Don Zeigler dot Info

KAMPALA (AFP) – Uganda‘s police warned male bar-goers to keep their noses clean after a probe found a gang of robbers had been using women with chloroform smeared on their chests to knock their victims unconscious.

“They apply this chemical to their chest. We have found victims in an unconscious state,” Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) spokesman Fred Enanga told AFP.

“You find the person stripped totally naked and everything is taken from him,” he said. “And the victim doesn’t remember anything. He just remembers being in the act of romancing.”

Enanga, who explained that several types of heavy sedatives had been used, said he first came across the practice last year when an apprehended thief named Juliana Mukasa made a clean breast of the matter.

“She is a very dangerous lady,” the official said.

While early investigations suggest that the gang may consist of dozens of members, the source of the sedatives remains unknown.

“We don’t know exactly how they get these materials,” Enanga added. “That is something that our investigations must crack.”

He called on men, particularly traveling businessmen who tend to carry a lot of cash, to take caution.

“It’s a serious situation and people have to be aware.”

From Bitchspot:

They did an episode on vampires on the latest MonsterQuest and I figured it’s yet another one of those crazy things that on the one hand is superstitious and on the other, you’ve got nutballs who seriously think they are vampires.

One thing that the show does reasonably well is give background on the subject matter and they spend nearly half the show examining the history of vampirism, both in history and popular media and it becomes clear that the modern concept of a vampire is almost entirely a cinematic and literary invention.  The real world, although certainly much darker than the vampire on screen, isn’t nearly so supernatural.

Count Vlad Tepes, also referred to as “Dracul” or “Son of the Dragon” was the origin for the name Dracula.  He was a bloodthirsty warlord in 15th century Wallachia.  While he certainly did murder thousands of Turks by impaling them, there’s no evidence whatsoever that he ever drank blood.  Today, he’s considered a national hero for almost singlehandedly repelling the Turk invasion of Romania.

Then there’s Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian countess in the 16th century who may well be the most prolific serial killer of all time.  She was eventually accused of killing more than 600 young girls so she could bathe in their blood and although she was accused of often biting her victims, there is no evidence that she ever drank their blood.  She was given house arrest and locked in a room in her castle for the rest of her days.

Finally, we have the case of Mercy Brown, the supposed American vampire who died of tuberculosis in 1892.  When other members of her family became ill with the wasting disease, her body was exhumed, the heart burned and the ashes given to her brother Edwin to drink.  It didn’t stop his death, also of tuberculosis, later that same year.

None of these cases were actual vampirism, they were superstition built on top of historical events, crafted by Bram Stoker into a literary creation with his novel Dracula.  The modern view of the vampire owes more to writers like Stoker and Ann Rice, as well as films like Dracula and Nosferatu, than anything remotely historical.

That doesn’t stop anyone from pretending they really are a vampire though.  The modern-day equivalent go by a lot of different names.  Overall, many of them consider themselves to be part of a larger community called the Otherkin.  This can include vampires, werewolves, angels, pretty much anything that is not entirely human.  The one thing they all have in common is they’re all entirely nuts.

A fixation on being a “vampire” is simply the sign of an unhealthy view of one’s own humanity and a desire to be better than those around you.  Some so-called vampires will deny that, of course, they’ll claim that they have a medical condition that requires them to ingest blood.  Unfortunately, medical science doesn’t support their claims.  Even for real diseases like Porphyria, which at one time were actually treated by drinking a small amount of blood, today they are handled by injectable medicines.  In every case where supposed vampires have claimed they have a physical need to drink blood, science has proven conclusively that the need is psychological, not medical.

MonsterQuest tried to actually measure and quantify the two forms of modern vampire.  They tested the blood of the butt-ugly lady who said she had to drink blood and found that her blood was completely normal and absolutely human.  Then they tested the psycho… um, psychic vampire and found out that there was no signs of energy transference or anything else out of the ordinary.  I could have told you that.  The people who think they are vampires, like those who think they are werewolves, etc. are all out of their gourds.

Yet the same people who try to tell you that vampires just have a medical condition are the ones who will start talking about the “vampire community” and the “hierarchy among vampires”.  I’m sorry, but cancer patients don’t pretend to have a community and a hierarchy and you certainly don’t have cancer patients running around looking like they were in a latex factory that exploded.  I can’t say I’ve ever encountered nightclubs for cancer patients where they all gather to undergo chemotherapy, can you?

The real problem is that these so-called vampires are just delusional losers with a blood fetish, but for those who are true believers, for those who are really insane and often dangerously so, they pose a threat to the rest of us.  Whether you’re talking about well-known cases like Rod Ferrell, who murdered his girlfriend’s parents in 1998 because he thought he was a 500-year old vampire named Vesago, and Susan Walsh, who vanished and is presumed dead in 1996 while researching vampire cults, or lesser-known cases like the 17-year old in Wales who killed his 90-year old neighbor and drank her blood so he could become immortal, or Manuela Ruda and her husband who killed a 33-year old man in Germany so they could drink his blood.  According to Ruda, “We drank blood from living people. I had fangs from animals implanted in my mouth to bite better with. We learned which veins to bite so it wasn’t an artery we drank from. Later I filed down my teeth to razor sharpness.  “We slept on graves. One time we dug a grave and slept in that to feel how it was. For the last 21/2 years I have had Satan in my soul.”

