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19 Mar 2009 10:50

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Culture, Offbeat: Bob Dylan’s outhouse is really stinking up the neighborhood

  • It started in September. I’d go into the frontyard and get nauseous. I couldn’t figure out at first where the smell was coming from.
  • Cindy Emminger • A neighbor of Bob Dylan’s in Malibu, Calif., on the smell coming from a port-a-potty on the famous singer-songwriter’s property. There are many puns to be made here – “Tangled Up In Poo,” “Blowin’ In The Wind” – but don’t expect us to make any of them. Oh wait. • source

19 Mar 2009 10:45

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Biz, U.S.: Are too many dollar bills going to get printed?

Where is George? He’s everywhere. And investors are scared that he’ll be weaker after more of him enter the market. source

19 Mar 2009 10:40

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World: Josef Fritzl gets life in prison in Austrian incest case

  • Fritzl, when getting sentenced, apologized publicly and profusely for what he’d done – he kept his daughter in a dungeon for years and prevented medical care to one of her children. source
  • Fritzl – who pled guilty to charges of rape, incest, involvement in slave trade, murder, assault, and withdrawl of liberty – will serve his time out in a prison for abnormal offenders. source

19 Mar 2009 10:26

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Culture, Offbeat: BSG has officially jumped the shark. It did so at the U.N.

The cast of “Battlestar Galactica” came to the U.N. to talk about human rights, and, uh, Cylons. source

19 Mar 2009 10:16

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World: Correction on German school shooting

  • The online transcripts were fake. The shooting, which we most recently reported on last night, initially centered around an online chat that the shooter, Tim Kretschmer, allegedly had with a friend the night before. This was fabricated by someone on the Internet. We apologize for the inconvenience. source

19 Mar 2009 10:10

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U.S.: Like babies? There’s a ton of them right now. Call it a mega-boom.

  • 4.3 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2007. That’s a record. source

19 Mar 2009 02:52

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Culture, Politics: Whiny TV execs ticked at Obama’s constant nation addresses

  • These repeated interruptions – and the rumor of even more to come – really make it difficult to build audience flow and loyalty. We will all lose one or two million dollars for this.
  • A (obviously anonymous) network executive • On the fact that Barack Obama has the gall to request another nation address on “American Idol” Tuesday! I mean, what the heck? It’s not like anyone else is struggling. (ABC, by the way, will be preempting episodes of “According to Jim,” which we’re surprised is still on the air, just like everyone else besides Jim Belushi.) • source
 

19 Mar 2009 02:42

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Offbeat: NYC’s finest didn’t stop terrorism, but they did deliver a baby

  • 7:20 a.m. Seven pounds. In Penn Station. Marie Boothe, in the subway station during rush hour, couldn’t wait any longer. “Forget the ambulance, forget everything else – I’m going to have the baby right here,” she recalled saying. So she started having it right there. Police officers on counter-terrorism duty were called in to help deliver Caesar Penn Boothe, whose name reflects the unusual circumstances of his birth. Aww, that’s the cutest thing we’ve ever heard related to the word terrorism! source

19 Mar 2009 00:35

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U.S.: How many soldiers were affected by the stop-loss policy?

  • 120,000+ solders have been affected by stop-loss since 2001 source

19 Mar 2009 00:32

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U.S.: The military’s stop-loss policy is ending in 2011 (finally)

  • If we had to point to one policy that has placed the most strain on our troops and their families, and adversely affected the morale and readiness of our forces, it would be stop-loss.
  • Jon Soltz • An Iraq war veteran and the chairman of VoteVets.org, on the news that the stop-loss policy would end in 2011. The hugely unpopular policy has kept soldiers from being able to exit the military on time. It was put in place in part because the military struggled with keeping troop counts up in the wake of two large-scale wars. It also inspired a well-known film. • source