Weird News

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I guess the reason this doesn't quite sit well with me is because of its Nanny State-ishness. Nanny Stateliness?... erm, maybe not.

Seems like it should be more illegal to actually starve a person than to incite starvation in others.

Not that the Auschwitz-Buchenwald weight loss plan would ever be popular.

[deadbeater]

Originally Posted by Cicero

~snip~PARIS (AP) — The French parliament's lower house adopted a groundbreaking bill Tuesday that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites — to publicly incite extreme thinness.

The National Assembly approved the bill in a series of votes Tuesday, after the legislation won unanimous support from the ruling conservative UMP party. It goes to the Senate in the coming weeks.

Fashion industry experts said that, if passed, the law would be the strongest of its kind anywhere. Leaders in French couture are opposed to the idea of legal boundaries on beauty standards.

The bill was the latest and strongest of measures proposed after the 2006 anorexia-linked death of a Brazilian model prompted efforts throughout the international fashion industry to address the repercussions of using ultra-thin models.

Conservative lawmaker Valery Boyer, author of the law, argued that encouraging anorexia or severe weight loss should be punishable in court.

Doctors and psychologists treating patients with anorexia nervosa — a disorder characterized by an abnormal fear of becoming overweight — welcomed the government's efforts to fight self-inflicted starvation, but warned that its link with media images remains hazy.

French lawmakers and fashion industry members signed a nonbinding charter last week on promoting healthier body images. Spain in 2007 banned ultra-thin models from catwalks.

But Boyer said such measures did not go far enough.

Her bill has mainly brought focus to pro-anorexic Web sites that give advice on how to eat an apple a day — and nothing else.

But Boyer insisted in her speech to lawmakers Tuesday that the legislation was much broader and could, in theory, be used against many facets of the fashion industry.

It would give judges the power to imprison and fine offenders up to $47,000 if found guilty of “inciting others to deprive themselves of food” to an “excessive” degree, Boyer said in a telephone interview before the parliamentary session.

Judges could also sanction those responsible for a magazine photo of a model whose “excessive thinness ... altered her health,” she said.

Boyer said she was focusing on women's health, though the bill applies to models of both sexes. The French Health Ministry says most of the 30,000 to 40,000 people with anorexia in France are women.

Didier Grumbach, president of the influential French Federation of Couture, said he was not aware how broad the proposed legislation was, and made no secret of his strong disapproval of such a sweeping measure.

“Never will we accept in our profession that a judge decides if a young girl is skinny or not skinny,” he said. “That doesn't exist in the world, and it will certainly not exist in France.”

Marleen S. Williams, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Utah who researches the media's effect on anorexic women, said it was nearly impossible to prove that the media causes eating disorders.

Williams said studies show fewer eating disorders in “cultures that value full-bodied women.” Yet with the new French legal initiative, she fears, “you're putting your finger in one hole in the dike, but there are other holes, and it's much more complex than that.”

Associated Press writer Emmanuel Georges-Picot in Paris contributed to this report. ~snip~

Oh great now I'm too skinny? Fine.

Then there's the complex arrangement of sticking your fingers in just one hole in the dike. I can't believe people bother to use that expression anymore.

I hope that French law can distinguish between Sarah Michelle Gellar thinness--she's otherwise a healthy athlete--and Kate Moss thinness--which she maintained through cigarettes and heroin.

[Cicero]

Hmm. I just looked them both up. Both cute...Maybe they should just ban being generally pretty, so no one has to work out all the details.

[Shawnee123]

<---runs out to buy cigarettes and heroin.

[classicman]

lol - thats really funny!

[xoxoxoBruce]

The ghetto is full of fat, cigarette smoking, Heroin addicts.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Graveyards, too.

[TheMercenary]

CNN Reporter Kink. To bad. I liked the guys reports, I think his job is over.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04192008...not_107174.htm

[Undertoad]

Yeah - like Jeanne Moos, Quest's "lighter side" bits are generally weird enough to be interesting, and never cloyingly sweet or mind-numblingly dumb, like a local reporter would be.