These people are just sick.

In the end, MonsterQuest is a pseudo-science show, not in the sense that they show spurious science, but that they try hard to be a science show but never really manage it.  To paraphrase their tagline, “MonsterQuest searches for, yet never actually manages to find any, answers.”  For all of their obvious hard work on screen, they come away from every single episode with empty hands.  They never actually find anything, they never actually verify anything and they never answer any of the questions they propose to answer at the beginning.  I guess it’s a good job if you can get it, getting a blank check to travel the world and never having to actually show anything for it.  Good job, History Channel.

National housing markets have West Virginians in a state of panic. But according to local banks and Realtors, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Local banks are reporting business as usual; in fact, they are reporting a 3 percent jump in the lending market since last year. And improvement for 2009 is forecast for the housing market in general.

According to the State Journal, the state’s real estate market has been protected from predatory lending and foreclosures seen in larger states like California, Florida and Arizona. National trends have made getting a house loan here a little harder, but it is by no means impossible, or even that difficult. Lending guidelines have definitely changed, but if you have a good credit score it is still possible to buy a home with little to nothing down, and get a low interest rate on the loan.

As one example of the many positive sides of the issue, earlier this year Gov. Joe Manchin went to the West Virginia Housing Development Fund board of directors and asked them to come up with a plan that would keep West Virginia from suffering the same housing slump now plaguing the national economy.

The board responded by unanimously approving an economic stimulus package that not only should help keep the state’s affordable housing market on the right track, but put many deserving families in their own homes, and keep existing homeowners from losing theirs. The Housing Development Fund can provide 30-year mortgages at interest rates as low as 4.99 percent. They also increased the Closing Cost Assistance Program to provide loans for as much as $5,000 to cover the larger cash contributions needed from families buying a home.

Housing Predictor, a company that provides independent real estate market forecasts, states that “Home prices in most of West Virginia didn’t go through the roof during the real estate boom, and as a result the state is handling the national real estate recession strongly. West Virginia’s thriving economy also drives the housing markets with good employment growth.”

The West Virginia Association of Realtors reports that West Virginia’s housing market is bucking the national trend.

“While there is no question some areas in the country are being hit hard, the market in our state is still stable,” says Raymond I. Joseph, Chief Executive Officer. “While some national markets are declining by as much as 20 and 30 percent, the median sale price of a home in West Virginia has only fallen by $7000 or around 8 percent in the first quarter of 2008.”

The area public needn’t buy into the fear so rampant throughout much of the rest of the country. They should check with their local real estate companies for the complete facts about the housing market in West Virginia. Buyers and sellers should not be taken in by the endless horror stories foisted upon them by the national media, and recycled all too often by local media outlets.

It’s all too easy to focus on the negative. The truth is, there are many positive developments going on, of which those reported above are only a few. Unfortunately the public doesn’t know about them because they receive scant mention in print or television.

Note: this is an editorial I wrote which was published in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. Kudos to them for taking the initiative to help get the true facts about the local housing market out.

What is it with all of these idiotic shows with people running around chasing spooks? Does anyone with more than a single functioning brain cell believe this stupid nonsense? Or do people watch it just for a laugh?

Here’s the problem I have with it: if there were really an afterlife, it would be populated by far more than just humans, right? How come we don’t have ghostly dinosaurs or cavemen running around? Or is the afterlife something off-limits to anything not human? If so, why?

If ghosts can make the television go haywire and the lights go on and off, why wouldn’t one show up on live TV or in a place where there was a lot of people? Of all of the billions of people that have come and gone, wouldn’t some of them want to communicate directly without relying on knocks or other vague means? Are we to believe that they only show up in creepy houses but just off camera? Why don’t they ever turn up in crowded shopping malls or pizza restaurants or airports?

I love the audio of these “ghosts”. They always mumble or whisper – for Chrissakes, spirits, just spit it out already without beating around the bush. Anyone handy with an audio editor like Adobe Audition can take a tape of nothing but background noise and manage to get something out of it that could be a human voice.

Video? I adore the “orbs” that turn out to be insects or specks of dust. And that’s about all that turns up in a conventional video recording… the thermal images that could be practically anything aren’t even worth mentioning.

And what’s up with the meters? Who decided that ghosts emit an electromagnetic field? And what the ghost hunters don’t tell you is that electromagnetic fields are literally everywhere in today’s world.

To sum it up, it’s all a big pile of steaming horse manure. And what’s sad is there are many who actually believe this garbage.

We at ERA Advantage Realty were shocked and saddened to learn that Jennifer Prinzbach, a longtime agent with the company and a great friend to all of us, had passed away suddenly on Friday, November 21. Barely past the 60-year mark, Jenny was always the picture of health and vitality – she exercised regularly and saw her doctor often.

