Pious vandals deface road sign

Residents living in a graffiti-plagued village on Merseyside are being asked to consider changing its name to tackle religious vandals who alter signs in the village.

Lunt, which dates back to Medieval times, has been repeatedly targeted by churchgoers who change the "u" to an "e". One suggestion is to change it to Launt. However, some villagers are defiant at the thought of giving in to the vandals.

One unnamed agnostic said: "This village is very, very old and people don't want the name changed. "The vandalism has been done for years, it's not children who are doing it. Personally, I suspect the vicar. At the end of the day we live in Lunt and we don't want to forgo sweets or swearing all year.”

Oh it’s the “L” they change? I’m shocked and stunned....

Alice Cooper - Halo of Flies

The Simpsons may be past their best but it is still enjoyable......or at least it was the last time I was able to watch new episodes before Sky pulled Sky One from Virgin Cable. Sky’s action was all about naked greed – it certainly has nothing to do with the Simpsons being unsuitable for children.

The USA’s most functional dysfunctional family has been dropped by Caracas TV station Televen from its morning schedule after being deemed unsuitable for children by the country's television authorities...... and has been replaced by Baywatch of all things!

The country's TV regulator said the saga of Homer Simpson, wife Marge and their three children flouted regulations that prohibit "messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents".

Baywatch has the dubious distinction of being voted the worst import of all time by British TV executives.

WW - Tree Paeony

Our species tree paeony (Paeonia lutea ludlowii) coming back to life. This week's entry for the Tuesday and Wednesday edition of Wordless Wednesday.

As thick as thieves

Police didn't have to do much guesswork to identify a suspect in the armed robbery of an Athens, Ga., convenience store.

Authorities say 28-year-old Demetrius Robinson filled out a job application before wielding a knife and robbing the Golden Pantry store last week. He left his real name and his uncle's phone number on the sheet but diverted police for several days with a phony address.

Investigators say he filled out the application to kill time until the store emptied of customers.

I bet he wishes he did a Sudoko instead!

Another story culled from the Fortean Times

Astronomers have discovered a planetary system orbiting a distant star which has similarities to our own: they found two planets that were close matches for Jupiter and Saturn orbiting a star about half the size of our Sun.

Martin Dominik, from St Andrews University in the UK, said the finding suggested systems like our own could be much more common than we thought. The St Andrews researcher said this planetary system, and others like it, could host terrestrial planets like Earth. It was just a matter of time before such worlds were detected, he explained. "We found a system with two planets that take the roles of Jupiter and Saturn in our Solar System. These two planets have a similar mass ratio and similar orbital radius and a similar orbital period. It looks like this may have formed in a similar way to our Solar System. And if this is the case, it looks like [our] Solar System cannot be unique in the Universe. There should be other similar systems out there which could host terrestrial planets."

The newfound planetary system, which orbits the star OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, is more compact than our own and is about five thousand light-years away. Although nearly 300 extrasolar planets have been identified, astronomers have consistently failed to find planetary systems which resemble our own. Dr Dominik said only 10% of systems discovered so far are known to host more than one planet.

But he explained that all the techniques currently used to find exoplanets were strongly biased towards detecting gas giant planets orbiting at short distances from their parent stars. The OGLE planets were found using a technique called gravitational micro-lensing, in which light from the faraway planets is bent and magnified by the gravity of a foreground object, in this case a another star.

He said that the ultimate goal for exoplanet researchers was to find habitable Earth-like and Mars-like planets. This aim was achievable, he said, because technology was improving all the time. "I think it will happen quite soon," he said, adding: "Micro-lensing can already go below Earth mass and it has detected more massive planets in the habitable zone. So in the next few years, we will see something really exciting."

Dr Dominik said there was competition between teams of astronomers using micro-lensing and those who favoured the transit technique, which seeks to detect new planets when, from our point of view, they pass directly in front of the parent star they are orbiting. The planet blocks a tiny fraction of the star's light, causing the star to periodically dim.

But he added that there was little chance to detect Earth-like worlds in OGLE-2006-BLG-109L because the system was too distant for current techniques to resolve planets the size of our own.

A blueprint for the Chagos Islanders

A resettlement plan for the Chagos islands will be symbolically presented in the House of Lords tomorrow to Olivier Bancoult, the Chagossians' leader in exile. It is hoped that the plan, which is backed by the Let Them Return campaign and written by John Howell, former director of the Overseas Development Institute, will be a persuasive case for a retreat by the government which continues to appeal against court rulings in the islanders’ favour.

The report suggests there are "no physical, economic or environmental reasons" why resettlement on the islands of Peros Banhos and Salomon should not happen. It suggests about 150 families, fewer than 1,000 people - about a quarter of those entitled to go back - would want to return. Eco-tourism and fish exports could provide jobs and income. The total cost to the UK of resettlement would be about £25m.

The residents of the Chagos archipelago were removed in 1971 to make way for a military base in Diego Garcia. They were dispatched to Mauritius and the Seychelles, where many have since died in poverty. They received limited compensation in 1982 in return for signing away their rights to return and in 2002 they were granted British citizenship.

Ten years ago the Chagossians, some of whom now live in England, began legal action for the right to return, and in 2000 the divisional court ruled their eviction illegal. The foreign secretary at the time, Robin Cook, agreed they should be allowed to return to all the islands except Diego Garcia. However, after the September 11 attacks in the US, Diego Garcia became an important base for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2004 the UK government issued orders in council which negated the court's ruling, but two years later the high court ruled in favour of the Chagossians. In May last year the government lost again at appeal. In November the Lords granted the government leave to appeal but ordered it to pay all legal costs, regardless of the decision. The case has been allotted five days from June 30, after which every legal avenue will have been exhausted.

