Opting Out Of Global Orgasm

A Buddhist monk from Thailand has decided to opt out of the so-called Global Orgasm Day being organized by aging hippies in the United States. As a matter of fact, he's opted out on a permanent basis.

He cut off his penis. With a machete. On purpose.

The 35-year-old monk, whose name was withheld for privacy reasons, allowed medical staff at Maharaj hospital, 780 km (480 miles) south of Bangkok to dress his wound, but refused reattachment, hospital chief Prawing Euanontouch said.

"We cleaned up the wound, gave him some stitches, but he declined to have it reattached because he said had abandoned everything," Prawing told Reuters by telephone.

Prawing declined to comment on the monk's erection, which Bangkok-based Kom Chad Luk tabloid reported on its Web site.

Excuse me for a moment, won't you? I have to go whimper in the corner for a few minutes.

Crime Fighting In Britain

Britain has launched a program to fingerprint speeders when they are pulled over. When the driver's fingerprint is scanned electronically, it will be electronically compared to the database of crime suspects. Cheery little bit of Big Brotherism, isn't it?

Motorists pulled over by police face the threat of being fingerprinted from today - further inflaming fears over the growth of the Big Brother culture.

They will be asked to use a hand-held fingerprint reader which will check their identity against the 6.5million recorded prints of crime suspects.

Although the scheme, to be tried out by ten police forces, will be voluntary at first, the Government has admitted it is considering making it compulsory.

It would work in the same way as motorists having to take a breath test to show whether they have been drinking.

Laws would be brought in which would mean criminal penalties for drivers who are stopped and who fail to let their fingerprints be checked.

The extension of fingerprinting to the roadside - at present such checks are made only on criminal suspects in police stations - comes amid growing concern at the spread of public surveillance.

Now, while they are zealously keeping an ever increasing eye on the citizens, trying mightily to catch them doing something wrong, they are less than stellar in actually preventing any embarrassing crimes. Like having the police pay records of 15,000 officers stolen.

A burglar has stolen bank account details of more than 15,000 Scotland Yard officers following a huge security blunder, it emerged last night.

Sensitive financial information about high-ranking officers, thought to include Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, and anti-terrorist detectives were stored on three laptops stolen from the company responsible for the force's pay and pensions services.

Last night, a major security review was under way at Britain's biggest force amid fears the thief could steal vast sums of money from officers' accounts.

It is also feared the computer files - which includes National Insurance numbers - could be used by criminal gangs to create false identities.

The break-in, at the offices of software group LogicaCMG in Peckham, South-East London, is a huge embarrassment to Scotland Yard.

A senior Yard source said: "Heads should roll over this. At a time of unprecedented concerns over security, it is scandalous that a thief can steal such sensitive information."

Detectives are trying to establish whether the thief had deliberately targeted the offices.

Well, then. Carry on watching the generally law-abiding types. They are easier to control than real criminals.

Poisoned Defector Fights For Life

Alexander Litvinenko, the man who was poisoned in Britain a few weeks ago is struggling to survive. His doctors are not sure what exactly was given to the man. Litvinenko, a former colonel in the Russian Federal Security Service, which succeeded the KGB was looking into the murder of a Russian journalist when the poisoning occurred. One toxicologist believes the poison used may have been radioactive thallium. That was a hallmark of the KGB back in the day.

LONDON, Nov. 21 — Mario Scaramella, the Italian who had lunch in London with a former Russian spy on the day the man was poisoned, said Tuesday that he showed the Russian e-mails during the meal that warned their lives might be in danger.

At a news conference in Rome, Scaramella said that at a sushi restaurant Nov. 1, he showed Alexander Litvinenko messages "regarding their security" and referring to a "well-organized plot."

"I said, 'Alex, I received an alarm in the last few days from a source that you introduced to me,' " said Scaramella, a security expert. By his account, both of them discounted the threats, and Litvinenko said: " 'It's unbelievable. Don't worry about that.' "

In a separate interview later, Scaramella said the e-mails mentioned "dangerous people" behind the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose unsolved murder last month in Moscow has caused an international outcry. He said the e-mails indicated that those responsible for her death were members of the Russian mafia from St. Petersburg.

Scaramella stressed that this was not his opinion but what was written in the e-mails, which are in the possession of Scotland Yard.

An Italian senator, Paolo Guzzanti, who appeared at the news conference, said Scaramella had not administered the poison. Guzzanti headed a parliamentary committee investigating Cold War espionage; Scaramella has acted as a consultant to the panel.

The Russian government denies any involvement, saying they haven't done that sort of thing since 1959. With the way Putin is running Russia, however, it is difficult to decipher where the government ends and the cronies take over. The rumors of Russian mafia involvement or even a full scale alliance with Putin's government have been swirling for quite some time.

Intrepid Operation

The US Navy is directing a 24/7 salvage operation to help free the USS Intrepid from the Hudson River mud that has held it fast since November 6th. They are dredging around the clock and sending divers in to survey the ship's predicament.

For the past week, workers under Navy supervision have dredged 24-7, gathering silt from the river's depths and swinging it over to a barge. The muck will be purified and taken to cover a landfill on Staten Island.

"We are deep in the throes of a major military-style dredging operation," said White, whose days have been filled with situation reports, conference calls and BlackBerry messages.

It all began as a military adventure that seemed, for a change, to bode well.

The Intrepid was to make a five-mile trip across the Hudson to New Jersey for needed repairs. A crowd of 500, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and former mayors David N. Dinkins and Edward I. Koch, gathered on Nov. 6 to send it off.

"To our platoon of ex-mayor line handlers, I say, Mr. Mayors, cast off!" ordered retired Rear Adm. James Lloyd "Doc" Abbot Jr., 88, who commanded the ship in the Mediterranean in the early 1960s. Smoke spewed, water churned, and the tugboats pulled, eventually to reach a force of 30,000 horsepower.

But after settling for 24 years into the silt at Pier 86, the 27,000-ton, 900-foot-long ship was stuck.

"Four propellers acted as screws, and the Intrepid screwed itself into the goo," White said. With the ship resting on a bump of mud, the stern was left to sit about two feet higher than the bow, he said, placing stress on the ship that could cause damage.

Time for a tactical reevaluation. Before the attempted move, the museum had spent $1.2 million to dredge more than 15,000 cubic yards of silt from under and behind the ship to create a channel to deeper water. Hundreds of tons of water had been pumped out of ballast tanks to raise the ship two feet. And the move was scheduled during the highest tide of the year, to lift the ship several more feet above a typical high tide.

The divers have reported visibility of only a few inches, so it is more an inspection by feel than a visual one. I remember reading that there was another higher-than-normal tide expected around December 6th, I suspect that must be why they are pushing to get the mud cleared away.  Earlier posts with some interesting links here and here.