TASTY NIBBLES

Marcus Groh went with a dive group last weekend to see the sharks in the ocean off Fort Lauderdale. To make sure there would be sharks, the tour leaders baited the water with fish guts. And it worked. The sharks came. They bit Marcus to death.

Who could have known?

SCHRODINGER LIVES!

An update on my colon (see earlier story): Today I am existing in two states of being simultaneously.

The doctor found a tumor. He says it is likely to be malignant. It is also likely to not be malignant.

So today I exist in a cancerous state as well as a non-cancerous state, both at the same time. And it won't be until later this week, when the testing of the biopsy is complete, that my two states will collapse into one. I will then be either cancerous Marc, or non-cancerous Marc.

This will be interesting.

WWJD

Two Oregon teens were suspended from school for wearing crucifixes. The principal said the crosses were gang symbols.

The Jesus gang?

AND YET IT MOVES

While waiting for my colonoscopy, I thought of the astronomer Galileo.

I was lying on my side on a gurney, wearing a gown that opened in the back, and my mind was numb with the terror of the occasion. There on a tray sat a device consisting of several instruments connected by black hoses. I surmised that one of those hoses was going to go some distance up a private orifice of mine, and I did not like the idea. That's when I thought of Galileo.

After the church charged Galileo with heresy for claiming that the Earth circles the Sun rather that the other way around, they tried to get him to renounce his theory. Evidently believing Galileo to be a reasonable man, before resorting to torture they first displayed for him the instruments of his torture.

He renounced his theory.

I can see why he'd do that.

An Idaho teen was arrested for faking his kidnapping and then trying to get his friends to pay a $3000 ransom.

Friends? This guy has friends?

There will always be an England. It just won't be on the radio,

You know that image from the war movies, people huddled together in the dark and lit only by the faint glow of a short wave radio, listening to the BBC World Service for the latest news of the Allied front.

But no more. The BBC has stopped transmitting to North and South America, and the last broadcasts to Europe ended Monday.

The "Beeb" issued a statement saying that after 75 years, the service could no longer be justified because so few people were listening amymore. You know, ratings were down.

The BBC World Service will continue serving underdeveloped nations in Africa and Asia. The rest of us can still catch it on the Internet.

And of course, there'll always be an Internet.

Mohamed al Fayed, whose son Dodi died in a Paris car crash with Princess Diana, testified at her inquest Monday in London. Here are some highlights of his testimony.

• Prince Phillip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, directed the plot to "slaughter" Dodi and Diana.
• Prince Phillip is a "racist" and a "Nazi."
• He added, "It's time to send him back to Germany, from where he comes." (Phillip was born in Greece.)
• Fayed said of Prince Phillip, "You want to know his original name? It's Frankenstein." (Actually, it's Mountbatten.)
• Phillip had the couple killed because he didn't want Diana to marry a Muslim, "someone who is naturally tanned, with curly hair."
• Prince Charles wanted Diana eliminated so he could marry "his crocodile wife," Camilla Parker Bowles.
• Diana told Fayed that Prince Phillip wanted to kill her. (She apparently never confided this to anyone else.)
• Diana told him that she was pregnant with Dodi's child. (Again, she never told her friends.)
• MI6, the CIA and the NSA were bugging Diana's phone.
• The British and French secret intelligence services "executed" Diana and Dodi.
• The CIA also helped.
• The couple's driver, Henri Paul, was in on the plot. (Paul also died in the crash. Two previous investigations by French and British police found that he was drunk and speeding.)
• A paparazzi photographer, who later committed suicide, also helped kill the couple. (That photographer, James Adanson, was 177 miles from Paris at the time.)
• Also in on the plot were former Prime Minister Tony Blair "and his senior henchmen," Britain's ambassador to France, French medical and forensic experts, Scotland Yard and Queen Elizabeth's private secretary.
• Mohamed al Fayed said his proof is in the secret MI6 files, which he's never seen.
• Fayed said, "I will expose those gangsters, not only for me but for the ordinary people of this country."

I'm waiting for the movie to come out.
(USA/NYT)

Here is some of the wit and wisdom of Arizona Senator John McCain.

• "Only an asshole like you would put together a budget like this," to former Budget Committee Chairman Senator Pete Domenici in 1999.
• "I'm calling you a fucking jerk," to Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley.
• "Fuck you. I know more about this than anyone else in the room," to Texas Senator John Cornyn during a meeting on immigration legislation.

Ya gotta like this guy.

(AP)

The town of Obama, Japan is supporting its American namesake. There are "Go Obama" posters, "I love Obama" T-shirts and bean cakes with Barak Obama's picture on them.

Remind me, how many delegates does Japan have?

(NYT)

GOD LOVES NUKES

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says God will punish Iranians who don't support the country's nuclear program.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

(AP)

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization will search a wilderness area of West Virginia in April, looking for Bigfoot.

They last searched this area in 2006. They didn't find him then, either.

(USA)

IS THAT A VIBRATOR IN YOUR POCKET?

