How Not To Fly (about)

Lightning Puts Hole In Wing Of Plane Carrying Jeb Bush To Orlando

Gov. Jeb Bush's plane was struck by lightning as it traveled from Tallahassee to Orlando on Thursday. The strike put a hole in one of the Beechcraft King Air's wings, but none of the seven people onboard were injured...

Band May Face Charges In Maine, N.J.

Authorities in Maine and New Jersey are mulling charges against heavy-metal band Great White for setting off illegal fiery displays in small clubs just days before a similar display sparked a deadly Rhode Island blaze, officials said.... "The fireworks were ignited during the first song, and it appeared to be the same effect (as in Rhode Island)," said Sgt. Stu Jacobs of the Maine fire marshal's office. "The flames touched the ceiling."

Self-Powered DNA Computers Earn [Guinness] World Record

To your naked eye, it looks like a spoonful of water. But inside, trillions of tiny computers work away, performing 330 trillion operations per second with 99.9% accuracy... It is more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC.... The first version used enzymes and DNA molecules to compute instead of silicon microchips.

Plan To Put Missile Defense On Fast Track / Bush Wants It Exempt From Tests

Buried in President Bush's 2004 budget... is a request to rewrite a law designed to prevent the production and fielding of weapons systems that don't work.

...critics maintain the new independence and secrecy of what has become a vastly expanded missile defense program increases the chance that the Pentagon will spend tens of billions of dollars on an anti-missile system that doesn't work.

Pushed Too Far

[Auburn, WA] Parteek's kesh [a topknot of hair covered with a headwrap] represented a connection to Sikhism... Prior to the Sept. 11 attacks [by the non-Sikh al-Qaida], some of Parteek's classmates hurled racial slurs like "raghead" and "diaperhead...." The aggression and hostility against Parteek heightened after Sept. 11....

In February 2002... One of Parteek's classmates was [persistently] throwing pencils at him while calling him a "raghead" and "diaperhead...." Parteek got out of his seat, walked over to the boy who was calling him names and slapped him on the side of his head... the boy suffered a fracture to his skull....

Parteek's legal advocate [recalled] Parteek's reaction... "All the people who have ever teased or hit me just flashed through my head. I don't know what happened. I did not mean to do it...." [His attorney] could not [over]emphasize how potentially problematic this sentencing was to Parteek's future.

Germans Want Cash For Interrupted Sex

[Berlin] A German couple are demanding compensation from a tour operator because a maid repeatedly interrupted them while they were having sex in their hotel room during a vacation in Cuba... they said the maid walked in on two occasions while they were engaged in intercourse, even though they had a "Do Not Disturb" sign outside the door.

Police Say Texas Teens Got Refund On Knife After Stabbing

[Mission, TX] Three teenagers accused of stabbing a man later returned the knife they used to [Wal-Mart.] According to police, the suspects snatched a woman's purse at the mall and stabbed Jason Meyers, 24, four times when he tried to retrieve it for his mother.... "Sure enough, [Wal-Mart] had a knife and receipt with a signature of one of the suspects returning the knife."

With Edwards, White House Shows First-Strike Capability

...the White House and Bush's political arm, the Republican National Committee, seem preoccupied with [John] Edwards, a first-term [senator and] former trial lawyer. A month ago, when Edwards began his candidacy, the RNC put out a 10-page report a day later branding him "An Unaccomplished Liberal in Moderate Clothing and a Friend To His Fellow Personal Injury Trial Lawyers." At the time, the GOP had not issued similar takedowns of the other Democrats in the field....

Republicans linked to the White House often talk of Edwards as the most dangerous of the Democratic candidates, because he is handsome and southern and "undefined" in the public imagination.

Online Games Increasingly A Place For Protest, Social Activism

Gamers have protested the impending war in Iraq, started newspapers, gathered charitable donations -- done myriad things they already do, or wish they could do, in the real world.... Players of EverQuest, the most popular online game in the United States with about 85,000 playing at any time, held in-game candlelight vigils after the Sept. 11 attacks...

Professor's Policy Draws Investigation

[Dallas, TX] [Michael Dini's] Web page advises students seeking a recommendation to be prepared to answer the question: "How do you think the human species originated?... If you cannot truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation for admittance to further education in the biomedical sciences..."

Spradling, 22, said he needed a letter of recommendation from a biology professor but, as a creationist, he said he couldn't "sit there and truthfully say I believe in human evolution."