Strange & Stupid: Amusing News

The community college instructor says the school sided with students offended by his explanation of Adam and Eve.

A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.
Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.

“I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,” Bitterman said.

Sarah Smith, director of the school’s Red Oak campus, declined to comment Friday on Bitterman’s employment status. The school’s president, Barbara Crittenden, said Bitterman taught one course at Southwest. She would not comment, however, on his claim that he was fired over the Bible reference, saying it was a personnel issue.
“I can assure you that the college understands our employees’ free-speech rights,” she said. “There was no action taken that violated the First Amendment.”

Bitterman, who taught part time at Southwestern and Omaha’s Metropolitan Community College, said he uses the Old Testament in his western civilization course and always teaches it from an academic standpoint.
Bitterman’s Tuesday course was telecast to students in Osceola over the Iowa Communications Network. A few students in the Osceola classroom, he said, thought the lesson was “denigrating their religion.”

“I put the Hebrew religion on the same plane as any other religion. Their god wasn’t given any more credibility than any other god,” Bitterman said. “I told them it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see it in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it literally, that you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there.”

Bitterman said he called the story of Adam and Eve a “fairy tale” in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney. He declined to identify any of the students in the class.
“I just thought there was such a thing as academic freedom here,” he said. “From my point of view, what they’re doing is essentially teaching their students very well to function in the eighth century.”

Hector Avalos, an atheist religion professor at Iowa State University, said Bitterman’s free-speech rights were violated if he was fired simply because he took an academic approach to a Bible story.

“I don’t know the circumstances, but if he’s teaching something about the Bible and says it is a myth, he shouldn’t be fired for that because most academic scholars do believe this is a myth, the story of Adam and Eve,” Avalos said.
“So it’d be no different than saying the world was not created in six days in science class.

“You don’t fire professors for giving you a scientific answer.”

Bitterman said Linda Wild, vice president of academic affairs at Southwest, fired him over the telephone.
Wild did not return telephone or e-mail messages Friday. Bitterman said that he can think of no other reason college officials would fire him and that Smith, the director of the campus, has previously sat in on his classes and complimented his work.

“As a taxpayer, I’d like to know if a tax-supported public institution of higher learning has given veto power over what can and cannot be said in its classrooms to a fundamentalist religious group,” he said. “If it has … then the taxpaying public of Iowa has a right to know. What’s next? Whales talk French at the bottom of the sea?”

A Muslim dentist insisted that a young woman wear an Islamic headscarf before he would agree to treat her for toothache, the General Dental Council was told yesterday.
The patient, a community nurse, alleges that she reluctantly told Omer Butt, 31, who runs a dental practice in Bury, Greater Manchester, that she was a nonpractising Muslim.

It is alleged that the dentist then told her that he would refuse to register her as an NHS patient if she did not cover her head. She was in so much pain that she agreed to borrow a scarf from a nurse at the clinic.
The panel was told that when the dentist, quoting the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, told her to wait in the waiting room, she felt so humiliated that she left the clinic and made a complaint about his behaviour.

Mr Butt denies the charge that he has undermined public confidence in his profession by discriminating against a patient and failing to act in her best interests. If found guilty of the charge by the council’s professional misconduct committee he could be struck off the register.

After learning of the charges laid against him, he wrote to the council praising Allah. He referred to the patient as his “sister” and concluded: “May Allah protect us all from the evils of Shaitan [Satan].”

John Snell, for the council, said that the woman, referred to as Patient A, went to see Mr Butt at his clinic in April, 2005.

Mr Snell said: “He asked her if she was a Muslim and she asked him why it mattered. He said he needed to know.”
The nurse allegedly told her: “Inside the surgery it is Mr Butt’s world and his rules that apply.”
Patient A told the hearing: “I did ask what would happen if I did not wear a headscarf and was told I would not be able to register there as a patient. I did feel that I was under duress.”

Andrew Hockton, defending the dentist, said that Mr Butt asked Muslim women to cover everything except their hands and faces “in order to protect his honour”.

The hearing continues.
dude his name is mr. BUTT! I may be five, but this is hilarious.

It is generally believed that regular sexual activity is good for people’s body and
iss doctors conducted a research several years ago to estimate that orgasm mobilizes the immune system of the human body as it increases the number of killer blood cells that detect and destroy foreign microorganisms.

Many women may have rather painful menstruations. Statistics shows that every tenth woman has to take analgetics to relieve from menstrual pain. Some people say that instead of anesthetic pills prescribed by doctors a woman can try having sex to ease pain during menstruation. The anesthetic effect of sex is connected with relaxation of organism and output of endorphins that are universally known as ‘hormones of happiness’. Indeed, generation of these hormones is closely connected with positive emotions; endorphins may also act as endogenous anesthetic.

