What Caught My Eye Today

Austria - I'm a bit late on reporting this story. I gotta say, this is one of the more disturbing news items I've read. And given the world we live in, that's saying something. But an unmistakable melancholy settled an Austrian town where police say a man imprisoned his daughter for 24 years and fathered seven children with her in a windowless warren of soundproofed cellar rooms. As the sheer monstrosity of his alleged atrocities sank in — less than two years after a young woman escaped her tormentor in another high-profile case — anguished Austrians questioned whether their clannish society and cherished privacy have steered them horribly wrong. In the United States, we have a word for clannish societies that cherish their privacy. We call them 'cults.' Police allege that the man confessed to taking his daughter — now 42 — captive when she was 18, repeatedly raping her, fathering seven children with her and tossing the body of one of their offspring into a furnace after the child died in infancy. Authorities say DNA tests confirm the man is the biological father of the six surviving children, three of whom he and his wife adopted and raised upstairs. The other three, along with his daughter, were held in the cellar and never saw daylight until — aged 19, 18 and 5 — they finally gained their freedom last week. Forget for a second - if you can - what a douche bag this dude is. I'm at a loss as to how people can treat others, even their own children, so poorly.

Stock Market - Ordinarily I don't report on specific stocks, but in this case I/m making an exception. Insurance-focused conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway said that its first-quarter profit slumped 64% compared with the same period a year earlier, with underwriting income falling sharply. Run by billionaire Warren Buffett, Berkshire posted investment gains of $115 million, while unrealized gains fell by $4 billion, leaving a total of $27.8 billion in unrealized gains at the end of the quarter. Bear with me. Not the most exciting story, until you consider this. One share Class A Berkshire stock trades at $133,600, meaning the $300 loss that the stock incurred today translates to a two-tenths of one percent loss. In other words, if this stock was indexed at a value of 100, after today's activity, it would be valued at 99.8.

Arctic - The Arctic will remain on thinning ice, and climate warming is expected to begin affecting the Antarctic also, scientists said. Well, I hope so. Otherwise this whole global warming brouhaha might lose some of its umph. Last summer sea ice in the North shrank to a record low, a change many attribute to global warming. See what I mean. So here comes the technical explanation. While solar radiation and amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are similar at the poles, to date the regions have responded differently, with little change in the South. Researchers have concluded that in the North, global warming and natural variability of climate were reinforcing one another, sending the Arctic into a new state with much less sea ice than in the past. On the other hand, the ozone hole in the Antarctic masked conditions there, keeping temperatures low in most of the continent. Okay, so here's my new theory on why a lot of people still don't buy into global warming. By the time scientists have finished explaining what it is, most normal people of dozed off.

Japan - It's been awhile since we've had a 'so bizarre it must be true' story. Well, my friends. The drought is over. A Japanese civil servant was demoted for logging more than 780,000 hits on pornographic Web sites on his office computer over nine months. Dude. Despite his frequent porn viewing, none of his colleagues noticed his activities, which he apparently conducted throughout the workday. Right. Just out of curiosity, how many of these 'colleagues' happen to be men? The man's supervisors discovered his extensive porn site visits after his computer became infected with a virus, prompting officials to examine his Web browser's history. Well, duh. That sort of thing is bound to happen when you practice unsafe 'porn surfing'.