A Vatican researcher claims a nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves the authenticity of the artifact revered as Jesus' burial cloth.

The claim made in a new book by historian Barbara Frale drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery.

Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the shroud.

She asserts the words include the name "Jesus Nazarene" in Greek, proving the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have labeled Jesus a Nazarene without referring to his divinity.

Even more compelling: If you look very close you see the small type, "All Rights Reserved."

(Thanks Blayne)

The Museum of Hoaxes claims that it's a hoax. I'm praying that it's real.

Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house.

Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of the Russian city of Perm, 720 miles east of Moscow.

Three homeless men with previous criminal records have been arrested on suspicion of setting upon a foe with knives and a hammer before chopping up his corpse to eat, local investigators said in a statement.

"After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up: part was eaten and part was also sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies," the prosecutor's main investigative unit for the Perm region said.

The yummy-looking kebabs shown here are just random kebabs. Probably not even in Russia.

My favorite track is, "I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Conditioner Is In." But I also like their version of "Hoochie Coochie Manicure."

( source)

How did you first hear of the J-Walk Blog, and how long have you been reading it?

I think I was actually searching for penalties of j-walking. I saw this blog and the by-line 'Stuff that may or may not interest you' I thought well lets see if I am interested. I was and became immediately addicted. I love the eclectic mix of topics and commentators.

What's the significance of your screen name?

Screen name is a mish-mash of my real name. It was my email at work.

Do you read this blog from work or at home? How many times a day?

Home exclusively although I have peeked from hotel business centers.

Basic stats?

I am s si six (somebody pound me on the back!) Married. I worked for Lsi Logic for 17 years. Got laid off in 2001. I started as a wafer sort operator. Moved to Fab and was an oxide and metal etcher then when to mask alignment. Product Engineering was my main job until I moved to FA. My last few years were spent in Failure Analysis receiving pin ball grid array failures from customer site and reworking and electrical testing.

Send a copy of the weirdest photo of yourself that you can find

I can't believe I actually wore those glasses. What was I thinking? They covered my whole face. I think I threw them away when I went through menopause. They kept steaming up on me effectively blinding me. That's my youngest son Mike at his Honor awards ceremony.

Have you ever met any of the other commenters? Would you like to?

I have talked to Don Coyote via email as well as Spokane Mary. I would love to meet everyone. I imagine all the time about what people look like and what they look like when they are tapping away at the keyboard.

How many different places have you lived in?

Born in Fresno moved to Bay Area when my father went to work for Lockheed. Moved to Maui with hubby and kids in 1976-1982. Loved it until they started building hotels on all the beautiful beaches. Now too many hotels and too too many rich people stinking up the place then leaving.

What other blogs to you follow?

The usual liberal blogs. HuffPo. ThinkProgress, Media Matters, Bob Cesca Awesome Blog, FireDogLake, Slate Magazine.

I really appreciate the links from people here. Curtis is phenomenal with his links. I have thanked him before but would like to thank him again here. I try to follow everyone's link when they are making there points. Its an incredibly rich source. I have learned a lot.

Which are your favorite topics covered at the J-Walk Blog?

Any and all topics. I love the mix. Nothing is un-favorite.

Who is your favorite J-Walk Blog commenter (other than yourself), and why?

How can one choose? I loved Curtis' bacon reviews. Bisbonian is amazing. Don Coyote and Spokane Mary are friends (imho) I always read Volt's thoughts and Minderbender makes me guffaw routinely. banjo brad is a sentimental fav since he is a central Californian though he lives in Arizona. Gee, Mean Jean, Wendy, Miss Cellania all truly interesting and cogent commentators.

What is your favorite type of music?

Jazz all the time any time. Fav's Pat Metheny. Current listening to 'Down to the Bone' a group out of Britain.

On your tombstone?

Why did you put me in the ground?

Was there ever a J-Walk post that you found so offensive you temporarily stopping visiting the blog?

I got pissed of at John for deleting a comment and yelling at me. I vowed I would never return. That lasted one day.

Which celebrity would you most like to have a beer with?

Frank Sinatra if I could put a truth serum in it. That would be one interesting convo.

What is the strangest thing you believe?

If you drink black coffee as a child you will have black knees as an adult. I listened to everything my mom told me.

Why don't you play the banjo?

Tone deaf? I would rather listen I guess.

If you're frustrated by poor service at a restaurant, think twice before you decide to not tip. You may be in for a bit more than just a dirty look from the waiter.

