Friday, May 08, 2009

Friday Flights

A flurry of stories spotted while flying around this morning's reading.

Discriminating: The Trinity Cross of the Order of Trinity, a cross-shaped medal of honor established by Queen Elizabeth, has been ruled unlawful because it "discriminates against non-Christians".

"A review of the British honours system by the Commons Public Administration Select Committee in 2004 recommended reducing the number of decorations from twelve to four, with the new proposed titles having no reference to the Cross or Christian saints."
Crawling: Unseasonal rains are pushing poisonous spiders as large as a man's hand into the neighboring town of Bowen, Australia. The eastern tarantula, with a leg span of 16cm (6.3in) (!), "...are also known as whistling or barking spiders for the hissing noise they emit when they are disturbed or aggravated at close range". I can only stand in awe of the unflappable Aussie attitude in the face of such arachnid nightmares:
Asked what he would do with the giant spider he caught this week, Mr Geiszler said: “I think I’m going to mount this one in acrylic to show people how big it is. It’ll make a great paperweight.”

Stultifying: CPSIA update: Despite earlier assurances to the contrary, it seems garage sales do officially fall under the over-reaching Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. You are a retailer as far as the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is concerned.

"Maybe you didn’t really care about the law before because it was only putting small retailers and work at home moms out of business. Hopefully you will care about it now that you can be slapped with a $100,000 fine for selling your kids’ old books at a yard sale."
Clarifying: Dozens of funny signs from around the world. It's hard to pick a favorite, but this one's regrettably missing punctuation kept me chuckling for a while (with this one a strong runner-up):

1 comment:

Dag said...

I knew an unhappy man who thought he is Rev. John Ritter. I asked him why he's unhappy, and he said it's because he mounted a giant spider and rode it to church every week in Acrylic.