by David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
SAN FRANCISCO — Xu Xing, a Chinese paleontologist, puzzled over the thigh bone of a monstrous new dinosaur he and his partners had discovered in the rich fossil beds of the Gobi desert.

The bone was so big, he said in an e-mail to The Chronicle, that he thought he and his colleagues had merely found another of those familiar plant-eating, long-necked, semi-aquatic creatures called sauropods, well known in the evolutionary past of the dinosaur world.[…]

“When I went back to my geologist colleague Lin Tan’s lab to check the skeleton, I was shocked,” Xu wrote in his e-mail, “I said to Tan, ‘it is not a sauropod, it is not a tyrannosaurus, it is a tyrannosaurus-sized oviraptor. We have a gigantic chicken!’”

jay: sux that the dude in the picture had to fellate that giant chicken. worst. prehistoric. job. ever.

cates: “the bone was so big…” that doesn’t sound like a complaining fellater to me.

By ERIN CONROY

AP - BOSTON - A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3 1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale’s age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.

“No other finding has been this precise,” said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Calculating a whale’s age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It’s rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts say the oldest were close to 200 years old.

jay: hooray! we finally got him! now let’s cut down this giant redwood so that we can count its rings and see how old it was! u-s-a! u-s-a!

BRUSSELS (Reuters) — A Belgian businessman rejected a Nigerian job applicant because the businessman said his own dog was racist and would bite non-whites, Belgian media reported Saturday. The 53-year-old Nigerian man told De Standaard newspaper he arrived at the Belgian’s wrought-iron business and was immediately confronted by the barking dog.

The Belgian turned the man away before he could even enter, and wrote on his labor office letter that he could not hire the man because of his color, adding there was a risk the dog would bite him.

The local labor office has concluded that the Belgian was racist and has removed him from its list of potential employers.

“My dog is racist. Not me,” the Belgian told De Standaard.

The Nigerian, who has lived in Belgium for 32 years, said it was not the first time he had been rejected for a job because of his color, although other employers had been more subtle.

jay: well, the racist dog was there first. what was mr wrought iron supposed to do? leave him at home? non!

cates: the rise of canine neo-nazism in europe should not be ignored.

The Scotsman — Two Thai strays who became ace sniffer dogs at an airport near the notorious “Golden Triangle” opium-producing region have been fired for urinating on luggage and sexually harassing female passengers.

The pair, Mok and Lai, had been plucked from obscurity under a programme initiated by King Bhumibol Adulyadej to turn strays into police dogs, the Bangkok Post said on Sunday.

They won plaudits from police for their work in sniffing out drugs at northern Thailand’s Chiang Rai airport, near the border with Laos and Myanmar.

But so many passengers complained about their unacceptable behaviour that they had to be fired.

“He liked to pee on luggage while searching for drugs inside,” Mok’s former handler, Police Lieutenant Colonel Jakapop Kamhon, said. “He also liked to hold on to women’s legs.”

cates: how are they any different to the baggage handlers? it’s just another example of prejudice in the modern world.

jay: actually, they’re not much different from the average dude on holiday in thailand. half sex tourist, half lame frat boy.

By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent

LOS ANGELES - Screaming and crying, Paris Hilton was escorted from a courtroom and sent back to jail Friday after a judge ruled that she must serve out her entire 45-day sentence behind bars rather than in her Hollywood Hills home.

“It’s not right!” shouted Hilton, who violated her parole in a reckless driving case. “Mom!” she called out to her mother in the audience.

She cried throughout the hearing, dabbing her eyes, and her body shook constantly. Several times she turned to her parents, seated behind her in the courtroom, and mouthed, “I love you.”

jay: screaming and crying! hahahaha. whee!

dan: maybe she should have thought about this before she shot that poor lana clarkson.

jay: word up. if you can’t do the time, don’t kidnap the lindbergh baby.

The Daily Telegraph — A truck driver travelled for several miles along a US highway after unwittingly picking up an extra passenger when a wheelchair became hooked onto the front of his cab.

The handles of 21-year-old Ben Carpenter’s electric wheelchair became tangled in the grille of the lorry which had stopped briefly at a red light.

