The Onion reports that a new Kansas Court decision requires public schools to teach both sides of the controversy: Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming If you want to display your opinion that we should teach the controversy, you can also buy one of these t-shirts from Teach the Controversy.
As always, The Onion is on top of this important story: Boston Globe Tailors Print Edition For Three Remaining Subscribers
How is BP handling the Gulf oil spill? This video nails it.
On the heels of Tim's Messing with the stoplight thieves, we just received 3 completely contestable parking tickets in one swell foop. Parking officers are local Treasury Agents, not police. Our story is as follows:
Wife finally picks up the car that I just received from my parent's estate. I got the title last week, and insured it yesterday so we could drive it home, get it inspected and licensed. The executor had let the plates expire, and neither he nor we thought to remove them. So she drove it homewards, stopping at a friend's house for a visit. She'd parallel parked in the rain between two other cars on the quiet residential block. When she came out, there were 3 tickets. One for expired plates. One for expired inspection. And a third for parking in a handicapped zone.
Handicapped zone? Then she saw the tiny little blue signs on posts around the car behind her. The trunk of our car apparently occupied the front 2 of the 22 feet they reserve for those private parking zones. The car behind ours, the one actually in the handicapped spot, had plenty of room both in front and in back. She hadn't seen the sign in her blind spot as she parked, but I guess ignorance is no excuse.
I do wonder whether the person who got the city to carve out a private parking spot on the public street still needed it. When my brother broke his leg, he applied for a handicapped hanger. By the time it arrived, his cast was off. But at least the hangers have expiration dates requiring renewal and proof of need. The private parking spot has no expiration. 
The need might well have expired ten years ago. We don't know. But such is the law .
The other two tickets, basically both for not having current inspection or plates, can be fought on the grounds that we hadn't had time to get them. There is a grace period when one buys a car.
About a month ago I was traveling East on Manchester Road in St. Louis County, Missouri. I decided to make a right at New Ballwin Road but the light was red. I put on my brakes, slowed down to where my speedometer went to zero. I flipped on the signal, looked left and right and then made my turn. There was an officer several cars across from me as I made my turn and I had seen him as I stopped. I thought nothing of his presence until he hit his lights and pulled me over. The officer was completely professional and courteous as he wrote me a ticket for not coming to a complete stop before making my right turn on red. I asked the officer whether he was a traffic officer or a regular patrol officer and he identified himself as a traffic officer. You see, traffic officers are those which choose to lay about in wait for giving tickets to unsuspecting alleged lawbreakers. Traffic officers do not arrest burglars, robbers or kidnappers or such unless there’s no one else to call upon for assistance. Traffic officers write tickets which generate revenues and make the city not have to raise other taxes or fees for their citizens. The ticket was allegedly for my not making any “complete cessation from movement” before making the right turn. I explained to the officer that I had ceased all forward momentum, turned on my signal, looked around and safely made my turn and that as for any “complete cessation from movement,” that was not possible in our physical universe. The officer and I debated the language of the ordinance, which he said was not as I had told him. Some readers know that I am an attorney. The whole “complete cessation from movement” thing seems like a scam so I did a little research. It seems that any “complete cessation from movement” actually does not naturally occur in our universe. At approximately - 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Kelvin) molecular motion is slowed to its minimum but, such motion never stops. [More . . . ]