Natalee Holloway was a stupid whore / Katrina

[phil]

"Laughing gas" ... ??

Nitrogen Oxide is FUN !!

[poseidon]

I had an I.V. and tried to count back from 10 and made it to 7 before I woke up with my gums swathed in bandages.

Very painless.

[poseidon]

Cost a couple grand at the time. Thanks gosh for dental insurance.

[rockkid]

Update


DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -- Police searched the dorm rooms of two Duke University lacrosse players after the two were arrested on charges of raping and kidnapping an exotic dancer during an off-campus team party.

District Attorney Mike Nifong said Tuesday he also hoped to link a third man to the alleged attack soon, but he said that person had not been "identified with certainty."

It is important that we not only bring the assailants to justice, but also that we lift the cloud of suspicion from those team members who were not involved in the assault," Nifong said in a statement.

The accuser, a 27-year-old student at a nearby college, told police she was attacked by three white men at a house where she and another woman were hired to dance at a party of lacrosse team members the night of March 13.

Two team members -- Reade Seligmann, a sophomore from Essex Fells, N.J., and Collin Finnerty, a sophomore from Garden City, N.Y. -- were arrested early Tuesday. Each posted $400,000 bond and was released within hours.

Their lawyers assailed the district attorney for bringing the charges after DNA tests had failed to connect any of the team members to the alleged rape.

Seligmann is "absolutely innocent," said attorney Kirk Osborn. Finnerty's attorney, Bill Cotter, said, "We're confident that these young men will be found to be innocent."

Nifong has declined to say what led to the charges or discuss evidence in the case. The dorm rooms were searched Tuesday night for about two hours, according to resident assistant Taggart White.

Defense attorneys have said they have time-stamped photos from the party, bank records, cell phone calls and a taxi driver's statement to support Seligmann's claim of innocence.

Robert Ekstrand, who represents dozens of players on the team, said neither Seligmann nor Finnerty was at the party "at the relevant time." The indictment represents "a horrible circumstance and a product of a rush to judgment," he said.

Defense attorneys have also alleged that the accuser was intoxicated and injured when she showed up for the party.

A cousin of the accuser who has been acting as a spokeswoman for her family disputed that allegations in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" Wednesday. She identified herself only by her first name, Jackie, to protect the woman's identity.

"Before she went to the party she was not intoxicated, she was not drinking," Jackie said. "There's a great possibility that when she went to the party, she was given a drink and it was drugged."

The case has raised racial tensions and heightened the long-standing town-vs.-gown antagonism between Duke students and middle-class, racially mixed Durham. The accuser is black, and all but one of the 47 lacrosse team members are white.

Duke would not comment specifically on any disciplinary action taken against Seligmann and Finnerty, but said it is university practice to suspend students charged with a felony.

"Many lives have been touched by this case," Duke President Richard Brodhead said in a statement. "It has brought pain and suffering to all involved, and it deeply challenges our ability to balance judgment with compassion."

Since the scandal broke, the university has canceled the team's season, its coach resigned and Duke officials said they were investigating the behavior of the nationally ranked team, some of whose members have been found guilty of public intoxication and public urination.

Neither Seligmann and Finnerty was among the team members arrested in recent years for such offenses as underage drinking and public urination.

Finnerty, however, was charged in Washington, D.C., with assault after a man told police in November that Finnerty and two friends punched him and called him "gay and other derogatory names." Finnerty agreed to community service.

Both Seligmann and Finnerty are products of wealthy New York City suburbs and all-male Roman Catholic prep schools. Finnerty attended Long Island's Chaminade High School, where 99 percent of the students go on to college. Seligmann went to the exclusive Delbarton School, a lacrosse powerhouse in Morristown, N.J.

"It is our hope and our conviction that the full truth of all that happened that night will vindicate Reade of these charges," Delbarton's headmaster, the Rev. Luke L. Travers, said in a statement.

[chrisfan]

I have to say that as this case unfolds, the evidence that is being presented on behalf of the players seems to be more credible than the additons being made for the victim. The accused guys are offering up alibis, proof of where they were, pictures to document the time line, etc. On the other hand, as the accuser's story is being challenged, it is being defended with speculative "Well this COULD have happened" stories.

[poseidon]

I think its much ado about nothing. The young men will be exonerated and might be able to make a bundle from their story of the money hungry stripper.

