h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

More than half of the Italian city of Venice is flooded.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8428781.stm

What an unusual story!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8428650.stm

A giant straw goat - the traditional Scandinavian yuletide symbol - erected each Christmas in a Swedish town has been burned to the ground yet again. Just 10 of Gavle's goats, built every year in the town's central square, have survived beyond Christmas since 1966.

'A Toronto woman accused of posing as a witch in order to defraud a lawyer of tens of thousands of dollars has made her first appearance in court. . .


Persuad faces eight fraud-related charges — including one count under an obscure section of the Criminal Code dating back to 1892 that prohibits fraudulently exercising witchcraft or sorcery.'

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/12/24/toronto-witch-court463.html

I don't see how she can be convicted on all the charges: if it's fraud, then she wasn't *really* exercising witchcraft or sorcery, and, if she was *really* exercising witchcraft or sorcery, then there's no fraud.

off to find my Pocket Criminal Code

Does that count as spellbinding courtroom drama!

That charge cannot be made to stand, simply because it is impossible to demonstrate the existence of the implied 'real' witchcraft, or perhaps even define it.

This could get interesting...


And did you notice the Python reference in the comments?

I don't expect anyone can predict the outcome.

right, I've finally gotten around to digging out my Pocket Criminal Code (2008).

Section 365 is the part they're using and it's not a law against witchcraft -- it's a law against *pretending* to be able to perform witchcraft:

'Every one who fraudulently

(a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration,

(b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or

(c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found,

is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.'

There sure are a lot of people who could be facing charges under this one, including the authors of the horoscope columns in the newspapers.

Why does c) remind me of Monty Python?

There shall in that time be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base, that has an attachment. At that time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer, and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight O'clock.

I like the term 'crafty science'

"There's just a humongous storm moving across the centre of the country, basically from the Canadian border to Texas and spreading from west Colorado to Illinois," Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the National Weather Service, told AFP news agency."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8429618.stm

Is "humongous" a technical term then?

It's funny how it stops at the Canadian border.

I guess we're doing something right.

Even the bad weather's more liberal in Canerderr

we're going to be a balmy +2 Celsius on Saturday where I am. A little different from that -45 two weeks ago.

As much as I'm unfond of the old fellow, this is beyond unnecessary:

'A woman jumped the barriers in St. Peter's Basilica and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI as he walked down the main aisle to begin Christmas Eve Mass on Thursday.'

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/12/24/christmas-world.html

Just as well John Prescott isn't Pope.

Perhaps the incident in St. Peter's was a practice run:


'In a surprise twist to the search to discover the origins of he universe Pope Benedict and the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams are to be fired at one another at the speed of light in the Large Hadron Collider at Cern. . .

Cern’s director-general Rolf Heuer said ‘Both His Holiness and the Archbishop claim to know something of how our universe began, so by smashing their heads together at a tremendous speed we hope that we will at long last get a final answer.’ . . .

We shall just be asking Dr Williams to remove his glasses.’'

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2009/11/23/archbishop-of-canterbury-and-pope-to-meet-head-on-in-large-hadron-collider/

"We shall just be asking Dr Williams to remove his glasses"

Brilliant!

"A shopping centre in China's Hebei province has built a car park with wider spaces that it says is designed especially to suit women drivers.

The women-only car park in Shijiazhuang city is also painted in pink and light purple to appeal to female tastes.

Official Wang Zheng told AFP news agency the car park was meant to cater to women's "strong sense of colour and different sense of distance".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8432887.stm

'Alcohol substitute that avoids drunkenness and hangovers in development '

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6874884/Alcohol-substitute-that-avoids-drunkenness-and-hangovers-in-development.html

sorry to for multiple stories, but they're catching my attention:

'A plant that started life during the last Ice Age is still going strong in the arid scrublands of California, scientists revealed today.

Researchers believe the Jurupa Oak has been around for 13,000 years, making it the oldest living plant in the world.

The oak is made up of a community of cloned bushes and scientists believe it has managed to survive the extreme effects of climate change by regenerating. . .'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1237973/Worlds-oldest-plant-13-000-year-old-oak-survives-cloning-itself.html

and, the true publication of the story:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008346