magistrate Patricia V. Trumbull in San Jose Aug. 19 at 1:30 p.m.

The maximum penalty faced by Salisbury if convicted is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for counts of conspiracy and violating the copyright act, and three years and $250,000 for a count of unauthorized recording of movies. Warez is a source of illegally copied computer programs and, more recently, first-run movies and DVDs. It was targeted by the FBI in a two-year undercover Operation Copycat investigation and a larger investigation called Operation Site Down.

In the argot of warez members—pronounced ``wares’’ and derived from the word software—Salisbury is accused of being a ``cammer.’’ Cammers are specialized warez members who record first-run movies with concealed camcorders and then place them on Internet servers after removing data that could be traced. Cammers are entitled to three movie downloads from the illegal sites for every uploaded movie. The indictment states that Salisbury also discussed payment with an unnamed individual.

Actually, Hollywood probably loses a few million each year, at most, from lost ticket sales caused by these kids, if even that much. The real problem is foreigners who rip DVD’s and sell them at discount prices in Singapore, Hong Kong and other foreign cities and cost Hollywood several billions of dollars each year. Hollywood pressured the Bush Administration to go after these kids because they’re too damned lazy to go after the real criminals overseas. I say “real criminals”, but the real crooks in this scenario are the Hollywood producers who keep putting out worse and worse crap every year and then giving themselves awards for doing so .... and they wonder why people aren’t going to the movies?


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/07/2005 at 07:11 AM   
Filed Under: • CrimeHollywood •  
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Russian Submariners Rescued

Earlier today, the Russian sub that has been snarled for several days on antenna cables at a depth of 600 feet off the Kamchatka Peninsula was finally liberated from its entanglement by a British underwater, remote-controlled vehicle. The crew of seven was fast running out of oxygen. It’s amazing what nations can do when they cooperate. Those who died on the Kursk years ago would probably agree ....

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, Russia (AP) - Seven submarine crew members trapped for nearly three days under the Pacific Ocean were rescued Sunday after a British remote-controlled vehicle cut away the undersea cables that had snarled the vessel. The seven crew members, whose oxygen supplies had been dwindling amid underwater temperatures in the mid-40s, appeared to be in satisfactory condition, naval spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said. The seven were being examined by ship medics, he said.

The sub surfaced late Sunday afternoon, some three days after becoming stranded in 600 feet of water off the Pacific Coast on Thursday. “The rescue operation has ended,” Rear Adm. Vladimir Pepelyayev, deputy head of the navy’s general staff, said in televised comments. Russian authorities had hoped that the British unmanned submersible could help free the sub and avoid losing a sub crew as they did with the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank almost exactly five years ago, killing all 118 aboard.

In sharp contrast to the August 2000 Kursk disaster, when authorities held off asking for help until hope was nearly exhausted, Russian military officials quickly sought help from U.S. and British authorities. Earlier Sunday, a British remote-controlled Super Scorpio cut away the cables that had snarled the vessel in Beryozovaya Bay, about 10 miles off the east coast of the Kamchatka peninsula. The United States also dispatched a crew and three underwater vehicles to Kamchatka, but they never left the port.

Officials said the Russian submarine was participating in a combat training exercise and got snarled on an underwater antenna assembly that is part of a coastal monitoring system. The system is anchored with a weight of about 66 tons, according to news reports.

Russia’s cash-strapped navy apparently lacks rescue vehicles capable of operating at the depth where the sub was stranded, and officials say it was too deep for divers to reach or the crew to swim out on their own. An earlier attempt to drag the vessel to shallower waters failed when cables detached after pulling it some 65 yards.

The submarine’s problems indicated that promises by President Vladimir Putin to improve the navy’s equipment apparently have had little effect. He was criticized for his slow response to the Kursk crisis and reluctance to accept foreign assistance.


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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/07/2005 at 06:02 AM   
Filed Under: • International •  
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Sunday Morning Funnies

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Posted by The Skipper   United States  on 08/07/2005 at 05:51 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-MedicineHumor •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
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