Yourish.com

Cutting straight to the point

Why toxic spiders should not be pets

Posted on August 28th, 2007 at 1:30 pm by Meryl Yourish.

Filed under: Bugs

At least cats will wait until you die to eat you.

A MAN who lived in his own “zoo” of lizards and insects was fatally bitten by a pet black widow spider — then eaten by the other creepy-crawlies.

Police broke in to Mark Voegel’s apartment to find spider Bettina along with 200 others, several snakes, a gecko lizard called Helmut and several thousand termites had gorged on his body.

Neighbours alerted police after becoming alarmed by the stink.

Via Hot Air.

Abbas talks peace, Palestinians want war

Posted on August 28th, 2007 at 9:30 am by Meryl Yourish.

Filed under: Israel, palestinian politics

The “military wing” of Fatah—which is the same as saying that the U.S. Army is the “military wing” of the government—is claiming the latest rocket attack on Sderot, which injured an Israeli civilian and would have killed had the rocket been launched a little earlier.

A Sderot resident was lightly-to-moderately wounded Tuesday by shrapnel and several other people suffered shock after a Qassam rocket hit a house in town.

The rocket landed directly in a bedroom, when all the residents of the home were hiding the bomb shelter. A man standing near the house was injured from shrapnel in his eye and was treated by emergency services.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah’s military wing claimed responsibility for the attack.

Meantime, Mahmoud Abbas is demanding final-status negotiations, while not saying a word about the daily terror attacks against Israelis. And I’m not just talking about the rockets from Sderot. Every day, soldiers and citizens are attacked throughout the West Bank. Every. Single. Day.

Which is why I cast a skeptical eye on the sudden support of Palestinian policemen of Israelis who stray into Palestinian territories.

The near-lynching of an IDF officer in Jenin that made headlines Monday night is the latest of a string of similar, but unreported, occurrences, according to the defense establishment and Palestinian officials.

In recent weeks, there were four incidents in which Israelis accidentally drove into Palestinian towns, encountered mobs of civilians and were evacuated by Palestinian police. The Monday night beating and the recent incident of a family who ended up in Jericho on their way to Tiberias received widespread media coverage.

But there were many other instances of Israelis who lost their way and ended up in hostile Palestinian territory, including a number in the past two weeks, Palestinian sources said. Most Israelis were evacuated before the local population was aware of their presence and in many cases, the incidents were barely reported.

In an incident last Tuesday, security guards of construction works in the Seam Zone south of Jerusalem ended up in Bethlehem. They were surrounded by a mob, but Palestinian police once again arrived at the scene in time. Palestinian security officials were able to calm the mob and rescue the security guards.

[...] The day before that, two Israeli buses accidentally entered the Palestinian village of Halhul, next to Hebron. Although the incident itself was mentioned briefly by Israeli media, it was not reported at the time that Palestinian police forces arrested a youth who was planning to set the buses on fire.

According to a senior official present at the incident in Halhul, a mob of Palestinian civilians surrounded the bus and was trying to hurt the passengers, although fortunately a Palestinian police officer happened upon the area and noticed dozens of area residents moving towards the Israeli buses.

Because when I read this story, and this one—I have a different thought in mind than, “Gee, the Palestinians really want peace with Israel, and this proves it because they saved the soldiers/citizens who took a wrong turn into a Palestinian town.”

An IDF officer was rescued Monday afternoon by Palestinian Authority police officers after he mistakenly entered Jenin.

The officer, a major serving in the army’s Central Command, was on his way to the Mevo Dotan settlement in the northern West Bank but accidentally drove into Jenin, located seven miles northeast of the settlement.

Local Palestinian residents who noticed the officer driving into the city hurled rocks at his car, forced him out and began beating him.

A Palestinian policeman spotted the angry mob and called for backup. The security officers struggled to reach the battered officer and several shots were apparently fired before they managed to extract him from the crowd moments before his vehicle was set aflame.

You see, my thought is more along the lines of: If the Palestinians truly want peace, Israelis would not need to be saved from them by the PA police. Those are not the actions of a people who want to live in peace, side-by-side with Israel.

Michael Vick’s apology

Posted on August 28th, 2007 at 6:00 am by Meryl Yourish.

Filed under: Cats, Miscellaneous

I couldn’t stomach more than a few seconds of it, but it struck me as a CYA apology, and nothing more.

News analysts are having a blast talking about how the judge may feel sorry for Vick because he’s losing millions of dollars due to the case, and that the judge may take that into account during the sentencing. Maybe. But I think this is the most important element to the judge’s decision:

“Tough but fair” is the description most often heard from lawyers who appear before Hudson, who owns a bichon frise dog and declined to be interviewed.

“He’s a good trial judge, but on sentencing he tends to be in the middle or upper range of the sentencing guidelines,” said attorney Murray Janus. “A lot of judges start at the low end. Not Judge Hudson.”

Sarah has been showing dachsund’s for years, and is involved in the dog world and fairly knowledgeable. Whenever she and I discuss the Vick case, she generally comes back to the judge being a dog owner. A bichon frise, she said, would be a bait dog for Vick’s pit bulls. We’re both betting the judge knows that.

My money is on a tough sentence. And it will be well-deserved. We’ll visit this again in December.