Sunday, 7-16-06: Peter Coors, the CEO of Coors Brewling Company, had his driver's license revoked for driving while drunk by a hearings officer in Denver, Colorado. "I made a mistake," Coors said. "For years I've advocated the safe use of our company's product." In local news, a man robbed a bank in Milwaukie, and then broke into to a nearby house. He suffered several dog bites in the process. Once inside, he inhaled paint and took all his clothes off. That's where police found him. Monday, 7-17-06: 2 burglars broke into a building near Perth, Australia. When they were confronted by a security guard, they called the police for help. A man named Merle Ehlinger was standing in a trench in 1955, 3000 yards from ground zero for an atomic test. "When that bomb goes white," he said, snapping his fingers, "for about that long , through your arm, with your eyes shut, you can see every pebble, every grain of sand in that trench glisten like a diamond. The first time, you don't believe you really saw it, and so you ask your buddy." In local news, a jet at the airshow crashed into a house. The woman who lived there wasn't home. Imagine how she felt to come home to a smouldering hole in the ground where her house used to be.... Tuesday, 7-18-06: Chile's Supreme Court has stripped Pinochet of immunity against trial in the killing of Salvador Allende's bodyguards during the coup in 1973. Their deaths were part of the Caravan of Death, a military operation that killed 75 jailed dissidents across Chile in the weeks after the coup. Previous attempts to try Pinochet have failed, as the courts have ruled him mentally and physically unfit. Wednesday, 7-19-06: A giant ice ball fell out of a clear blue sky in Johannesburg, South Africa on July 7th. The impact left a small crater in a parking lot, surrounded by broken ice. This kind of phenomenon has been reported since the 19th Century. Six years ago there was a swarm of falling ice balls in Spain that lasted for a week. Scientists think they might form at the top of the atmosphere.... Thursday, 7-20-06: "There's nobody in the world like me," said Paris Hilton to the Times of London. "I think every decade has an iconic blond-- like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana-- and right now, I'm that icon. There's a lot of heiresses out there, and I don't see any of them doing what I've done. I have so many projects-- bags, fragrences, makeup. I go 'round the world every three days, designing and personally approving it all. I've got movies to make, a tour, TV shows. Every day of my life is scheduled until the end of 2007." She's a goddess... 4 years ago a Cook County judge appointed an inquiry into allegations of torture used by the Chicago police in the 1970s and 1980s. The inquiry came out with a 300 page report. Turns out the allegations are true. Most of the people tortured were black. The 3 year statute of limitations has run out, of course. In local news, yesterday police were sent to help a suicidal man in Eastport Plaza. The policeman showed up, opened his car door and stood behind it, and yelled for the man to drop him gun. The man, with his gun in his hand, turned toward the officer. The policeman immediately shot him four times, hitting him in the abdomen. Whereupon the man shot himself in the head and died. I'm not sure that counts as help. What do you think?.... Friday, 7-21-06: Yesterday US and German scientists launched a project to sequence the genetic code of the Neanderthals. Wow! Unfortunately, it'll be two years before it's finished. One complication is that they're working with 40,000 year old samples. And another is filtering out microbial DNA from contamination. Of course you'll remember the famous study 9 years ago at the Max Plank Institute showing that we split from Neanderthals half a million years ago, and that our line didn't interbreed with Neanderthals. During a Stones concert in Little Rock, Arkansas, Keith Richards asked the audience if anyone there was from Fordyce. "I used to know the chief of police there," he said. So now the state of Arkansas is pardoning Keith for a reckless driving ticket he received there 31 years ago. He was arrested on Jykly 5, 1975, as he was driving from Memphis to Dallas. He was travelling with a band member, a security guard and a fan. A police officer saw the car swerve, pulled them over, smelled marijuana and took them to city hall. Keith paid $162.50 fine. The fan was charged with possession of marijuana. Keith later said he was adjusting the radio. There's a fabulous article in the latest Discover Magazine about extreme origami. There are only two rules: one must start with a square piece of paper, and it can't be cut or turn. The reigning champion is a 23 year old savant named Satosha Kamiya, who started folding with his mother when he was 2 years old. He recently produced what is considered the pinnacle of the filed: an eight inch tall Eastern dragon with eyes, teeth, a curly tongue, sinous whiskers, a barbed tail, and a thousand overlapping scales. The folding itself took 40 hours. Sathosha has won a contest called Origami TV four years running. One year he had to fold a fish underwater using waterproof paper.