Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Costner and his brother, Dan, have been developing oil separation machines designed to respond to massive oil spills for 15 years. Thanks to BP, they’ll finally have the opportunity to test their technology.

High school students and college-age adults have been complaining to District officials that the free condoms the city has been offering are not of good enough quality and are too small and that getting them from school nurses is “just like asking grandma or auntie.”

So D.C. officials have decided to stock up on Trojan condoms, including the company’s super-size Magnum variety, and they have begun to authorize teachers or counselors, preferably male, to distribute condoms to students if the teachers complete a 30-minute online training course called “WrapMC” — for Master of Condoms.

“If people get what they don’t want, they are just going to trash them,” said T. Squalls, 30, who attends the University of the District of Columbia. “So why not spend a few extra dollars and get what people want?”

Coleman died from a brain hemorrhage after a fall…

But how far could it have been (too soon?)

Spenser Dauwalder was cited with the infraction in October after he and three younger friends imitated a rap from a popular YouTube video that begins, “I need a double cheeseburger and hold the lettuce.”

Two pieces of trivia that are in fact related:

• The name “Trench Coat” comes from the heavy, long wool coats that German soldiers wore in the trenches during WWI.
• The Geneva Convention banned the use of knives and blades that had more than two sides.

During WWI, the US issued a tri-cornered knife to soldiers.  The knife was designed to pierce the German Trench Coat.  (A normal blade wouldn’t pierce the coat.)  It was common for men to infiltrate the trenches of the enemy and then use knives to slash the hell out of them.

At the Geneva Convention, the tri-cornered knives were banned.  Although they were good at piercing jackets, they also created wounds that were very hard to stitch.  A knife with one or two blades created a wound that was easier to stitch, thereby allowing more wounded soldiers to live after being stabbed.

Source: Pawn Stars on the History Channel

A gore, gore point, or gore zone is a triangular piece of land found where roads merge or split. When two roads merge, the area is sometimes referred to as a merge nose.

The term “gore” probably originates from the dressmaker’s term for a triangular piece of cloth.Gores on freeways in the United States are frequently marked with stripes or chevrons at both entrance and exit ramps. These help drivers entering the freeway to estimate how much time they have to match the speed of through traffic, and warn drivers improperly exiting the freeway right down the middle of a gore that they are about to run out of road. Gores at exit ramps occasionally feature impact attenuators, especially when there is something solid at the other end of the gore.

via Gore road – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

So I asked: since guns are readily available in Chicago even with a ban in place, do you really think it’s been effective?

I’m hardly the only guy who asks the mayor things he doesn’t want to answer, and I’ve been responsible for at least one of his huffing, puffing, ranting tangents, which generally get the press corps laughing, thus enabling him to move on to the next question without giving a real answer to the one at hand.

But even by those standards, this was a masterful and surreal performance.

“Oh!” Daley said. “It’s been very effective!”

He grabbed a rifle, held it up, and looked right at me. He was chuckling but there was no smile.

The religious police then called their parents to come and collect the women, and to sign pledges that the girls would not repeat their ostensibly offensive un-Islamic behaviour and dress.

According to recent reports, growing numbers of urban young Saudi women are latching on to the emo fashion popular from Japan to Europe and the Americas.

The trend is characterised by wearing skinny black jeans, tennis shoes, colourful T-shirts bearing the names of emo bands, heavy make up and sharply chopped and sometimes radically coloured hair-dos.

Today is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.  (Background here, more info here.)

I can’t draw.  At all.  Even my stick figures are hard to discern.

So instead of embarrassing myself, I’ll point you over to Zombie’s Mohammed Image Archive.

I encourage you to check it out.  And be patient.  I’d guess the server will be slow today.  (If it is, read more here while you wait.)

Oh, and free to post your own drawings or links to drawings.

This is a free speech zone, where nobody has the right to not be offended.