An Idaho Falls man has been told not to wear his bunny suit in public anymore after neighbors complained that he was frightening small children.

The Idaho Falls Police Department received calls on Monday of a man in a black bunny suit that was being a public nuisance [...]]]>

Damn. Would just the tutu be OK?

An Idaho Falls man has been told not to wear his bunny suit in public anymore after neighbors complained that he was frightening small children.

The Idaho Falls Police Department received calls on Monday of a man in a black bunny suit that was being a public nuisance and scaring children in a neighborhood. Police responded to the 400 block of Third Street where they advised 34-year-old William Falkingham not to wear his bunny suit costume in public.

According to reports, a resident told authorities that her son had been frightened by Falkingham who was wearing a black bunny suit and hiding behind a tree. The neighbor also told police that the 34-year-old male pointed his finger like a gun at her son.

Officers also spoke to other neighbors who expressed that they were greatly disturbed by Falkingham and his bunny suit. Neighbors also reported that the 34-year-old occasionally wears a tutu with the costume.

Falkingham told authorities that he enjoys wearing the suit, but understands the neighbors’ concerns and complaints.

via Idaho Falls Police Investigate Man in Bunny Suit – KPVI News 6 – Pocatello, ID.

Police in Lower Saxony, Germany, who decided to teach a vulture to sniff out corpses of missing people, have hit difficulties two months into training.

Reasoning that it could fly over miles of wasteland, then descend where it found a missing person, they had wanted to fit [...]]]>

Somebody call me a cab.

Because by “find” you meant, of course, “eat”:

Police in Lower Saxony, Germany, who decided to teach a vulture to sniff out corpses of missing people, have hit difficulties two months into training.

Reasoning that it could fly over miles of wasteland, then descend where it found a missing person, they had wanted to fit it with a transmitter.But it transpires that Sherlock, as the bird is known, is not very interested.

On top of that, it is shy, confuses human with animal remains and actually prefers to walk, Spiegel magazine says.

via BBC News – German police vulture scheme fails to take off.

For people suffering from debilitating autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, there is growing evidence that help may be at hand from an unusual source: parasitic worms.

In a U.S. study, early safety tests suggested the eggs of pig whipworms have anti-inflammatory properties, reducing the size [...]]]>

Go on without me, I’ll just slow you down:

For people suffering from debilitating autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, there is growing evidence that help may be at hand from an unusual source: parasitic worms.

In a U.S. study, early safety tests suggested the eggs of pig whipworms have anti-inflammatory properties, reducing the size of brain lesions in MS patients. A similar trial is under way in Denmark. And in Britain, academics at the University of Nottingham are studying the potential health benefits of hookworms, another type of parasitic worm.

If these trials prove successful, treatment with parasitic worms—known as helminthic therapy—could provide a simple, cheap, natural and controllable treatment for the debilitating condition, which affects 2.5 million people world-wide.

[more] via Parasitic Worms May Offer Hope of New Multiple Sclerosis Treatments – WSJ.com.

Dear Leslie:

I am honored that you have chosen me as the subject of your journalism school graduate thesis. At the behest of your instructor, you e-mailed me to ask how I’ve “built my personal brand over the years.” I’m answering with this column.

The [...]]]>

Gene Weingarten is not amused, but in an amusing way:

Dear Leslie:

I am honored that you have chosen me as the subject of your journalism school graduate thesis. At the behest of your instructor, you e-mailed me to ask how I’ve “built my personal brand over the years.” I’m answering with this column.

The best way to build a brand is to take a three-foot length of malleable iron and get one end red-hot. Then, apply it vigorously to the buttocks of the instructor who gave you this question. You want a nice, meaty sizzle.

via Gene Weingarten: How branding is ruining journalism – The Washington Post.

A Des Moines homeowner found messages in spray paint, some of them profane, around his house when he returned Wednesday afternoon.

Raymond Kling, 32, found messages like “Got ya,” and “U Lose,” and “Ugly couch,” written on the walls and doors, furniture and cabinets. The burglar spray painted clothes.

[more] via [...]]]>

Somebody enjoys their job:

A Des Moines homeowner found messages in spray paint, some of them profane, around his house when he returned Wednesday afternoon.

