UK couple in real-life divorce over virtual affair

By Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) - A British woman is divorcing her husband after discovering his online alter-ego was having an affair with a virtual woman in the fantasy world of Second Life, media reported on Friday.

Amy Taylor, 28, said her three-year marriage to David Pollard, 40, came to an end when she twice walked in on him watching his online character, Dave Barmy, having sex with other virtual women.

Second Life enables players to create online lives in which their virtual alter ego, or avatar, can socialize, develop relationships, buy property and set up businesses in an imagined world using the game’s virtual currency.

The couple met in an internet chatroom in 2003 and married in real life and in a fantasy tropical setting in Second Life.

However, Taylor always had suspicions about Pollard’s online loyalty. At one point she hired a virtual detective to test whether his avatar was cheating on her, after finding him at the computer watching his character having sex with a prostitute.

Pollard passed that honeytrap test but earlier this year Taylor found his character in a compromising position with another virtual woman.

“He confessed he’d been talking to this woman player in America for one or two weeks and said our marriage was over and he didn’t love me any more,” said Taylor, who filed for divorce the next day.

“The solicitor wasn’t at all surprised — she said it was her second divorce case involving Second Life that week.”

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

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Tags: Apocalypse, Divorce, Second Life, UK

Foot tapping protected by First Amendment, Craig’s lawyer says

From CNN’s Chris Welch

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (CNN) – In an effort to persuade a three-judge panel to throw out Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea, his attorney suggested Wednesday that his foot tapping in an airport men’s room may have been protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

The Idaho Republican was arrested in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June 2007, after an undercover police officer accused him of soliciting sex by using hand signals and tapping his foot in a bathroom stall.

Two months after his arrest, and without consulting a lawyer, Craig later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.

In addition to suggesting that First Amendment may be involved, Craig’s lawyer, Billy Martin, also argued before the Minnesota Court of Appeals panel that no one besides the arresting officer saw the hand signals and foot tapping, which would mean no one else was offended by the behavior and, thus, make the disorderly conduct charge invalid.

Martin also suggested that the judge who Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Apocalypse, First Amendment, Larry Craig

EDITORS NOTE: This will be the first post in a series of posts referencing stories that are so absurd that they can only signify that the end is coming.

Man Eats 23,000 Big Macs

6 hours ago

FOND DU LAC, Wis. (AP) — A 54-year-old man says his obsessive-compulsive disorder drove him to eat 23,000 Big Macs in 36 years. Fifty-four-year-old Don Gorske says he hit the milestone last month, continuing a pleasurable obsession that began May 17, 1972 when he got his first car.

Gorske has kept every burger receipt in a box. He says he was always fascinated with numbers, and watching McDonald’s track its number of customers motivated him to track his own consumption.

The only day he skipped a Big Mac was the day his mother died, to respect her request.
The correctional-institution employee says he doesn’t care when people call his Big Mac obsession crazy. He says he’s in love with the burgers, which are the highlights of his days.

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Tags: Apocalypse, big macs, McDonalds