theweaselking | Aug. 31st, 2006

Aug. 31st, 2006

"The Umbrella Project": Making corsets and dresses out of discarded umbrellas.

RadioShack Corp. notified about 400 workers by e-mail that they were being dismissed immediately.

Catholic Church condemns abortion performed on raped Colombian girl, 11, will excommunicate the doctors and nurses who performed it.

The 11-year-old girl was eight weeks pregnant after being raped by her stepfather.

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, said in addition to the doctors and nurses, the measure could apply to "relatives, politicians and lawmakers" whom he called "protagonists in this abominable crime".

The girl, whose identity has not been released, had "fallen in the hands of evildoers", the cardinal said in an interview with local television on Tuesday.
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Quoth

flemco about similar idiocy yesterday, "And yet, in this country, we let the religious vote. I don't get it."

Early stages of supernova caught on camera.

Astronomers say they have witnessed a stellar explosion - or supernova - unfolding in real time. Supernovae occur when huge, mature stars effectively run out of fuel and collapse in on themselves. The observations, outlined in the journal Nature, offer the most detailed picture yet of these cosmic explosions.

An initial release of energy from the star was picked up by the Swift satellite in February, allowing experts to train their telescopes on the event. This short, sharp outburst, known as an X-ray flash, amounted to an early warning signal that the star was going to turn supernova.

Maine National Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan are never far from the thoughts of their loved ones. But now, thanks to a popular family-support program, they're even closer.

Welcome to the ``Flat Daddy" and ``Flat Mommy" phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home.

The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front.

``I prop him up in a chair, or sometimes put him on the couch and cover him up with a blanket," said Kay Judkins of Caribou, whose husband, Jim, is a minesweeper mechanic in Afghanistan. ``The cat will curl up on the blanket, and it looks kind of weird. I've tricked several people by that. They think he's home again."