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A man who was fed up with paying massive bank charges decided to give one of the high street giants a taste of its own medicine.

When Royal Bank of Scotland refused to refund £3,400 charges that Declan Purcell believed he was owed, he sent in the bailiffs.

Stunned customers at his branch of RBS watched as debt collectors seized four computers, two fax machines and a till filled with cash.

The branch manager was told that the items would be sold unless RBS came up with the money owed to Mr Purcell.

Only when the manager gave an undertaking that the debt would be paid did the bailiffs leave.

Mr Purcell said: “I think the bank was pretty shocked when the bailiffs went in. But my view is that this is exactly what they would have done to me.”

A drunk is stumbling through the woods when he happens upon a preacher baptising folk in the river. He ambles down to the water’s edge then trips and falls down before the holy man.

Almost overcome by the smell of alcohol, the preacher pipes up: “Lord have mercy on your drunken soul, brother – are you ready to find Jesus?” Out of his skull, the drunk agrees: “Yes, I am!” he replies. And with that, the preacher grabs him and dunks him under the water.

Moments later, he drags the boozer back up: “Brother, have you found Jesus?” “No, preacher,” stammers the drunk, “I have not!”. Stunned by this, the preacher sends the drunk down again… this time leaving him there a little longer.

Shortly he drags him back up again: “Rid your soul of the poison, brother – have you found Jesus?” Gasping for air, the drunk splutters a reply: “No, preacher – I have not!” At his wit’s end, the preacher sends the drunk down one last time.

A full minute later, he pulls him out: “For the love of God,” shouts the preacher, “tell me you’ve found Jesus!” Coughing his lungs up, the drunk wipes his eyes and turns to the preacher: “You sure this is where he fell in?”

A man walked into a very high-tech bar. As he sat down on a stool, he noticed that the bartender was a robot. The robot clicked to attention and asked, “Sir, what will you have?” The man thought a moment, then replied, “A martini, please”. The robot clicked a couple of times and mixed the best martini the man had ever had.

The robot then asked, “Sir, what is your IQ?” The man answered, “Oh, about 164.” The robot then proceeded to discuss the theory of relativity, inter-stellar space travel, the latest medical breakthroughs, etc. The man was most impressed. He left the bar, but thought he would try different tactic.

A while later he returned and took a seat. Again, the robot clicked and asked what he would have. “A martini, please.” Again it was superb.

The robot again asked, “What is your IQ, sir?” This time the man answered, “Oh, about 100″. So the robot started discussing NASCAR racing, bass fishing and what to expect the Steelers to do this weekend. The guy had to try it one more time. So he left, returned and took a stool…

Again a martini, and the question “What is your IQ?” This time the man drawled out “Uh… ’bout 50.” The robot clicked, then leaned close and very slowly asked, “A-r-e y-o-u-r p-e-o-p-l-e r-e-a-l-l-y g-o-i-n-g t-o n-o-m-i-n-a-t-e H-i-l-l-a-r-y?”

The EFF’s Cindy Cohn says,

Have you had any difficulties entering or leaving the United States? If so, EFF would like to hear from you.

After focusing attention on the Department of Homeland Security’s secret Automated Targeting System (ATS), we’re keen to uncover and document its effect on the law-abiding public. We’re interested in hearing from any travelers who have had repeated problems at the border or have been told by government agents that they are on a “list” or that there is some unexplained “problem” that needs to be resolved.

Please share your story with us by writing travel@eff.org and providing as much detail as possible. We will treat all responses confidentially and may contact you to follow-up.

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A Dutchman dressed as the unpredictable master criminal The Joker from Batman managed to get himself a national ID card, despite supposedly stringent new rules which outlaw grins, funny faces, and head coverings from passport pics.

To avoid confusing facial recognition scanners, travellers in Europe have been ordered not to look too happy in their passport photographs. Eyes must also be open and clearly visible, and there must be no sunglasses, tinted glasses, or hair across the eyes. In the Netherlands, these rules were introduced last August.

But a 35-year-old man from the Dutch town of Hellevoetsluis decided to paint his face black and dress up as Batman’s goofy trickster-thief rival and was astounded that his new appearance was accepted without a hitch. Initially, the man was asked not to wear a hat, but when he argued it was because of religious beliefs, he was allowed to leave it on.

The incident has stirred quite a controversy among Dutch politicians. Interior minister Johan Remkes now has to explain how this could have happened. “We don’t think there are many people dressed up as clowns in this country,” his department said.

