It’s the age old problem that has happened to all of us. You have a favorite hat that means quite a lot to you. But one day, you are running around wearing just your underpants and your favorite hat, and a woman asks you for your hat. You foolishly give it to her, only to find out that seventeen years later she is trying to sell your favorite hat for a profit. And to add insult to injury, she has written a not too flattering book about you.

But you are poor and have no power, so what can you do?

However, if you have wealth and power, you have other options: File suit!

Headline Telegraph: Bono’s court crusade to win back trousers, a Stetson and his earrings

The U2 singer Bono took a break from his crusade to eradicate African poverty yesterday when he went to court in an attempt to retrieve a pair of trousers, an “iconic” Stetson hat and the hoop earrings he wore in the late 1980s….

U2 have taken their former stylist Lola Cashman to court, claiming that she took the memorabilia without permission while they were on tour promoting their Joshua Tree album in 1987 and making their Rattle and Hum film….

“You may have wealth and power,” he said. “But when someone is trying to push us around and blackmail us and threaten us with books, at a certain point you have to say ‘Stop right there’.”

The singer was referring to an unauthorised biography of U2, Inside the Zoo, written by the former stylist. In the book, Ms Cashman says the band gave her the items, including the Stetson worn by Bono on the cover of Rattle and Hum….

In her evidence, Ms Cashman claimed that Bono came off stage and was running around in his underpants with his hat on. She asked for the Stetson and he handed it over, she said.

Well, here’s a tip for Bono. Next time you’re running around back stage in just your underpants and favorite hat, save yourself some trouble and don’t give away the hat.

Headline Reuters Health: Does weight loss up death risk for obese people?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - It may run counter to advice from almost every quarter, but a Finnish study suggests that losing weight may not be wise for overweight people….

According to the investigators’ report in PLoS Medicine, the final group included 2957 subjects who were overweight or obese in 1975. Two hundred sixty-eight of these subjects died during follow-up.

Individuals who lost or gained weight between 1975 and 1981 were roughly 40 percent more likely to die than those who kept a steady weight. Moreover, intentional weight loss raised the risk of death by 87 percent compared with maintaining a steady weight.

Headline Reuters Health: Obese women run risk of frailty in old age

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who are obese after age 70 are more likely to become frail — and perhaps disabled — than normal-weight women, new research shows.

Headline AP: Survey: Most Adults in Idaho Overweight

COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho - Most of the adults in Idaho are overweight or obese, according to an annual survey by the Centers for Disease Control….

In 2003, nearly 60 percent of adults were considered overweight by CDC standards, and 22 percent of that group was obese.

Put these reports together and we learn some valuable lessons. The death rate in the general population is 100%. But if you lose weight, you are between 40% and 87% MORE likely to die than if you maintain a steady weight. So if you want to have a chance of living forever, keep a stead obese weight.

However, if don’t lose weight as an obese woman (and do manage to avoid the statistics that catch up with everyone else) the chances are good that you will be very frail as those eternal years wear on. So you pay the price of frailty and disability for a less than 100% death rate. It is a steep price indeed.

And finally, there seems to be a clear link between obesity and potatoes. Just to be on the safe side, you might want to steer clear of Idaho entirely.

Google co-founder is quoted as saying:

In the future, search engines should be as useful as HAL in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey–but hopefully they won’t kill people.

– Sergey Brin

I use Google quite a lot. In fact, I used Google to find this quote. I truly hope their search engine lives up to this high standard.

Extreme semolina pilchard.

Reuters Photo:

Caption: “Extreme sports : French World Champion of Freestyle rollerblade Taig Khris competes in the 4th stage of the LG Action Sports World Tour, an International multidisciplinary competition in Paris. (AFP/Bertrand Guay)”

Saturday was our final coach pitch game of the year. My youngest daughter will be too old for that league next year, so it was my final time on the mound.

It turned out to be an odd game. We only had three players show up because the rest of the team was on vacation. The other team only had seven. So they gave us two players, and we scrimmaged five on five. Each team fielded an infield and a coach played catcher. There were no outs (including no strike-outs), and batted around once per half inning. That way, every girl got to bat and run the bases.