His stuff is not meant to be taken all that seriously, but now that we know he uses meth and puts a rope around his balls and walks around, I don't think I want to watch him.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Meth, and possibly the rope, are common in the NYC gay scene.
Isn't this the old argument about what you do on your own time shouldn't affect your employment?

[classicman]

The criminal complaint says the officer at the scene was able to ID the drug because of "his prior experience as a police officer in drug arrests, observation of packaging which is characteristic of this type of drug, and defendant's statements that . . . 'I've got some meth in my pocket.' "

[xoxoxoBruce]

Man Attempting to Capture Lightning in a Bottle Killed by Lightning

No one has ever called John Willis a smart man. He was constantly at the bottom of his class in high school, thus knocking off the ’smart’ portion of that statement, and numerous ex-girlfriends of John’s will also contest using the word ‘man’ to describe him. But one thing everyone can call John now is dead.
That is because he was killed late Wednesday night after being struck by lightning not once, but twice in the same night.
“John had this crazy idea, it was just stupid,” said John’s longtime friend Tony. “He heard someone make an offhand remark about ‘catching lightning in a bottle’ and he took it seriously.”
“It was John’s dream to be rich,” said another friend. “No one has ever been able to catch lightning in a bottle, but he thought he could fill a few bottles and make a fortune selling them at craft shows and outside sporting events.”
John fashioned a makeshift lightning rod from some old pipes he removed from his home that he felt “weren’t that important anyways” and attached them to an old glass jam bottle using duct tape. He then had a plastic cover for the bottle, which he intended on “placing over the bottle really quickly after the lightning strikes” to trap it.
“He used a plastic cover because he didn’t want to get electrocuted,” said Tony. “He also wore rubber-soled shoes and rubber gloves, but it just wasn’t enough protection.”
John waited patiently for nearly two weeks before a lightning storm finally struck. When it did, he made his way to an open field and setup his operations.
“John placed a few bottles in the field, then put his lightning rod in the first,” said John’s girlfriend Tracy, who was with John when he was killed. “He had me hide in some bushes away from the bottles, he was afraid the lightning wouldn’t strike if it saw both of us there waiting to trap it.”
John knelt next to the bottles, one hand steadying the lightning rod, the other with the cover for the bottle, ready to trap the lightning when it struck. At approximately 8:30, John’s first chance came.
“I’ve never seen lighting so close to me,” said Tracy. “It was like a huge discontinuous natural electric discharge in the atmosphere right in front of me!”
The lightning struck the pipes but John was unable to cover the bottle.
“When it hit, it knocked John back about ten feet,” said Tracy. “He was burnt, smoking, and unconscious for the next hour.”
When John finally came to, he was even more determined to capture the lightning.
“I could see the look of determination in his face,” said Tracy. “At least, I think that was determination, but it might have just been the look of a man with no eyebrows.”
The second bolt of lightning struck an hour later.
“John was getting tired, he had rested up against the rod for support,” said Tracy. “When the lightning finally struck, it sent John flying backwards and he collapsed onto the ground.”
Paramedics at the scene pronounced John dead and “cooked to a delicious golden brown”.
John’s parents were clearly upset by the news, but didn’t feel John was solely to blame for this mishap.
“We encouraged John to always follow his dreams,” said John’s father. “We never would have told him that if we knew he had such stupid dreams.”
Tracy plans to continue the dream of John’s and finally capture lightning in a bottle.
“I’ve gotten a bigger bottle, I think that was the fate of John,” she said. “His bottle couldn’t hold all the lightning, so it transferred over to him. But now I’ve got the biggest bottle Wal-Mart sells and there is no way I won’t accomplish what he died trying to do.”

From

[Cicero]

“We encouraged John to always follow his dreams,” said John’s father. “We never would have told him that if we knew he had such stupid dreams.”

lol!!!

[spudcon]

Originally Posted by xiphos

lol.

To India: Not a bad idea, but it could use some thought. Instead of getting to your gun licence quicker, one could get certain benefits, like a monthly pension special for them, etc. It would create less killing, and would acually help the citizens of India.

Perhaps the Indians think giving more guys guns would increase killing. Their population control. Just a speculation.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I used to work with an Indian engineer that told me getting a gun was no problem. But the government strictly controlled ammo, and you had to account for what you shot at, to get more.