Just Lend A Hand

An exotic dancer from New Jersey is in a spot of trouble over her odd taste in interior decorating. It seems the local authorities frown on keeping a collection of human skulls. But what really ticked them off was Freddy. They really would like to know Freddy's history. But Freddy won't talk.

Because Freddy is a severed human hand kept in a jar of formaldehyde. On a dresser. In a bedroom.

Police responding to a report Friday of a suicidal person at the home of 31-year-old Linda Kay discovered a large, crudely severed human hand in a mason jar of formaldehyde on the dresser of Kay's basement bedroom, according to the police report.

While the subject of the initial phone call was not located in the home, authorities found six skulls in an upstairs room. The Middlesex County medical examiner has determined all are human.

Kay was arrested and charged Friday afternoon in South Plainfield Municipal Court, where she faces arraignment at 9 a.m. Wednesday. As of early Tuesday, no lawyer had filed papers on her behalf, a court administrator said.

Kay could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

While human skulls may be purchased online, the origin of the hand is more troubling. The police report states it was severed roughly, not surgically, with bone fragments in the jar.

Two people who knew Kay, including one who stayed at her house for about two months earlier this year, told The Star-Ledger of Newark for that the hand, which Kay nicknamed "Freddy," was a gift from a medical student who frequented the Union strip club where she dances. At the all-nude juice bar called Hott 22, Kay nurtured her Gothic persona, wearing dark costumes, heavy eyeliner, piercings and tattoos.

The Newark Star-Ledger has a little more about Kay:

Assuming there is no foul play, the identity of the skulls will likely never be known. Most skeletons sold in the United States come from overseas, from the few countries that still allow legal export of human remains, according to Joey Williams, director of education at Oklahoma-based Skulls Unlimited.

Skulls Unlimited sells a human skull for anywhere from $350 to $750, depending on its condition.

"In overpopulated parts of the world, cemetery space is at a premium," Williams said. "There are companies that excavate skeletal remains and sell them to the medical community."

Williams said they also sell to museums, artists and people who "have a fascination for the macabre."

Kay was apparently one of those people. Her mother said her daughter has been drawn toward morbid things since she was a girl. She had a collection of animal skulls, including a Texas longhorn.

"She would find snake skeletons in our back yard," Patricia Ann Kay said. "That just was her. It's a fascination with the human body."

….

She and McDonough bought the home in South Plainfield five years ago for $290,000. Bouncers and dancers from Hott 22 were frequent visitors — as were police, because of noise complaints.

"We got a big music system," Lafontaine said. "We hung out. We did karaoke."

Neighbors who refused to give their names said they often heard music, screaming or loud parties coming from the house at 2, 3 or 4 in the morning.

Sounds like a fun date.

Not.

Iran Threatens Israel - Again

Iran is threatening to attack Israel if Syria is attacked.

Iranian threats against Israel continue: Iranian media outlets published sections of interviews given by Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad-Reza Sheybani, who said that Hizbullah's military capability has greatly increased in the last decade, and threatened that if Israel harmed Syria, the Iranians would respond with force.  

Sheybani stressed that Iran would support Syria if it is attacked by Israel. "There should be no doubt on this issue: If Syria is harmed, even in the slightest way, we will respond with force. This, on the basis of the joint defense agreement in effect between the two countries and already signed by the two ministers of defense," he said.

Sheybani added that he thought "Israel did not have the ability to deal with Iran's capabilities."

If I were the suspicious type, I'd be watching Iran and Syria very, very closely right about now. Because if either one were to stage some kind of incident to provoke a wider war, the situation could get very dangerous. Especially with statements like this coming out of Iranian officials:

At a conference in Tehran, attended also by Hamas and Palestinian Authority representatives, al-Din threatened that "this war will be remembered as the beginning of the end of Israel."

Inflate-A-Mate!

Tired of the toilet seat being left up, ladies? Are his bad habits wearing you down? Sick and tired of his lack of commitment? Never fear! The answer is at hand!

An inflatable man.

LONDON (Reuters) - He fits in a car's glove box, appears at a flick of a switch and when a woman has finished using him, she can just pull the plug and he deflates.