"Nobody, nobody wants to be forced to pay a tip or be arrested for terrible service," Leslie Pope said when her happy hour ended in handcuffs. Pope and John Wagner were hauled away by police and charged with theft for not paying the mandatory 18 percent gratuity totaling $16 after eating at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pa. with six friends.

Pope claimed that they had to wait nearly an hour for their order and that she had to get napkins and silverware for the table herself. "At this point I became very annoyed because I had already gone up to the bar myself to have my soda refilled because the waitress never came back," Pope said.

After the $73 bill came, the group paid for food, drinks, and tax but refused to pay the tip. After explaining the bad service to the bartender in charge, Pope claimed he took their money and called police. The couple was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car.

People have been posting their reviews (and photos) of the Lehigh Pub at Yelp.

Starry-eyed children writing letters to the jolly man at the North Pole this holiday season likely won't get a response from Santa Claus or his helpers.

The U.S. Postal Service is dropping a popular national program begun in 1954 in the small Alaska town of North Pole, where volunteers open and respond to thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Replies come with North Pole postmarks.

Why?

Last year, a postal worker in Maryland recognized an Operation Santa volunteer there as a registered sex offender. The postal worker interceded before the individual could answer a child's letter, but the Postal Service viewed the episode as a big enough scare to tighten rules in such programs nationwide...

North Pole Mayor Doug Isaacson agreed that caution is necessary to protect children. But he's outraged North Pole program should be affected by a sex offender's actions on the East Coast - and he thinks it's wrong that locals just found out about the change in recent days.

He's semi-well known in some circles.

An Arkansas cop tasered an unruly 10-year-old girl after her mother called police to report that the child was crying, screaming, and refusing to go to bed. The tased girl, Kiara Medlock, is about 65 pounds and 4' 6", according to her father. Anthony Medlock, a truck driver who does not live with the fifth grader and her mother, provided TSG with a recent photo of his daughter, which can be seen at right.

 According to the below Ozark Police Department report, when Officer Dustin Bradshaw arrived at the residence last Thursday, he found the girl "screaming, kicking, and resisting every time her mother tried to touch her." Bradshaw added that, "Her mother told me to tase her if I needed to." After Kiara continued to refuse her mother's instructions, the cop concluded that "there was not going to be a peaceful resolution of the issue." Bradshaw warned the girl that she was "going to jail," but the child continued kicking and crying and resisted his attempt to handcuff her.

In the end, it all worked out:

During the tussle, Kiara "struck me with her legs and feet in the groin, reported Bradshaw, who countered with a brief "stun to her back" with his Taser. The child, not surprisingly, "immediately stopped resisting and was placed into handcuffs.

Found at Ugliest Tattoos.

At a signpost by the railway tracks, a tidy little banjo-picking monster is trying to find her way. She sets out on a journey and finds what she is looking for...in a rather surprising way.

It's under 90 seconds, so make sure you stick around for the dancing pie.

(Thanks wormpicker)

Don't trust Web seals. You might think that the Web seal on a retail site is a sign of the merchant's integrity. Not necessarily.

Sure, they look fun and friendly, but you can't trust 'em -- especially when they form a herd.

And more seals don't equal better service. We found one seal-laden e-commerce site that received an F from the Better Business Bureau.

By golly, a downtown bookstore has found a way to poke fun at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and draw attention to her new book released this week, "Going Rogue: An American Life."

Several copies of Palin's book, about her experience as John McCain's running mate in 2008 and life in Alaska, are stacked on the checkout counter at Bookshop Santa Cruz next to a bowl filled with small bags of walnuts -- a 2-for-1 special of sorts.

Customers who buy Palin's book, priced at $29 in hardcover, also get a free bag of "Just Plain Nutz."

Question: Which of these 11 definitions of rogue did Palin have in mind when she came up with that title?

Apparently, Linda is not very happy with the fact that people are spreading her words around, and is sending out non-negotiable invoices.

She (or, rather, her "literary agent" Mary Taylor Smith) sends nasty letters to people demanding immediate payment of $750, significantly more than anyone would ever pay for such reprint rights -- using the fact that statutory copyright infringement violations have a $750/infringement starting point (which, we already know is ridiculous). Of course, Taylor Smith never seems to suggest that anyone might have a fair use exemption. She just sends the letter and an invoice demanding payment.

Her copyright crusade is an ongoing topic on her blog. For example: Grand Theft, Intellectual Property, Part 6.

If you're curious about that essay, you can search for it yourself -- but it's not worth the effort. It starts like this:

If my body were a car, this is the time I would be thinking of trading it in for a newer model. I've got bumps and dents and scratches in my finish, and the paint job is getting a bit dull. But that's not the worst. My headlights are out of focus and it's especially hard to see things close up.

