I just saw this list on Lovelyish.com and had to repost it.

In our wonderful country, the land of the free and the home of the brave, we pride ourselves (sometimes) on our law system. Laws are being added and overturned all the time. In honor of the anniversary of our Independence coming up next week, I thought I’d show you a list of some of the dumbest laws in the United States.

1. Colorado: It is illegal to crash into obstacles on a ski slope.

2. Anniston, Alabama: It is illegal to wear blue jeans down Noble Street. I am there often I better me more careful.

3. Boston, Massachusetts: Angry at your neighbor? Well duels to the death are permitted on the common on Sundays but only if the Governor is present.

4. Topeka, Kansas: The installation of bathtubs is prohibited. All you bubble bath lovers, never move to Topeka.

5. Boise, Idaho: Residents are not permitted to fish from the the back of a giraffe.

6. Oregon: Keep your animals in line because fights between cats and dogs are illegal.

7. Mississippi: They take Sunday Church services VERY seriously. Any private citizen is allowed to arrest anyone who disturbs a Church service.

8. New York: Believe it or not, it is illegal for a woman to be on the street wearing “body hugging clothing.” I think it might be time that the police start enforcing that law on some people.

9. Prescott, Arizona: No one, and I mean NO ONE is allowed to ride their horse up the stairs of the county courthouse. I wonder if the other staircases are fair game?

10. Connesville, Pennsylvania: One’s pants may be worn NO lower than 5 inches below the waist.

11. New Hampshire: On Sundays, it is illegal to relieve yourself while looking up.

12. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: If a person is considered “offensive looking” it is illegal for him or her to be in public during the day. I can’t believe this is real. I wonder who gets to decide what is considered “offensive looking.”

13. New Jersey: If the horn accidentally goes off while a couple is making love in the car, they must face jail time. No ifs, ands, or buts. That’s why they invented back seats.

14. Hawaii: No child can be given the name Charles. Barrack is okay.

15. Rehoboth Beach, Delaware: It is illegal to change your clothes in a vehicle.

Oops, I’ve definitely broken that one.

The Pope’s iPhone application seems like an extension of his YouTube channel, used mostly as a broadcast medium for the Pope’s messages:

“The H2O news application for the iPhone and iPod Touch brings you timely, insightful news about the life of the Church in the world. In collaboration with the Vatican Television Center and Vatican Radio,H2O news connects you with video and audio news from the Vatican.”

As I wrote back when the Vatican joined YouTube, “launching a channel may be a positive first step, but new media is not a broadcast medium: it’s an interactive one.” The new applications seem like a lot more broadcasting, but the ability to share things with friends through the Facebook app is a move in the right direction, and could help expand the online community that the Church clearly sees as an opportunity to bring its members closer together.

Thanks to the Popular Press and now the Casey Anthony trial, the catchy sound bite dubbed “CSI Effect” has become virtually a household word although until recently a Google search on this topic pulled only up a few mainstream articles. In a short span of less than two years, university studies and conflicting findings have appeared.

While there is research that suggests that the “CSI Effect” is more anecdotal than proven, much of this research is early, and it focuseson lab experiences and verdicts rather than on decision-making during the deliberative process.

What is the “CSI Effect”? How is it affecting jurors’ decision-making and the justice system as a whole? How is it manifesting in civil cases? What does a litigator need to understand about this very real phenomenon?

The term “CSI Effect” has been used to describe a purported phenomenon whereby high-tech, forensic science dramatized in television crime dramas theoretically promotes unrealistic expectations among jurors of how conclusively forensic evidence determines innocence or guilt, or from the perspective of the civil litigator, causation, or liability.

Accordingly, because jurors are recalibrating the way they consider evidence, this is also impacting the way they contemplate the burden of proof.

Rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt” many prosecutors argue that jurors are applying a “beyond any doubt” standard, completely dependent on forensic,scientific evidence.

Once the cornerstone of the justice system, proponents of the existence of the “CSI Effects” contend the use of deductive reasoning is being replaced with the need for absolute “scientific proof” of guilt or liability.

Anecdotally, some lawyers, other professionals and law enforcement authorities complain that jurors have lost all ability to make assessments of credibility or weigh evidence but, instead, jurors have expectations that attorneys present impossibly conclusive evidence like that often seen on “CSI”.

As perverse as it may sound, the Casey Anthony trial is the kind of news event that TV executives dream of. I don’t know how I feel about it, it is truly a tragic case. America is mesmerized by the show.

Three years in the making, the trial — in which 25-year-old Anthony is accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee — has gone from being a newsworthy case to one of the biggest ratings draws in recent memory.

Cable news channels and network news programs are scrambling to cover it as extensively as they can. Even today, Sunday, fourth of July holiday weekend the closing arguments will be aired and this may be one of the highest rated programs in cable news history.

“It’s not about policy, it’s not about international relations,” says Scot Safon, executive vice president and general manager of HLN, the CNN sister channel that used to be called Headline News

“It’s a story that has a very, very strong human dimension to it,” he says. HLN’s decision early on to concentrate on the Anthony trial has translated into tremendous, across-the-board ratings increases since the trial began four weeks ago.

The audience for HLN’s “Nancy Grace” is up more than 150 percent since the “Tot Mom” trial started.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, who started a nightly 9 p.m. show on HLN with faint-pulse ratings last spring, has seen his ratings nearly triple since devoting his show to the trial — beating both Piers Morgan on CNN and Rachael Maddow on MSNBC nearly every night this month.

