Steinbring Inc.

I think I remember these photos from a larger collection from another site but I don’t remember where.  If somebody knows, please let me know.  If I remember, when I first came across these photos, the author said that they were taken by a Russian on a business trip.

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I think this dude has been hanging around Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a little too much.

A leader of the Texas House of Representatives apologized Friday for circulating an appeal to ban the teaching of evolution as derived from “Rabbinic writings” and other Jewish texts.

“I had no intention to offend anyone,” said the lawmaker, Warren Chisum, a Republican from the Panhandle who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

…

The one-page memorandum, marked “From: Representative Ben Bridges,” declared that “tax-supported evolution science” was based on religion and therefore unlawful under the United States Constitution.

It continued, “Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called secular evolution science is the Big Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion.”

“This scenario,” the memorandum stated, “is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings on the mystic ‘holy book’ kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”

Link [ Via Yiddish Phrase: #!@$ ]

An Amsterdam judge has ruled that peep shows — where sex workers performing strip shows and explicit acts can be watched from booths — are a form of theater and club owners are therefore entitled to a hefty tax break.

“Admitting customers to peep shows is equivalent to admitting them to a theater performance,” an Amsterdam Appeals Court judge wrote in a ruling late last month that was made public Tuesday. “The erotic character of the performance does not diminish that.”

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I would normally be the first to blame an industry lobbying group but how much power could lunchbox manufacturers have?

In 2005, when government scientists tested 60 soft, vinyl lunchboxes, they found that one in five contained amounts of lead that medical experts consider unsafe — and several had more than 10 times hazardous levels.

But that’s not what they told the public.

Instead, the Consumer Product Safety Commission released a statement that they found “no instances of hazardous levels.” And they refused to release their actual test results, citing regulations that protect manufacturers from having their information released to the public.

That data was not made public until The Associated Press received a box of about 1,500 pages of lab reports, in-house e-mails and other records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed a year ago.

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I really hope that this doesn’t pass. If it does, the RIAA might think they could get away with it in the US.

Canada’s Private Copyright Collective is taking another stab at introducing levies on digital music players and memory cards.

The charges could add as much as $75 to the price of a new Apple iPod.

The collective, which seeks to compensate artists for unauthorized copying of their music, said Friday it’s taking a new tack after a 2003 Federal Court of Appeals decision rejected the levies.

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In its new submission to the Copyright Board, the collective is proposing levies of $5 on devices with up to one gigabyte (GB) of memory, $25 for one to 10 GB, $50 for between 10 GB and 30 GB and $75 for over 30 GB. That would take the price of Apple’s 30GB iPod to $365 from $290, a 26 per cent increase.

The group is also asking for levies of $2 to $10 for memory cards, which are primarily used to store photographs in digital cameras.

It’s also asking for eight-cent increases to the current 21-cent levy on blank CD media and 77-cent charge for CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio and MiniDiscs.

Link [ Via SlashDot ]