A policeman saw the couple hugging and kissing in a taxi [...] He took the unidentified man and his Egyptian acquaintance to a police station for questioning. The two "confessed to hugging and kissing inside the taxi," and the man also admitted to being drunk. He was fined $3,270.
The affluent emirate is in the midst of a drive to establish itself as the Gulf's business and leisure hub.
"Business and Leisure Hub."
Dubai: Vegas for Fundamentalists:
letting this fish swallow your arm seems contraindicated
Noodlers fight for acceptance:
An underground group of fisherman says it has dealt with discrimination from Missouri lawmakers for years.
Noodling is an ancient fishing method in which the fisherman wiggles his or her hand underwater near a bed of fish in hopes that a catfish will bite or, even better, swallow his hand. The fisherman then pulls the catch, which can weigh up to 250 pounds, out of the water.
"I feel like we can win this battle one noodler at a time," the noodler wrote.
window three
Today, blood rains from the sky:
There is this sickening reddish spooge rolling down the outside of my windows, and sticking to them in big muddy clots.
Tags: doomed, firstperson, photography, sf
wobble
Quake May Have Made Earth Wobble:
"Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake on Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis. When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was forced below the edge of another 'it had the effect of making the Earth more compact and spinning faster,' Gross said."
Update, 11-Jan-2005: NASA Details Earthquake Effects on the Earth:
The "mean North pole" was shifted by about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) in the direction of 145 degrees East Longitude. The earthquake also decreased the length of day by 2.68 microseconds.
