Math is hard

The Manchester Evening News, a British rag is reporting a lottery scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale “because players couldn’t understand it.”Apparently your average Brit is well-qualified for a job at Verizon: Tina Farrell, from Levenshulme, called Camelot after failing to win with several cards.The 23-year-old, who said she had left school without a maths …

Dan Rather Reports: the trouble with touch screens

From HDNet: Dan Rather Reports presents conclusive evidence of the failure of touch screen voting machines across the country. The episode, “The Trouble with Touch Screens”, is an entire hour devoted to new information on this story. From scientists involved in testing the equipment, to manufacturers in third world countries who shipped these defective voting …

Conservatives in their native environment

The Independent‘s Johann Hari goes on a cruise with readers of the National Review: A red-faced man who looks like an egg with a moustache glued on grumbles, ” If the Germans think they can take responsibility for the world, I don’t care about German courts. Bomb them.” I begin to witter on about the …

You fucked with the wrong marine

Ex-Marine, 72, fights off pickpocket: Bill Barnes says he was scratching off a losing $2 lottery ticket inside a gas station when he felt a hand slip into his front-left pants pocket, where he had $300 in cash. He immediately grabbed the person’s wrist with his left hand and started throwing punches with his right, …

Ladies and gentlemen, start your bicycles

Paris is about to get what could be the world’s largest Yellow Bike Program(ish): On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance …

Why Asian Muslims didn’t explode

After the cartoon fiasco, Karim Raslan of the The New York Times wrote Why Asian Muslims didn’t explode. He doesn’t really answer why, but he does cite several cultural differences. Some of hsi strongest rhetoric: Whether we are conservative or liberal, many of us are appalled and angered by the stupidity and insensitivity of the …

where the money went

Florida university discovers misplaced $275,000: Three University of South Florida officials were fired after the school discovered $275,000 in misplaced checks and cash scattered throughout an office. Nearly half the money at the school’s English Language Institute — $133,647 — was in checks up to 10 years old and could not be deposited, said university spokeswoman …

pilot dumps drunk man on island

don’t piss off monarch air: The unidentified man swore at crew and passengers after being refused a bottle of wine on the four-hour flight from Manchester to Tenerife. He became so abusive the fed-up pilot diverted the Monarch Airlines Airbus to Porto Santo island off West Africa. After the plane touched down, the man was …

Marquette U doesn’t believe in free speech

A dental student at Marquette University got in a bit of trouble over a blog posting. I’ll let the Marquette Warrior sum it up: But this is the first case we know of (there probably have been many we don’t know of) when a precipitous and emotional reaction from University administrators led to a punishment …