He's the "Buddy on Demand," a blow-up man launched on Tuesday with the aim of making solo female motorists feel less nervous about driving at night.

According to research by the inflatable friend's creator, insurer Sheilas' Wheels, 82 percent of women feel safer with someone sitting in the car beside them and nearly a half don't like driving alone in the dark.

"We're not saying that an inflatable man is the only answer but we do hope it will give women extra confidence and make journeys in the dark less fearful," said Jacky Brown, the spokeswoman for Sheilas' Wheels.

The picture they show of one of these inflated is, how shall I put this, laughable. It looks exactly like the auto-pilot in the movie Airplane. Only without the pilot's hat. We don't want to know where the inflation nozzle is.

Never Underestimate

The power of human stupidity. Police in London are not at all happy with the people who organized a three-week long water gun assassination tournament.

"StreetWars", which is described on its Web site as a "3-week long, 24/7, watergun assassination tournament", begins on Tuesday in the capital.

The game, which has already taken place in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Vienna, involves players hunting down targets whose details they have been given and then squirting them with water to eliminate them.

But angry police say the appearance of people behaving suspiciously, armed with what could look like real guns, risked sparking major alerts in a city where four suicide bombers attacked the transport system last year, killing 52 commuters.

"The sight of people carrying what appears to a be a firearm on the Tube one year after the tragic events of July 2005 will cause passengers and staff genuine fear," British Transport Police said in a statement.

They warned they would come down hard on any players who caused trouble.

In this day and age, this is not at all a smart thing to do. When someone ends up getting killed, will the organizers be liable?

The Snake Is In The Mail

What was just a routine day at the post office in Mechernich, Germany got quite exciting when a package began moving around. On it's own. When postal workers looked a bit more closely, they noticed a rather large snake exiting the package. One wishes a video had been captured of the event, since it sounds like the place emptied out in a hurry. One brave postal worker wrestled the five foot long albino python into another container. Everyone else made for the horizon.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German woman sparked panic at her local post office when a 1.5-metre (5-foot) albino python escaped from a packet she had mailed, police said on Tuesday.

The 28-year-old woman, who had sold the snake over the Internet, stuffed it in a package labelled "attention — glass" to be sent to its new owner.

"Staff accepted the package and put it in the back of the office — they had no idea what it was," said police spokesman Andreas Blum. "All of a sudden, they noticed that it started moving around and then saw a big snake wriggling out of it."

The funniest part of the whole story has got to be this line:

While it is not a crime to send snakes by post, the woman is being investigated for the improper treatment of animals.

It's legal? Hmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmm. Excuse me, I have a package to send.

Mean Genes

Is nastiness genetic? If colonies of extremely tame rats, foxes and other animals can be bred in just a few generations into two groups one tame and the other ferocious could the same thing apply to humans? The New York Times has an article that describes a long-term Russian experiment into the domestication of animals. Begun in the 1950's the experiment has produced colonies of almost domesticated silver foxes as well as rats. They have also produced the opposite - vicious animals.

On an animal-breeding farm in Siberia are cages housing two colonies of rats. In one colony, the rats have been bred for tameness in the hope of mimicking the mysterious process by which Neolithic farmers first domesticated an animal still kept today. When a visitor enters the room where the tame rats are kept, they poke their snouts through the bars to be petted.

The other colony of rats has been bred from exactly the same stock, but for aggressiveness instead. These animals are ferocious. When a visitor appears, the rats hurl themselves screaming toward their bars.

“Imagine the most evil supervillain and the nicest, sweetest cartoon animal, and that’s what these two strains of rat are like,” said Tecumseh Fitch, an animal behavior expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who several years ago visited the rats at the farm, about six miles from Akademgorodok, near the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Frank Albert, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, is working with both the tame and the hyperaggressive Siberian strains in the hope of understanding the genetic basis of their behavioral differences.

The history is fascinating. The questions it raises about how it could apply to humans are quite scary.

“It looked as if it would not work for a long time, but in the end we managed to build enough trust,” Dr. Paabo said. He and his student, Mr. Albert, work closely with Dr. Plyusnina. Mr. Albert hopes to identify which of the rats’ genes were selected for by the domestication process.

