random/odd news of the day [Archive]

stryfe

03-02-2002, 09:36 PM

Originally posted by falcor
one of the girls on the 'girls gone wild' videos is sueing because she claims she never gave consent. she claims she was too drunk. hahaha!
okay...so i think i found the story.

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020302/film_nm/film_wildpartygirls_dc_1&cid=600">Woman Wins Case Vs. 'Wild Party Girls' Producers</a href>
SAN MARCOS, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas woman who was videotaped taking off her top at a spring break party won a $5 million judgement from the producers of "Wild Party Girls" videos after she spotted herself in a TV ad for the tapes.

Amber Kulhanek, a 22-year-old senior at Southwest Texas State University, sued Arco Media, the Florida-based producers of the risque videos made famous in late night TV ads.

Kulhanek took action after her picture appeared in a TV advertisement for the videos broadcast on cable networks.

"She never signed a consent to have anybody film it," said attorney David Sergi. "Quite frankly, she was too drunk to legally give a valid consent."

The state district court in Hays County, Texas, entered the judgement this week after Arco failed to respond to Kulhanek's suit. Kulhanek must now try to collect the cash.

In previous cases, courts have ruled that there is no expectation of privacy in a public place, and has upheld the right of companies to videotape the actions of women who bare their breasts, and more, at events like Mardi Gras.

Kulhanek, an art student, was filmed in a bar in Matamoras, Mexico, in 2000. She was goaded, Sergi said, into taking part in a wet T-shirt contest that ended up with her shirt coming off completely.

It occurred in 2000 while she was on spring break, the annual collegiate bacchanal, in nearby South Padre Island, Texas.

Kulhanek saw herself in the advertisement, and developed insomnia that led to her dropping out of school.

"The next thing she knew, all of her friends were giving her grief about it. Strangers were coming up to her and making rude and sexually graphic remarks, asking her to take off her clothes," Sergi said.

stryfe

03-04-2002, 07:05 AM

<a href="http://english.joins.com/AboutKorea/index.asp">JoonAng Ilbo</a href>
Q. Ms. Atwater: When did this menstrual leave business start and why? Whenever I tell my friends back home about this they think I'm crazy.

A. IHT-JAI: The menstrual leave law provides for a paid day-off for all women workers - on a monthly basis, as you may have surmised. Women employees can choose between the holiday and an extra day's pay added to their paycheck.

Local companies began providing the women-only day off in the early '90s. The policy caught on, and some of the large conglomerates instituted it in succeeding years. Women's rights groups, led by a former labor union chief, eventually pushed for the policy to become law, which it did in 1997.

Many business groups want the law abolished. They complain that it is unfair and discriminatory and makes women more expensive to employ than men. The issue is currently among those being hotly debated among labor, management and government groups.

falcor

03-04-2002, 07:32 AM

we should sell midol over there. we'd make a killing.

archonemis

03-04-2002, 08:26 AM

Selling drugs is bad.

falcor

03-04-2002, 08:30 AM

only if we sell to tards like you. woohoohoo!!!

archonemis

03-04-2002, 08:45 AM

I don't drug.

neku74

03-04-2002, 09:22 AM

Originally posted by stryfe
<a href="http://english.joins.com/AboutKorea/index.asp">JoonAng Ilbo</a href>
Q. Ms. Atwater: When did this menstrual leave business start and why? Whenever I tell my friends back home about this they think I'm crazy.

A. IHT-JAI: The menstrual leave law provides for a paid day-off for all women workers - on a monthly basis, as you may have surmised. Women employees can choose between the holiday and an extra day's pay added to their paycheck.

Local companies began providing the women-only day off in the early '90s. The policy caught on, and some of the large conglomerates instituted it in succeeding years. Women's rights groups, led by a former labor union chief, eventually pushed for the policy to become law, which it did in 1997.