I saw her last on Thursday – she was in the office doing some paperwork, and we chatted as usual about the business and what was going on in our personal lives.

She didn’t answer phone calls or emails Friday afternoon – she had said she was feeling a little under the weather and would stay home to rest, and maybe do some work from her home office.

Her daughter became concerned and drove to her house Saturday morning. She found Jenny upstairs. At this point the authorities are telling us it looks as if she died from natural causes.

Everyone is in a state of grief – the business goes on as usual but it’s hard to work under these circumstances. It’s eerie… we use Yahoo Messenger at all three offices to keep in contact, and everyone on the staff has an account. Jenny is still showing up as being online; no one has shut her computer down yet.

If you knew Jenny in a professional or personal capacity, please think about dropping by Seaver Funeral Home in Princeton on Wednesday between 4 and 6 pm to pay your respects and offer your condolences to her family.

I, for one, will surely miss her. She was a little eccentric and a lot crazy; truly one of a kind.

Now that we’ve had some time to let the thought of a new president sink in, it’s time to get back to work. After what feels like an unending campaign, it would be so easy to just ignore the next four years. After all, America chose its first black president. We created history. Gay people still can’t marry, but I guess there’s a limit to how many barriers we can break down per election.

That being said, as a collective society we need to gain some perspective. Yes, Obama is the first black president to be elected, but he is not the “black president.” He is simply our next president. People are focusing far too much on what he symbolizes, rather than what he has done, or will do. We need not question the significance of his election, but we cannot judge him on superficial accomplishments alone. He is not a novelty president.

I’m not speaking to the ultra-conservative base at McCain rallies. I’m not pointing to citizens hoarding weapons like children hoard their toys, fearing Obama will take them away.

This is for my fellow Obama supporters: We voted Obama into office, and it’s our responsibility to hold him accountable for his decisions. It’s our responsibility to criticize and praise as necessary. President-elect Obama is going to have to make the most difficult decisions possible, and in a very short period of time.

He will succeed and he will fail. It’s inevitable. We need to be ready for some great decisions, and some we may not like. This is how it goes for a president. Certain decisions will be made for the benefit of the country, not the benefit of a few.

While America bids farewell to the Bradley Effect, we need to look out for the “Kennedy Effect.” Obama has on numerous occasions been compared to John F. Kennedy for his ability to inspire hope, his confidence and charm. JFK was a handsome fresh face against an effective, but tiresome Eisenhower administration, and – well, Richard Nixon.

Obama replaces a president with a 22-percent public approval rating, and ran against John McCain. That’s where the comparison should end. Throughout history, JFK has been struck with an aura of brilliance. But as history continues to hash up the past, it’s clear Kennedy’s mythology did more than his policies.

Kennedy showed intelligence and resolve during the Cuban Missile Crisis, only because he failed miserably during the Bay of Pigs invasion. And yes, he threw money into the space program, but it wasn’t out of love for science. It was a power move against Soviet technology and influence.

Unfortunately, Kennedy died just as he was beginning to have an aggressive domestic agenda, yet the legend of Kennedy lives on much stronger than his policies ever did.

This shouldn’t happen with Barack Obama. Granted, he is a charismatic figure whom many millions admire, and his message of hope and inspiration are by no means something to turn away from. But we must find a balance. America needs to accept that the honeymoon is over.

The problems facing our country haven’t changed. When I hit the polls on Election Day, I didn’t select a black presidential candidate. I didn’t select charm or charisma. I didn’t select the next JFK. I selected the candidate I believe will change the country for the best. That was the easy part. Now comes the real work. The drapes in the Oval Office may be changing, but the challenges and responsibilities of the president haven’t.

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – As a portly woman plodded ahead of him on the sidewalk, the obese mayor of America’s fattest and unhealthiest city explained why health is not a big local issue.

“It doesn’t come up,” said David Felinton, 5-foot-9 and 233 pounds, as he walked toward City Hall one recent morning. “We’ve got a lot of economic challenges here in Huntington. That’s usually the focus.”

Huntington’s economy has withered, its poverty rate is worse than the national average, and vagrants haunt a downtown riverfront park. But this city’s financial woes are not nearly as bad as its health.

Nearly half the adults in Huntington’s five-county metropolitan area are obese — an astounding percentage, far bigger than the national average in a country with a well-known weight problem.

Huntington leads in a half-dozen other illness measures, too, including heart disease and diabetes. It’s even tops in the percentage of elderly people who have lost all their teeth (half of them have).

It’s a sad situation, and a potential harbinger of what will happen to other U.S. communities, said Ken Thorpe, an Emory University health policy professor who is working with West Virginia officials on health reform legislation.

“They may be at the very top, but obesity and diabetes trends are very similar” in many other communities, particularly in the South, Thorpe said.

The Huntington area’s health problems, cited in a U.S. health report, are a terrible distinction for the city, but the locals barely talk about it. Many don’t even know how poorly the city ranks.

Time to revive somewhat of a more business-oriented presence on here. I’ll still be blogging from time to time, but I’m going to focus more on all the fun things I do for extra money. (All of them legal, BTW)