Photo of the recent eruption of Chile's Chaitén volcano. (More photos)

Thursday:

Sen. Clinton repeated her desire for the filly to be victorious – saying to a crowd in Jeffersonville, Indiana saying she was sending in her daughter to place her bets. "I hope that everybody will go to the derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me. I wont be able to be there this year – my daughter is going to be there and so she has strict instructions to bet on Eight Bells."

Saturday:

Big Brown hit the wire nearly five lengths ahead of Eight Belles, but moments later, there was heartbreak. While Kent Desormeaux was galloping out Big Brown, Eight Belles fell.
She had fractured both of her front ankles, said the Derby’s on-call veterinarian, Dr. Larry Bramlage, and was euthanized on the racetrack.

A man has been accused of attempting to pass a $360 billion check, which he claims was given to him by his girlfriend’s mother to start a record business, Fort Worth police said.
[...]
The personal check was not made out to Mr. Fuller and when the bank contacted the check owner, the woman said she did not write a check for $360 billion.
Mr. Fuller was also accused of unlawful carrying of a weapon and possession of marijuana, Lt. Henderson said. He may also face a theft charge in Crowley.

Padded lampposts are being trialled in a London street to protect inattentive pedestrians.

A pilot scheme has been launched in Brick Lane after it was found to have the highest number of 'walking and texting' injuries in the country.

A study carried out by 118 118 found one in ten people has hurt themselves while focused on their mobile phone screen.

The charity Living Streets is so concerned that it has teamed up with the directory enquiries service to test a scheme to wrap up the nation's lampposts.

A poll will be carried out on Brick Lane to gauge the response of locals.

If successful, the concept will be rolled out in Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool.

Only trying to have sex offenders shot:

"Sheriff (Randy) Cartwright and I agree that the sign is misleading and we will develop a sign that is more appropriate," Keaton said Monday. "There was no malicious intent toward gun owners and no attempt to embarrass people who are seeking gun permits."

It sounds like Comedy Central may be forcing Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, both WGA members, to return to air without their writers. In a joint statement, they said:

"We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence."

No, seriously!

I'm sorry he got caught. This is the one red light camera I regularly drive through, because there's just no easy way to bypass it, especially when traffic is heavy and turning left from Old Broadway north onto Broadway is nearly impossible (and fucking dangerous).

The provision for recess appointments is a horribly outdated relic from a time when the Senate would be out of session for months at a time with no way to reconvene quickly when, say, a critical post was suddenly left vacant. Now it's useful mostly as a cynical procedural ploy, seen here being countered with another cynical procedural ploy. Fighting fire with fire, I guess... Or maybe a shit hurling monkey metaphor would be more appropriate.

Both photos by Nick Ut, 35 years apart to the very day.

Julie Amero, the substitute teacher convicted earlier this year in the infamous classroom porn popup case, has been granted a new trial after numerous sentencing hearing delays. It is said that, since the prosecution did not object to the retrial motion, she likely will not face further prosecution.

What a huge fuckup this has been by Connecticut state attorneys and her school district, but now Amero's situation finally seems to be heading in a less tragic direction.

NBC said that they debated internally "for hours" over whether to air the VT gunman's multimedia manifesto. That's right, whole hours. Rather than even waiting until the dead had all been buried before posthumously stroking the gunman's narcissistic ego, they decided to forge ahead and lay it all out for us in a tantalizing trickle of photos and video clips. (Speaking of narcissism, how 'bout those NBC NEWS watermarks on all the images. Classy. Neener, neener! The killer chose us and not you!) Their justification for airing the material included something about helping people who wanted to make some sort of sense out of the massacre. Right. Oh, so he was apparently a crazy monotone talking motherfucker. Now it all makes sense. Thanks, NBC, you've taken your cues from FOX NEWS well and have done the public quite a service.

I'm sure the desire to air their big scoop before the other guys had absolutely no bearing whatsoever on their decision. Nor was it that they thought viewers' interest might be waning after seeing the same old greasy head shot for 48 continuous hours.

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