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A public treasurer in the Michigan county of Alcona stands accused of embezzling tax payers out of more than $1.2m, at least part of which was used to cover costs he incurred falling for a Nigerian banking fraud.

Thomas Katona, the former Treasurer of Alcona County, was charged with nine felonies. According to the Michigan Attorney General’s office, the 56-year-old beancounter, who held his post for 13 years, also plowed $72,000 of his own money into the fraud.

County officials first suspected something was amiss late last year, when bank employees informed them Katona had sent eight payments totaling $186,500 to overseas accounts, six of which were associated with peddlers of the Nigerian scheme. He stepped down in November as authorities commenced an investigation.

They found that bank employees had warned Katona that the investment was a sham, but the treasurer ignored the warnings. An audit eventually showed that more than $1.2m was missing from county coffers. It remains unclear how much of that was paid to the scammers.

Last week a judge set Katona’s bail about $1m.

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Good lord in heaven. How dumb are these guys at Diebold?! Can you believe the United States has actually entrusted them to build a security system for the original U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights?!

After everything else… now comes this.

It was revealed in the course of last summer’s landmark virus hack of a Diebold touch-screen voting system at Princeton University that, incredibly, the company uses the same key to open every machine. It’s also an easy key to buy at any office supply store since it’s used for filing cabinets and hotel mini-bars! That is, if you’re not a poll worker who already has one from the last time you worked on an election (anybody listening down there in San Diego?).

The Princeton Diebold Virus Hack, if you’ve been living in a cave, found that a single person with 60 seconds of unsupervised access to the system, who either picked the lock (easy in 10 seconds) or had a key, could slip a vote-swapping virus onto a single machine which could then undetectably affect every other machine in the county to steal an entire election.

But the folks at Princeton who discovered the hack (after our own organization, VelvetRevolution.us, gave them the Diebold touch-screen machine on which to perform their tests) had resisted showing exactly what the key looked like in order to hold on to some semblance of security for Diebold’s Disposable Touch-Screen Voting Systems.

But guess what? Diebold didn’t bother to even have that much common sense.

This idiotic company has had a photograph of the stupid key sitting on their own website’s online store! (Screenshot at end of this article.)

Of course, they’ll only sell such keys to “Diebold account holders” apparently — or so they claim — but that’s hardly a problem. J. Alex Halderman, one of the folks who worked on the Princeton Hack and tried to keep the design of the key secret for obvious reasons, revealed Tuesday that a friend of his had found the photo of the key on Diebold’s website and discovered that was all he needed to create a working copy!

The Democratic National Committee released on Saturday a video running approximately 18 mins in length purporting to show a speech by Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton. Its authenticity could not be immediately confirmed. In fact there was some question raised as to when and where the tape had been made. Sen Clinton was shown not in typical Senate surroundings, but in a casual living room setting with the outdoors visible through a window in the background. Presumably the announcement was shot in one of Hillary’s homes, Chappaqua or Georgetown. But there is no mention on the tape of recent events, and some experts were of the opinion that the recording was old and had not been made recently.

On the tape the speaker, tentatively identified as Sen Clinton, is shown exhorting her followers and making attacks on President Bush and other US government officials. The tape ends with the threat of her own intentions to run for president, and a list of forthcoming steps that she would be taking in that direction. A CIA spokesman said while they had no specific reason to doubt that the person on the tape is in fact Hillary Rodham Clinton, they would have a higher degree of confidence in its authenticity after performing a voice and facial analysis.

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Apple’s digital rights management lock on its iPod device and iTunes software is illegal, the Consumer Ombudsman in Norway has ruled. The blow follows the news that Germany and France are joining Norway’s action against Apple.

The Norwegian Consumer Council, Forbrukerradet, lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman on behalf of Norwegian consumers claiming that the Fairplay DRM system acted against the interests of consumers. It said the fact the technology stopped songs bought from iTunes being played on any player other than an iPod broke the law in Norway.

The Ombudsman has now agreed, according to Torgeir Waterhouse, senior advisor at the Consumer Council.

“It doesn’t get any clearer than this. Fairplay is an illegal lock-in technology whose main purpose is to lock the consumers to the total package provided by Apple by blocking interoperability,” Waterhouse told OUT-LAW.COM. “For all practical purposes this means that iTunes Music Store is trying to kill off one the most important building blocks in a well functioning digital society, interoperability, in order to boost its own profits.”

