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Fourth-grade teacher Jarretta Hamilton was newly married and expecting a baby when she went to speak with her supervisors in April of last year.

But the administrators at Southland Christian School in St. Cloud parried her query about maternity leave with a query of their own: When did she conceive?

After Hamilton admitted that her child had been conceived about three weeks before her February 20, 2009, wedding, the school fired her.

The reasonable thing to do in such a case is ask yourself: What would Jesus do?

And the answer to that is, that Jesus, being known for his message of intolerance and religious orthodoxy, clearly would *not* have tolerated sex three weeks before the wedding vows.

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Four Filipina ex-staffers of a Baltimore City hospital haven’t gotten over the shock of being summarily fired from their jobs, allegedly because they spoke Pilipino during their lunch break.

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you want to know who got the upper hand when it comes to the financial reform bill, follow the money. Bank stocks are currently trading higher and financials are outperforming all other sectors. As Dick Bove, a high-profile analyst that covers Wall Street, put it, “I think I would be buying bank stocks this morning.”

That’s because the financial reform bill Washington is touting didn’t protect investors in any substantive way. Congress failed to address the Supreme Court’s “Stoneridge” decision, which would have afforded investors protection against Ponzi schemes and other large scale frauds commonly aided and abetted by large financial institutions. And don’t let the headlines fool you, Congress totally punted on the requirement that brokers put their clients’ interests ahead of their own, the so-called fiduciary standard. Failing to address these two issues is a one-two punch in the gut for investors.

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German police say an American got so fed up with the constant mosquito-like droning from his neighbors’ vuvuzela plastic horns that he threatened to kill them with an ax.

Police in the Bavarian city of Weiden said Friday the 45-year-old man confronted his neighbors during Thursday’s Netherlands-Cameroon World Cup game wielding the ax.

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Pope Benedict has joined mounting Vatican criticism of raids by Belgian police investigating alleged child sex abuse, calling them "deplorable".

In a message to Belgian bishops, the pope expressed his solidarity "in this moment of sadness".

Several buildings were searched in raids targeting a retired archbishop and the graves of two prelates.

Prosecutors said the action concerned alleged "abuse of minors committed by a certain number of Church figures".

[..]

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, described the detention of priests “serious and unbelievable”.

“There are no precedents, not even under the old communist regimes,” he said.

Dear pope – there’s a phrase that perfectly describes what the Belgian police is doing, and I’m not surprised you’re not familiar with it. It’s called “upholding the law”.

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Gov. Bobby Jindal rejected a bill Friday that would have required him to make public and to preserve all his office’s documents involving the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

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"As I was escorted away from the demonstration, I saw two officers hold a journalist. The journalist identified himself as working for ‘the Guardian.’ He talked too much and pissed the police off. Two officers held him a third punched him in the stomach. Totally unnecessary. The man collapsed. Then the third officer drove his elbow into the man’s back. No cameras recorded the assault. And it was an assault."

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The crux of the suit: For 30 years there’s been a feminist bookstore in Minneapolis named Amazon Bookstore. Jeff Bezos was probably just starting to read under the covers with a flashlight when the Minneapolis women began selling books as a nonprofit under the name Amazon in 1970. The bookstore, now a for-profit collective, sued Amazon.com earlier this year for trademark infringement. The bookstore claimed to have lost money and staff time dealing with a growing stream of customers and suppliers who had mistaken it for the Web retailer. And, by the way, the store wanted its name back.

The case is a big company spin-meister’s worst nightmare: a classic underdog, the embattled, independent, female-owned bookseller whose long-standing local business is trampled by the heartless dot-com with the multibillion-dollar market capitalization. Amazon Bookstore even put a link on its own Web site asking for contributions to help finance its legal case against the mammoth e-tailer.

But Amazon.com, apparently still unused to its new role as Goliath, played it to the hilt, in a way so embarrassingly sensationalistic that no screenwriter, not even Nora Ephron herself, could have credibly concocted it. In pre-trial depositions, quoted last week in Holt Uncensored, a book-industry column, Amazon.com lawyers interrogated one of the co-owners of the store under oath about her own sexual orientation and that of the staff.

Choice excerpts: "Have you had any interest in promoting lesbian ideals in the community?" and "I’ll ask you this, are you gay?" The lawyer himself even seemed embarrassed by his own line of questioning, apologizing while asking: "Are any of the employees of the bookstore gay, and forgive me for asking this question." (Amazon Bookstore’s lawyer objected and filed a motion for a protective order against such questions. The judge is scheduled to rule on the motion next week.)

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What happens when you give cameras to a group of Kabul teens? You see Afghanistan not as a place of war and violence, but as a country where children still play and life carries on.

All dressed up: A little girl is decked out in red and has her fingernails painted to celebrate the Muslim holiday Eid, in this photo taken by Nazifa Alizada, 16. When visiting the United States, Alizada told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she wanted people to see her country as beautiful, and not just a place of violence and conflict. “There is culture and friends and family,” she explained.