Many business groups want the law abolished. They complain that it is unfair and discriminatory and makes women more expensive to employ than men. The issue is currently among those being hotly debated among labor, management and government groups.

yeah, it is an odd law. a good friend of mine that works over at the korean branch of my company told me about this - i was really shocked and thought maybe it was an asian business practice.

in a way, i think that its cool b/c sometimes when i'm on the rag i would love to stay home in bed. however, on the other hand i think its a bit condescending towards women and would give someone a better excuse to hire or promote a man over a woman, which sucks.

stryfe

03-05-2002, 11:42 AM

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&u=/nm/20020304/od_nm/germany_sleep_dc_2">German Town Promotes Sleeping on the Job</a href>

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German town has found that sleeping on the job, albeit in limited doses, can boost workers' efficiency.

For two years, civil servants in the small town of Vechta southwest of Hamburg, have been allowed 20 minutes after lunch to go home and take a nap, doze in their office chairs or otherwise relax, town spokesman Frank Kaethler said.

"In the beginning employees were skeptical about the project," he said on Monday. "But then they were happier and they started working better."

Kaethler said Vechta started the project because it had too much work for too few employees and no budget to hire new civil servants. A local health insurance company gave them courses on napping.

Research by the Institute for Sleep Research and Medicine in Regensburg found that 22 percent of the overall German population naps. But institute head Juergen Zulley said only Vechta appeared to have implemented a sleeping-on-the-job project.

"Work and sleep are normally seen as opposites and many firms don't want it to be said that their employees sleep in their company," Zulley said.

Asharak

03-05-2002, 08:11 PM

High school students face criminal charges for prank (http://www.msnbc.com/local/kxas/NBC7L91N5YC.asp)

NBC 5's Scott Gordon

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS, Feb. 26 - Seven Richland High School students are in trouble for a childish prank. Not only are they in trouble at school - they face criminal charges.

North Richland Hills Police Sgt. Andy Kancel said, “It happened last Wednesday night in the parking lot of this North Richland Hills discount store.”

An off-duty officer noticed seven teenagers acting strange. Police said they were placing a dollar bill on the sidewalk, and then returning to their car to videotape people picking up the bill.

Turns out, police said, the teens had put human feces on it.

Sgt. Kancel said, "I haven't actually seen all the tape. I saw a small portion of it. But basically they are filming the reactions that they get from these subjects that are out on the street or on the sidewalk when they pick up the dollar bill with the feces on it."

Police said the same teens also pulled another prank, putting an outhouse in somebody's front yard.

Officers said what the teens did was a lot more than just a teenage prank.

"Well, I think when you look at the big picture, you have the totality of the circumstances warranted the issuance of the tickets... the misdemeanor criminal mischief citations," Sgt. Kancel said.

All seven teens played on Richland High School's baseball team. They were suspended Friday night.

In a twist to all this, the police department has launched an internal investigation into complaints by two parents that officers may have violated procedures. But it's unclear exactly what the parents claim the officers did.

Police said the videotape the teens made is evidence and won't release it. NBC 5 couldn't reach the students' parents for comment because police haven't yet released their names.

A point of clarification: The suspension only affects the boy's extra-curricular activities… they havn't been suspended from school.

Ricky

03-08-2002, 05:26 AM

http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/030702dnmethitandrun.b7a85.html

stryfe

03-08-2002, 07:15 AM

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&u=/nm/20020307/od_nm/dogs_dc_4">Rush on Valium for Dogs with Panic Attacks</a href>
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli vets are giving valium to dozens of dogs suffering from panic attacks as escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence brings the sounds and stresses of war closer to Jerusalem.

Dogs start howling, become overly aggressive, shake uncontrollably or lose bladder control when the rattle of gunfire in the West Bank reverberates into apartment buildings, veterinarians said.

"Only today I treated an Alsatian who has stopped eating and refuses to leave his house," Benny Sapir, a Jerusalem veterinarian, said.

Another vet said he had not seen so many nervous dogs since Iraq rained Scud missiles on Tel Aviv during the 1991 Gulf War.