His strategy is to cross the tame rats with the ferocious rats and then score the progeny for how much of each trait they inherit. He hopes to identify 200 sites along the genome at which the tame and ferocious rats differ. If one or more of the sites correlate with tameness or fierceness in the progeny, they will probably lie near important genes that underlie one of the two traits.

The genes, if Mr. Albert finds them, would be of great interest because they are presumably the same in all species of domesticated mammal. That may even include humans. Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard, has proposed that people are a domesticated form of ape, the domestication having been self-administered as human societies penalized or ostracized individuals who were too aggressive.

Dr. Paabo said that if Mr. Albert identified the genes responsible for domestication in rats, “we would also look at those genes in humans and apes to see if they might be involved in human evolution.”

Human self-domestication, if it occurred, would probably not have exactly the same genetic basis as tameness in animals. But Mr. Albert said that if he could pinpoint the genetic difference between the tame and ferocious rats, he would compare the chimp genome and the human genome to see if they showed a similar difference.

The article itself skirts the questions about humans, but it is intriguing that populations of animals with completely different behavioral characteristics were bred in a relatively short time. Could that also apply to humans?

Rocket Barrage Continues

Hezbollah continued intentionally targeting civilians and unleashed another barrage of rockets into Israel. A 15 year old girl was killed. For an indication of what the Hezbollah weapons are designed for, look at the picture accompanying the linked article. It shows a bus that was hit with shrapnel from a rocket. Look closely and you can tell that what you're looking at is damage from ball bearing type impacts. These rockets are pure anti-personnel weapons designed to create maximum casualties.

After a comparatively quiet morning, the North of Israel found itself once again under rocket fire early Tuesday afternoon, with rockets landing in Kfar Mrar, Kiryat Shmona, Acre, and Nahariya. The heaviest barrage, which included 16 rockets, struck Haifa.

In Kfar Mrar, a 15-year-old girl was killed after a rocket stuck a private residence near a mosque in the Galilee village, which is home to Druse, Christians, and Muslims.

Also, a 76-year-old Haifa resident died of a heart attack during the latest barrage of rockets on the city.

The elderly man collapsed as he ran towards a bomb shelter upon hearing a warning siren.

At least 24 of the wounded were evacuated to Poria Hospital in Tiberias, where hospital staff treated one person in serious condition and one person with moderate wounds. The rest of the evacuees, staff reported, were lightly wounded, although the wounded included an unusually large number of children.

Earlier, in Haifa, at least 23 people were wounded - two moderately and 11 lightly - when 16 rockets pounded the city. The rest were suffering from shock. Magen David Adom ambulances evacuated the wounded to Haifa's Rambam Hospital.

According to police, what could have been disastrous results of the salvo on Haifa were avoided, due to the fact that most of the rockets missed apartment buildings and impacted in courtyards.

One of the rockets hit a city bus. Puddles of blood were seen on the front steps of the bus leading up to the driver's seat. The windshield was hit by shrapnel.

It's kind of hard to discuss proportionality when you're dealing with this kind of intentional terror tactic.

Oars Optional

The crew of a large freighter have been rescued from their listing ship in waters South of the Aleutian Islands. The 23 crewmen were rescued by two National Guard and one US Coast Guard helicopters. Conditions were "challenging" according to spokesmen. The freighter, Singapore flagged Cougar Ace, was carrying almost 5,000 automobiles from Japan to Canada.

"People are out of harm's way, they are rescued and they are safe," said Alaska National Guard spokesman Maj. Mike Haller.

All 23 crew members were hoisted into two National Guard Pave Hawk helicopters and a Coast Guard helicopter and taken to Adak Island in the Aleutians, 230 miles to the north of the Cougar Ace.

The rescue was conducted in "very challenging weather," said Master Sgt. Sal Provenzano with the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center. There were 10-foot seas whipping the ship, which was listed nearly on its side.

A nearby merchant marine vessel was standing by to take any crew member who couldn't fit on the three helicopters, but rescuers decided against conducting more hoist operations to lower the crew members onto the ship in poor weather.

