Medary.com

The humorless U.S. Olympic Committee threatens a lawsuit against an Oregon woman's ferret agility trials.

An estimated 75 ferrets will vie for medals at the Ferret Agility Trials on Sunday in events including the tube run and the paper bag escape. Only "they are not Olympians anymore," organizer Melanee Ellis said with a laugh.

Aw, c'mon, USOC, it's about ferrets, fer cryin out loud!

Glasgow, Scotland hosts the World Bagpipe Championships

The event began with pomp and circumstance yesterday, when massed pipe bands marched through the city centre to George Square, where they brought traffic to a standstill for half an hour as they played to an audience of 5,000 people.

Thank goodness they're not calling it the Bagpipe Olympics.

There have been reports that Microsoft won a patent victory over Apple on the iPod user interface. Those reports are wrong:

Closer inspection says the Microsoft patent was rejected. It was modified in December of 2003 but Techweb INCORRECTLY says the patent was approved. It is still an application. [uspto.gov]

In reality it will not be approved because of this little thing called Prior Art. As you might have guessed, you can't patent something someone else is already shipping. Further in the US we use a "First to Invent" method rather than a "First to File." Clearly since the Apple product was ~you know~ shipping, they invented it before Microsoft and clearly the MS application was not novel.

Transportation Safety Administration realizes that full body cavity searches in airports maybe, just maybe slow security lines a tad:

An initial set of staff recommendations drafted Aug. 5 also proposes that passengers no longer have to routinely remove their shoes during security checks. Instead, only passengers who set off metal detectors, are flagged by a computer screening system or look "reasonably suspicious" would be asked to do so, a TSA official said Saturday. Any of the changes proposed by the staff, which also would allow scissors, ice picks and bows and arrows on flights, would require Hawley's approval, this official said, requesting anonymity because there has been no final decision.

The shoe thing was always utterly nonsensical. But, this is the government, they've got the guns, it doesn't have to make sense.

Oregon moves to make pseudoephedrine available by prescription only.

Moreover, it's not clear that less onerous approaches aren't just as effective. In April of last year, Oklahoma became the first of more than a dozen states to require that medicines containing pseudoephedrine be kept behind pharmacy counters. The result has been a 90% drop in seizures of meth-production labs. Congress is considering legislation that would apply the Oklahoma law nationwide. State narcotics officials report similar results in Iowa, which earlier this year passed a law that allows only licensed pharmacists to sell pseudoephedrine products and limits customers to one package per day.

Oregon relocated its cold medicines behind the counter last October, and Governor Kulongoski credits the move with drastically reducing the number of meth labs in the state. Ten months later, he's ready to further burden Oregonians without any evidence that prescription requirements will help close more meth labs.

Making pseudoephedrine prescription-only is just nuts. Jaw-droppingly nuts. It's Sudafed, for heaven's sake. Yeah, meth is a problem, but really, this War on Sudafed is getting out of hand.

Mark Steyn:

Sept. 11 was a total government fiasco: CIA, FBI, INS, FAA, all the hot shot acronyms failed spectacularly. But appoint an official commission and let them issue an official report and suddenly everyone says, oh, well, this is the official version of 9/11; if they say something didn't happen, it can't possibly have happened.

Readers may recall that I never cared for the commission. There were too many showboating partisan hacks -- Richard ben Veniste, Bob Kerrey -- who seemed more interested in playing to the rhythms of election season. There was at least one person with an outrageous conflict of interest: Clinton Justice Department honcho Jamie Gorelick, who shouldn't have been on the commission but instead a key witness appearing in front of it. And there were far too many areas where the members appeared to be interested only in facts that supported a predetermined outcome.

Steyn puts aside his usual ripping wit for a more sober assessment of the 9/11 Commission fiasco.

Bush says "all options are on the table" in nuclear dispute with Iran.

In the interview, Bush said the United States and Israel ''are united in our objective to make sure that Iran does not have a weapon.''

But, he said, if diplomacy fails "all options are on the table."

"The use of force is the last option for any president. You know, we've used force in the recent past to secure our country," he said.

Iran blusters in response:

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters in Tehran, "If America committed such a mistake, our defenses are bigger than America."
. . .
Asefi also accused the United States of having a hand in recent unrest in western Iran, saying "we have information of American intervention and will soon issue a formal protest in this regard."

And so, the war of words is joined.

Friday night: Vikings 27, Chiefs 16. Kansas City's re-tooled defense gets shredded early by the Vikings.

Saturday night: Broncos 20, Texans 14. Broncos's re-tooled defense stops Texans first-string four times on the goal line.

Medary.com's NFL coverage will feature the Broncos (Filbert's favorite) as well as Chiefs and Vikings news and notes.

Sombody call PETA. At approximately 6:50 a.m. this morning, I personally witnessed the most horrifying act of violence I've ever seen on TV.

I was watching Fox News Network's Fox & Friends when a stage hand rushed onto the set of the TV show and brutally swatted a fly.

The grisly scene continued with the cameraman zooming in for a close-up of the murdered creature, while the hosts laughed and joked.

I am in shock. Or it could be caffiene deficit. I'm not sure.

#10: The Conference Map Project
#9: Royals World Series Party rained out
#8: SDSU women's basketball schedule is out
#7: Tennessee women's basketball schedule is out
#6: Delta edges closer to bankruptcy
#5: Sole flying U.S. Constellation blows engine, may not fly again
#4: BAC 0.08 is unconstitutional
#3: Hamas to Israel: Thanks for Gaza, we'll keep killing you
#2: Iraqis say they'll meet constitution deadline
#1: Iran "astonished" by unanimous nuke vote