Have you ever had hangover? There are lots of popular recommendations saying how to recover from hangover but none of them mentions sex.

Hangover usually means headache, thirst, stomach aches and depressive spirits that may also provoke suicides. The low spirits and poor health condition in hangover are connected with temporary disbalance of hormones that generate positive emotions. If a person suffering from hangover chooses to have sex then his or her organism will get the hormones of endorphins and oxytocins. Oxytocins stimulate muscle contraction and bring down people’s aggressiveness to others.

Mind that sex therapy must be obligatorily safe. So use condoms and other contraceptives to get protected from genital infections. One should know that sex is heavy physical and emotional job for the human organism, and it may be harmful for diseased or weak people. People suffering from heart diseases, coronary heart disease in particular, hypertension and the like must be particularly careful when enjoying sex therapy. If a human needs medical aid sex will on no occasion be a good substitution of medical care and medications in this case.

Regular active sex is a regular physical activity that strengthens heart, burns calories and exercises muscles. This must be the most pleasant type of fitness that costs you absolutely nothing.

As sex makes local blood supply better it works as wonderful prophylaxis of gynecological and urological disorders with men and women.

please please please if you ever do anything for me go to cbs.com and watch the Big Bang Theory. Or watch it on the tele at 8:30 p.m. on Mondays.
its THE GREATEST.
I’m obsessed.
who doesnt love awkward self conscious nerds hitting on the hot neighbor and fighting over quantum theory? (I know, this does not help my case, but just give it a shot.)

uhh….seriously? What are we, Russia?

Scattered apartment units across the state already ban smoking. But early next year, the Department of Public Health plans to survey landlords, condominium associations, and tenants about the feasibility of making smoke-free residential zones the norm, rather than the exception.
There could even be a state-run registry to connect tenants with landlords and condo boards that offer developments entirely devoid of smoke.

The state review emerges as an influential coalition of health and housing officials is issuing a sweeping call to make smoke-free housing standard across New England. The Asthma Regional Council will issue a report today saying that mounting evidence about the dangers of secondhand smoke, especially to children, provides the best argument for establishing rules that restrict smoking in buildings with multiple units.

It is striking evidence that the war against tobacco has shifted to a new front: the home. Having succeeded in eliminating smoking from most public haunts, antismoking forces are now turning their attention to residences, equating the dangers of tobacco to lead or asbestos.

“For a lot of people now, they go to their workplace, and the workplace is smoke-free, and then they go home and they realize they’re being exposed to secondhand smoke,” said Eileen Sullivan, director of policy and planning for the state of Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program.
A 2006 US surgeon general’s report concluded that secondhand smoke “is not a mere annoyance.”
“It is a serious health hazard that can lead to disease and premature death in children and nonsmoking adults,” the report said.

Still, health authorities in New England are treading lightly, concerned that if they push for measures that are considered draconian - backing laws that ban smoking in all homes, for example - they will be dismissed as the “public health police,” their efforts derailed. Instead, they are championing an approach that combines education with voluntary smoking prohibitions.

Laurie Stillman, executive director of the Asthma Council, said her group has no interest in forcing landlords to go smoke-free. Instead, she said, the coalition is hoping “to get a snowballing effect where you get a few developments doing this, and then more and more will see this as more of a common thing.”

That is precisely the course charted in Maine, where a Web-based registry of smoke-free units has proved successful. Landlords who promise their buildings are truly free of smoke can post their vacant units - there are 1,600 listed - and tenants weary of smoke seeping into their apartments can locate a new, smoke-free home.

The Smoke Free Housing Coalition of Maine appeals to a landlord’s bottom line. “We emphasize the financial aspect,” coalition chairwoman Tina Pettingill said. “They want to save money.”

I’m just putting a link because this is a pretty long article, but this is a really interesting follow-up on the family of the man who almost died at the wrath of a storm grate on 93 earlier this year.

IT may be the longest hangover in the history of binge beer drinking.
When a 37-year old man walked into a hospital emergency room in Glasgow, Scotland last October complaining of “wavy” vision and a non-stop headache that had lasted four weeks, doctors were at first stumped, the British journal The Lancet reported today.

The unnamed patient “had no history of head injury or loss of consciousness; his past medical record was unremarkable, and he was taking no medications,” Zia Carrim and two other physicians from Southern General Hospital said in a case report.

Body temperature and blood pressure were both normal, and a neurological exam scanned negative.
But when an eye specialist was called in, the fog began to clear, at least for the doctors.