Raymond Kling, 32, found messages like “Got ya,” and “U Lose,” and “Ugly couch,” written on the walls and doors, furniture and cabinets. The burglar spray painted clothes.

[more] via Burglar scrawls messages in spray paint | The Des Moines Register | DesMoinesRegister.com.

Hoskinson has a prior conviction for robbery. On Oct. 9, 2007, Hoskinson stole $409 and beer from a Speedway. He was identified as the robber because he used his Speedy Rewards card at the gas pump before demanding money from the clerk.

via Convenience [...]]]>

Penny-wise, pound your head on a gas pump stupid:

via Convenience store clerks hit robber with broom | Zanesville Times Recorder | zanesvilletimesrecorder.com.

HOQUIAM, Wash. (AP) – Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington state.

The victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” Police said the attacker answered, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a [...]]]>

The furtive but fervent Taxonomic Liberation Front strikes again:

HOQUIAM, Wash. (AP) – Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into an apartment and assaulted a man in Washington state.

The victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” Police said the attacker answered, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a marten,” then punched him in the nose and fled.

[more] via Man carrying dead weasel accused of assault.

COLUMBIA, Mo. | Public health officials in Columbia have asked an ice cream shop to cool it with the cicada-flavored ice cream that customers apparently can’t get enough of.

Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream sold out its only batch of the insect-filled snack within hours of its June 1 debut. Employees collected the [...]]]>

The Associated Press:

COLUMBIA, Mo. | Public health officials in Columbia have asked an ice cream shop to cool it with the cicada-flavored ice cream that customers apparently can’t get enough of.

Sparky’s Homemade Ice Cream sold out its only batch of the insect-filled snack within hours of its June 1 debut. Employees collected the bountiful bugs in their backyards and removed most of the dead cicadas’ wings

[more] via www.kansascity.com | 06/07/2011 | Health officials nix cicada ice cream.

“Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book,” says Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who once had to persuade a student in his Bible class at Middle Tennessee State University that the saying “this dog won’t hunt” doesn’t appear in the Book of [...]]]>

Not in so many words, no:

“Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book,” says Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who once had to persuade a student in his Bible class at Middle Tennessee State University that the saying “this dog won’t hunt” doesn’t appear in the Book of Proverbs.

via Actually, that’s not in the Bible – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs.

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” ended Wednesday, bringing despair to booksellers who relied on her book club, television programmers who needed her ratings, and religion scholars who for a decade have tried explaining how this child of poverty became the leader of a [...]]]>

Thanks for a twenty-five year long national tutorial in self-absorbed stupidity and materialism:

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” ended Wednesday, bringing despair to booksellers who relied on her book club, television programmers who needed her ratings, and religion scholars who for a decade have tried explaining how this child of poverty became the leader of a worldwide cult. They have worked just as hard to define that cult, which is at once Christian and pantheistic, African-American in origin but global in reach.

The scholars found conflicting sources of Ms. Winfrey’s spirituality. It began, but definitely does not end, with the black church of her youth. In her 2003 book, “Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery,” Eva Illouz, a sociologist, quotes Ms. Winfrey as saying: “Since I was three and a half, I’ve been coming up in the church speaking. I did all of the James Weldon Johnson sermons” — Mr. Johnson being the poet whose “God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse” was published in 1927. “I used to do them for churches all over the city of Nashville,” Ms. Winfrey said.

Dr. Illouz, who teaches at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, found that elements of the black church, like its emotionality and focus on justice, “pervade ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ which has taken on the vocation of relieving a multiplicity of forms of suffering through the use of speech infused with the rhetorical style of black preachers.”

While respecting Ms. Winfrey’s use of her Christian heritage, Dr. Illouz ultimately concluded that the talk-show host might be something of a false prophet. That is because, she said, Ms. Winfrey and her cadre of self-help experts treated suffering as something beneficial. Ms. Winfrey turned the black church’s ethos of self-reliance in the face of suffering into an exaltation of suffering itself.

“By making all experiences of suffering into occasions to improve oneself,” Dr. Illouz wrote, “Oprah ends up — absurdly — making suffering into a desirable experience.”

[more] via The Church That Oprah Winfrey Built – NYTimes.com.