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A biologist, a statistician, and a mathematician are sitting at a cafe. Across the street, a man and a woman enter a building; ten minutes later, they emerge with a child.

“They’ve reproduced,” says the biologist.

“No,” says the statistician. “It’s an observational error. On average, 2.5 people went each way.”

“You’re both wrong,” says the mathematician. “The conclusion is obvious. If someone goes in now, the building will be empty.”

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The free culture movement is abuzz today over news that ASCAP has requested their members to fight organizations like Creative Commons, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation over what it claims as an effort to undermine copyright.

ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), according to ASCAP member Mike Rugnetta, has sent a letter out asking its members to send donations that would go to fighting organizations like Creative Commons, the EFF, Public Knowledge and other supporters of the free culture movement. He posted the letter to prove it (Part 1, part 2).

“At this moment,” the letter says, “we are facing our biggest challenge ever. Many forces including Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and technology companies with deep pockets are mobilizing to promote “Copyleft” in order to undermine our “Copyright.” They say they are advocates of consumer rights, but the truth in these groups simply do not want to pay for the use of our music. Their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free.”

The letter continues, “This is why your help now is vital. We fear that our opponents are influencing Congress against the interests of music creators. If their views are allowed to gain strength, music creators will find it harder and harder to make a living as traditional media shifts to online and wireless services. We all know what will happen next: the music will dry up, and the ultimate loser will be the music consumer.”

Oh fuck off, you asshats. It’s just the current music distributors, and organizations like ASCAP, RIAA and MPAA that will die. Music will be just fine, and probably be even better of without parasites like you.

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The remote-wipe capability that Google recently invoked to remove a harmless application from some Android phones isn’t the only remote control feature that the company built into its mobile OS. It turns out that Android also includes a feature that enables Google to remotely install apps on users’ phones as well.

So if you’ve bought an Android because Apple has too much control over the iPhone, you’ve been had.

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Let the best fruit win, and when it does, we’ll know how to ask for it. ‘The European Community requires that grapes, oranges, apples and pears be identified by variety at the point of sale, and the practice is common there for other fruits too.’ ‘Until 2006, the California Tree Fruit Agreement, the organization that sets standards for the state’s shippers of peaches, nectarines and plums, required the specific variety to be identified on the carton. But some growers and shippers found that they could not readily market certain varieties perceived by buyers as inferior, and so the CTFA now allows fruit to be shipped under generic designations such as “yellow peach.””When inferior varieties are marketed generically, producers of inferior varieties piggyback on producers of better varieties. In a pomological version of Gresham’s law, bad fruit drives out good.”All too often today, new varieties are bred to appeal to the lowest common denominator, to be inoffensive to the greatest number of people, so it suits the industrial distribution system when fruit is marketed anonymously. When fruit quality is homogenized, variety is less significant; in turn, anonymity deprives consumers of their main weapon to resist homogenization.’

Trust that the mass market crap is crap and find local producers/distributors you can trust.

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A Swiss man has been sentenced to five months in jail and three strokes of a cane for spray-painting graffiti on a train in Singapore.

Oliver Fricker, 32, a software consultant, admitted breaking into a depot and vandalising the train.

The judge called it a serious breach of security.

[..]

Prosecutors said the pair spray-painted the words “McKoy” and “Banos” on two carriages – a signature that has featured in graffiti works in other countries.

He went into another country and threw his culture and art all over their public transport in a way that the locals wouldn’t appreciate.

So why aren’t McDonalds and Starbucks being caned for doing this shit?

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Nearly halfway through the month-long 2010 World Cup Tournament in South Africa, over a dozen teams have been eliminated from the original group of 32, with the Round of 16 beginning tomorrow, June 26th. Television and web viewership has been setting records all over the world as supporters tune in to watch the events in South Africa and react along with the fans and players in the stadiums as they celebrate their wins and suffer through losses. Collected here are recent photos from the 2010 World Cup, as some of the players and their supporters have been experiencing it – in South Africa and around the globe. (43 photos total)

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Photographers gather in front of Argentina’s coach Diego Maradona as he sings the national anthem before the 2010 World Cup Group B soccer match against Greece at Peter Mokaba stadium in Polokwane June 22, 2010. (REUTERS/David Gray) #

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People are seriously underestimating how much liquidity in the global financial world is dependent on a solvent BP. BP extends credit — through trading and finance. It extends the amounts, quality, and duration of credit a bank could only dream of. The gold community should think about the financial muscle behind a company with 100-plus years of proven oil and gas reserves. Think about that in comparison with what a bank, with few tangible assets (truly, not allegedly), possesses (no wonder they all started trading for a living). Then think about what happens if BP goes under. This is no bank. With proven reserves and wells in the ground, equity in fields all over the planet, in terms of credit quality and credit provision — nothing can match an oil major. God only knows how many assets around the planet are dependent on credit and finance extended from BP. It’s likely to dwarf any banking entity in multiples.

