Cross-dressing Teen Kicked out of School

In Georgia, 16-year-old Jonathan Escobar withdrew from his high school because school officials would not allow him to wear women's clothing (skinny-jeans, wigs, makeup, stilettos etc...). School officials accuse him of disrupting school functions and basically told him to dress more manly or be forced to withdraw from school.

"On his third day at the school, during which Escobar was wearing pink wig, he approached by a school official and told that his choice was to either stop dressing in such a feminine manner or consider home-schooling.

Citing a school dress code that prohibits students from wearing clothing that may "contribute to a disruption of school functions," the school stands by its decision to confront Escobar on his outfits, The Atlanta Journal Constitution says.

Meanwhile, a student group on Facebook called "Support Jonathan" has grown to over 1,000 members. Organizers have printed bright pink T-shirts emblazoned with those words which many students plan to wear to school to show their displeasure, the paper said.

As for Escobar, he sees the school's edict as a an infringement on his creative expression.

"If I can't express myself, I won't go to school," he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "I want to get the message out there that because this is who I am, I can't get an education."

2 Idiots climb over zoo fence...get mauled by tiger

2 men scaled the two safety fences at the Calgary Zoo on Monday. Surprise, surprise- they were mauled by a Siberian Tiger. This seems like it should be in he book, "The Darwin Awards" where people get hurt because of their own dumb actions.

"Officials said two men scaled the zoo's 8-foot perimeter fence, which also is covered in barbed wire, about 1 a.m. Monday morning.

The two 27-year-old men, who were not identified, then headed toward the tiger cage, where they scaled a safety fence meant to keep the public away.

The two men never entered the cage, but stood in between the safety fence and another fence meant to "keep the tigers in" when they startled a 2-year-old Siberan tiger named Vitali.

Vitali "has a fairly significant armament at his disposal: very sharp claws," said Dr. Sandie Black, the zoo's head veterinarian.

Calgary Police Department Acting Staff Sgt. Rick Halford said authorities were investigating the case and will decide whether to pursue charges against either man."

Woman Mauled by Pet Bear

Here's another stupid story. A woman, whose husband deals exotic animals (on an expired license) was killed by a bear.

"A woman was mauled to death by a captive 160-kilogramme black bear in front of her children as she cleaned the animal's cage, officials said Monday...Walz went into the bear's 4.5 metre by 4.5 metre steel and concrete cage about 5 pm Sunday, (local time).

Walz threw a shovelful of dog food to one side of the cage to distract the bear while she cleaned the other side, Conway said.

At some point the bear turned on her and attacked.

Her children and the neighbour's children saw the attack and summoned help, and the neighbour shot and killed the bear while it was on top of Walz, Conway said.

"Why this woman chose to go in the same area that the bear was in is beyond me. It's a fatal mistake," he said."These things are not tame animals, they're wild animals."

Owners of wild animals typically have a two-section cage, allowing them to isolate the animal behind a locked gate while they clean the other part, Conway said.

Michael Walz's license to keep and sell exotic animals expired in June 2008, Conway said."

I think it is so dumb how people keep wild animals captive and are shocked when things go bad. I cant imagine what kind of people would even want a bear as a pet...

Sad statistics about crime and those with disabilities

A government study has recently shown that people with disabilities are more likely to be victims of violent crime (50% more) than people without disabilities

"The first national study of its kind found that a wide range of disabled people -- including blind, deaf, developmentally disabled, and others with physical and mental limitations -- were victims of assaults, rapes and robberies in 716,000 cases in 2007."

"The study found that people with cognitive disabilities such as mental retardation, developmental disabilities and cerebral palsy represented the largest group of victims.

Simple assaults accounted for about two-thirds of the crimes against disabled people in the study, which tallied 476,000 simple assaults, 114,000 aggravated assaults, 79,000 robberies, and 47,000 rapes or sexual assaults"

growable meat?

weird:

"A pioneering group of scientists are working to grow real animal protein in the laboratory, which they not only claim is better for animal welfare, but actually healthier, both for people and the planet. It may sound like science fiction, but this technology to create in-vitro meat could be changing global diets within ten years."

scientists are working on growing meat in labs that have less fat and better fatty acid ratio, so it would improve our diets. It could also prevent the spread of things like mad cow disease. This new approach to meat production may also be beneficial to the environment some claim.

"We could reduce the environmental footprint of meat, which currently contributes more to global warming than the entire transportation sector," says Matheny.

How it is made...

"Preliminary results from a study by Hanna Tuomisto, at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, suggest that cultured meat would reduce the carbon emissions of meat production by more than 80 percent."

"In-vitro meat is made from samples of animals conventionally slaughtered. For example, "pork" is made from pig ovaries retrieved from slaughterhouses, which are fertilized with pig semen, transforming them into embryos. They are then placed in a nutrient solution, where they grow and develop."

It's a long way from the popular image of animals wandering round the farmyard in the sunshine, but then so is modern intensive farming. The factor that could take the research from the lab to the store and into refrigerators around the world is its remarkable commercial potential.

According to New Harvest, meat is already estimated to be a $1 trillion global market, and demand is expected to double by 2050. With concerns about health, animal welfare and the environment growing the appeal of in vitro meat is obvious.

Fossil found to human ancestor

The remains of man's 4.4 million year old ancestor have been found in Ethiopia. Nicknamed Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus, is the oldest direct descendant of man found since the discovery of "Molly".

"Scientists believe that the fossilized remains, which were discovered in 1994 in Ethiopia and studied for years by an international team of researchers, support beliefs that humans and chimpanzees evolved separately from a common ancestor.

"This is not an ordinary fossil. It's not a chimp. It's not a human. It shows us what we used to be," said project co-director Tim White, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed "Ardi," is a hominid species that lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Aramis, Ethiopia. That makes Ardi more than a million years older than the celebrated Lucy, the partial ape-human skeleton found in Africa in 1974.

Ardi's 125-piece skeleton includes the skull, teeth, pelvis, hands and feet bones. Scientists say the data collected from Ardi's bone fragments over the past 17 years push back the story of human evolution further than previously believed."

I am really interested in human evolution, and I really would love to see what scientist think we will look like in a few million years.

Man sues bank of America over poor customer service

The title I gave this post does not due this article any justice in describing how insane this situation is.

Dalton Chiscolm of New York is suing Bank of America for 1,784 billion, trillion dollars. I have never even heard of such an amount of money before, let alone for one man to be expecting that much money to be deposited into his bank account:

"Chiscolm in August sued the largest U.S. bank and its board, demanding that "1,784 billion, trillion dollars" be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

"Incomprehensible," U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

"He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a 'Spanish woman,'" the judge wrote. "He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers." "

""These are the kind of numbers you deal with only on a cosmic scale," said Sylvain Cappell, New York University's Silver Professor at the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences. "If he thinks Bank of America has branches on every planet in the cosmos, then it might start to make some sense. Judge Chin gave Chiscolm until October 23 to better explain the basis for his claims, or else see his complaint dismissed."

I'm just glad that no one is actually taking this nut serious.