The patient, said the ophthalmologist, had swollen optical discs, greatly enlarged blind spots and what eye doctors call “flame haemorrhages,” or bleeding nerve fibres.
“We sought a more detailed history” from the patient, noted one named Zia.

This is when the man revealed he had consumed 60 pints - roughly 35 litres - of beer over a four day period, following a domestic crisis.
Doctors believe severe dehydration, caused by the alcohol, led to a rare condition called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). A scan of the brain’s blood vessels confirmed the diagnosis.

CVST - which can cause seizures, impaired consciousness, loss of vision and neurological damage - strikes three or four people per million, mainly children, every year in Britain. The cause is generally unknown.

It took more than six months of long-term blood-thinning treatment to restore the man’s normal vision - and to get rid of the headache, the doctors reported.

…over 4 days? thats nothing! 60 pints in 4 days…pussy.

(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-09-28 08:52

A man, surnamed Chen, recently sparked great controversy in his hometown when he mailed his mother 2,000 yuan ($266.67) for cosmetic purposes before bringing his girlfriend back home to the city of Dongguan, Guangdong Province.

Chen did not want his homely mother to lose face when she saw his girlfriend.

Chen fell in love with a beautiful girl when he was a university student. With the help of his girlfriend’s rich family, Chen landed a job in a city outside Guangdong after he graduated last year.

It will be the first time Chen’s girlfriend will meet his mother, a cleaner at a local housing estate in the city’s Fenggang Township. His mother was confused when she received the money and a letter from her son last week, asking her to improve her looks. Unsure what to do, she sought advice from her neighbors and relatives. Many local residents thought Chen had forgotten his family and his past suffering, and they felt Chen had disrespected his mother.

Jones Soda’s latest flavors: dirt, sweat
SEATTLE

Ever wonder what the Seahawks’ locker room tastes like after a big game?

Apparently, Jones Soda Co. thinks Seattle NFL fans want to know. The company started taking online pre-orders Thursday for a five-pack of sodas with flavors it says reflect the hard work of professional football players.
Clare Bowles, a spokeswoman for the Seattle-based company, said the four literally named flavors — Dirt, Sports Cream, Perspiration and Natural Field Turf — are “pretty lifelike.”

“Perspiration Soda is kind of salty tasting,” she said, with a slightly higher sodium content than the average soda, with a smooth, “stinky football sock” finish.
A sip of Sports Cream Soda conjures up the experience of rubbing ointment into an aching muscle, while Natural Field Turf Soda is like “playing tackle football, and you get tackled really hard, you’re down on the ground and you get a little bit of the grass in your teeth,” Bowles said.

The only sweet soda of the bunch, Sweet Victory, has a berry flavor.
Each bottle features the photo of a Seattle Seahawks player. Limited quantities of the five-pack will be sold in select stores starting Oct. 1.

In May, Jones Soda announced it won a five-year contract to sell nonalcoholic beverages at the Seahawks’ home stadium, Qwest Field, beating out The Coca-Cola Co.

GO GAWKER! YOU RAIL ON THIS LITTLE SHIT!

When is it okay to hate a 4-year-old? Maybe when the kid’s name is Elijah Pollack. Elijah is the son of Alternadad Neal Pollack, the author and oh-so-hip dad who has been remanded to blogging his existence away on Epicurious. This week, they visit a cheese store and, well, Elijah is the worst. Now we know both he and his portrayal are at the mercy of his daddy.He is essentially a formless mass that has been fashioned into what he is by his father. But if we were to come across a sculpture that resembled, for instance, a large penis, we would be remiss not to mention that fact simply because the statue was created by a sculptor and did not form itself. And if you think we are somehow being hyperbolic or unnecessarily cruel in being so harsh on little Elijah, let us show you.

As a father, it’s my duty to pass down my loves [of cheeses] to my son. We’re training Elijah for cheese snobbery. The other day, at the grocery store, he did me proud.

There were three cheeses on taste display. The first was a nine-month-old Murray Bridge cheddar from Australia. I popped a cube in my mouth. It was pleasant but innocuous, something you could easily put in a child’s lunchbox. Elijah tried one as well.

He shook his head.

“This cheese is too boring for me,” he said.

The next selection was a “mammoth cheddar,” cut from an enormous wheel made God knows where. It’s cheese for people who don’t like cheese. Elijah almost spit out his piece, but showed enough manners to swallow.

“Don’t buy that one, daddy,” he said.

A good rule of thumb, I think, is that the level of adult hatred towards a minor should be commensurate not with his biological age but at the age of his precocity. So it is both a compliment and just to describe Elijah Pollack as big, big trouble in the making.