From one of the lacrosse players not accused -- but who contends he was flunked by an angry visiting professor just beause of the allegations againt the team.

The first civil lawsuit stemming from the Duke lacrosse criminal case is on the books, and one legal observer said more could be on the way.

...Duke University could find itself bracing for its own legal battles. The school's actions in the weeks following the accusations could have lasting legal implications.

On Thursday, former Duke Lacrosse player Kyle Dowd filed the first civil suit in connection with the scandal. He claims a visiting instructor flunked him in a course because he was a lacrosse player, and he sued her and the university. he is seeking money damages and a grade of "passing" for the course. The university already had changed his grade from an F to a D.

Dowd was never implicated in the investigation.

“I didn't want to see Duke turn their back on other students like they turned their back on me and my fellow teammates,” Dowd said.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (137)
Post contains 190 words, total size 1 kb.

So? Still fun.

I was wondering if this cat's primary occupation was musician or comic. On one hand, he's obviously a comic, playing a simple punky three chord song. On the other hand, some punks are natural clowns.

Wiki has the answer, though I'm not sure the answer is actually clear. In other words, kinda both. But he seems to be chiefly a comic.

Posted by: Ace at 06:08 PM | Comments (24)
Post contains 68 words, total size 1 kb.

Thanks, Nancy!

mployers stepped up hiring last month, boosting payrolls by a healthy 167,000 and keeping the unemployment rate steady at a still historically low 4.5 percent. Workers' wages grew briskly.

The latest snapshot of the nation's employment climate, released Friday by the Labor Department, showed that the jobs market ended 2006 on a strong note and provided fresh evidence that the troubled housing and automotive sectors aren't dragging down employment across the country.

The tally of new jobs added to the economy last month exceeded analysts' forecasts for a gain of around 115,000 and was the best showing since September. Analysts were predicting the politically sensitive jobless rate would remain unchanged from November, which it did.

"This is a good report for the American worker," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.

For all of 2006, the nation's unemployment rate dropped to a six-year low of 4.6 percent as the economy added 1.8 million jobs. In 2005, the unemployment rate averaged 5.1 percent.

The average of all of 2006 was 4.6%. Which isn't surprising, as the rate has been between 4.4% and 4.7% all frigging year. It hit the 4.4% mark once, in October. So most the time it's been 4.5% and 4.6%.

Now we're told that that number is "historically low." Who knew?

I guess it wasn't the sort of news worth reporting before the elections.

Also Novermber's and October's supposedly bad payroll numbers were increased by 29,000 all told. That, of course, won't be mentioned on Brian Williams tonight.

This post... would have been timely when I wrote it, which was around ten hours ago. Got stuck in the queue as a draft.

Oh well.

Posted by: Ace at 05:14 PM | Comments (23)
Post contains 292 words, total size 2 kb.

It's going to be on all the leftwing sites anyway, so there's no point in my embargoing.

And, yeah-- nothing at all but rumors.

Oddly enough, the MSM has very little difficulty keeping quiet all the affairs the other anchors are rumored to indulge in.

Vengeance By A Fired Flack: The first known instance of the rumor has been confirmed by Radar (no friend of FoxNews, certainly) as being planted, anonymously, in a Wikipedia entry by Hume's former PR guy.

A Fox spokesperson also flatly denied it, and suggested it was being "shopped around" by enemies of the network.

And while that might sound like paranoia, at least one such enemy does exist: publicist Paul Schur, a former Fox spokesman whose job it was to burnish Hume's image just months ago.

Last month, Schur, who worked with both Hume and Kendall in Fox's Washington bureau until he left the network in August, anonymously edited the gossip into Kendall's Wikipedia entry, inserting this claim: "There are many rumors that Kendall has a very 'special' relationship with managing editor Brit Hume, the reason for her plum assignments at Fox News." Radar was alerted to the Wikipedia entry by an anonymous e-mail sent in late December. Wikipedia keeps track of the IP address of each user who changes an entry; when Radar became suspicious that Schur was behind the change to Kendall's entry, a reporter sent him an e-mail with a link to a website maintained by a Radar staffer. When Schur visited the site, his computer's IP address was logged by the site's tracking software, and it matched the IP address of the Wikipedia user that inserted the rumor in Kendall's entry. (The offending sentence has since been deleted.)

Asked whether he had changed the Wikipedia entry or otherwise retailed the rumor, Schur declined to comment. Told of Schur's involvement, Fox's spokesperson said, "If it's true, it's unfortunate he has resorted to this."

It's unclear why Schur left Fox News; insiders described his departure as abrupt and unexplained, suggesting that he may have been trying to exact vengeance on his former employer. Whatever the reason, it's ironic that Fox, which has a notoriously ferocious and loyal PR shop, has been attacked by one of its own.

Thanks to Sinistar for that.

Posted by: Ace at 04:57 PM | Comments (113)
Post contains 403 words, total size 3 kb.

Or, I suppose, two girls sharing the same body.

I was watching this trying to figure out in what way it had been faked. Looked real, had a TLC logo, but the latter is easy to fake.

But this Wiki entry, at least, says this is the real deal. Their names are Abigail and Brittany Hansel.

The twins were born with a third Beebelbroxian arm, removed when they were very young. They also have two different hearts, pumping along a shared circulatory system. Wikipedia ticks down the shared or doubled organs, and tells us, in case we're wondering-- 1 vagina.

And teenaged girls usually have problems sharing a bathroom. Sheesh.

