Cuppacafe

OK, I found him, what do I win?

These pictures were taken by me with my cell phone @ JFK airport the night we dropped Dylan off to head for Cairo.

I couldn't resist myself.

The Perfessor

I'm the Deputy Democrat Registrar of Voters in my hometown, so voting is something of a serious issue to me. Needless to say, when Walt showed me this story, it simply made me shutter. Apparently in Harris County, TX, there was something of a small blaze that destroyed the county's entire inventory of 10,000 electronic voting machines still burned.

Houston Fire Department spokesman Patrick Trahan said arson investigators were at the scene of the fire, but no cause has been determined.

The three-alarm blaze started about 4:15 a.m. at the football field-size warehouse the county uses to store its election equipment. Firefighters extinguished the flames about four hours later.

No injuries were reported.

The county’s voting machines, including eSlate equipment, were stored at the nearly 27,000-square foot facility, county officials said.

Early voting begins Oct. 18. Election Day is Nov. 2.

You can read more about this story here, or view the video after the jump.

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...well, except perhaps the people who use his name to denounce others to achieve their own personal, agenda.

A little background; Fred Phelps, and the asshats who follow him as members of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church apparently hates gays so much that they regularly protest at the funerals of servicemen and women who have been killed overseas (defending the right for these maroons to be douche-bags). Classy, right?

Well, they recently got it in their heads to protest gays at the International Comicbook convention in San Diego, the biggest comic con in the world. Well, unbeknownst to these misguided folks they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. You see they were going up against folks who think nothing about dressing up as robots, magical anime girls, Trekkies, Jedi and, well furries, than then walk around in public.

Needless to say, the good folks of San Diego's Comic-Con were well prepared for the arrival of the Westbror protesters with their own special brand of superhumans where they counter-shouted "WHAT DO WE WANT?" "GAY SEX!" "WHEN DO WE WANT IT?" "NOW!" while brandishing ironic (and some very sincere) signs.

The Westboro protesters were not only not prepared, but simply didn't know what hit them.

Yeah, that's right, most of the times these yabos show up, encounters with them degenerate into an angry shouting match, which just gives more air time, and (to their way of thinking) bolsters their cause.

Hopefully this encounter will serve as a model for future encounters (assuming that the Westboro clowns can ever recover what little "dignity" they might have left), and if they ever show up somewhere again, they will be likewise humiliated.

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So, in a continuation of our celebration of Independence Day, we'd like to harken back to an issue we first became aware of while watching The West Wing. In the episode Institutional Memory from the seventh season, Toby (who is under incitement for revealing the presence of a military space shuttle in order to save a trio of stranded astronauts), is sitting at home and had apparently found a typo in the Constitution of the United States.

Yep, a typo in one of our most important documents.

What's the big deal you ask, well apparently, the typo just might change the nature of the War Powers Act...

Amerndment 5 (including the Takings Clause):
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Now I don't really know what all of this means, but, well I do find it interesting.

Now you can all go back to stuffing your faces and drinking 'til you puke.

The Perfessor

Shakespeare told us that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, well, apparently while here in the U.S. parents get to name their children anything that makes them (the parents) happy. Well, as it turns out in the rest of the world, these types of naming rights simply don't exist, as many of these countries have this kind of freedom.

Sweden
Enacted in 1982, the Naming law in Sweden was originally created to prevent non-noble families from giving their children noble names, but a few changes to the law have been made since then.

Germany
In Germany, you must be able to tell the gender of the child by the first name, and the name chosen must not be negatively affect the well being of the child. Also, you can not use last names or the names of objects or products as first names.

New Zealand
New Zealand's Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act of 1995 doesn't allow people to name their children anything that "might cause offence to a reasonable person; or [...] is unreasonably long; or without adequate justification, [...] is, includes, or resembles, an official title or rank." Officials at the registrar of births have successfully talked parents out of some more embarrassing names.

Denmark
Denmark's very strict Law on Personal Names is in place to protect children from having odd names that suit their parents' fancy. To do this, parents can choose from a list of 7,000 pre-approved names, some for girls, some for boys.

For the rest of this article, as well as other rules and regs the world over go here.

The Perfessor

This just in, apparently Tut, the boy King who has so captured the imagination of the world is missing his winky...yeah, you read that right someone stole Tut's Tutter.

Did someone sabotage the Egyptian king's mummy to hide his less-than endowed genitalia? A new report from The New Scientist presents the possibility of a anatomical conspiracy.

Earlier this year, scientists speculated the cause of famed King Tutankhamen's death to be due to a bone disorder and a bad case of malaria, but just last week a group of German researchers overruled that diagnosis. Instead, they say the 19-year-old pharaoh suffered from sickle-cell anemia, a genetic abnormality in red blood cells that ultimately causes organ failure.

Needless to say, the fact that he is both dead, and, well, dickless, isn't even the worst of it...

While researching the new prognosis for The New Scientist,journalist Jo Marchant uncovered another proposed ailment of Tut's. A letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that Tut could also have suffered from Antley-Bixler syndrome, a genetic mutation that yields strange physical effects, such as elongated skulls and even under-developed genitalia. (Some researchers support the theory and use artistic depictions of Tut and his relatives, often show with elongated faces, as proof.)

Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass dismisses the theory, claiming that Tut was, in fact, well-developed. However, as Marchant points out, Tut's penis is no longer attached to the body. After some digging, Marchant was able to confirm that the king's genitalia was attached to the mummy during its first unwrapping in 1922, meaning the postmortem castration likely occurred in modern times. Interestingly, Tut's penis was declared missing in 1968 until a CT scan discovered it hidden in the sand that surrounded the mummy. (Penises, Brains and Skulls: The Most Amazing Stolen Body Parts)

This evidence has lead some to believe that Tut's penis was swapped sometime after his body was embalmed, suggesting a conspiracy existed to save him from embarrassment of the locker room variety, even in the afterlife.

Don't worry though, our pal Stephen Colbert is on the case.

The Perfessor