It actually worked out better than a regular game, since our team had a some girls who weren’t hitting very well. In fact, one of the three girls there Saturday had never hit the ball all year, not even a foul ball. I was worried about saying she could bat until she hit the ball because I didn’t know how we were going to get her to hit the ball. But to everyone’s delight, she did well on Saturday. She would have struck out if we were counting strikes, but she fouled off a few and eventually during each of her three at bats, hit a little dribbler toward the pitcher’s mound. We were all pretty excited to see her finally make contact and get on base.

At the end of the game, we said our good-byes to the two other team-mates. And now I will hang up my glove (metaphorically speaking, since I didn’t wear a glove while pitching - it is a soft ball and they don’t throw hard) and retire as a little league pitcher. The scouts weren’t that impressed by how well I could strike out seven and eight year old girls, and I won’t get a call by the big leagues.

I hope that years from now, my daughter will remember that I really didn’t have much of a fast ball, and that she got some pretty good hits off of me.

Q.38. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?

A. At the resurrection, believers, raised in glory, will be publicly recognized and declared not guilty on the day of judgment and will be made completely happy in the full enjoyment of God forever.

There is a resurrection to come at the end of time (the last day) when Christ returns. Jesus Christ will judge everyone at that time, publicly declaring the righteousness of His people (justifying them based upon His own substitution as He has paid the price for the guilt of their sins and has given them His perfect righteousness) and declaring the guilt of those who are not His people.

John 6:35-40

³⁵ Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. ³⁶ But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. ³⁷ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. ³⁸ For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. ³⁹ And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. ⁴⁰ For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

¹³ But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. ¹⁴ For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁵ For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶ For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷ Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. ¹⁸ Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Revelation 20:11-15

¹¹ Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. ¹² And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. ¹³ And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. ¹⁴ Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. ¹⁵ And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Headline Washington Times: Terrorists in Iraq seen from Africa

Reuters Photo:

Caption: “A Chinese worker sprays antiseptic in a pipe with a diameter of 2.6 m (8.5 feet) at a drinking water project in Ningbo in east China’s Zhejiang province June 21, 2005. It is ‘a task of top priority’ to build a water-saving society since the per-capita share of water resource in China is less than one third of the world’s average, Xinhua News Agency reported. CHINA OUT REUTERS/China Newsphoto”

Headline AP: Giant Popsicle Melts, Floods NYC Park

NEW YORK - An attempt to raise the world’s largest ice pop in a city square ended with a scene straight out of a disaster film — but much stickier.

The 25-foot-tall, 17 1/2-ton treat of frozen Snapple juice melted faster than expected Tuesday, flooding Union Square in downtown Manhattan with kiwi-strawberry-flavored fluid that sent pedestrians scurrying for higher ground….

Snapple … called off the stunt before it was pulled fully upright by a construction crane. Officials said they were worried the thing would collapse in the 80-degree, first-day-of-summer heat….

The giant ice pop was supposed to have been able to withstand the heat for some time, and organizers weren’t sure why it didn’t.

Somehow I don’t think a melting popsicle, giant or otherwise, would make a good disaster film. (”The Towering Freeze-pop” or maybe “Popsicle 2005″. No. It just doesn’t work.)

But according to the latest disaster film, isn’t New York was supposed to freeze over due to global warming, not heat up enough to melt giant popsicles?

Major League Baseball has had some major problems with players using illegal performance enhancing substances. Many players are now known to have used steroids. Sammy Sosa was caught last year using a corked bat. Numerous players have been caught using illegal drugs.

But other baseball leagues have their problems too. The Korea Baseball Organization has had to deal with players using frozen cabbage during the game.

Headline Reuters: There’s no room for cabbage in baseball…

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea’s baseball players have been banned from putting frozen cabbage leaves under their caps to beat the summer heat.

The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) took action after Doosan Bears pitcher Park Myung-hwan’s cap fell off during a game last weekend, revealing his secret cooling agent.

After an emergency meeting, KBO officials ruled that cabbage leaves are a distraction and cannot be considered part of the baseball uniform.

MLB didn’t take any action against steroids, and look how so many high profile players are now known to have been using them. Will MLB act to stop the use of frozen cabbage as a “secret cooling agent” before it becomes as big of a problem as steroids?