Horrified motorists alerted police as they watched the wheelchair hurtling along the two-lane highway in Michigan at speeds of up to 50mph.

[…]

Mr Carpenter, who has muscular dystrophy, was unharmed, but said afterwards he thought he might not make it through the ride.

“I was probably thinking that this is going to keep going and not stop anywhere,” he told a local television station.

However, the only casualty of his trip was the contents of a drink he was holding when the truck picked him up.

His wheelchair escaped damage except for losing most of the rubber on its wheels.

“It’s a very bad story that ended very well,” Mr Carpenter’s father Donald said. “We’re just thrilled that he’s still around.”

cates: amazing. he only spilled his drink. i would have spilled my entrails into my underpants.

jay: also, a new north american landspeed record in the wheelchair division. if only this had happened on the salt flats…

dan: what’s the big deal? michael j fox did this in back to the future, and that was what, 20 years ago? 25? and he’s got parkinson’s. i’m sorry, cates. I just don’t see why this is news.

AP - CHELSEA, Vt. - A prosecutor has dropped charges against a woman who was arrested for staring at and making faces at a police dog.

“Prosecuting a woman for ’staring’ at a police dog is absurd,” said her lawyer. “People are allowed to make faces at police dogs and officers to express their disapproval. It’s constitutional expression,” said public defender Kelly Green, who represented Jayna Hutchinson.

Hutchinson, 33, of Lebanon, N.H., was charged with cruelty to a police animal and resisting arrest after a July 31 incident in West Fairlee in which police were called to a market to investigate a report of a brawl. They were approached by Hutchinson, who told one officer she had been assaulted the day before by one of the men involved.

She asked Vermont State Police Sgt. Todd Protzman to take her statement but he refused, telling her she smelled like alcohol and was drunk but that he would take her statement at another time.

After a heated exchange, she approached Protzman’s cruiser, where his dog Max was waiting, putting her face within inches of the window and “staring at him in a taunting/harassing manner,” Protzman wrote in an affidavit.

“While the defendant taunted my canine, Max was focused on the defendant and the perceived threat she presented to him,” the affidavit said. “He was no longer focused on me and the other officers at the scene.”

jay: i love cop talk. ‘my canine’ is really something else. is there something the matter with saying ‘my dog?’ or ‘the animal?’ i don’t think there is. do cops talk that way because they think it sounds both more professional and more hard-ass? also, it’s sad when canines lose focus.

dan: what’s up, my canine? my sister from another litter! my pooch from another cooch!

jay: pooch from another cooch?!

cates: we have irritating policespeak in the uk, too. criminals are always “perpetrators”. people never head north; they always “proceed in a northerly direction”. and the police never lock anyone up; they “deprive them of their liberty”. i’m sure it’s just an attempt to reverse the totally unjustified and widespread opinion that cops are intellectually sub-normal.

jay: pooch from another cooch?!

dan: over the line?

On Aug. 17, 1998, after relentless media attention, leaks, and news of Lewinsky’s upcoming testimony, Clinton made history by becoming the first U.S. president to testify in front of a grand jury in an investigation of his own possibly criminal conduct. In an address to the nation, he admitted to having had an “inappropriate relationship” with Lewinsky, but reaffirmed that he did not ask anyone to lie about or cover up the affair.

dan: what’s this, you ask?

Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor in the case, pursued the matter.

dan: why, it’s the entry on bill clinton from conservapedia, the wiki without all that nasty trotskyite bias.

Clinton became the second sitting president to be impeached by the US House of Representatives. During his second term Clinton was accused of perjury in connection to the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. The US Senate voted to acquit him. He later lost his law license in Arkansas.

dan: and what’s funny about that? nothing, really. the funny part is the discussion going on behind the wiki:

I am going to have to rewrite this article for obvious reasons.Geo. 00:37, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Too even-handed?McTavidge 22:37, 14 March 2007 (EDT)

Well, I tend to think that the fact that the article claims that Clinton was impeached isn’t greatly even-handed. I’m a conservative like any other person with reasonable political ideals, but I think we’re sort of stretching credibility with this one. Karalius Nyder 22:31, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

Sorry, my apologies - he was impeached! I need to brush up on my American politics. Karalius Nyder 00:45, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

dan: i would imagine it’s hard to keep up with the leftist press covering this stuff up…

jay: conservapedia? huh? holy crap, dan. you didn’t just make that up! it exists! haha. yuck.

