SpiderFarmer

Seriously. Beginning last November, the city of San Francisco began a program whereupon clinically obese men between the ages of 18 and 55 could undergo a procedure whereupon approximately 1/2 an inch is removed from each vas and the ends are sealed – commonly referred to as a vasectomy – completely free of charge. The overwhelming turnout led the State of California to follow suit, and now California is the first state in the Union to offer state-funded vasectomies to men who have been diagnosed as obese.

Bee population at risk:
The little bug eats the bigger bug, and “[i]t’s bad news for beekeepers, farmers and anybody who likes to eat.” An invading parasite imperils the American honeybee — and your fruit basket. In only six months “40 percent to 60 percent of the bees nationwide have perished”. And “that, in turn, hampers production of about one third of the human diet, including almonds, apples, strawberries, cherries, blueberries, sunflowers, melons and cranberries.”  via: Metafilter

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (”NTIA”) (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/), the telecommunications and Internet arm of the Department of Commerce, has disallowed private registrations for .US domain names.This decision was made without a hearing or an opportunity for a response by those affected — in fact; there was no due process of any kind. What this means, ironically enough, is that American citizens have been denied the right to privacy when buying an America-designated domain suffix.

Read more:

• Why privacy makes the Internet safer. How anonymity hides the bad guys!
• Domain Owners Lose Privacy – Wired.com
• Go Daddy slams US on domain privacy – Computer Business Review Online
• Ruling on ‘.us’ Domain Raises Privacy Issues – washingtonpost.com