"We made the decision to cram in everybody," Provenzano said.

One crew member with a broken ankle was to be flown by plane to Anchorage immediately after landing in Adak, Provenzano said. There were no other injuries reported.

It was not immediately known how long the other crew members, who all donned survival suits when the ship started taking on water, would remain on Adak Island.

The Cougar Ace began listing in the turbulent Pacific Ocean late Sunday night, when the crew sent out an SOS.

A Coast Guard plane earlier Monday dropped three life rafts, but roiling waters shoved the rafts underneath the dipping port side of the 654-foot ship. Racing against an increasingly tilting ship, rescuers tossed an additional raft along the higher starboard side, but it was a 150-foot drop to the water and beyond their reach.

The Cougar Ace had been carrying nearly 5,000 cars from Japan to Canada when it began taking on water Sunday night.

A merchant marine ship crew that had been in the area reached the vessel Monday morning. The crew of that ship tried, but failed, to rig a line to the Cougar Ace to keep it from tilting further.

Near the vessel, Coast Guard officers could see a 2-mile oil sheen, though officials said it was difficult to say how much of the ship's 430 metric tons of fuel oil or 112 metric tons of diesel fuel had spilled. The ocean was choppy, with rain squalls and 8- to 10-foot seas reported.

The ship is almost completely on it's side in Coast Guard photographs that accompany the linked news article. When the Coast Guard calls conditions "challenging" you can about bet that that was one hairy rescue.

Rice Standing Firmly Behind Israel

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is meeting with both Israeli leadership and the Palestinian President Abbas today, but remains unwavering in her support of Israel. Her remarks after meeting Abbas indicate that there is a new model in play. It will not be the same old easily broken ceasefire.

Talking to reporters here after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Rice said, "We need to get to a sustainable peace, there must be a way for people to reconcile their differences."

Earlier, meeting in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, she said the time has come for a new Middle East. "I have no doubt there are those who wish to strangle a democratic and sovereign Lebanon in its crib," Rice said. "We, of course, also urgently want to end the violence."

Rice is leading the first high-level U.S. diplomatic mission since war broke out in Lebanon. She said she has "no desire" to be back in weeks or months after terrorists find another way to disrupt any potential cease fire.

"It is time for a new Middle East," she said. "It is time to say to those that don't want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail. They will not."

Olmert welcomed Rice warmly and vowed that " Israel is determined to carry on this fight against Hezbollah." He said his government "will not hesitate to take severe measures against those who are aiming thousands of rockets and missiles against innocent civilians for the sole purpose of killing them." is determined to carry on this fight against Hezbollah." He said his government "will not hesitate to take severe measures against those who are aiming thousands of rockets and missiles against innocent civilians for the sole purpose of killing them."

Rice, who has disappointed some U.S. allies with her support of Israel, also met Tuesday with Israel Defense Minister Amir Peretz. Rice made no public remarks after her meetings with Olmert and Peretz.

She then took a motorcade to the West Bank town of Ramallah for a meeting with Abbas. About 45 minutes before Rice's arrival, police scuffled with hundreds of Palestinians in an anti-U.S. protest outside the government building where the meeting was being held.

West Bank town of Ramallah for a meeting with Abbas. About 45 minutes before Rice's arrival, police scuffled with hundreds of Palestinians in an anti-U.S. protest outside the government building where the meeting was being held.

No protesters were in sight by the time the Rice party arrived.

Israelis have welcomed Rice's message that a long-term solution is essential to dealing with their conflict with guerrilla fighters from the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas. However, the Palestinians are among those pushing for a quick cease-fire to end what they see as the suffering of the Lebanese people.

The Bush administration has said it wants to address the overall threat from Hezbollah, a Shiite militia in Lebanon, by creating conditions that will give the weak Lebanese government control over its entire territory, including south Lebanon, which is under Hezbollah control.

Speaking For Hezbollah

The Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, effectively acting as the negotiator for Hezbollah, rejected US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's peace proposals.

Nabih Beri, Lebanon's parliament speaker and Hezbollah's de facto negotiator, rejected proposals brought by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday, inisisting a cease-fire must precede any talks about resolving Hezbollah's presence in the south, an official close to the speaker said.