Sleepy Introvert Ninja

03-08-2002, 07:30 AM

<font size="3" face="System, Small Fonts" color="#400040">
Our today's news is your current news.
Then making your today's news our
yesterday's news. All news is just news.
</font>

p_kusmin

03-08-2002, 09:28 AM

no news is good news...

stryfe

03-11-2002, 10:39 AM

<a href="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26777">So where is the plane?</a href>
by Geoff Metcalf

I receive a lot of strange information from a wide variety of sources. Some of it is intriguing. Some of it is flat-out weird. I try (and frequently fail) to temporarily set aside my own personal prejudices to objectively as possible consider the merits of both the intriguing and weird.

Recently, an interesting French website has been asking questions about the crash of American Airlines Flight 77, which reportedly crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

The conventional wisdom has been inculcated into us that there were four terrorist hijacked airplanes that tragic day. But there are refutations for each of the official scenarios floating around. The conspiracy theory industry hasn't been this jazzed since the JFK assassination.

However, in the shadow of the creative writing, multi- phased propaganda and bovine excrement, there are several questions that at least should be asked and answered...

stryfe

03-12-2002, 06:45 AM

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020311/od_nm/crime_safrica_tiger_dc_3">Tigers Maul S.African Robber After Botched Heist</a href>
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A thief escaping from a botched robbery at a game sanctuary near Johannesburg made a fatal mistake when he climbed a high fence and found himself in the tigers' den, police said Monday.

"They grabbed him and first played with him. He died of a broken neck and a fractured skull," police spokeswoman Milica Bezuidenhout told Reuters. The body was removed after the tigers, a male and a female, had been sedated, she said.

The 28-year-old victim, a South African, and an accomplice had held up the gate guard at the Rhino and Lion Reserve at Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg, Saturday, but fled when staff and visitors became suspicious and chased them.

The accomplice and the driver of the getaway car were arrested and were to appear in court later Monday, Bezuidenhout said.

stryfe

03-12-2002, 07:27 AM

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&u=/nm/20020312/od_nm/condoms_dc_1">First Female Condom Machine in Launched</a href>
PARIS (Reuters) - President Jacques Chirac's campaign spokeswoman Roselyne Bachelot marked International Women's Day by inaugurating France's first female condom machine.

But the plan aimed at polishing the incumbent's feminist credentials ahead of the presidential election in May backfired when women protesters complained that the female condoms were three times the price of the versions made for men.

One female condom costs two euros ($1.76) -- customers can snap up three of the male version for the same price.

Bachelot unveiled the new condom machines -- blue for men, pink for women -- in a central Paris metro station, one of five stations now equipped with them.

Bachelot, slightly suspect in conservative circles because she was the only right-wing deputy to support a "gay marriage" bill passed by the left-wing government, swept aside taboos over the female condom and dismissed suggestions it was "noisy."

The female condom, a sac-like device inserted by the woman before sex, has been available in some countries for several years. But amid criticisms that its plastic crackles and that it reduces sensation for both partners, it has not won wide acceptance.

The AIDS (news - web sites) awareness group Act Up denounced Friday's event in a statement as a publicity stunt and said the conservative Chirac was "using the vagina as an electoral ploy."

Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, his chief rival in the two-round election ending on May 5 both used International Women's Day as a way to lobby for the key female vote.

angoraphobia

03-12-2002, 07:29 AM

the female condom seems awfull cumbersome and odd.....i really dont see it being too popular...but ive never tried using it so i wouldnt know....

