So I got my credit card bill in my email today and it said I owed them $1.6k. I’m like wo… what did I buy this month. Upon further inspect, it turns out that $600 was from my previous bill which is set to be paid on 2/13 (due date). So with $1k left, half of it is actually from my car insurance payment. $495 for 6-months with full coverage is pretty good. Decided to go with Safeco because all the other guys were quoting me $800+.

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Random Crap:

Judge shelves case over Jesus’ existence – An Italian atheist lost his legal crusade against the Catholic Church on Thursday when a judge rejected his attempts to sue a priest for saying that Jesus existed 2,000 years ago, the priest’s lawyer said. Luigi Cascioli, 72, had argued his hometown priest and former schoolmate had effectively broken an Italian law meant to protect the public from being conned. But instead of granting Cascioli his request to bring the case to court, the judge recommended magistrates investigate him for slandering priest Enrico Righi, Righi’s lawyer, Bruno Severo said. … Asked about the possibility he would be tried for slander, Cascioli chuckled, saying that to prove he lied, prosecutors would have to prove that Jesus existed. I have a question regarding slander laws, well at least here in the US. If I sue you for slandering me, do I have to prove you lied or do you have to prove you’re telling the truth. Let’s say politician A claims politican B was involved in some corruption case. If politician B says politician A is slandering, does A have to prove he’s telling the truth or B have to prove otherwise or that A’s lying. I would’ve thought that A would have to prove that B was involved in some corruption case, or else he/she’d be slandering B. Analogous to this story would be this man having to prove Jesus doesn’t exist in order to clear the slandering claim, which I have to say is feat as big as proving he does exist.

Philly Bus Driver Tosses Woman Off Bus – A transit bus driver grabbed a woman by the hair, knocked her head into a pole, opened the door and tossed her into traffic after she yelled at him for missing her stop, police said. … Edney said he had to skip the woman’s stop Wednesday morning because of a detour, police said. Although I agree he’s reaction was a bit harsh, I’d be pissed if someone like that woman was getting on my nerves. I feel sorry for the guy.

Sgt. Stone and the men of EZ Company in … DEAD MEN TELL NO JOKES (from Tera) (taken from 4chan)
The strip claims to originate from Nuklear Power, but I wasn’t able to find the strip on their site.

Yellow Fever (from ChewyDenise) – another video from Wong Fu Productions. It wasn’t a lip synch like their previous video Harlem (direct download), but still pretty funny. Contains a lot of stereotypes, so if you get easily annoyed by it, please don’t watch. You can check out their other stuff at Wong Fu Entertainment and Wong Fu Productions.

Fate-Stay Night 2006 Calendar (from Artemyst) – Don’t worry, it’s work safe. The chibi images on the last 2 pictures are so cute!

LEGO Technic Difference Engine (from /.) – I set out to build a working Difference Engine using LEGO parts which could compute 2nd or 3rd order polynomials to 3 or 4 digits. Pretty cool!

Model World (from MS newsgroup) – It’s often hard to convince people that Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs are real. They look uncannily like hyperdetailed models, absent the imperfections of reality. Streets are strangely clean, trees look plastic, and odd distortions of scale create the opposite effect of what we expect from aerial photography–a complete overview, like military surveillance. “I was a little bit tired of the idea of photography allowing you to see everything,” Barbieri says. “After 9/11 the world had become a little bit blurred because things that seemed impossible happened. My desire was to look at the city again.” Oh my god! If I didn’t read that, I would never have known these were actual photos. They look so cool, like models! You need to DEFINITELY go check out some of his photos.

Zillow (from Tekman) – An interesting site that lets you know how much your house is worth and what houses sold for that are around you in the same category. Check out how much Bill Gate’s house is worth! At the time of posting, it’s at $117.1M.

Babies’ Cells Linger, May Protect Mothers (from /.) – Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That’s because a baby’s cells linger in its mom’s body for decades and — like stem cells — may help to repair damage when she gets sick. It’s such an enticing idea that even the scientists who came up with the idea worry that it may be too beautiful to be true. So when mom’s say they feel like they still have a part of you in them, they really mean it!

Songbird (from /.) – This is one sleek looking media player that works inside a web browser, Firefox to be specific. Songbird is a Web player built from Firefox’s browser engine. Songbird is open source, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions. Check out the screenshots. It’s so pretty.

If the shoe fits — print it – Print your own shoes and get a perfect fit. A new manufacturing process looks set to bring mass production to tailor-made shoes that can be built layer by layer from a 3-D footprint. I can just imagine how comfortable those shoes will be. Too bad they’re only available for sports players at the moment.

Potato danger: you want collision with that? – Frozen squirrels, angry wasps and obstructive potatoes were among some of the reasons given by motorists to support their insurance claims, Norwich Union said Monday. … The squirrel motorist said the frozen animal had fallen out of a tree and crashed through the windshield while another driver blamed a wasp sting on the leg for a sudden surge in acceleration and a bump with the car in front. One driver even blamed a potato stuck behind the brake pedal for the inability to stop.

Well, just as long as they’re acting mature… – Article wasn’t too interesting, but I like how they used the phrase: procreate with themselves. Instead of saying FU, you should say, “Go procreate with yourself.”

‘Maid in Japan’ cafes treat geeks like lords – “Welcome home, Master,” says the maid as she bows deeply, hands clasped in front of a starched pinafore worn over a short pink dress. This maid serves not some aristocrat but a string of pop-culture-mad customers at a “Maid Cafe” in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, long known as a Mecca for electronics buffs but now also the centre of the capital’s “nerd culture”. “When they address you as ‘Master’, the feeling you get is like a high,” says Koji Abei, a 20-year-old student having coffee with a friend at the Royal Milk Cafe and Aromacare. … Maids at some of the more attentive shops even offer to spoon-feed customers at their table. Geek heaven?

Suspect Ends Up Covered in Pot After Chase – Also, some people with police scanners heard that a man was throwing marijuana out of his car window and drove to the scene to try to retrieve it, Phoenix said. Haha!

Nano Technology may make cleaning Toilets a thing of the Past (from /.) – Researchers from the University of New South Wales, Australia, are developing a coating that may make cleaning bathrooms less of a chore. The lead researchers, Professors Rose Amal and Michael Brungs of the ARC Centre for Functional Nanomaterials, are hoping to apply a tiny coating of titanium dioxide particles to keep the toilets clean. Currently titanium dioxide is being used on outdoor items like self-cleaning windows. Less cleaning I have to do, the cleaner my house will be!

Opera 9 Technology Preview 2 (from /.) – New release is out, now with bittorrent within browser support!

Weekend Eating: Mobile Cooking (from /.) – Many students, and other young people, have little in the way of cooking skills but can usually get their hands on a couple of mobile phones. So, this week, we show you how to use two mobile phones to cook an egg which will make a change from phoning out for a pizza. Please note that this will not work with cordless phones. If I had 2 cell phones, I’d definitely give this a try! Almost as interesting as seeing an egg blow up in the microwave.

A hippo and a turtle in love? (from Cari) – Feb 1: The ‘Today’ show’s Alexis Glick talks with seven-year-old Isabella Hatkoff and her father Craig about their book ‘Owen and Mzee: A True Story of Remarkable Friendship.’ I posted this article awhile ago, but the story on video is still so cute and adorable.

I’ll end this super long post with a cute picture of Arcueid and a kitten (from Artemyst) (taken from chiyochan):