Richard Gifford, lawyer for the Chagossians, said: "We have now had three decisions in our favour, involving a total of seven judges." It would need "quite a cataclysm to decide that all seven were wrong". He added: "Legally, it is the end of the road for the government."

An FCO spokesman confirmed that the government appeal would go ahead.

I’ve said this before and I will say it again. The treatment of the Chagos Islanders was a disgrace. It is an equal disgrace that the government chooses to fight when it has been beaten three times in the courts. The government should concede and try and salvage a little dignity in what has been a sordid episode in British history.

A pervert’s monster excuse

A man who claims that he was molested by Bigfoot as a child was ordered to serve 20 years in prison yesterday for his own molestation-related activities. Gene R. Morrill, 57, of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, had pleaded guilty to 20 charges stemming from his efforts to solicit 13-year-old boys over the Internet.

According to the Freelance Star, Defence Attorney Terrence Patton cited Morrill's mental health issues in seeking leniency from Judge J. Howe Brown.
Morrill reportedly told an investigator preparing his pre-sentence report that he had been sexually assaulted by the legendary Bigfoot. Patton said Morrill really believes the assaulted happened. "I've had a few that have claimed abuse, but never by a mythical creature," said Stafford County Detective Darryl Wells, who has built the case against Morill one online chat at a time. "He is a sexual predator that targets children," says Wells.

According to the evidence presented by prosecutor Jim Peterson, Morrill was one of several out-of-state online predators identified last year by Detectives Darryl Wells and John Chapman. Morrill was convicted of five counts of attempting to take indecent liberties with a child, five counts of using electronic equipment to solicit a juvenile and 10 counts of reproducing child pornography.

Hmm, shomehow, for the next decade or two getting molested by Sasquatch is perhaps the least of his worries....

Arkansas outlaws toddler marriages

Amazingly the date for this news story (here) isn’t April 1 but there’s no need to start humming duelling banjos either! A law that mistakenly allowed anyone to marry with parental permission was repealed by a measure signed into law on Wednesday by Governor Mike Beebe, It ended months of embarrassment for the state.

Lawmakers didn't realize until after the end of last year's regular session that a law they approved, intended to establish 18 as the minimum age for marriage, instead removed the minimum age to marry entirely. An extraneous "not" in the bill allowed anyone who was not pregnant to marry at any age with permission. The bill read: "In order for a person who is younger than eighteen (18) years of age and who is not pregnant to obtain a marriage license, the person must provide the county clerk with evidence of parental consent to the marriage."

Some lawmakers called for a special session last year, but the Governor didn't see any imminent crisis and said the chances of children marrying under the law were slim. Legislators, however, had the chance for a do-over when Beebe convened a special session to consider a hike in the state's severance tax on natural gas. They repealed the botched law, and reinstated 17 as the minimum age to marry for boys and 16 for girls.

Rep. Will Bond, the sponsor of the botched 2007 law and its correction, apologized for the error and asked his colleagues to "throw me a rope and bail me out here. I always thought if you put your name on a bill, you should be ready to take the blame if you're willing to accept the credit," Bond said Wednesday.

Mercifully hadn't been any reports of young children attempting to marry under the 2007 law. I’m not sure why there is a different minimum age for boys and girls though. That said, it’s good to see a politician not trying to spin their way out of a cock up!

Seahorses in the Thames

Eighteen months after the discovery by Zoological Society of London it has been announced that a colony of seahorses has been discovered in the Thames estuary. The discovery has been hailed as clear indicator of the increasing purity of the river’s water.

Alison Shaw, the Zoological Society of London’s marine and freshwater conservation manager, said: “These amazing creatures have been found in the Thames over the past 18 months during our wildlife monitoring work. It demonstrates that the Thames is becoming a sustainable habitat for a diversity of aquatic life.”

The short-snouted seahorses (see above for a picture of one bred in captivity in an Angelsey aquarium) in the Thames are commonly found around Africa and the Mediterranean but also sometimes near the southern coasts of Britain. Their usual habitat is shallow coastal waters rich in weeds and plant life, although they can be found as deep as 100ft. “They’re rarely found in Great Britain at all,” said Richard Harrington from the Marine Conservation Society. “If they are, then it is usually in the Channel Islands or near Dorset.”

Last year, however, juvenile seahorses of both the short-snouted and long-snouted species were found in the marina at Brighton, East Sussex. This was the first evidence to suggest the fish were actually breeding in British waters.

The Thames discovery illustrates the partial success of attempts to reduce pollution in a river once considered one of the dirtiest in Europe (Fifty years ago the river was declared biologically dead).

The clean-up has already resulted in the return of salmon, which were extinct in the Thames from 1833 until 1974 but are now breeding in Berkshire. Their regeneration has been aided by releases of juvenile fish. In 2006 a dead otter was found not far from Tower Bridge. Other sightings have confirmed that the mammal species could be staging a comeback.

Conservationists hope wildlife numbers will continue increasing but the Thames still suffers from periodic surges of pollution, especially after rainstorms, which tend to flush sewage from drains into the river. By 2019 the government plans to have built a 20-mile, £2 billion tunnel to collect such sewage and transport it to a treatment plant in east London.

The lower reaches of the river are often visited by porpoises and dolphins; in 2006 a northern bottlenose whale was watched by crowds of people as it swam upriver as far as Chelsea. It died while being rescued.

Some experts suspect that the decrease in pollutants is only one of the factors behind the appearance of se horses in the Thames. “There has also been a small but definite rise in the temperature of the North Sea and English Channel,” Harrington said, “and this may well be the cause of all the new and exciting species we are seeing.”