Swine flu: Of course it had to get ridiculous

This article from yesterday's NYT details the politics behind naming of a flu. I get it. But the part that made me just shake my head in wonder is:

An Israeli deputy health minister — an ultra-Orthodox Jew — said his country would do the same (call it "Mexican flu"), to keep Jews from having to say the word “swine.” However, his call seemed to have been largely ignored.

I know where in the Torah it says that my tribe shouldn't eat pork. (Leviticus and Deuteronomy, if you're bored spitless sometime.) Can someone point out the part in the Torah that describes the sin of...talking about pork?

Oooh, heresy.


Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/world/asia/29swine.html?_r=1

Hmmm

This story is from www.philly.com. It's about a German couple who abandoned their three children in Italy. Maybe you heard about it. The youngest child is 6 months old. The oldest child is 6 years old. They were having some financial difficulties and so took a trip to Italy (as a cost-savings measure, I suppose) and then while at a restaurant for dinner, went outside to smoke and...never came back. They were found by the authorities and now Italian prosecutors are investigating the couple for abandoning minors, and the German prosecutors are considering whether to open a probe against the mother. Below is a picture of the man of the couple. This is very sad, and highly irresponsible and so forth. But what I'd really like to know is: Will no one say anything about the lipstick this guy is wearing?


Source:
http://www.philly.com/philly/gallery/20090423_ap_policecouplewhoabandonedkidsfoundinitaly.html

K

What does K mean to you? In law, it's shorthand for "contract." In common parlance (one could never accuse the law of being anything remotely close to common parlance), it has come to mean "thousand."

Dipsticks of the world, I invite you to consider the following: We have m, which is shorthand for mille, the Latin word for "thousand." We also have M, which means mille mille or "million."

K is metric, and it signifies distance, such as a 5K, or a 5,000-meter race. When I see that 663K jobs have been lost, it worries me that someone so cretinous is writing about something so important. What other facts may be subject to only nominal scrutiny? It's a question of credibility, and K, when used for something other than distance, strains that credibility.

The Trog will now step off her soapbox and resume her day.

Source:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jobless-rate-bolts-to-85-apf-14841814.html