A soft-spoken 14-year-old’s nose piercing has landed her a suspension from school and forced her into the middle of a fight over her constitutional right to exercise her religion. Ariana Iacono says she just wants to be a normal teenager at Clayton High School, about 15 miles southeast of Raleigh. She has been suspended since last week because her nose ring violates the Johnston County school system’s dress code.
“I think it’s kind of stupid for them to kick me out of school for a nose piercing,” she said. “It’s in the (constitution’s) First Amendment for me to have freedom of religion.”
Iacono and her mother, Nikki, belong to the Church of Body Modification, a small group unfamiliar to rural North Carolina, but one with a clergy, a statement of beliefs and a formal process for accepting new members.
If nothing else this has brought to our attention a new crackpot church. Huzzah!
Today’s Guests:
Vanessa Fox, Founder, NineByBlue.com
Roger Chang, Senior Producer, Revision3
Andrew Eisner, Director of Content and Community, Retrevo
The Topics:
The New Twitter
IDF 2010
Intel’s New Wares
Steve Jobs, Ninja
The Killer Kindle Ad
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Peshawar: Printers in this city near the Afghan border say they have produced thousands of fake voter registration cards at the request of Afghan politicians for use in that country’s parliamentary elections on Saturday.
The cards, some shown to The Associated Press, add to evidence that fraud could undermine the elections and further destabilize the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai…
Three printers in a dimly lit section of Peshawar’s Storytellers’ Bazaar told the AP that Afghan election candidates had traveled to the walled heart of the ancient city about an hour from the border and provided them with samples of Afghan voter registration cards.
The printers said they had produced thousands of cards, along with plastic sheaths to laminate them, for roughly 23 cents apiece…
Does it ever matter who’s in the White House when it comes to political delusions like nation-building?
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Cockroaches appear to carry a secret weapon that can protect people against deadly superbugs, new research has found.
Dr. Naveed Khan and his team tested mashed up cockroach brains against the E. coli bacteria that cause meningitis and MRSA, the staph bacteria that has become resistant to antibiotics.
A night in a Petri dish together killed 90 per cent of the bacteria, Khan told the Star on Tuesday. The insect parts had no effect on human cells, however.
“Some of these insects live in the filthiest places known to man,” he said. Because cockroaches can survive the loss of a limb, and the brains of cockroaches are the most protected parts of their bodies, researchers had decided to look there for their answers.
Tests also examined the nervous systems of locusts for superbug-fighting power, after realizing locusts were unscathed while soldiers fighting in countries such as Afghanistan were becoming infected with bacteria that resisted treatment.
“What’s exciting is that most research has generally been done on plants,” said Khan.
Found by Obtuser.
 The photo CNN cropped before using it for their article |
Britain’s advertising watchdog has censured an Italian ice cream manufacturer over an advertisement depicting a heavily pregnant nun that appeared ahead of a papal visit to the UK.
The ad featuring the strapline “immaculately conceived” over an image of the expectant sister spooning from a tub of Antonio Federici ice cream was “likely to cause widespread offense,” the Advertising Standards Authority ruled…
The watchdog rejected the manufacturer’s claims that it was “using gentle humor” to convey the message that “ice cream is our religion…”
“We concluded that to use such an image in a light hearted way to advertise ice cream was likely to cause serious offence to readers, particularly those who practised the Roman Catholic faith.”
The Antonio Federici ad is the company’s second invoking religious imagery to fall foul of the ASA. An advertisement featuring a nun and a priest eyeing each other for a kiss was banned in July last year…
It said it had also been banned from showing another advertisement showing two men dressed as priests apparently on the brink of sharing a kiss. The ASA has not published any ruling on the ad.
A statement from Antonio Federici said the company was seeking to relaliate by securing a series of billboard advertisements along the route the pope’s motorcade is expected to take during his visit to London.
Har!
This should make it all better.
The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten its image with a new name: corn sugar.
The Corn Refiners Association applied Tuesday to the federal government for permission to use the name on food labels. The group hopes a new name will ease confusion about the sweetener, which is used in soft drinks, bread, cereal and other products.
Americans’ consumption of corn syrup has fallen to a 20-year low on consumer concerns that it is more harmful or more likely to cause obesity than ordinary sugar, perceptions for which there is little scientific evidence.
However, some scientists have linked consumption of full-calorie soda – the vast majority of which is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup – to obesity.
[…]
There’s a new online marketing campaign at and on television. Two new commercials try to alleviate shopper confusion, showing people who say they now understand that “whether it’s corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can’t tell the difference. Sugar is sugar.”
Kind of a baffling “advertisement.”
That’s what apparently happened to Luke Angel, a British teen who sent a curse-laden message to the White House directed at President Obama. “The individual had sent an email to the White House which was full of abusive and threatening language,” a police spokesperson told the British newspaper, Bedfordshire On Sunday.
Officers visited Angel at his home in Silsoe, a town in Bedfordshire, England, during which time the teen admitted to sending the e-mail, although he couldn’t remember what he wrote.
To clarify he called Obama a pr*ck in an email to the White House. We all knew Obama was thin-skinned, but this is ridiculous. My question is since this is no credible or incredible threat against the President, isn’t this a waste of resources and time? And if it were a threat of some sort why is the FBI rather than the Secret Service handling it? So many unanswered questions. It is so dumb that I am yet to be convinced that it is not some hoax.
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
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