thenerdguy
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EUGENE, Ore. - A pet store owner is calling a police sergeant a hero for saving her from the coils of a 12-foot Burmese python doing its best to turn her into a meal.
Teresa Rossiter had reached into a cage Thursday to show the huge snake to a customer when it bit her right hand and coiled around her left arm, throwing her to the floor.
A friend who happened to be at the store kept the snake off her neck and body while police were called. And when Sgt. Ryan Nelson rushed into the store, he was ready to kill the snake with his knife.
But Rossiter asked him to spare the expensive python, so Nelson put on gloves and pried open the snake's mouth to free Rossiter's hand.
Two responders from the Eugene Fire Department helped unwrap the snake, which was eventually returned to its cage.
Rossiter called Nelson a hero.
School teaches pot cultivation
OAKLAND, Calif., April 21 (UPI) -- A California man who started a school that teaches marijuana cultivation and care says the institution is aimed at preparing students to operate pot clubs.
Richard Lee said his school, Oaksterdam, is aimed at preparing prospective pot club owners for the task of operating the businesses, which sell marijuana and food items containing the plant to customers who have medical recommendations from their doctors, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.
"We're doing this to show our cities we can be good neighbors," Lee told one of his classes. "That we've got nothing to hide. That we can run a business on the up-and-up, and it's nothing to fear."
Lee said the two-day course offered at Oaksterdam teaches students how to grow marijuana indoors as well as instruction on how to harvest and cook with the plant. He said students are also instructed by multiple lecturers on the complex legal issues involved with operating a pot club, which were made legal by California's Proposition 215 but remain illegal under federal law.
Psychics see big trouble over new laws
LONDON (Reuters) - Fortune-tellers, mediums and spiritual healers marched on the home of the British prime minister at Downing Street on Friday to protest against new laws they fear will lead to them being "persecuted and prosecuted".
Organizers say that replacing the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951 with new consumer protection rules will remove key legal protection for "genuine" mediums.
They think skeptics might bring malicious prosecutions to force spiritualists to prove in court that they can heal people, see into the future or talk to the dead.
Psychics also fear they will have to give disclaimers describing their services as entertainment or as scientific experiments with unpredictable results.
"If I'm giving a healing to someone, I don't want to have to stand there and say I don't believe in what I'm doing," said Carole McEntee-Taylor, a healer who co-founded the Spiritual Workers Association.
The group delivered a petition with 5,000 names to the prime minister's office, although Gordon Brown is away in the United States.
With the changes expected to come into force next month, spiritualists have faced a barrage of headlines gleefully suggesting that they should have seen it coming.
But many don't see the funny side. They say the new rules will shift the responsibility of proving they are not frauds from prosecutors and onto them.
"By repealing the Act, the onus will go round the other way and we will have to prove we are genuine," McEntee-Taylor told Reuters. "No other religion has to do that."
The government said the new regulations form part of a European Union directive that is meant to harmonize unfair trading laws across the EU. It will introduce a ban on traders "treating consumers unfairly".
The British Humanist Association, a charity which campaigns against religion and supernatural beliefs, said stricter regulations were overdue because the current laws don't work.
"It is misleading for spiritualists to claim that, as ‘religious' practitioners they should not be regulated under consumer laws," said Chief Executive Hanne Stinson.
"The psychic industry is huge and lucrative and it exploits some very vulnerable, and some very gullible, people with claims for which there is no scientific evidence."
"He was the bravest guy ever. He went way above and beyond the call of duty," she told The Oregonian newspaper.
Rossiter suffered dozens of puncture wounds, but she, the sergeant and the python were fine.
Teresa Rossiter had reached into a cage Thursday to show the huge snake to a customer when it bit her right hand and coiled around her left arm, throwing her to the floor.
A friend who happened to be at the store kept the snake off her neck and body while police were called. And when Sgt. Ryan Nelson rushed into the store, he was ready to kill the snake with his knife.
But Rossiter asked him to spare the expensive python, so Nelson put on gloves and pried open the snake's mouth to free Rossiter's hand.
Two responders from the Eugene Fire Department helped unwrap the snake, which was eventually returned to its cage.
Rossiter called Nelson a hero.
School teaches pot cultivation
OAKLAND, Calif., April 21 (UPI) -- A California man who started a school that teaches marijuana cultivation and care says the institution is aimed at preparing students to operate pot clubs.
Richard Lee said his school, Oaksterdam, is aimed at preparing prospective pot club owners for the task of operating the businesses, which sell marijuana and food items containing the plant to customers who have medical recommendations from their doctors, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.
"We're doing this to show our cities we can be good neighbors," Lee told one of his classes. "That we've got nothing to hide. That we can run a business on the up-and-up, and it's nothing to fear."
Lee said the two-day course offered at Oaksterdam teaches students how to grow marijuana indoors as well as instruction on how to harvest and cook with the plant. He said students are also instructed by multiple lecturers on the complex legal issues involved with operating a pot club, which were made legal by California's Proposition 215 but remain illegal under federal law.
Psychics see big trouble over new laws
LONDON (Reuters) - Fortune-tellers, mediums and spiritual healers marched on the home of the British prime minister at Downing Street on Friday to protest against new laws they fear will lead to them being "persecuted and prosecuted".
Organizers say that replacing the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951 with new consumer protection rules will remove key legal protection for "genuine" mediums.
They think skeptics might bring malicious prosecutions to force spiritualists to prove in court that they can heal people, see into the future or talk to the dead.
Psychics also fear they will have to give disclaimers describing their services as entertainment or as scientific experiments with unpredictable results.
"If I'm giving a healing to someone, I don't want to have to stand there and say I don't believe in what I'm doing," said Carole McEntee-Taylor, a healer who co-founded the Spiritual Workers Association.
The group delivered a petition with 5,000 names to the prime minister's office, although Gordon Brown is away in the United States.
With the changes expected to come into force next month, spiritualists have faced a barrage of headlines gleefully suggesting that they should have seen it coming.
But many don't see the funny side. They say the new rules will shift the responsibility of proving they are not frauds from prosecutors and onto them.
"By repealing the Act, the onus will go round the other way and we will have to prove we are genuine," McEntee-Taylor told Reuters. "No other religion has to do that."
The government said the new regulations form part of a European Union directive that is meant to harmonize unfair trading laws across the EU. It will introduce a ban on traders "treating consumers unfairly".
The British Humanist Association, a charity which campaigns against religion and supernatural beliefs, said stricter regulations were overdue because the current laws don't work.
"It is misleading for spiritualists to claim that, as ‘religious' practitioners they should not be regulated under consumer laws," said Chief Executive Hanne Stinson.
"The psychic industry is huge and lucrative and it exploits some very vulnerable, and some very gullible, people with claims for which there is no scientific evidence."
"He was the bravest guy ever. He went way above and beyond the call of duty," she told The Oregonian newspaper.
Rossiter suffered dozens of puncture wounds, but she, the sergeant and the python were fine.
/ for TheNerdNews!
