The Snuson Confessional Sacristy & Bulletin

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Skydiver dies after landing in New Jersey yard during Easter egg hunt

The Brooklyn man and veteran skydiver plummeted into a backyard when his parachute apparently failed to deploy properly at around 2 p.m. Sunday, according to the Gloucester County, N.J., Prosecutor’s Office. The family that lived there was having an Easter egg hunt at the time, according to media reports.

(Excerpt) Read more at articles.mcall.com ...

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Elderly man calls for ambulance, violent cops beat him instead

An elderly Missouri man dialed 911 and asked for an ambulance to come and help his ailing wife. Instead, the police showed up, threw him to the ground, sat on his head and handcuffed him.
He later received stitches for his injuries.
“I never had anybody jump on me for doing nothing,” said the man, Elbert Breshears of Humansville, Missouri, in a statement to KSPR 33.
The trouble began after Breshears called to get help for his wife, who suffers from dementia. He asked for paramedics to come provide assistance to her after she knocked out one of their home’s windows.
The Humansville police arrived first, however.
According to Breshears, an officer tackled him right away, and then barked at him to stand up.
“He told me to get up,” recalled Breshears. “I told him I couldn’t.”

(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...

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When the World Ends, You’ll Need The Knowledge (Book Review)
Geek Dad blog ^

