At least 18 mushroom-lovers have been killed in accidents while hunting for their favorite fungi in the mountains and forests of northern Italy.

Mountain rescuers say eager mushroom seekers are abandoning safety procedures as they don camouflage and hunt in darkness to protect coveted troves, la Repubblica newspaper reported on Sunday.

“There is too much carelessness. Too many people don’t give a darn about the right rules and unfortunately this is the result,” Gino Comelli, head of the Alpine rescue service in northwest Italy’s Valle di Fassa, told the newspaper.

Seventeen people have died in nine days — six in 48 hours alone — mostly from sliding off steep, damp slopes in the northern mountains, la Repubblica said in a story headlined “the massacre of the mushroom hunters.”

Another person has been missing for more than a week, it said.

Ansa news agency said a man who had been hunting mushrooms was found dead on Sunday in the Alpine region of Valtellina.

A combination of August thunderstorms and hot weather has led to a bumper mushroom crop that has drawn the first hunters of what is expected to be a boom season.

Here is a video of the accident at the California 200 in Lucerne, California. You see a bit of the carnage, but whats important here is to look at the spectators. Look at their proximity to the track. I can’t imagine racing in a truck . . . over jumps . . . having to worry about running over a bunch of morons on either side of the track.

From reports I have read, the organizers tell people to stay at least 50 feet from the course. I hope that these are paying customers and that the organizers have this information printed on the tickets.

As the video clearly shows, these people are literally making themselves human track markers. I don’t care what anyone says. Its the fault of the spectators, not the drivers that these people were killed or injured. JD

Reading and watching the coverage of the crash at the California 200 yesterday in Lucerne Valley, its amazing how many people that were there blame the driver of the car, the event organizers and anyone else but themselves.

I went to one such event with some friends a few years ago, and they were telling me to come down next to the course to see the race better. I thought, are these guys crazy? I then proceeded to go sit up on a small hill about 60 yards from the action. From there I felt it was safer, and I had a better vantage point to see more of the course.

My friends thought I was crazy. After all there is nothing better than being right next to the action. And they are not the only stupid ones. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of these dullards lining either side of the course in strategic spots AFTER the jumps to take pictures to text to their dopey friends.

So when trying to understand how this could have happened, one only need blame the incredibly stupid people that think that texting pictures to their friends is more important then their own safety and the safety of their children.

As far as I am concerned, the parents of any children injured or killed from their stupidity should be arrested for child endangerment. But rather then putting the harsh spotlight of reality on the stupid parents, we will focus on the money and the lawyers that are lined up to sue all involved to line their pockets with cash.

Open note to the idiots that put themselves in harms way at such sporting events. YOU ARE IDIOTS! A bit of personal responsibility might be in order here. JD

Chicago Ridge officials are not commenting after a village employee was charged with holding parties at her home where she allegedly sexually assaulted four teenage boys while providing them marijuana and alcohol.

Cathleen M. Miller, 40, of the 5800 block of West 109th Street in Chicago Ridge, is charged with three counts of criminal sexual assault and one count of criminal sexual abuse, according to Cook County State’s Attorney’s office spokesman Andy Conklin. At the Bridgeview courthouse on Tuesday, Miller was ordered held on $900,000 bond, he said.

Miller, who is employed as a secretary for the Chicago Ridge Village Hall, was arrested Monday following an investigation by police and the state’s attorney’s office, according to Chicago Ridge police.

Chicago Ridge Mayor Eugene Siegel declined to comment on the case in a statement released Thursday, except to say his “thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families, as well as with Miller’s family.”

Police said the victims were four boys between the ages of 14 and 15.

Between Feb. 1 and June 1, Miller held parties at her home at which she would provide teens with alcohol and marijuana, according to court records.

Miller had intercourse with two of the teens, oral sex with a third and fondled a fourth, according to prosecutors, who said the boys were friends with Miller’s teenage daughter.

The parents of another teen who had attended the parties figured out what was going on and contacted authorities, court records indicate. That teen was not considered a victim.

Miller is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Aug. 2 in Bridgeview.

You gotta love life in the ghetto, where kids are taught to behave like animals and have little or no fear of authority. Note to guards. Shoot first, ask questions later.

Armed security guards have been posted at public pools in Buffalo after a lifeguard was pulled into the water by rowdy teenagers and other unruly behavior prompted safety concerns for parks employees.

