Odds and Ends

Different places around the web:

From Lucianne

Help in deciding what not to say during this New Year comes from Lake Superior State University 2006 List of Banished Words

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe has Questions the Islamic Society should answer. And I have a few for the moderate Moslems...wherever they may be.

Maybe we should ask London how that ban on handguns thing is working out. From the Daily Mail: 35 stabbings mar London revelry

Has anybody asked the pigeons about this? Three squirrels nailed to a wooden fence in a University Park neighborhood. Dead squirrel display puzzles police

You know, while this may be puzzling to the volcanologists, it is better than having it blow its top in a massive explosion as it did in 1980. Mount St. Helens releasing lava at astonishing pace

If they weren’t thinking about this I would be worried. But planning and doing are two different things. 'US planning strike against Iran'
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From This Day In History The History Channel

45 B.C., New Year's Day is celebrated on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar takes effect.

1781 Mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line
All 1,500 soldiers from the Pennsylvania Line insisting their enlistments were up staged a mutiny at their winter quarters in Morristown.

1863 The Emancipation Proclamation takes effect changing the goals of the Union’s efforts from reunification to ending slavery.

1942 United Nations created upon the presentation of a declaration by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill and signed by 26 nations.
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From Breitbart.com

Europeans rang in the New Year as massive firework displays filled the wintry night skies above cities with smoke, light and colour but more than 400 cars were torched in what has become a New Year's fixture in France

Oh, those wild, crazy and sophisticated French!
Europeans see in New Year with blaze of fireworks

You know it’s a slow news day when….
US studies find antidepressants work for some

If they didn’t work—for some—do you think, you know, they would be prescribed?