Author Lewis Dartnell poses an interesting question in his new book, The Knowledge: How To Rebuild Our World From Scratch:
If our technological society collapsed tomorrow, perhaps from a viral pandemic or catastrophic asteroid impact, what book would you want to press into the hands of the survivors?
Just over a decade ago, I was living in Texas and taking occasional trips out to the hill country for camping, hiking, and climbing. There’s a whole-lot-of-nothing out there, if you’ve never been. It’s beautiful, but you can go days without seeing another human being if you’re in the right spot. Bringing in your own water and food are an obvious necessity, and you’ve got to be very careful with every activity as medical help isn’t easily available… and neither is mobile phone coverage. My friends and I would frequently sit around the campfire and talk about just how society sat so precariously on that razor’s edge and question whether we were truly prepared if we lost the corner grocery store, indoor plumbing, and every other modern necessity that we take for granted.
I’m not a sky-is-falling kind of guy. I don’t have a bunker behind my house and a decade’s worth of food stocked away for my family (although I do sometimes think about it). Every generation has had its concerns about the world ending, but I’m one of those optimists that hopes we’ll be able to solve our problems — water shortages, global warming, pandemics — and not be despised by our great-great-grandkids.
But who really knows? Asteroids are flying around our universe with sufficient mass and speed. New and scarier viruses seem to pop up every few years. So many countries seem to want their own nuclear bombs these days. Experts seem to think a major financial collapse lurks around the corner. Just how prepared are we if the world we know it stopped functioning normally for an extended period of time? How long would we last without the modern conveniences of electricity, medicine, clothing, food, and clean water?
There are plenty of books out there that offer up advice for short term and long term survival — you can learn how to find and purify water, how to build a shelter, how to start a fire, and so much more. But so many survival books focus on the short term — three days to three months. What happens if a collapse of society is more permanent? What kinds of problems are we looking at and how might we get around them? And, ultimately, how might we more quickly recover from a collapse? These and more are the questions posed and given answers in Dartnell’s The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch.
The first three chapters introduce readers to the situation — a complete and utter collapse of civilization. Whatever the reason, Dartnell explains that what will be needed if humans are to survive is a reboot-manual. He offers up some examples of collapses that humans could most likely survive… and types of collapses where things don’t look too good for humans. For those types of collapse where we have a fighting chance, Dartnell argues that there are certain skills that we simply cannot lose… to lose them would mean extinction or additional dark ages where everything humans knew pre-collapse would have to be rediscovered through trial and error… and trial and error in this situation means more lives lost.
Dartnell briefly offers up a discussion on what he calls the Grace Period… where your chance of survival means figuring out how best to set yourself up to be part of the survivor group that will need to survive and preserve as much knowledge as possible. He tells you why you’ll need to get out of the city. Immediately. You’ll get a crash course in food and water prep and some discussions on what to expect when the power grid goes down. And then the book takes a solid turn…
For the remainder of the book, each chapter takes on a single category with Dartnell offering up a brief history on the category (such as clothing) and how that category developed over time… and finally with what information would need to be kept secure in order to make certain humans didn’t have to make the same development discovery and errors. Chapter categories include Agriculture, Food & Clothing, Materials, Medicine, Power, Transport, Communication, and many more.
Each chapter will open your eyes to just how much information and innovation have been collected over thousands of years. Dartnell shares breakthroughs and unique details related to each category; what’s shocking is just specialized our society has become and how many skills have been lost as manufacturing technologies have replaced the human element. Sure, there are plenty of people in the world who might still know how to create spun yarn, but how many of them might still be around after the collapse of society? How many people these days know how to properly can their food and use simple chemical processes to slow down food spoil? Do you know how to properly find and prepare a field for planting crops? And if you do, do you know the best way to keep the soil’s nutrients replaced over time?
Dartnell’s book is an eye-opener. Glass. Aspirin. Soap. These and dozens more are just the simplest of items that humans are at risk of losing because we lack the knowledge to recreate them. And I said simplest of items… the book offers plenty more subjects that are going to be even more difficult to make, but all are required for modern society — sulphuric acid, for example, used to produce fertilizer, bleach cotton, making detergents, prepping iron, creating lubricants, and much more.
Over 300 pages in length, The Knowledge is an amazing checklist of human discovery. It could also be an extremely depressing checklist for human survivors as they inventory everything they’ve lost.
One big caveat — Dartnell’s book is NOT a How-To guide. He does cover dozens and dozens of topics in a summary-type manner, but you’re not going to finish reading this book and immediately know how to create your own soap or aspirin, for example. Dartnell does explain the basic idea behind most every concept, but it’s going to be up to you to reach further if you wish to develop any or all of these skills.
One obvious point you’ll pick up on quickly as you read through the book is just how valuable it will be for humans to gather together again. We’ve all seen the movies and TV shows that show how society degrades into us-vs-them, but Dartnell makes a solid point that there’s simply no way for any one person to have all of the skills necessary to reboot society. With that thought in mind, the book can provide you a jumping off point for picking one or two specialties that you might be able to add to a small group of survivors. I’m pretty good at making little wind generators that could light a single lightbulb, and I’ve actually made soap in my younger years and could probably figure it out again with minimal effort.
Whether you’re a prepper or not, The Knowledge is one of those books that could be invaluable to anyone wanting a better understanding of just how dependent we’ve become on technology to do our work for us… and how many skills have been lost over the years. For me, I’m crossing my fingers that the book never moves beyond a simple thought experiment. But in a worst case scenario, The Knowledge is one book that you’ll want to seek out (if you don’t own a copy) and preserve with extreme prejudice along with any other books that can provide what society will need to survive, reboot, and rebuild.

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KKK Suspect Was Busted With Black Male Prostitute

"Today in Things You Can't Unread: The former KKK leader who's accused of killing three people at Jewish centers was previously arrested when police caught him having sex with a black male prostitute, ABC News reports, as noted by Gawker. Officers in Raleigh, NC, caught Frazier Glenn Cross in a vehicle with the man, who was dressed as a woman. "It was pretty shocking because of his personal stances," says a former prosecutor. Cross later said he had sought out the prostitute in order to beat him, according to a recorded phone call."

(Excerpt) Read more at newser.com ...

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Michigan Priest Charged With Stealing $700,000 From Church
HNGN ^ |

A Catholic priest in Michigan has been charged with stealing thousands of dollars from a church in Troy, including money donated by the family of a dead parishioner.

