In yet another example of a problem endemic to our society, a fat man sues four fast food restaurants, claiming that they made him fat, as if he bore no responsibility for having made the personal choice to eat their food, even though they have been publishing nutritional information for years.

From "The Government Can Take Anything and Mess It Up" department: The Transportation Security Commission is way behind in hiring employees. According to an article in USAToday, "At three New York airports, 61% of applicants [for the position of airport screener] failed a test of English proficiency and overall aptitude skills [emphasis added]." Incredibly, officials estimate that one-third of the applicants are no-shows for meetings with recruiters!

Further, the government wanted fifty percent of the screeners to be female. So far, they've only managed to entice enough women to reach twenty-five percent of the total. Duh! Do you suppose that the problem is that few women even want the job?

All this, and the real problem wasn't even the airport screeners at all. It was the Immigration and Naturalization Service that dropped the ball. But instead of reforming it, which might hurt the feelings of some foreigners who want to come here, the government federalized the airport screeners! Just what we need: more big government!

String of hamburger joints sold for $2.26 billion.

msnbc.com reports a story in The Wall Street Journal, which reveals that "[f]ederal prosecutors in New York plan to seek indictments against two former top financial officers of WorldCom Inc. [Bernie Ebbers and Scott Sullivan] as early as next week for their roles in the company?s accounting scandal."

The city commission of Chiefland, Florida put their police force's seven officers on indefinate leave, with pay, after someone discovered that the city's charter didn't give them the right to make arrests or issue tickets.

The Rev. Al Sharpton places the value of his reputation at $500 million.

Apparently, it is a vast right- and left-wing conspiracy that brought Traficant down.

Seven year old kidnapped Philadelphia girl chews through her bonds and escapes. The Nando Times has the story.

Intresting: A woman has a flat tire, catches a ride with a trucker, disappears. Turns out she just liked the trucker and was riding with him for two weeks. The Clarion-Ledger has the story.

"The Devil made me do it," says convicted killer.

Apparently, Def Leppard has finally found their audience. The band is scheduled to perform a free concert at the new Fayetteville, Arkansas Wal-Mart Supercenter at 6:00 p.m. on July 31.

It seems that WorldCom's financial misdeeds have been an open secret for over a year, since it has been that long ago that a class action lawsuit, brought by former WorldCom employees, sought to bring the wrongdoing to light.

A Wall Street Journal article, reported on msnbc.com, says that WorldCom filed for bancruptcy protection and that the actiion "will almost certainly wipe out common shareholders."

An ABCNEWS story reveals that WorldCom will file for bankruptcy protection.

In Maryland, the battle against a carnivorous Chinese fish continues. For the time being, at least, a twelve-member panel thinks that the most effective method of control would be to asphyxiate the fish with a non-toxic chemical that would dissipate within two to six days.

Global Industries is hosted, for free, on Tripod. Another, good, free host is 0catch. They have one, non-intrusive banner ad at the top of each page. It is easy to sign up, and their serving up of web pages has been fast, for me.

There's a new button at the bottom of the page that signifies that I'm using w.bloggar, a free blog interface tool by Marcelo Cabral. w.bloggar has some really nice features, such as bold, italic, and underline. One of the neatest features is the ability to preview your post before uploading it to your blog host. Thanks, Marcelo!!

In the United States, at least, the first day of the "work" week for most of us is Monday, yet most, if not all, of our calendars start the week on Sunday. Why is that? A quick search on Google turned up "Calendars Through the Ages," which gives the following explanation:

The Bible clearly makes the Sabbath the last day of the week, but does not share how that corresponds to our 7 day week. Yet through extra-biblical sources it is possible to determine that the Sabbath at the time of Christ corresponds to our current 'Saturday.' Therefore it is common Jewish and Christian practice to regard Sunday as the first day of the week (as is also evident from the Portuguese names for the week days). However, the fact that, for example, Russian uses the name "second" for Tuesday, indicates that some nations regard Monday as the first day.

In international standard ISO-8601 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has decreed that Monday shall be the first day of the week.