News To Me with George Mathis

Monsanto's genetically modified seeds, which are resitant to Roundup, are used to grow corn and other crops all over the world, including some other DeKalb County.

April 29, 2013:

• An herbicide sprayed on millions of acres of food has been linked to multiple health problems and diseases. The ubiquitous weed-killer Roundup, developed by agricultural biotech giant Monsanto, is said to leave “glyphosate” in food, which “can disrupt normal body functions and induce disease,” according the report. The chemical is absorbed by plants and can’t simply be washed off. Since glyphosate is linked to Parkinson’s and cancer, the EPA is jumping right on this one. The federal agency has set a 2015 deadline for determining if use of the chemical should be limited.
• A British mother forced her 14-year-old daughter to artificially inseminate herself so she could adopt the baby as her fourth child, according to an article in The Guardian. The woman, who is serving five years for cruelty to …

Continue reading Study: Roundup linked to diseases »

Atlantan Selena Gilreath wears a mask while working on Northside Drive. The mask will match her vest by afternoon. (John Spink/AJC)

“If I’d wanted a yellow truck, you’d have bought one,” I said to the wife while I hosed pollen off her red GMC Jimmy.

We were headed to Athens Wednesday to pick up our fourth boat (it is a sickness) and I wanted to give the rarely used vehicle some love and maybe save an ounce of gas.

“It will be yellow again by the time we get back. You’re wasting water.”

She was right. Somewhere along Ga. 10 a smoke-like haze enveloped us. “Is my eyesight failing or is something on fire?” I asked.

A mile or two down the road we figured it out. It was pollen, aka nature’s middle finger. Trees alongside the road were emanating opaque cocoons of airborne plant sperm and there wasn’t anything we could do about it except keep the windows rolled up. And be happy we weren’t sneezing.

The pollen this morning is about as bad as it gets.

The AJC’s Mike Morris reports …

Continue reading Pollen on the attack in Georgia »

Pollen attacks a helpless vehicle in DeKalb County. (Photo courtesy of wife)

April 10, 2013:

• Thou shalt not uTorrent: Someone in Vatican City  is downloading porn, according to file sharing experts. TorrentFreak.com, perhaps not the most reliable source, alleges to have analyzed what the good folks in the tiny, pope-ruled nation are downloading and some of it is copyrighted porn. The IP addresses resolve to “Holy See (Vatican City State)” and some of the more spicy titles, such as “RS77_Episode01,” are confirmed to be naughty, say TorrentFreak editors. There’s only 800 or so people living in Vatican City, but there’s no way to know exactly who is responsible for the downloads. It could be a randy tourist or  multi-gigabyte misclick. Porn is popular everywhere, but like Cubism in the early 20th Century, that doesn’t make it right. A Religious Institute survey of clergy suggests 20 percent of religious leaders have visited a sexually explicit website, probably for …

Continue reading Report: ‘Torrents’ of porn in Vatican City »

Anti-Thatcher protesters react to the death of former British Prime Minister as they gather at Trafalgar Square in London. (AP)

April 9, 2013:

• A new study reveals women like tall men with a large [bleep]. For those unwilling to click the link, just know the word represented by bleep is NOT wallet. The study, which showed “3D computer-generated male bodies” to 105 women, found “[bleep] size affected a man’s sexual attractiveness, but height was equally important, with taller men considered more attractive.” Dr. Wong, whose name I did not just make up, said, “There is always much debate on the subject and we wanted to address the notion of whether size matters using a valid scientific approach.”
• It looks like Maryland will be the next state to allow medical marijuana. The state Senate has approved the measure 42-4 and the governor said he would likely sign the measure into law. I don’t smoke marijuana, and never have, but it seems that many more states will be following …

Continue reading NTM: Women like men with big … »

Signs of the Apocalypse are increasing in frequency and intensity. You have been warned. (Photo from sharpdaily.hk)

After a weekend dominated by sports (Final Four, Braves sweep), I feel the need to share with intelligent readers of this blog the sort of news that reveals not only the depth of human suffering, but humanity’s unyielding sense of dignity and nobility.

But it’s easier to just show these pictures of dogs wearing pantyhose.

Clearly, the good people of Hong Kong must be stopped ere the appellation “man’s best friend” is lost forever.

Why do such a thing to a pet? I’m not sure, but the English word “sexy” in the URL is clear cause for concern.

Hopefully PETA is on this.