Reverend Edward Belczak and another church administrator were indicted for theft of $700,000 from the St. Thomas More Church in Troy and the Archdiocese of Detroit between 2004 and 2012, The Detroit News reported. The pair allegedly concealed the theft by forging documents to the Archdiocese that showed the parish's expenses to be a lesser amount than it really was.
Belczak, 69, and his accomplice, 67-year-old Janice Verschuren, face several charges including conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, according to the indictment released Wednesday. Both face up to 20 years in prison if found guilty, the newspaper reported.
The money included donations given on Mother's and Father's Day, as well as a $350,000 donation to the church from the relatives of a parishioner who passed away.
Supporters of Belczak, described as a popular priest who has touched many lives, are not convinced of his guilt. He has been a pastor for over 30 years.
"He's presumed innocent and the conclusion is he is innocent," Jerome Sabbota, the priest's attorney, told The Detroit News. "We haven't seen any evidence. All we hear are allegations."
The priest reportedly used some of the stolen funds to pay for a $500,000 condominium in Wellington, Florida several years ago. Prosecutors placed the condo under a forfeiture suit two days before the indictment, the newspaper reported.
The Archdiocese did not offer specific details about the pending case against Belczak and Verschuren, but the two have not worked at the parish in over a year.
"The archdiocese will continue to cooperate with authorities as this matter moves through the courts," Archdiocese spokesman Joe Kohn told the newspaper in a statement. "As such, there is nothing more the archdiocese can or will say at this stage in the proceedings."
In the meantime, Belczak continues to serve other churches in the area, according to The Detroit News.

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Woman Dies In Car Wreck Moments After Posting About 'Happy Song' On Facebook

A North Carolina woman died Thursday in a car wreck, apparently moments after posting on Facebook how much she liked "the happy song."
Courney Ann Sanford, 32, of Clemmons, N.C. was driving on Business Route 85 in High Point, N.C., when her car crossed the median and hit a truck, the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
Sanford's car ran off the road and caught fire. She died at the scene. The truck also went off the road and hit a tree but its driver was unhurt.
Sanford had been wearing a seat belt but it wasn't on properly, police said.
Investigators ruled out drugs, alcohol and speed as possible causes of the crash, then learned later Thursday from her friends that Sanford had posted on her Facebook page at 8:33 a.m., High Point police Lt. Chris Weisner told WGHP. That was about a minute before authorities received their first call about the accident, he said.
The post read: "The happy song makes me HAPPY."

(Excerpt) Read more at syracuse.com ...

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Lab mice fear men but not women, and that's a big problem for science
TheVerge.com ^ |