And at the heart of it all are those dreadful OTC (over-the-counter) derivatives again! Banks try and lean on major oil companies because they have exactly the kind of credit-worthiness that they themselves lack. In fact, major oil companies, conversely, spend large amounts of time both denying banks credit and trying to get bank risk off of their books in their trading operations. Oil companies have always mistrusted bank creditworthiness and have largely considered the banking industry a bad financial joke. Banks plead with oil companies to let them trade beyond one year in duration. Banks even used to do losing trades with oil companies simply to get them on their trading register; a foot in the door so that they could subsequently beg for an extension in credit size and duration.

[..]

As we’re beginning to see, the Western pension structure, financial trading, and global credit are all intertwined. BP is central to this, as a massive supplier of what many believe(d) to be AAA credit. So while we see banks roll over and die and sovereign entities begin to falter, we now have a major oil company on the verge of going under. Another leg of the global economic “chair” is being viciously kicked out from under us. Ecological damage isn’t just an eco-event on its isolated own. It’s been added to the list of man-made disasters jeopardizing the world economy. The price tag and resultant knock-on effects of a BP failure could easily be equal to that of a Lehman, if not more. It’s surely, at the very least, Enron times 10.

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Former oil clean-up worker Candi Warren says she signed up to make a difference, but soon found out the work of cleaning the beaches was all cosmetic. That’s what she was told, she says.

Warren says she knew that when crews worked during the day, the tide and surf buried oil overnight. But they were forbidden to dig it up. She quit in disgust three weeks ago despite the $18 per hour pay.

She said she was told to only clean the surface of the sand, that this is all cosmetic. She was on a crew at Gulf State Park where tourists go. She says it has priority so as to make it look like the beaches are clean.

Warren says she believes money is being wasted on the crews and says "At some point the real clean-up will have to begin, but I’m afraid the money will be gone."

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"They accuse you of being some kind of child molester just because you are sitting next to someone.

[..]

Now a consent order has been drawn up at Slough County Court, in which BA admitted sex discrimination in the case and agreed to pay him costs of £2,161 and £750 in damages.

Mr Fischer, a hedge fund manager, has donated the damages payout and £2,250 of his own money to Kidscape and Orphans in the Wild, two child protection charities.

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The $20bn fund that Barack Obama managed to get BP to agree to set up to meet claims for economic losses and environmental costs from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is impressive, especially since the amount can be increased. The political pressure so evident also caused BP to temporarily suspend paying dividends. This should set a precedence for how host countries of multinationals take stern action, and executives of multinationals respond to meet their responsibilities – even if only partially.

But then the US is a powerful host country indeed, and BP had little choice but to yield given the political pressure and public anger. Developing countries are also host to multinationals that in many cases have poisoned the environment or caused immense loss of life and property. But these multinationals have got away scot free or paid miniscule sums for the harm they caused.

These double standards must change. There should be international co-operation between the host and home countries of multinationals to ensure they compensate for the environmental clean-up as well as pay victims for ecological disasters they cause, wherever they take place. The G20 leaders should talk about it this weekend, and not just focus on bank levies and the shift to fiscal austerity packages.

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Sports fans who want to use a credit or debit card to buy tickets for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be restricted to using a Visa card, due to an exclusive deal between the Olympic organisers and the credit card payment system.

Payment for the 10 million tickets expected to be sold from 2011 through the Olympic website and other authorised sellers have been restricted to those that run through the Visa payment system.

On the official London 2012 ticket site, it says: "In recognition of Visa’s support of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, London 2012 is proud to accept only Visa payment cards (debit, credit and prepaid), along with cash and cheques. Sponsor support is crucial to the staging of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games and the operation of organisations throughout the Olympic Movement.

I’m proud to announce another exclusive deal between me and all Olympic venues: I won’t be visiting any of them.

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A top German court has ruled that it is not a criminal offence to cut off the life support of a dying person if that person has given their consent.

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Just about every cell phone in current production has the antenna located at the bottom. This insures that the radiating portion of the antenna is furthest from the head. Apple was not the first to locate the antenna on the bottom, and certainly won’t be the last. The problem is that humans have their hands below their ears, so the most natural position for the hand is covering the antenna. This can’t be a good design decision, can it? How can we be stuck with this conundrum? It’s the FCC’s fault.

You see, when the FCC tests are run, the head is required to be in the vicinity of the phone. But, the hand is not!! And the FCC’s tests are not the only tests that must be passed by a candidate product. AT&T has their own requirements for devices put on their network, and antenna efficiency is one of them. I know because I have designed quad-band GSM antennas for the AT&T network. The AT&T test similarly does not require the hand to be on the phone.

So, naturally, the design evolved to meet requirements – and efficient transmission and reception while being held by a human hand are simply not design requirements!

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garbagetrashpacificocean Biologist: Ocean pollution threatening the human food supply Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth’s oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.

A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

"These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean," said biologist Roger Payne, founder and president of Ocean Alliance, the research and conservation group that produced the report.