Need more evidence than word of mouth from a harlot.

[luke]

Here we go again. Everyone is sort of holding their breath around these parts.

Latest forecast: Active hurricane season still expected

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — The 2006 hurricane season in the Atlantic will be active, but fewer major storms are likely to make landfall than last year, Colorado State University researchers said today.

An updated forecast from a team led by William Gray calls for 17 named storms in the Atlantic basin between Thursday and Nov. 30. The team said nine storms are expected to become hurricanes, and five of those are expected to develop into intense or major hurricanes with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater.

Last year, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported 28 tropical storms, 15 hurricanes and seven intense hurricanes in the Atlantic. One of the storms was unnamed because it was originally considered subtropical but was reclassified as tropical after the season ended, Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said.
Long-term averages are 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 intense hurricanes, Gray’s team said.

“If the atmosphere and the ocean behave as they have in the past, we should have a very active season, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into storms that produce as much destruction as last year,” said Gray, who has headed the hurricane forecast team for 22 years.

The forecast listed an 82 percent chance that at least one major hurricane will make landfall in the U.S. this season, compared with the long-term average probability of 52 percent.

It listed a 69 percent chance of a major hurricane making landfall on the East Coast, including the Florida peninsula, compared with 31 percent long-term, and a 38 percent chance of landfall on the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to Brownsville, Texas, compared with 31 percent long-term.

Gray said Atlantic hurricane seasons are likely to be active for 15 to 20 more years but another season as busy as 2004 and 2005 is statistically unlikely.

...

BTW, didn't realize there was a resurgence here with the Duke stuff...anyway, fuck Nancy Grace, that hillbilly moron should be dropped out of an airplane into the next Cat 5.

[chrisfan]

Given how much the low-balled last year's hurricane season predictions, why do they even bother any more? Do they forget why hurricanes used to always have women's names - because they're so unpredictable? Why report on a prediction of the unpredictable?

[kmc]

But is Nancy Grace a stupid whore?

[rockysigman]

chrisfan said:

Given how much the low-balled last year's hurricane season predictions, why do they even bother any more? Do they forget why hurricanes used to always have women's names - because they're so unpredictable? Why report on a prediction of the unpredictable?

Is that really why they used to only have women's names?

kmc said:

But is Nancy Grace a stupid whore?

I don't know if she's a stupid whore or not, but she sure is scary sometimes.

[luke]

She's the stupid whore.

And yeah, CF, they really have no idea what they're talking about with hurricanes. The only really hopeful sign this year is that the Gulf and Atlantic are legitimately cooler than last year.

Of course, around here, the papers are all trying to scare us with "Lafayette hasn't been hit by more than a Cat 2 in blah blah years, but if..." and then they go into some scenario about as likely as a made for TV bird flu movie.

[chrisfan]

Yep Rocky, that's why they used to be only women's names.

I have to say that I have really really mixed feelings on the kind of warnings like that Luke. On the one hand, people need to know that it can happen, so they prepare. Floridians have been great at this for years, due in large part to the state's commitment to educating residents. But all hurricanes don't hit Florida, and there are a lot more people who need to prepare better than they do. Given the way the east coast has been let off so easily the past couple of years, I'd be rather concerned about their level of preparation right now. You've got a lot of newer residents who've never been through one - and others who have been lulled into thinking they're someone else's problem.

All that said, I think that too often, the preparation warnings take a dramatic tone of "It could happen here!" rather than a "It could happen here, and so this is what you need to do to prepare ..." In many ways, I think that overly dramatic "the sky is falling" warnings do more harm than good (when they're dramatic rather than informational) because they make it more likely that people will ignore the real warnings, figuring it's just more dramatics.

[strat-0]

Odds are tricky things. I know they try to base these predictions on data and computer models, etc., but even if you roll a die and get 6 five times in a row, it doesn't affect the chances of rolling another 6 one way or the other. I'm sure some of our resident statisticians could explain that better. As I've said before, I was proud of my C in math for non-majors.

[chrisfan]

At least you took math -- I chose my major partially becuse it didn't require a single math course! But I did have to take a psychology statistics class, so I'll confirm what you've said.

[kmc]

I am absolutely retarded at math. I was proud of my pass in statistics and my pass in probability.