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Many thanks to the tipster (named, we kid you not, Bobby Brown) who sent us this picture from the Consumer Electronics Show, where the RIAA once again proved their digital-era expertise. Either they quickly ran out of pamphlets, or this is their passive-aggressive way of demonstrating how badly they’re doing this year.

And the Award for Best Closing Sentence in a weblog entry goes to….

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Typically, many people in my line of work no longer have the title of librarian. They are called media and information specialists, or sometimes librarian technologists. The buzzword in the trade is “information literacy,” a misnomer, because what it is really about is mastering computer skills, not promoting a love of reading and books. These days, librarians measure the quality of returns in data-mining stints. We teach students how to maximize a database search, about successful retrieval rates. What usually gets lost in the scramble is a careful reading of the material.

Students are still checking out the standard research fare — the Thomas Jefferson biography, the volume of literary criticism on Jane Austen — but few read it. The library checks the books back in a day later, after the students have extracted the information vitals — usually an excerpt or two to satisfy the requirement that a certain number of works be cited in their papers.

[..]

I recently spoke with a junior who was stressed about her decreasing ability to focus on anything for longer than two minutes or so. I tried to inspire her by talking about the importance of reading as a way to train the brain. I told her that a good reader develops the same powers of concentration that an athlete or a Buddhist would employ in sport or meditation. “A lot out there is conspiring to distract you,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s your opinion about books. It doesn’t make it true.” To her, the idea that reading might benefit the mind was, well, lame.

[..]

Recently I stood Charles Dickens’s “Bleak House” next to the DVD version produced by the BBC. Lady Dedlock (Gillian Anderson) graced both covers. A senior fingered the DVD for a minute, then turned it over to read the blurb. “The book is too long,” she said. “Is the movie any better?”

“You’re right. The book is long,” I said. “But once you start this one, you won’t be able to put it down, right from that first page about the London fog.”

“I think I’ll watch the DVD,” the student said.

And in my library ledger, I’ll register this as a sale.

My friends, I am writing to warn you of a very dangerous game that many of you or your loved ones may intend to play this Tuesday. This is a very serious matter; many people could die because they simply aren’t aware how much the situation has changed. I am speaking, of course, of the State of the Union drinking game. While this is a favorite pastime in America it has never been completely safe to drink whenever you catch a politician lying. This year, however, there are expected to be an unprecedented number of lies, fabrications, omissions of truth, revisions of history, misuses of statistics, and the complete denial of the world situation. Players who typically drink after each lie need to be aware that alcohol poisoning can lead to death at over .4% blood alcohol content. (For comparison, the legal limit to drive is .08% in some states.) This Tuesday’s State of the Union will address, among other things, the Iraq war and global warming. Even conservative estimates predict that unseasoned drinkers could be killed within the first hour of the State of the Union address. As you can see, matters are grave within the State of the Union. I urge you to join with me in encouraging at least a ten lies to one drink revision in the drinking game. Don’t let your death be added to those the current administration is already responsible for.

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A Police Officer walking past two of the shipping containers washed up on the beach at Branscombe, Devon following the beaching of the cargo ship MSC Napoli after it was holed during storms on Sunday, 21st January 2007. The ship is carrying almost 2,400 containers, about 150 of which are said to hold hazardous chemical substances. The drifting vessel was being towed to Portland Harbour in Dorset for a salvage operation, but the Maritime and Coastguard Agency decided to beach it in Lyme Bay, near Sidmouth, instead, following the structural failure. The area is a World Heritage Site and also known as the Jurassic Coast.

Plenty more stunning pictures in his photostream

There’s not much posting going on today – nor the rest of the week. I’ll be on the exhibition floor of the largest dutch educational fair…

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Abelardo Morell’s camera obscura images are created by the age-old optical principle of darkening a room and projecting an inverted image of the world outside through a small aperture. Morell photographically records ephemeral, upside-down images of the outside world by placing his four-by-five view camera in rooms and opening the shutter for time exposures lasting typically as long as eight hours.

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AT&T also has been targeted in the lawsuit, which isn’t likely to go away unless a judge throws it out. If there are several lawsuits, they may be consolidated one broad motion.

In the meantime, some of the company’s own shareholders have begun a campaign to demand that AT&T explain its involvement. They’ve introduced a resolution for consideration at AT&T’s stockholder meeting in April. It asks the company’s management to explain what steps it is taking to ensure customer privacy and to disclose how much money it has spent on collaborating with the NSA program.

The As You Sow Foundation, a group that says its mission is to promote socially responsible investment, is leading the effort. The group is demanding information from telecom provider Verizon as well.