The city’s eight public outdoor pools were shut down last Thursday after fights broke out and a locker room was vandalized.

At one pool, a 16-year-old lifeguard says she was yanked by her ankles into the water when she tried to restore order. She says she struck her head on a drain and then was repeatedly dunked by several teenagers until another lifeguard rescued her.

The teen was treated at a Buffalo hospital for a mild concussion.

City parks officials say security guards were on duty over the weekend and will be working at the pools for the rest of the summer.

Buffalo is about 356 miles northwest of the Big Apple.

Who cares about World Cup Soccer? I come in contact with probably 50 new people a day and I have found only two that have expressed and interest in world cup soccer.

Every four years Americans are hit with all this hype about soccer, and within a week of it being over, no one cares anymore. Why does the media keep pushing this lame sport on us here in the states?

Clearly, with the exception of recent immigrants to America, people here do not like soccer. Yet I keep hearing about how everyone is waiting for tonight’s game.

I don’t know anyone that will be watching tonight. I was talking with my friends and family in the mid west, and they knew nothing about it.

I have said it before and will say it again. No one I know want to invest three hours of their time watching a game where no one scores a single point and the game ends in a tie.

Its ridiculous. I know there are those that think me a fool and so be it. But believe me when I say that I have tried to get into it, but its just boring.

You want me to watch soccer? Make the field fifty feet shorter twenty five feet narrower and make it full contact. Helmets and shoulder pads.

I will pass the time tonight watching the Australian Lawn Dart Championship or perhaps the Bocce Ball Playoffs from Italy. No soccer for me, thanks. JD

I thought this was pretty funny, but if the ends justifies the means, then by all means level the allegation of racism. After all, this is what minorities routinely do when faced with any kind of disciplinary action in the work place, in school, hell for that matter any time anyone looks at a minority person cross eyed.

The side effect of attacking this tax with a “racism” allegation is that perhaps it will get the tax repealed. I use tanning beds from time to time, usually when I am about to go to the beach or out in the sun for an extended period of time.

Going in for six or seven minutes a couple of times the week before you go out in the sun helps avoid terrible sunburns. It will be interesting to see how the tan tax pans out. I will say that it is almost exclusively white people using the salon that I use. JD

Mention the new “tan tax” in a major news outlet and cries of discrimination and reverse racism often follow.

The complaint surfaced on reader comment boards to blogs and news Web sites back in December, when it became clear that the levy — a 10 percent surcharge on the use of ultraviolet tanning beds — was likely to be included in the new health-care overhaul bill. Since then, it’s been repeated by conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Doc Thompson, a fill-in host for Glenn Beck who intoned in March, “I now know the pain of racism.”

When an article about the fallout from the tax — which took effect last week — appeared on the Washington Post’s Web site Wednesday, dozens of commenters questioned the tax’s legality.

The case can seem deceptively simple: Since patrons of tanning salons are almost exclusively white, the tax will be almost entirely paid by white people and, therefore, violates their constitutional right to equal protection under the law.

But does the argument have any merit? Not remotely said Randall Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School specializing in racial conflict and law.

“There is no constitutional problem at all, because a plaintiff would have to show that the government intended to disadvantage a particular group, not simply that the group is disadvantaged in effect,” he said.

Kennedy said that this is why courts have upheld a raft of other laws that also happen to have a disproportionate impact on particular groups. For example, laws that impose higher penalties for possession or trafficking of crack cocaine as opposed to powder cocaine resulted in far harsher sentences for African Americans compared to whites.

And laws that offer preferential treatment for veterans are much more likely to benefit men than women. But in both cases judges ruled that, because lawmakers did not intend to disadvantage black people or women when drafting those laws, they are legal.

What would it take to prove that President Obama or members of Congress intended to discriminate against white people when they included the tan tax in the health-care law? There would have to be some record of direct or indirect comments by the officials involved, Kennedy said. Or there would have to be no possible alternate reason for adopting the tan tax.

But the levy’s supporters argued from the start that it had a dual purpose: to raise funds to cover some of the cost of extending health coverage to the uninsured and to discourage a habit that scientific studies have linked with increased risk of cancer.

“To say that this health rationale was a mere pretext for wanting to stick it to white people is completely implausible,” Kennedy said.