The history of science is one chock-full of mice and men. Historically, biological and medical research has largely depended on rodents, which provide scientists with everything from cells and organs to behavioral data. That's why a new study in which researchers found that mice actually fear men, but not women, has the potential to be so disruptive. It might mean that a number of researchers have published mouse studies in which their results reflect this male-induced stress effect — and they know nothing about it.
"People have not paid attention to this in the entire history of scientific research of animals," says Jeffrey Mogil, a pain researcher at McGill University and lead author of the study. "I think that it may have confounded, to whatever degree, some very large subset of existing research." Moreover, the effect probably isn't limited to behavioral studies, because the organs and cells that are used in medical research, such as in cancer studies, often originate in rodents. "If you're doing a liver cell study, the cells came from a rat that was sacrificed either by a man or a woman," Mogil says. As a result, "its stress levels would be in very different states." This, he says, could have an effect on the functioning of the liver cell in that later experiment.
In the study, published today in Nature Methods, researchers used the "mouse grimace scale" to measure pain responses in rodents exposed to men, women, or their respective smells. Pain is a proxy for stress because stress can, to a large extent, numb pain. So when the mice were confronted with the smell of men, they experienced less pain, whereas the presence of women — or their smell, Mogil says — "did nothing at all."
This might seem like a positive effect, but think of it this way: when athletes get hurt during a stressful game, they often don't feel the injury right away, and they keep pushing. From an evolutionary standpoint, this is supposed to keep them alive by helping them focus on something other than pain. Yet in reality, it mostly just ends up making the injury worse.
But pain wasn't the only indicator of stress in this study. Further experiments showed that the rodents also had increased body temperatures and levels of corticosterone, a stress hormone, in response to the smell of men. And the effect wasn't just prompted by human males, either. Rats and mice "are afraid of the smell of males of any species," Mogil says, because the mice in this study reacted to the smell of male dogs, guinea pigs, and cats as well.
The researchers think that mice react this way because of competition, and not predation. Male mice are territorial, Mogil says, even when it comes to females entering their domain. They also compete with males for mating opportunities, "so it's probably a little bit evolutionarily adaptive to have this effect until you can determine that a male that's around doesn't actually mean you any harm," he says. In all likelihood, mice just haven't developed a way to discriminate between the smell of a male mouse and the smell of other male mammals, so men also elicit a fear response.
Interestingly, the stress response isn't only dependent on the sex of an intruder, but also on the circumstances of his or her approach. "If you put a male-worn T-shirt and a female-worn T-shirt in the same room, the female T-shirt counteracts the effect of a male T-shirt." This, Mogil says, indicates that solitary males represent the real threat. "A lone male is up to no good — either hunting or defending his territory." Fortunately, the male-induced stress effect becomes less pronounced over time, eventually disappearing altogether. This, and the fact that women counteract the effect, means there are a number of ways that researchers could prevent it from showing up in data.
One option, Mogil says jokingly, "is fire all the men — or have them chaperoned by a woman." A more realistic approach, however, would be to have male experimenter sit in a room for 45 minutes before collecting data. That makes the problem go away. But the Mogil doubts that anyone will want to do that because "it's just too boring."
Instead, Mogil hopes that his research — and other studies like it — will prompt researchers to report the gender of the experimenter in their publications. "You don't have to go back very far to see studies where people didn't think the strain of mouse mattered or the sex of the mouse mattered," Mogil says. "But these things all matter," and could be addressed in statistical analyses.
For now, Mogil is looking forward to hearing from fellow researchers who might now have an answer for unusual results. "I expect to hear stories, to hear people telling me that this sort of explains mysteries about experimenters not replicating each other, or having effects and then losing them," Mogil says. Because studies are so large these days, the graduate students who start them often don't see them through to completion, Mogil explains. So, women and men often end up taking on the same work in succession. Whether scientists will want to go back and check if their results were tainted by a male-induced stress response, however, is anybody's guess. As Mogil puts it, "we will have to see."

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WATCH: Wendy’s Employee Assaulted In ‘Smack Cam’ Attack - Perps Put It Up on YouTube




In an attack reminiscent of the “Knockout Game,” a Wendy’s employee was assaulted in what is known as “Smack Cam” - the latest sick trend of the "thug culture."
In the video posted on YouTube, a teenage boy is recorded at an Austin Wendy’s Tuesday night going up to 16-year-old Calaybra Jones pretending to order. The teenager then smacks her across the face before running out into a getaway car.

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‘Witch’ Boasts About Human Flesh, Blood Diet
Nehanda Radio ^ |

A suspected witch from Pelandaba caused a stir in Mpopoma suburb, Bulawayo, after she ran out of her “witchcraft powers” and found herself at a stranger’s house.
Ellen Khayiya Mpofu, 52, was picked up by police after she invaded Patricia Tshabalala’s house just before 2AM yesterday and claimed that her friends “dumped her”.
Dressed in a wrapping scarf with no shoes and holding a plastic bag with pieces of cloth, mysterious objects and some concoctions, Khayiya shocked Mpopoma residents who learnt she found her way into the house through a locked door.
Stunned residents thronged the house to catch a glimpse of the “witch” before she was whisked away by the police at about 7AM.
Tshabalala said she was asleep when she heard someone scratching the main door from outside and she rushed to check, suspecting that thieves were trying to break into her house.
“I heard what sounded like a pet scratching the door at about 2AM. I listened carefully and the sound continued until I rushed to the door and asked who the visitor was. Before I could get an answer, the door was flung open and a half-naked woman, carrying a plastic bag stood before me,” said Tshabalala.
“I asked her how she had opened the door and she told me she used her fingers. While I was still shocked she tried to push herself into the house and I screamed, alerting neighbours who came and beat her up before interrogating her.”
Tshabalala said the woman, who gave contradictory statements, claimed she had travelled by taxi to Mpopoma from Hillside before her friends dumped her and later revealed that she was riding on a child. “The woman had two twisted fingers on her right hand. She told us it was caused by opening people’s doors during her night escapades. She bragged that she never worries about relish as she feeds on people’s blood and flesh.
“The plastic bag contained blood-stained pants, a bra, a petticoat, a T-shirt, a jersey, some jewellery and pieces of cloth. She was also carrying all sorts of strange things,” said Tshabalala.
Khayiya reportedly told stunned residents that she had three children from different fathers but stayed alone in Pelandaba as she could not stand men.
The woman, who kept on falling into a trance and changing voices, claimed she inherited the witchcraft from her sister, a teacher at a local school.
“One of my neighbours who knows the teacher phoned her and she disclosed that the woman was her sister. She pleaded with us not to beat her up, but she did not come to take her until the police came.
“The alleged witch claimed that her whole family was into witchcraft and said they rode on different people’s backs during the night to travel to different places for witchcraft purposes,” said Tshabalala.
Bulawayo provincial police spokesperson Inspector Mandlenkosi Moyo could not be reached for comment. The Chronicle