Hyde

03-12-2002, 10:21 PM

A Jamestown mother, yesterday, allegedly attached a jumper cable clamp to her 3-year-old son's penis, causing serious bodily injury to the little boy. Today, the 22-year-old mother, Danielle Monroe, has been charged with 2nd degree assault, a felony, and endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor, for failing to give her son medical attention for over three hours. The boy has since undergone surgery and has been released. Monroe's son and two other children are in the care of The Chautauqua County Child Welfare Services. Monroe is being held without bail.

stryfe

03-13-2002, 06:56 AM

Originally posted by Hyde
A Jamestown mother, yesterday, allegedly attached a jumper cable clamp to her 3-year-old son's penis, causing serious bodily injury to the little boy. Today, the 22-year-old mother, Danielle Monroe, has been charged with 2nd degree assault, a felony, and endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor, for failing to give her son medical attention for over three hours. The boy has since undergone surgery and has been released. Monroe's son and two other children are in the care of The Chautauqua County Child Welfare Services. Monroe is being held without bail.
okay, what the deuce?

stryfe

03-13-2002, 06:58 AM

this is kinda neat...it's a rubber band gattling gun.
<a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20020312/310851.html">For the gun enthusiast who has $400 and 144 rubber bands</a href>
direct link to the real deal.
<a href="http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/"><img src="http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/goodone3.jpg"></a href>

stryfe

03-13-2002, 08:16 AM

in case people miss this in geographica...
<img src="http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20020313/i/1016034556.2751914023.jpg">
<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020313/en_nm/afghan_picture_dc_1016034264&cid=579">National Geographic Finds Girl in Famed Photo</a href>

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For nearly two decades, National Geographic (news - web sites) has been flooded with requests for information about a beautiful Afghan teen-ager with piercing green eyes whose cover image became one of its most recognized photographs.

But the woman's identity has only just been uncovered after the National Geographic photographer who first saw her in a refugee camp in Pakistan 18 years ago, finally tracked down the woman in a remote village south of Jalalabad, Afghanistan (news - web sites).

"Every time I went there (to Afghanistan or Pakistan), I asked about her, but I never had any leads," freelance photographer Steve McCurry, who took the picture for National Geographic in 1984, told Reuters.

McCurry says hardly a day has gone by that people have not asked him about the young woman, whose name he did not take down when he took her picture for the January 1985 cover of National Geographic.

This January, he returned with a National Geographic team to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan where he took the picture and found someone who said he grew up with the woman's brother.

"The refugee camp was set to close and so I knew this was my only chance to find her," said McCurry. "I couldn't believe it when the brother finally turned up with his sister. I knew immediately it was her."

The woman, who is now about 30 years old, was identified as Sharbat Gula. She remembered McCurry taking the picture but had never seen a copy of it and was surprised and embarrassed by all the attention it attracted.

Gula got married shortly after McCurry first saw her and had four daughters, one of whom died in infancy. She was repatriated from the camp in 1992 and returned to Afghanistan with her family.

Her life had been tough in Afghanistan and McCurry said she had struggled to survive.

"What the second picture shows is that she is still alive and survived quite well in fact ... but that pain and hardship is still written in her face. It is not a face of joy," he added.

NEW PHOTOS TAKEN

A conservative Pashtun, Gula sought her husband's permission to lift her veil to show her face for the latest photographs, which appear in National Geographic's April edition.

McCurry said he saw Gula as a representative of the plight of the Afghan people, who endured an extended war with the Soviet Union and the rise and fall of the Taliban.

"She's really emblematic of the Afghan spirit," he said, adding that a education fund had been set up by National Geographic for young Afghan girls.

National Geographic used several scientific methods to ensure they had found the right woman, including iris recognition in which the colored portion of the eye is examined.

No two human irises are the same and a direct match holds a near 100 percent probability of authenticity, National Geographic said. The woman's eyes were found to be a perfect match.

stryfe

03-19-2002, 08:13 AM

the sony <a href="http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48225,00.html">SDR-4X</a href>
<p><img src="http://foxnews.com/images/50724/1_21_sdr_4x_robot.jpg"><img src="http://foxnews.com/images/50724/2_22_031902_sdr_4x.jpg"></p>
He also comes with a clunky, sci-fi name and a price tag resembling that of a luxury car.

The silver, round-eyed SDR-4X humanoid robot was unveiled Tuesday and will go on sale later this year. Sony Corp. would not say much more about its plans for the 23-inch tall robot.