It's very odd stuff. They do seem like pretty normal teenagers. Except...

Thanks to RobG.

Posted by: Ace at 04:48 PM | Comments (68)
Post contains 131 words, total size 1 kb.

More fascism in NanSSy PeloSSi's AmeriKKKa:

A man with a history of smashing windows to indulge his fetish for mannequins could draw a long prison term.

Ronald A. Dotson, 39, of Detroit faces up to life in prison if convicted of a charge of attempted breaking and entering at a cleaning-supply company in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale.

Prosecutors charged him as a habitual offender. Authorities say he has at least six convictions for breaking and entering and a stint in prison over the last 13 years.

Dotson was arrested Oct. 9 after police say he smashed a window at a cleaning-supply company to get at a female mannequin dressed in a black and white French maid's uniform. He had been out of prison for less than a week.

Dotson was arrested in Ferndale in July 2000 and later convicted for breaking and entering at a women's clothing shop to get at a mannequin in a pink dress with bobbed hair.

Ferndale police also arrested Dotson in 1993 after finding him in an alley behind a woman's store with three lingerie-clad mannequins.

The reader who sent me this story (sorry, couldn't find you, had to Google, you know who you are) asks a good question: Why didn't this moron just buy himself some mannequins? In trying to track down this story, I found lots of mannequin sellers. And they're cheap!

Looks like he's going to prison at just the wrong time. Mannequin breasts are getting larger.

Number of ejaculations: Eight

Posted by: Ace at 01:43 PM | Comments (78)
Post contains 264 words, total size 2 kb.

Revolver-- without barrel -- slash three-inch knife/mini-bayonet -- slash brass knuckles.

So no matter what the range -- arm's length, three inches past arm's lenght, or fifteen feet away -- you always have a clumsy, substandard weapon with which to defend yourself.

This is the original FutureWarrior system first developed by Dr. Miguelito Loveless.

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (22)
Post contains 64 words, total size 1 kb.

... little of which I believe will go very much further than articles like this.

Still, there are some things I buy.

n the near term, other advances include enhancements to equipment that already seems futuristic, such as the Pathfinder Raven, a roughly 4-pound robot plane with a wingspan of roughly 54 inches—smaller than an average seagull's.Soldiers launch it by hand. It essentially lands via controlled crashes, designed to fall apart into pieces that are easily put back together.

The current version of this robot plane, called Raven A and loaded with a visible-light and infrared camera to deliver imagery to soldiers on the ground in real-time, has already found use in Afghanistan and Iraq. The next version, Raven B, will add digital zoom, allowing soldiers to spy on enemies from afar.

...

DARPA is also helping to develop a radar scope the size of a large walkie-talkie that helps soldiers see through walls to locate targets.

The researchers are also working to develop a way for untrained soldiers to use sound waves to stop internal bleeding in combat zones. Internal bleeding requires professional treatment, and the time delay it takes to evacuate someone to a surgical facility can readily lead to death or amputation. The idea is to create a blanket or cuff that, once placed over the injured area, uses ultrasound to spot the internal wound. Afterward, high-powered ultrasound focused on the wound can cauterize it.

So that's what McCoy is always doing on Star Trek.

I don't buy this, but it's cool to pretend:

For the longer term, the governmentÂ’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is helping to develop head-to-toe body armor that also enhances the strength, endurance and speed of soldiers using combustion engine-driven hydraulics that behave as artificial muscles. The idea behind these "exoskeletons" is to help a lone armored soldier carry a weapon that would normally take a crew to operate, such as a machine gun. DARPA will deliver prototype exoskeletons to the U.S. Army for tests in 2008.

And definitely not this:

The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN) at MIT is developing sensors integrated into battlesuits to detect chemical and biological weapons, as well as countermeasures against those threats when encountered. They are also working to integrate automated medical care into battlesuits, including splinting bones and CPR, and exploring the possibility of delivering medications such as vasopressin that will help minimize the risk of blood loss and hemorrhagic shock in injured soldiers.

ISN research may also lead to improved armor, perhaps made of a network of microscopic trusses, miniature versions of the triangular scaffolds used to support bridges and skyscrapers. Armor made from several layers of these micro-trusses should absorb energy from bullets, shrapnel or blast waves by deforming in a way similar to crumple zones in cars.

Thanks to JackM.

Okay... Yes, there is the HAL exoskeleton which you can already buy for $50,000.

But... I don't know. Do people really have full range of motion and scrambling/running ability in these things, or are they just able to walk more or less straight, slowly, while carrying double their unassisted load?

I think the armor that performs basic surgery on you is just silly. The list of inventions combining multiple unrelated functions is long; the list of inventions combining multiple unrelated functions which have actually been used extensively in real life is rather shorter.

Sure, they made sword/pistol combos, knife/pistol combos, shield/pistol combos. Little more than historical curiosities.

Thanks to Ken.

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (37)
Post contains 587 words, total size 4 kb.

So O'Reilly claims. I wouldn't know, as I don't watch them.

The video is worth watching just to see the useless See-No-Liberalism Jane Hall get spanked a bit by Bernie Goldberg.

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (24)
Post contains 51 words, total size 1 kb.

Avoid her sensitive areas, don't cause bleeding, don't do it in front of the children, and it's copacetic.

Allah "gets it" -- sometimes a bitch just needs a good slappin'.

From someone who never hat-tips or links, so eph 'im.

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (30)
Post contains 52 words, total size 1 kb.