Dangerous stunt

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Naked scanners may be dangerous

WASHINGTON — Some US scientists warned Friday that the full-body, graphic-image X-ray scanners now being used to screen passengers and airline crews at airports around the country may be unsafe.

"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP.

"No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner," he said.

"We still don't know the beam intensity or other details of their classified system."

Story

Nice. The government creates a device they won't release the specs to, forces you to submit to a scan, examines your genitalia, and says "Trust us, it's safe".

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A Page out of the history books

I've never been a fan of Bettie Page. Hell, I hardly knew who she was--just heard her name bandied about. If you've never heard of her, she was what used to be referred to as a pin-up girl. That was back when newspapers didn't display women's breasts in all their glory and you had to buy (or sneak a peek at) what used to be called a smut magazine. Hell, in "the olden days", there were smut magazines that didn't even show nipples! It was a much different world from today. Miss Bettie Page was also one of the early girls appearing in Playboy.

Just yesterday, I inadvertently learnt she died in 2008 and being the inquisitive type, I decided to do some research. This intensive work consisted of doing a Google image search of her name. I didn't find her to be overly attractive, but then, who was in the 50's? As I pored over dozens of Bettie's pix, one of them stopped me in my tracks.

Although she is featured in provocative poses and in various stages of undress, only in this one particular photo did she have the slightest effect on my er, um prurient interest. She bears an uncanny resemblance to a girl I've had a crush on since I was a child. In fact, the apple of my eye is every bit as attractive today as she was way back then. See if you don't agree...

Veronica Lodge then and now:




Bettie Page then:




Side by side:

Is there not a striking resemblance? Further coincidence is that "Betty" (different spelling) is Veronica's best friend's name. As it turns out, the creator of the Archie comic book characters, Bob Montana, fashioned Archie's girlfriend around Veronica Lake, a popular actress back in the 40's. I wonder if Lake had a lodge...

The Archies

Britney Spears caught nude by hidden camera

An amateur photographer has made public explicit photos of...

Sorry, guys...this is just an experiment to see if scandalous keywords increase hits.

From the anals of time

At my age, pinpointing when something occurred, is sometimes tricky. My best guess is that the following occurred around the early 90's.

On a hot summers day, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, young Gwen Jacobs was walking along the sidewalk of a busy downtown street. She suddenly decided right there and then that it was unfair for men to walk along topless while women had to be uncomfortably covered. She removed her top and nonchalantly continued her trek. In due course, as one might expect, the police arrived on the scene, "scene" being the operative word here, and promptly arrested her.

Gwen, the assertive and resourceful gal that she was, even at her tender 20ish age, secured herself a good lawyer. To make a short story shorter, the court was convinced that she was right in having equal rights to a man in regards to public (un)dress.

The effect of the case was immediate, if not widespread. In the following months, the occasional young, and even not so young, female could be seen exercising her new-found "freedom of expression", most often at beaches, parks or in one case, while watering the front lawn. Each incident that was spotted by a member of the hordes of press that were now scouring all venues they thought might yield another "Gwen", was immediately flashed across the television screens and had everyone wagging their tongues about it. Beach attendance figures broke all records that summer, attended by mostly adolescent boys (of all ages) hoping to get a head start on September's anatomy class.

Well, extremely conservative Canadians couldn't stand for such a public debacle. But what to do about it? When a "lady" of a certain age, in a small public pool, with even smaller children, insisted on exposing her ample bosom, thereby covering up her navel, enough was enough. The police arrested her and somehow managed to convict her of some sort of community standard statute. After that, one or two more incidents were reported to have occurred at the beach and that was the end of it. Canada was proud to revert back to the prude it has always been. And Gwen Jacobs was indelibly etched in Canadian history.

Q & A's from around the web

Is it wrong to walk around your own home naked?

Only if it's an old age home. (shudder)