``This robot was designed to live with people in homes,'' said Toshitada Doi, Sony executive vice president.

Tuesday: A group of SDR-4X perform a synchronized dance during a media unveiling at a Tokyo hotel.
For that, the robot has sensors on the bottom of its feet to help it walk on uneven surfaces such as carpeting and has been programmed to tumble without falling apart and then get up on its own, Doi said.

The SDR-4X is an upgraded version of a humanoid robot shown about a year ago. It has two cameras to see things better, including being able to tell the difference between the edge of a table and the patterns on the floor. That has been a challenge for another Sony product, the puppy-shaped robot Aibo, which has only one camera.

The new robot will be considerably more expensive than Aibo, which already has sold more than 100,000 units worldwide. The latest Aibo model sells for $1,400 in Japan and $1,500 in the United States.

``This robot will be cost as much as one car, a luxury car,'' Doi said.

For that money, the SDR-4X can carry on simple conversations with its 60,000-word vocabulary, recognize color, dodge obstacles in its path and even sing once programmed with music and lyrics.

The robot also can be programmed to recognize 10 people through their faces, stored as digital images shot with its camera, and their voices, picked up through seven microphones. It also will remember their names.

03-19-2002, 08:49 AM

I'd hate to see a SDR-4X go haywire, reach for a kitchen knife and kill your pet cat or dog....while shredding your bed scenario...

stryfe

03-19-2002, 10:25 AM

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020319/ap_on_sc/antarctic_ice">Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses</a href>
Tue Mar 19,12:16 PM ET

By ROBERT BARR, Associated Press Writer

<table><tr><td><img src="http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20020319/i/1016544789.2819113026.jpg" height="200"></td><td><font color=white size=2>LONDON - A large Antarctic ice shelf in an area of the giant continent that is warming faster than the global average has collapsed with "staggering" rapidity, British scientists said Tuesday.

The shelf designated as Larsen B, 650 feet thick and with a surface area of 1,250 square miles, has collapsed into small icebergs and fragments, the British Antarctic Survey said. Before breaking apart, the ice shelf was about the size of Rhode Island.

The ice shelf collapse reported Tuesday was first detected on satellite images earlier this month by Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado.

"The reason this is worth paying attention to is that we're seeing a very rapid and profound response by the ice sheet to a warming that's been around for just a few decades," Scambos said.<font></td></table>

"And we can use this as sort of a guide for what's going to happen if the rest of the Antarctic should begin to warm because of climate change."

David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey, said the agency predicted three years ago that ice shelves would be disappearing.

"Since then, warming on the peninsula has continued and we watched as piece-by-piece Larsen B has retreated," Vaughan said.

"We knew what was left would collapse eventually, but the speed of it is staggering. Hard to believe that 500 million billion tons of ice sheet has disintegrated in less than a month."

In recent months, scientists have presented apparently contradictory evidence about warming in Antarctica. Two months ago, the journal Science reported new measurements which indicated that the ice in West Antarctica was thickening, rather than melting.

Scientists are unsure what to make of those measurements, but they are not incompatible with the recently observed ice sheet collapses because they apply to a region much closer to the South Pole than the Antarctic Peninsula.

Referred to as the "banana belt" by polar scientists, the peninsula is much closer to the equator than is the rest of Antarctica and surrounded on three sides by moderating seas.

In the past half century, the Antarctic Peninsula, which is nearest to southern Argentina and Chile, has warmed by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit, much faster than average global warming, the Survey said. As a result, five ice shelves which extend out over the ocean along the peninsula have retreated.

In January, researchers Ian Joughin of the California Institute of Technology and Slawek Tulaczyk of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said ice was thickening in West Antarctica. The scientists said the change, if not merely part of some short-term fluctuation, represented a reversal of the long retreat of the ice.

Their finding came less than a week after a paper in the journal Nature reported that Antarctica's harsh desert valleys — long considered a bellwether for global climate change — had grown noticeably cooler since the mid-1980s.