Speaking of hypothetical cars. Many years ago I wrote an equally stupid thing: If Excel Were A Car. Go ahead and steal it. Please!

A woman quietly left $40,000 worth of rare U.S. coins near a Catholic shrine for safekeeping so the Virgin Mary could watch over her life savings while she was out of town, and apparently it worked: The money was returned to her when she got back a week later.

Operators of the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes near Emmitsburg [Maryland] thought they had been blessed when a groundskeeper found the two plastic freezer bags filled with gold and silver.

But Shrine Director William Tronolone said the woman approached him after a noon Mass on Sunday, six days after the discovery, to ask whether anyone had found some coins she had hidden beneath fallen leaves at the site on the campus of Mount St. Mary's University.

"I said, 'Why did you leave it there?' And she said, 'Well, I had to go away and I was afraid to leave it and I wanted the Blessed Mother to watch over it for me - and evidently she did because you found it,' " Tronolone said.

The photo shows some of the actual coins. These are not just random coins.

(Thanks Blayne)

Here's a list of liquid, aerosol and gel items that you should put in your checked bag, ship ahead, or leave at home.

Prohibited food items include:

• Cranberry sauce
• Creamy dips and spreads (cheeses, peanut butter, etc.)
• Gravy
• Salad dressing

It never occurred to me to take gravy on a plane. Now that they gave me the idea, they say I can't do it! I'll have to take the train instead.

By the way, pies and cakes are OK, but they are subject to additional screening.

When she was helping her son with his homework Saturday night, a Central Bucks mother noticed something that surprised and shocked her.

"I couldn't understand what I was looking at," said the woman, whose identity the newspaper has agreed not to disclose.

It was a work sheet called "Solving Equations using Multiplication and Division!" and it featured a photo of a black man wearing a straw hat, shirt and suspenders, with his mostly toothless mouth wide open. As if to underscore the man's stupidity, at the bottom of the picture was written, "No wai!!!"

The mother learned that her son, the only black student in his eighth-grade pre-algebra class at Lenape Middle School, was teased by another student when the assignment was distributed.

"One of the kids in the classroom turned around and said, 'Is that your father?' " she said.

It's #2 hit when you search Google Images for big mouth.

Another question: Why does the title of this lesson have an exclamation point?

Hi, I am a fairly long time reader (about one year, I'd say) of your blog, my nick is Asmodeane, and while I have not posted more than one or two comments (if at all, actually, might have been some other blog), I decided to answer your questionnaire!

How did you first hear of the J-Walk Blog, and how long have you been reading it?

I think I first stumbled on J-Walk when a friend send me a link to some funny image or video on IRC. The link didn't go to J-Walk, but to some picdump style page, but I started link-hopping and eventually landed here. I left your site in the permanent tab bar.

What's the significance of your screen name?

The name is based on Asmodean, a character in Robert Jordan's epic fantasy cycle called "Wheel of Time". I must have been 15 or so at the time, and added the silent e at the end to differentiate myself from all the other Asmodean fanboys. Only later did I find out that Asmodean was one of the names of Satan, a.k.a. Father of Lies, Lord of the Flies, etc.

Do you read this blog from work or at home? How many times a day?

I only read this blog at home. I have it permanently open in my tabs in Opera, so I basically reload it a few times a day to see if anything interesting happened.

Basic stats:

I'm 29, male, I live in Helsinki, Finland (although was born in the USSR originally), I am co-habiting with my girlfriend, I work for a company that makes plastic cards and equipment to make them. I hate my job, and as soon as I have enough money I will "Sell up and sail".

Send a copy of the weirdest photo of yourself that you can find, and describe what was going on.

I am trying out my new thermal layer, about to go snowboarding. The other image I thought of was one where my friends stole my underwear on our biking trip to Gotland, and I am using a little baggy to hide my family jewels, but that seemed a little too NSFW, so decided against sharing it with the rest of the class.

What other blogs to you follow?

I read Shorpy, Bits and Pieces, Cynical C, What Would Tyler Durden Do, Unreasonable Faith, Pharyngula, Get Rich Slowly, Little Green Footballs, and some others that escape me at the moment.

Least favorite topics covered here?

I guess the Banjo stuff. It's not annoying or anything, mind you, just a little yawny. I also don't really understand your fascination with Sluggo from those comics, what were they... Ah yes, Nancy.

Have you ever spent any time in jail?