Meanwhile, in other news:

• A North Carolina doctor has located a 6-inch extraterrestrial baby in Chile. Instead of presenting the facts in a scientific journal he will be making his case in a movie. Since a circus freak show tent was not available, this seems perfectly reasonable.
• Beyonce and Jay-Z …

Continue reading News To Me: Dogs in pantyhose and other mysteries »

#FAIL (AJC photo by Ben Gray)

News tidbits for April 4, 2013:

• Atlanta is the third “roachiest” city in America, according to Orkin, which probably knows a thing or two about bugs. OK, they never used the word “roachiest” but they should have. Chicago, surprisingly, had the most pest control treatments for four kinds of pests, ants, rodents, spiders and bed bugs. Atlanta’s most troublesome bug was mosquitoes. Los Angeles, No. 2, was actually the “roachiest.”
• North Korea is threatening a nuclear attack on the United States, which sounds scarier that it probably is. Why are they upset? Maybe because the hacker group Anonymous hacked the country’s official Twitter and Flickr accounts? The hackers are said to have posted a pic of Kim Jong Un with a pig nose and a drawing of Mickey Mouse (his fave!) on his chest. The text read “Threatening world peace with ICBMs and Nuclear weapons/Wasting money while his people starve to death.”
• Georgia is ranked 10th in gun …

Continue reading Georgia full of guns and mosquitoes »

The banana and clove flavors of Munich's famed hefeweizens have not assuaged the misery of Justin Bieber's stranded monkey. (AP)

Part of my job is keeping up with the news. In olden days, news editors read other printed publications, checked the news wire and listened to reporters (and neighbors) to stay on top of what was going on.

Things have changed.

Now we also get to follow Twitter, read dozens of online news sites, blogs, feeds and otherwise click things repeatedly. I even get news tips from my friends’ Facebook posts.

It can get messy, but the end result is “more news.”

Today I’m going to summarize a few of the things I find interesting in my daily search. Hopefully some of what I mention will be interesting to you as well. To liven it up, I will throw a little mirth into the mix. Don’t take it too seriously; it’s all in fun.

If you have run across something interesting online, please share it here.

April 3, 2013:

• The Associated Press Style Book (not sure if that is …

Continue reading News to You, maybe »

Hey baby, how about we rush over to the Majestic right now for an omelet next week? (Credit: Bart Zijlstra, University of Iowa)

What the world needs now is love sweet snail love studies, according to Burt Bacharach and a $880,000 federal grant.

An article on CNSNews.com details the expenditure by The National Science Foundation, which will allegedly help a female scientist at the University of Iowa figure out “why males exist.”

The study looks at the New Zealand mud snail, which, like my former college roommate, can have sex with or without a partner.

Sex with other sentient creatures is “more costly” than asexual reproduction, “yet nearly all organisms reproduce sexually,” scientist Maurine Neiman declares. “Why is sexual reproduction so common despite its costs?”

I’m no scientist, but I’m guessing it helps divorce attorneys pay their bills.

Alas, answering the question is “more complicated that is appears,” the scientists write.

“Because only females can directly produce …

Continue reading $880,000 study to figure out ‘why males exist’ »

Freedom is not free, and have you seen the price of guns and ammo lately?

Maybe that explains why a guns rights advocate from Wisconsin feeling the financial pinch of buying a gun to “protect his family” is selling an autographed 8×10 glossy of comedian Jim Carrey on eBay.

Carrey, of course, recently alienated some folks by impersonating the late Charlton Heston in an anti-gun video spoof.

On eBay, the black and white photo emblazoned with Carrey’s trademark “spank you very much” is going for over $500, and there’s still 5 days to go.

I think he’ll be able to afford a Glock with that, but he’ll need a bit more to buy the Glock G30S .45 ACP he wants, which retails for about $650.

Almost 100 people have bid on the photo since it was posted Tuesday.

“Astrobuzz” (probably an alias) said he “lost all respect for Mr. Carrey after he released his ‘Cold Dead Hands’ video mocking responsible gun owners and Charlton Heston. I believe in the 2nd Amendment and my rights shall not be …

Continue reading Jim Carrey autograph auctioned for Glock »

Looks like Georgia to me. (MELISSA ABBEY, MABBEY@AJC.COM)

You wouldn’t know it by all the rain we’ve had lately, but Georgia needs water to satiate its thirst for growth.

And the best way to get water is to grab land.

Fortunately for us, Georgia politicians have an impeccable record (see Yazoo Land Fraud) when it comes to land deals and the good people of Tennessee probably won’t miss a sliver of land between us and the gushing Tennessee River.

Or maybe they will.

An article titled “Tennessee, Georgia at war over state line” in the Chattanooga Times Free Press seems to indicate they are onto us.

No matter, we have House Resolution 4 on our side, which states Georgia will take it all the way to the Supreme Court if Tennessee does not agree to swap 66.5 square miles of Tennessee land for a 1.5-mile strip of Tennessee land that Georgia would lay a monster pipe on to pump a billion gallons of water per day.

As someone who paid the Ga. 400 toll for years after the road was paid …

Continue reading Georgia’s charge of the water brigade »