(From Pharyngula.)

Amazingly the husband, Ronald Long, was trying to use a .22-caliber pistol to shoot a hole through the wall in the couple’s home to enable them to run a wire through to the television.

Link.

Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion when they can make that choice for themselves.

From a decision by the Supreme Court on Price v Massachusetts, via a post on Daylight Atheism about certain religious sects which advocate against receiving medical help when ill. The post is a good read, but I specifically love the passage.

At I Google for You, I will Google for You. You tell me what you’re searching for. I’ll go out and find it, while you go about your daily work. When I’m done, I’ll send you a link to the result page.

And later…

# Is this an April Fool’s Day joke?

No, this is an innovative Web 2.0 start-up.

Of course it must be real then…

(from Machinist)

Recently, defenseman Kurtis Foster broke his leg getting pushed from behind in a race to prevent an icing call. In hockey, if a puck travels across two red lines, it is considered iced; play stops and the puck is brought back down the ice for a faceoff in the offending team’s goal. Read more here.

In college hockey, the puck is considered iced when it crosses the second red line (the goal line.) In the NHL, however, the puck must be touched by the defending team to be called, so if a player from an offending team touches it first, the icing is called off. This is what Foster was attempting to do when he broke his leg.

This has led to calls (not the first time) that the NHL institute no-touch icing, with the icing call being made as the puck crosses the red line. Hockey traditionalists like the battle to the puck, but reformers point out that it can lead to injuries and preventing the icing call hardly ever affects a play. I would like to see no-touch icing implemented.

There is a Facebook group set up in support of this. Click here.

How does it work?

Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality

Link