Just in time for Valentine's Day, a federal appeals court has overturned the Texas ban on sex toys.

But watch out, a dildo can still get you busted in Alabama.

What's up with Valentine's day? When did the observance become so cynical?

Yesterday I reported on un-Valentine's cards, candy, T-shirts and background checks.

Now I see in the Wall Street Journal a special Valentine's piece on how to have a good divorce. Some advice: Try coming to terms without a lawyer, be prepared for a major loss of assets, and treat your ex as a business partner rather than as someone you loved.

USA Today reminds the soon to be divorcee to purge the e-mail archives of damaging evidence so you're not caught out like the mayor of Detroit. And don't forget to clean up your Facebook profile.

And a West Virginia radio station is giving away a free divorce for Valentine's day.

Maybe it's always been like this, ever since Saint Valentine was tortured to death on February 14th, 496AD for secretly marrying young couples.

But at least the Tulsa World had something positive: How to make love last. The answer: put the flowers in a vase of sugar water with a drop of bleach, and cut the stems on a diagonal.

Even war-torn Kenya remembers Valentine's Day.

Kenya grows 25% of the Valentine's flowers, mostly roses, sold in Europe. It's the number one export. And Cupid waits for no civil war. So the flowers are being transported in police convoys and flown out of the country.

It's good to know that even as opposing tribes are hacking each other to death, there's still time to stop and smell the roses.

Just in time for Valentine's day, stuff for the unloved one.

• From American Greetings Corp, a card that reads, "Roses are red, and green is the clover, I'll be so glad when this day is over. Crappy Valentines Day."
• From Cafe Press, a T-shirt that reads, "Love is like a box of chocolates. It's sweet at first, and then you wanna puke!"
• From Bittersweets, the Valentine's Candy for the Rest of Us," little chalky candy hearts with messages like, "PRENUP OK?" and "DO MY DISHES."

And keeping with this Valentine's Day sentiment, The Oklahoman newspaper published a front page story on how to run a background check on your sweetie, including web links to court and prison records.

Happy Valentine's Day, or whatever.

A JOYFULL NOISE

Some Oklahoma churches are having a kerfuffle. It's about music.

Lot's of churches have music. Some have organs or, God help us, guitars. Many have choirs.

The Church of Christ has choirs. But the one in Quail Springs has added musical instruments. And evidently, that's an Unchristly thing to do.

No musical instruments are ever mentioned in the New Testament. There's a lot dueling scripture here. A competing church calls the the musical pastor a "false teacher for adding elements to the worship which God did not authorize."

At my childhood Conservative Jewish synagogue, the singing was a capella, in a minor key. Playing musical instruments on the sabbath is a sin. But the cantor did use a pitch pipe, which did not go un-noticed or un-commented upon.

Some reform congregations use instruments, but Orthodox Jews don't consider Reform Jews to be really Jewish.

Ever notice how religion brings people together? Me neither.

Whatever happened to Dr. Robert Jarvik, the guy who invented the first succesfull, implantable artificial heart?

He's doing TV commercials for Lipitor, the cholesterol drug. You may have seen them. He talks to the camera, and then there's a long shot of him rowing a boat on Lake Cresent, showing how healthy he is on Lipitor.

Only it's not him rowing. It's a body double, Dennis Williams.

Dennis isn't even a doctor, but he plays one on TV.

What's a vote cost? A delegate vote goes for $45,000 to $4 million.

If you take the presidential candidates and divide money spent by delegates won, here's what you get:

• Mike Huckabee ... $45,000
• John McCain ... 57,000
• Hillary Clinton ... 89,000
• Barack Obama ... 121,000
• Mitt Romney ... 654,000
• Ron Paul ... 4 million

Rudolf Giuliani spent $48 million and didn't win a single delegate. You do the math.

(NYT)

Here in the Sooner state, 86% of those recently surveyed want English to be the official language.

But given what many natural born Americans do to the English language, maybe that's not such a good idea.

China is celebrating its lunar new year. This year is 4696.

The Hebrew calendar is also lunar. The new year started in September. It's 5760.

This would mean that for 1064 years, Jewish people had no Chinese food.

Conventional wisdom is that every adult citizen should get out and vote because it's a civic duty.

I disagree. I say if you don't feel strongly about voting -- if you haven't been following the candidates and the issues -- then just stay home and leave the voting to those who know what they're doing.

People in Virginia, Florida, Washington and Texas turned out to vote on Super Tuesday but found their polling places closed. That's because Florida voted last month, Virginia is next week and Texas is next month. Washington has no primaries, they'll caucus this weekend.

If these citizens can't even pick the proper day to vote, can they really be trusted to pick the next leader of the free world?

Some South Carolina lawmakers want to require political candidates to pass drug tests -- thereby denying voters the right to elect officeholders who are on drugs.

Playing in London, "Meltdown," a modern dance inspired by the life of Britney Spears. It features a female dancer dressed in a pink crop-top and vinyl hot pants chased by black-clad paparazzi and rescued by dancing doctors in white coats.

The music is by the same man who brought us "Jerry Springer: The Opera."