Air temperatures recorded continuously over a 14-year period ending in 1999 declined by about 1 degree F in the polar deserts and across the White Continent, that paper said.

stryfe

03-27-2002, 08:28 AM

<a href="http://www.worldonline.co.za/news/news_center_020325.460947.html">SPCA fumes at Aids-wary goat molesters</a href>

<font color="white" size="2"><table><tr><td width="245"><font color="FFFFCC" size="2">[Johannesburg, 25 March] - Boys in a Northern Province village, where many people have apparently died of Aids, are allegedly turning their attention to goats: they think practising bestiality is the way to avoid getting the disease.</font></td><td><font color="white" size="2">Now the National Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty Against Animals has appealed to people to come forward with information.

The NSPCA said it had noted an SABC news report that boys of Mamvuka Village in Nzhelele Valley in the far north of the province have sex with goats to avoid getting Aids. The organisation said other admissions were made during the news insert, which was broadcast on Sunday evening, but the NSPCA had not yet received any official complaints.</font></td></tr></table>

"Bestiality is a criminal offence. Charges can be laid under the Criminal Procedure Act and also in terms of the Animals Protection Act," the NSPCA statement said. It said two convictions were recently obtained for bestiality and both offenders were imprisoned without the option of a fine.

"An appeal is made to anyone with information on this - or any other bestiality offences to come forward. The NSPCA stresses that charges can only be laid and proceed when information sufficient to prove beyond reasonable doubt is to hand."

Captain Ailwei Mushavhanamadi said the Northern Province police had not received any reports of such crimes. But the SABC interviewed at least one boy who admitted he considered bestiality as safe sex, and that he and his friends had sex with goats up to four times a week.

"We know about Aids and we are very afraid of it. That is why we are having sex with these goats. Goats don't have Aids.

"We see people in the village dying everyday. It's because they have slept with one another and infected each other. Goats can't get those infections. We would therefore rather have sex with them," a grade 11 scholar said.

"It's obvious that if I'm not sick there is nothing I can transmit to goats and goats to me. We won't become HIV-positive because goats don't get Aids. We often share the same goat and don't get each other's diseases," he said.

The NSCPA said some of the statements made during the broadcast revealed a lack of education, and that an information campaign should be launched in the affected areas.

"Whether education or prosecution is the key, the matter cannot move forward without co-operation and solid information. The NSPCA is deeply concerned that the youths repeatedly stated their reasoning for having sex with goats - avoidance of Aids. It is suggested that urgency be given to correcting such myths."

The SABC reported that the practice affected goat-farming in the area. Sinah Musekwa, a goat owner, said nobody wanted to buy his goats any more.

"Since we've learnt that these rumours are true people don't want to be associated with these goats. No one wants anything to do with their meat or milk. I'm going to have to destroy my goats," he said.</font>

[Edited by stryfe on 03-27-2002 at 09:38 AM]

stryfe

03-27-2002, 04:48 PM

hmmm...shouldn't they be worrying about sloppy seconds?

kamenriderv3

03-27-2002, 04:53 PM

Originally posted by Solipsism
I'd hate to see a SDR-4X go haywire, reach for a kitchen knife and kill your pet cat or dog....while shredding your bed scenario...

they edited that scene out of a.i.

ocd

03-27-2002, 05:18 PM

Originally posted by Den

Stryfe> This is incredibly stupid of these boys because most sexually transmitted diseases (maybe even aids)were first introduced to humans through bestiality...That and the fact that they are fucking goats. Wasn't there something earlier about Crusoe being a goat fucker? Ew.

ocd

03-27-2002, 05:21 PM

Originally posted by stryfe
this is kinda neat...it's a rubber band gattling gun.
<a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20020312/310851.html">For the gun enthusiast who has $400 and 144 rubber bands</a href>
direct link to the real deal.
<a href="http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/"><img src="http://www.backyardartillery.com/machinegun/goodone3.jpg"></a href> Oh yeah. This is so bad ass. My office would be impenetrable.