A special two-hour version of “Dateline,” NBC’s newsmagazine show that recapped the case, nothing new, just a recap — was the most-watched show of the night. The ratings nearly doubled ABC’s rival news show, “20/20.”
Local networks also recently shuffled scheduled programming — including the opening rounds of this weekend’s US Open golf tournament — to air trial coverage all day long, reports Broadcasting & Cable.

The presence of cameras in the courtroom is “the key differentiation between this being a trial that people are fascinated by and watching literally all the time,” Safon says.

In truth, with a few exceptions, TV news has been late in picking up just how much people are hungry to keep up with the trial.

That’s no longer the case.

“The View” has been devoting a daily segment to the case with legal reporter Chris Cuomo — the first time in the show’s history it focused on one subject for an entire week.

“We think that there is a genuine interest in this story in daytime television because, at its core, Casey Anthony’s motherhood is on trial,” “The View” executive producer Bill Geddie said on Friday in a response to an e-mail query.

Inevitably, the Anthony trial draw comparisons to the OJ Simpson trial. But what turns the case into such addictive TV is that the Anthonys are “not famous people,” Safon says.

“On some level, this seems like such an unremarkable family. And yet, when you look underneath the hood, you’re seeing this incredibly complex group of people and relationships.”

I read about this on CNN’s web site in the science section and could not resist putting it here in my blog…last night there were so many fireflies in my mom’s yard it was like fireworks!

I was surprised to learn my mom’s yard was actually serving as a setting for “speed dating” and it will from now until late August. And according to the CNN article the “lightning bugs” are enjoying a big showing this year.

Those fireflies that light up your lawn, their tails loaded with “bioluminescent” chemicals, might seem just part of the season’s scenery, but something a little more serious is happening.

“It’s like Friday night at the singles bar out there,” says entomologist Marc Branham of the University of Florida. “A lot of people might think firefly bioluminescence is just nature’s fanciful nighttime entertainment but there is a lot more going on there.”

In a word, it’s about mating. Most of the fireflies, sometimes called glow worms, flitting over your lawn and firing up are males, Branham says, signaling their availability to females fireflies on the ground. “They only flash back when they see a male they find particularly attractive.”

Each species has a signature pattern of glows and flashes and while some look for mates all night, others only try nightly signaling for periods as short as 26 minutes. As a graduate student, Branham built an “artificial male” firefly, a light-emitting diode, designed to mimic male signals of various species by altering the strength, duration and timing of the flash. (For one species, “females really went for a faster flash rate,” he says. “In fact, they went for a flash rate faster than was found in nature.”)

Once the lightning bug lovers have exchanged flashes, barring a child cramming one of the romantics into a jar (remember those airholes), the male lands nearby and the fireflies mate.

The flashes serve as mating calls, just like bullfrog croaks or bird calls, letting females pick out the most fit mate. Darwin described this sort of “sexual selection” in his 1871 book, The Descent of Men and Selection in Relation to Sex, covering numerous examples of female “mate choice” in creatures large and small.

Wow, just last week I blogged about the seemingly eminent demise of MySpace and then along comes Justin Timberlake.

So how did Justin Timberlake, who in last year’s movie “The Social Network” portrayed a pivotal figure in the history of Facebook’s phenomenal growth wind up owning part of rival social network Myspace?

It’s all about connections.

Nicole Winnaman, president and founder of entertainment branding firm Winnaman & Associates, learned a little more than two weeks ago that Irvine-based advertising network Specific Media was in talks to acquire Myspace from News corp. The executive, who has paired musicians like Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, and Pink with well-known consumer brands, approached Timberlake’s manager with a proposal to take a stake in the struggling Myspace as part of the new owner’s attempt to bring sexy back to the once-dominant social network.

Last Friday, even as Specific Media was hammering out deal points with News Corp. over its $35-million acquisition of Myspace, the digital media company’s founders — brothers Tim and Chris Vanderhook — met with Winnaman and Timberlake’s manager at the futuristic Encounter Restaurant at LAX to talk about a potential partnership. Timberlake joined the meeting by phone.

On Monday, the Vanderhooks boarded a flight to New York to meet Timberlake in person the following day. By Tuesday night, lawyers for Timberlake and Specific Media were racing to close the partnership deal in time for Wednesday’s acquisition announcement.

“I don’t think anyone slept for 72 hours,” Tim Vanderhook recalled.

Timberlake’s manager, Johnny Wright, said his client — whose career spans many forms of media, including music, film and television — recognizes the power of social media in shaping pop culture. In “The Social Network,” Timberlake portrayed Sean Parker, an Internet entrepreneur who helped Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zukerberg secure financing for his fledgling website.

In the case of Myspace, Timberlake made his own undisclosed financial investment, according to Wright.

Timberlake declined to be interviewed for this story, but Wright insisted: “This is not a vanity ownership. He wants to make it relevant in a big way.”

Neither Timberlake’s team nor Specific Media would offer any particular plans for revitalizing Myspace. But Vanderhook said he and his brothers understand digital advertising and how to move traffic on the Internet. He said he hopes Timberlake will be able to give the flagging site renewed social relevance.

“Justin is a tremendously bright guy who is really passionate about the opportunity for artists to build a community with fans,” Vanderhook said. “He’s excited about the platform and the ability to interact with his fans. He’s well aware of the all the unique opportunities that digital media affords someone like him. He will use the platform himself and show other artists how to use it”