Rice's talks with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora also appeared to have been tense. Siniora told Rice that Israel's bombardment was taking his country "backwards 50 years" and called for a "swift cease-fire," the prime minister's office said.

An official close to Beri said his talks with Rice failed to "reach an agreement because Rice insisted on one full package to end the fighting."

The package included a cease-fire, simultaneous with the deployment of the Lebanese army and an international force in south Lebanon and the removal of Hezbollah weapons from a buffer zone extending 30 kilometers from the Israeli border, said the official. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

Beri rejected the package, proposing instead a two-phased plan. First would come a cease-fire and negotiations for a prisoner swap. Then an inter-Lebanese dialogue would work out a solution to the situation in south Lebanon, said the official.

The United States has insisted that no cease-fire can take place without dealing what it calls the root cause of the violence - Hezbollah's domination of the south along the Israeli border. Israel has rejected any halt in the fighting until two soldiers captured by the guerrillas are freed and the guerrillas are forced back.

The U.S. has said an international force might be necessary to help the Lebanese army move into the south. The central government has long refused to send the army in, insisting Hezbollah is a legitimate force and fearing that doing so would tear apart the country because of the guerrillas' strength.

In a sign of the differences between the U.S. and Lebanon, Siniora presented his own package for a permanent solution that contained long-standing Lebanese complaints that must be addressed before "Lebanese authority can be spread over all areas," his office said.

It included a call for a "swift cease-fire," to be followed an over-all solution guaranteeing the return of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel, Israel's withdrawal from the Shaba Farms - a tiny border region that Lebanon claims - and a provision on minefields lain in south Lebanon during its 18-year occupation of the region.

This could take a while. Bringing in extraneous negotiating points is, of course, normal. Bringing up the Sheba Farms is a particularly odd point though. My understanding of that issue is that Israel took control of that reportedly rocky and barren area from Syria, not from Lebanon.

Democrats Admit They Are Worried

Very interesting article out of the Associated Press today. Democrats are openly voicing worries that a Lieberman loss will hurt other Democrats. Now they are carefully phrasing it in terms of impact on Connecticut and other Democratic candidates there, but they are obviously thinking bigger, as well. The outbreak of war in Lebanon has made it even more dangerous, of course.

If Lieberman loses to Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont, he plans to run as an independent candidate. His volunteers are currently collecting the 7,500 signatures needed to petition Lieberman onto the November ballot, if necessary.

"It makes it more challenging," said John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and former chairman of the state Democratic Party, when asked what a Lieberman primary loss would mean to Democrats running for everything from Congress to state representative.

The hot Senate race has already drawn complaints from the two Democratic gubernatorial candidates running in the Aug. 8 primary. The campaigns for both Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano have complained that the Senate race is garnering the bulk of media attention, leaving their candidates fighting to win the voters' attention.

Feelings are mixed as to whether a primary loss by Lieberman would hurt the chances for the three Democrats hoping to defeat the state's three incumbent GOP U.S. House members, Reps. Chris Shays, Rob Simmons and Nancy Johnson.

Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said she believes the healthy fundraising numbers posted by Diane Farrell, Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy show that Democrats are willing to financially back the candidates. All three races remain targeted by the DCCC.

"Regardless of the Senate primary, all three Connecticut House Republicans are in for the races of their lives in November," Psaki said. "There's no question Connecticut is one of the top battlegrounds in the country."

Both Murphy and Farrell stood on stage at Monday's event, urging Democrats to back the incumbent.

But Ed Patru, a spokesman for the Republican Congressional Committee, said if Lieberman's name appears on the November ballot as an independent, Democratic voters will be drawn away from the party.

I have been saying much the same things for as long as I have been blogging about this race. Because the Democrats have openly announced they planned to nationalize the elections, the Connecticut primary itself also has national implications even though the article steers clear of them. A Lamont win will give the Republicans a club roughly the size of Detroit to beat the Democrats with.

Are you really, really sure you want to court the netroots, Democrats?

UPDATE: The Washington Post's David Broder also writes about this.