In its defense, AT&T is asking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to exclude the resolution from its proxy statement, claiming it would interfere with business and the company should not have to divulge information because of state secrets privileges, according to a statement released by the groups pushing for the resolution.

And to quote Benitto Mussolini:

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

Bad: Telling immigration service you are the prince of Sweden.

Worse: getting arrested and spending the night in jail.

Worst: you really ARE the prince of Sweden

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – President Bush scored high Thursday on a list he may not be keen to top.

Three of Bush’s quotes, led by his “I’m the Decider” remark in April, head 2006′s most notable quotations compiled by Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations.

Bush’s comment that “I’m the decider, and I decide what is best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense” is followed by his State of the Union address quote that “America is addicted to oil” and by his comment on Hurricane Katrina to high school students in New Orleans: “I take full responsibility for the federal government’s response.”

[..]

Cohen’s quote was followed in fifth place by another comic’s remark — Stephen Colbert’s comment on Bush at the White House correspondents dinner: “The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.”

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The Vatican’s attorney general Nicola Picardi released the astounding statistic at the start of 2007: The tiny nation’s justice department in 2006 had to contend with 341 civil and 486 criminal cases. In a population of 492, that measures out to 1.5 cases per person — twenty times the corresponding rate in Italy.

By this measurement at least, crime is soaring in the Vatican in spite of a security force that would put a police state to shame. The seat of the Catholic Church has one Swiss guard for every four citizens, not to mention museum guards and police assigned to the Vatican by Italy.

Picardi did say that most criminal cases were matters of pickpocketing or purse-snatching. The rest amounted to other petty crimes like fraud and forgery — committed not by kleptomaniacal nuns but by a handful of black sheep among the 18 million pilgrims and tourists who visit St. Peter’s Cathedral, St. Peter’s Square and the Vatican Museums every year. About 90 percent of these crimes go unpunished, which is not a measure of Christian mercy but a sign of the perpetrators’ favorite method of escape. They can break for the border — a few meters away — to Italy.

[..]

Picardi releases similar alarming statistics almost every year, when he makes his annual report on the state of the Vatican’s security. He’d like his country to join the Schengen Agreement, a 1985 treaty signed by EU nations to bring down border controls and allow cooperation among justice departments and police.

The Pope has other plans:

Pope Benedict XVI recommended another strategy in a speech to Vatican security personnel. “Let us pray,” he said, “for the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary.”

If that doesn’t work, I think the Pope should take a hint from a recent event:

He may have been thinking of the weeks in April 2005 when Pope John Paul II was dying. A total of 6 million pilgrims arrived for vigils in St. Peter’s Square, and not a single incident of pickpocketing was reported.

Today, Roe vs Wade celebrates its 34th anniversary. Guess what Bush tried to say about that, and how it matches the rest of his words and actions…

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Yesterday was a very special day for Mister Bush.  He has declared January 21, 2007 “National Sanctity of Human Life Day”.  Check it out, right there on the White House website, a nice, pretty little message.

I filled in the blanks.

America was founded on the principle that we are all endowed by our Creator with the right to life and that every individual has dignity and worth.

(AP photo)

National Sanctity of Human Life Day helps foster a culture of life and reinforces our commitment to building a compassionate society that respects the value of every human being.

(AP photo)

Among the most basic duties of Government is to defend the unalienable right to life, and my Administration is committed to protecting our society’s most vulnerable members.

(AP photo)

National Sanctity of Human Life Day serves as a reminder that we must value human life in all forms, not just those considered healthy, wanted, or convenient.

(AP/Nabil)
Click here for more photos.  (WARNING:  graphic content).

I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being.

(AP photo)
Caring for the Wounded in Iraq – A Photo Essay – warning, extremely graphic content.
Coalition casualties in Iraq

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Comet McNaught, the Great Comet of 2007, has grown a long and filamentary tail. The spectacular tail spreads across the sky and is visible to Southern Hemisphere observers just after sunset. The head of the comet remains quite bright and easily visible to even city observers without any optical aide. The amazing tail is visible on long exposures and even to the unaided eye from a dark location. Reports even have the tail visible just above the horizon after sunset for many northern observers as well. Comet McNaught, estimated at magnitude -2 (minus two), was caught by the comet’s discoverer in the above image just after sunset last Friday from Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. Comet McNaught, the brightest comet in decades, is now fading as it moves further into southern skies and away from the Sun and Earth.