BBC — Two women who force-fed children raw chilli and raw eggs, and stung them with nettles, have been jailed for acts of “sustained cruelty”.

Maria Keable, from Ramsgate, Kent, and Deirdre Carrington, from west London, were sentenced to 19 months in prison at Canterbury Crown Court on Monday.

The two Mormon women have also been banned from working with children.

[…]

They became friends after meeting at a Mormon temple in London in 1997.

The court was told Keable and Carrington had beaten the four girls and two boys with wooden rolling pins and kicked and punched them.

They also force-fed the children with hot chilli powder - a punishment they used on a two-year-old-girl.

Keable saw her actions as Christian and believed in “love with boundaries”, Canterbury Crown Court was told.

Judge Nash said: “You were undoubtedly, Maria, obsessed with punishment. You behaved like a hospital matron of the 19th Century, bullying the children in an unforgivable way.”

Keable, aged 60 and from Macedonia, had told police “in her country, the use of chilli was normal”.

Judge Nash told her: “It’s no good you saying ‘this is what we did in Macedonia’.

“You have been over here for 40 years, you know how we live over here and that’s what makes your part in this so wrong.”

Carrington, 41, of Chiswick, told police she was having “emotional problems” when she made one girl eat chilli powder.

cates: but what type of chilli powder was used? anything below 800,000 on the scoville scale is just a bit of fun.

By Thomas J. Lueck — NY Times

It was just six inches.

That was what made the difference at 4:40 a.m. yesterday as Gilberto Cantu, a truck driver from Texas, approached the New Jersey entrance of the Lincoln Tunnel in his big rig, loaded with bathtubs, toilets and plumbing fixtures. The truck was 13 feet 6 inches high. The tunnel has a height limit of 13 feet. Six inches can make a big difference.

Mr. Cantu drove the entire 1.5 miles of the tunnel from Weehawken, N.J., to Manhattan, tearing his way under the Hudson River in the tunnel’s center tube and peeling back the roof of his tractor-trailer as if it were a tin can. No one was injured, but an undetermined number of decorative tunnel ceiling tiles were ripped off.

It was unclear why Mr. Cantu did not heed warnings from flashing signs and a loudspeaker in New Jersey, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the tunnel. “There were enough bells and whistles going off that this should not have happened,” Mr. Coleman said. “He told the officers he didn’t know where he was going.”

jay: two possible reasons why mr. cantu didn’t heed warnings: 1. meth 2. if you’re going to make gilberto pay to ride, gilberto is going to ride all 13′ 6″ of big-rig straight up yer poop-chute. take that, port authority of new york and new jersey! YEEE-HAW!

dan: the irony, of course, is that he fits just fine now!

MANILA (AFP) - A jobless man was shot dead by a security guard for singing out of tune in a Philippine karaoke bar, police said Thursday.

Romy Baligula, 29, was halfway through his song on Tuesday night in a bar in San Mateo town, east of Manila, when 43-year-old security guard Robilito Ortega yelled that he was out of tune.

As Baligula ignored his comments and continued singing, Ortega pulled out his revolver and shot him in the chest.

Senior Superintendent Felipe Rojas said Baligula died instantly.

The security guard was detained by an off-duty policeman shortly after the shooting.

Deaths and violence are not uncommon in Philippine karaoke bars.

The popular Frank Sinatra song “My Way” has been taken off many karaoke bars in Manila after it was found to be the cause of fights and even deaths when patrons sang out of tune.

jay: the news always hits me hardest when i read an article and think, “my god, this could have been me!”

cates: if they’ve taken “my way” out of a lot of the bars, what have they replaced it with? “i will survive”?

dan: “deaths and violence are not uncommon in philippine karaoke bars.” move over, “wild west”! i think we have a new insta-metaphor for lawlessness. “i tell ya brother, tikrit is like a philippine karaoke bar!”