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Food poisoning fells more than 100 at Maryland food safety summit

(Reuters) - A U.S. food safety summit in Maryland earlier this month has become a cautionary tale after more than 100 attendees came down with suspected food poisoning.
Most of those affected complained of diarrhea, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a statement.
Local health officials have heard from about 400 of the 1,300 attendees and are at a loss as to the exact cause of their illness.
The April 8-10 meeting at the Baltimore Convention Center included representatives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and food companies such as McDonald's Corp, Tyson Foods Inc and ConAgra Foods Inc.
"We are working on evaluating possible exposures and doing testing at the Maryland state public health laboratory to attempt to identify an agent," the health department said in the statement.
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(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...

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Obama Asks Muslims To Pray For Him?

I saw that Obama visited a mosque in Malaysia and asked the Muslims there to pray for him.
He does realize they pray to ALLAH right????
Would any real Christian ask Muslims to pray to Allah for them???

(Excerpt) Read more at onislam.net ...

[trebli]

Doesn't surprise me at all.

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Man sues hypnotist for trance-induced dance injury
Toronto Sun ^ |

MONTREAL — A man is suing a hypnotist for $456,692 because he claims he hurt his knee while dancing in a deep trance that didn't end when he left the stage.
Eric Morneau blames the popular hypnotist Messmer and the Entourage production company for injuries he allegedly suffered during a May 28, 2011, show at a Montreal theatre.
The complainant, who works as an exterminator in Granby, Que., claims he was in "deep hypnosis and...had no control of his movements" after agreeing to go onstage.
The lawsuit says Messmer asked the volunteers to dance the French Cancan, which involves suggestive moves and high leg kicks.
Morneau says he remained spellbound after the volunteers were sent off the stage.
"The plaintiff could not help but start dancing again," the lawsuit says.
Morneau claims he suddenly felt a "sharp pain in his right knee that caused him to fall on the people around him and prevented him from continuing to dance."
He said his injury was so unbearable that he had difficulty walking.
A doctor diagnosed him with a sprained knee, the suit says, and he claims he had to undergo surgery and miss months of work.
Morneau says two years later he still has trouble doing physical activity or working as a volunteer firefighter.
Morneau alleges he had no control of his actions while under hypnosis and was unable to understand the risks related to Messmer's commands.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
In an e-mail to QMI Agency, the Entourage production company said Morneau is the only person to complain from among more than 70,000 people who have been hypnotized over the past eight years.
"We are sorry to note that the defendant has chosen to bring the matter before the courts," the firm said.
"Entourage finds the current situation deplorable (but) neither Messmer, nor Entourage can be held responsible."

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Judge rules State Farm does not have to pay for exploding corpse

State Farm doesn’t have to be good neighbor for a Florida woman who was unlucky enough to have a rotting corpse rudely explode in an adjacent apartment.

(Excerpt) Read more at blog.sfgate.com ...