I once attended a very rowdy Russian dorm party. The police cars came to the dorm building's yard early on and stayed to monitor the situation. Then someone got the bright idea to throw a beer can at the police. We were quickly evacuated from the premises, and I think I passively resisted arrest by holding on to the railing on the balcony, getting some nightstick for my trouble and a pretty set of handcuffs.

I dropped my glasses in the scuffle and didn't get to pick up my shoes when they took me away, so morning found me on the opposite side of the city with no glasses (i.e. practically blind) and no shoes. No wallet or cell phone either, of course. I got back to the same dorm somehow, and we went on drinking vodka for the next two days. Other than those 8 hours in the drunk tank, no, I have not done any Jail time.

Why don't you play the banjo?

Banjos carry a horrible stigma as a terminally uncool instrument, so that is probably why I never started. It is also something of a rarity in these latitudes and they didn't have them on offer in the music school I went to. Also, I think there is some law against young Jewish boys playing the banjo. They should always be made to play violin by their parents, wear round glasses, and be bullied at school. I played the violin for 8 years, wore round glasses, and you can probably guess the rest.

Longplayer is a one thousand year long musical composition. It began playing at midnight on the 31st of December 1999, and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again. Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it was originally produced as an Artangel commission, and is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust.

It's really very listenable if you like unobtrusive ambient background music.

et's take the daily 2007 numbers from Global INForM Cases Sales database: The total number of Coca-Cola cans sold per worldwide is 67,873,309. Diet Coke and Coke Zero sold 35,387,241, while My Coke sold 103,260,550. Yes, that's all per day. So using only classic Coca-Cola's daily sales figures, that means 24,773,757,785 are sold every year.

The world population is 6.692 billion, so that works out to only 3.7 cans of Coke per person, per year.

How can they improve that? Well, in the U.S., the key is using Boost Zones.

The company plans to double the number of so-called boost zones from 50 North American locations this year... In these targeted areas, Coca-Cola and its biggest bottler work directly with retailers to make Coke brands more visible on everything from redesigned menus to visors worn by fast-food workers.

Where did the concept of "boost zones" come from?

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., brought the boost zone idea from Europe, where the effort started five years ago and has grown to more than 300 districts on the continent and in Brazil. Boost zones surround the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and Windsor Castle west of London.

"Walk around Windsor Castle. It's red," Coca-Cola Enterprises CEO John Brock said at an investor conference in May. "And every account up and down the street, you're going to see, is going to have our brands there."

What kind of results can you expect in a boost zone?

"My business increased 25 percent to 27 percent in the month after Coke did this," said Darrar, 55, wearing a white Coke visor and a red Coke shirt with Hovan embroidered on one breast. "I'm happy to wear their logo if I get that increase."

Some day, the entire world will be a red boost zone. With that 25% increase, the world will be drinking 4.6 cans of Coke per year.

Unfriend

unfriend - verb - To remove someone as a ‘friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook. As in, "I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight."

Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford's US dictionary program sez:

"It has both currency and potential longevity. In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year. Most "un-" prefixed words are adjectives (unacceptable, unpleasant), and there are certainly some familiar "un-" verbs (uncap, unpack), but "unfriend" is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of "friend" that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!).

Yeah, right. Two years from now, nobody will be using it because it sounds so stupid.

A Google search for unfriend yields 11.6 million hits. When you eliminate those that also contain Oxford, it drops to 7.72 million.

(Thanks Chris)

Now what. What do we do when we get there? Do we live in a reality of our own or do we associate with others like we do here? I have not heard much about what people think Heaven is like.

He got some pretty good answers. But most of them sound like they're from children:

• Heaven is the full embrace of our loving God without the sinful desires our flesh now contains.
• I think a lot of our time will be spent worshiping God.
• We don't do anything in heaven...we will live with Christ in our glorified bodies in New Jerusalem...before that...between death and resurrection we're just chillaxin'.
• There are those that do go to heaven according to the bible and they serve as kings and priests with Jesus.
• We will be in God's Glory and having a Godly time, Amen.
• Kicking back, relaxing, enjoying existence, and being served by those that are ruling with Christ and worked so hard here on Earth to earn rewards and jewels in Heaven.
• I picture a warm room, sitting together and fellowshipping and learning and doing. A total lack of lonliness and sorrow. Like the best parts of holidays...doing for others, building one another up, sharing...everyday.

The best answer:

It eventually would just be the same as hell in my opinion, spending an eternity of nothing. Of course, I guess in heaven, you could just press a button that would make you happy or something.

Yes, that's a bacon sandwich in that thought balloon.