stryfe

03-27-2002, 05:26 PM

Originally posted by ocd
Originally posted by Den

Stryfe> This is incredibly stupid of these boys because most sexually transmitted diseases (maybe even aids)were first introduced to humans through bestiality...That and the fact that they are fucking goats. Wasn't there something earlier about Crusoe being a goat fucker? Ew.
<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020326/en_nm/life_crusoe_dc_2&cid=579">selkirk's island</a href>
"CHICAGO (Reuters) - The real Robinson Crusoe loved rum more than truth, took to bestiality with the goats on the island where he was stranded, and died at sea, his untamed search for easy money halted finally by tropical fever...

Souhami's meticulous mining of ancient journals and records yields a story that pairs research-paper precision with bursts of poetry. She details every aspect of Selkirk's life on the island -- his clothes, food, shelter and even his sexual conquests in the local goat herd, animals whose ears he notched after satisfying his needs..."

ocd

03-27-2002, 05:40 PM

Yep. That's the story..

...Why the goats...?

ocd

03-27-2002, 05:45 PM

What's so disturbing about the Johannesburg scenario is that it's a community phenomenon where one guy said, "Hey, how about we hump some goats?" and somebody else sat and thought about it for a second and then said, "Yeah! That sounds like a good idea! Let's round up the boys!"

stryfe

03-27-2002, 05:48 PM

i'm wondering why the goats didn't fight back, or did they? goats seem like they could get kinda violent.

ocd

03-27-2002, 06:04 PM

Good point! I wonder if there is a "goat humping mentor" that teaches all these bestiallity types the Goat Humping Way, so they don't get the shit kicked out of them.

Asharak

03-27-2002, 07:30 PM

<a href=http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/tuesday/metro_state_5.html>4th-graders reprimanded for lewd acts in classroom</a>
By Janet Jacobs and Jonathan Osborne
American-Statesman Staff
Tuesday, March 26, 2002

MARBLE FALLS -- Police are investigating allegations that five fourth-grade boys performed oral sex on one another during class at least twice at Marble Falls Elementary School.

School officials confirm that the incidents took place and that they are treating the acts as lewd behavior. The boys were suspended for a day, have been put in alternative classes for 10 days and will receive counseling, said Superintendent Dana Marable.

"It was a dare," Marable said.

However, at least one mother, who asked not to be identified to protect her son's identity, said the acts were done under threat.

"My boy didn't want to, and the other boys threatened him if he didn't," she said.

In interviews with police, the boys -- all ages 9 and 10 -- admitted the acts took place last fall and again in February, said Marble Falls police Capt. Robert Sooter.

Marable said the acts took place during a free reading time, when everyone in the classroom, including the teacher, is supposed to be reading. The boys had retreated to beanbag chairs in the back of the classroom and were using their coats to hide from the teacher, the parent said.

"The little boys didn't do it in front of the teacher," Marable said. "They hid."

A child in the class told the teacher about the sex acts March 7, two days before spring break. The boys were suspended March 8. When they returned from spring break March 18, they were placed in alternative education.

Police said they learned about the incident March 18. School officials said they notified authorities March 8, in compliance with a Texas law requiring that abuse incidents be reported within 48 hours.

"All authorities have been notified in accordance with the letter of the law," said Marble Falls Elementary Principal Steve Shroft.

Police are concerned about three things: whether any of the boys used coercion and might be charged with a crime; whether the teacher or school officials were negligent or were slow to report the incidents; and whether the boys were re-enacting behavior they had learned elsewhere.

"Obviously, this is some kind of learned behavior, and it's our job to learn where it came from," Sooter said.

Amanda Van Hoozer, director of program services for the Children's Advocacy Center in Austin, said it's possible that one boy is more sexually advanced than the others and is sharing this knowledge. But, she said, a history of sex abuse is a more likely explanation.

"Some kids are really precocious," Van Hoozer said. "They know a lot more than other kids. They've seen it in a magazine, and they've decided to try it out for themselves. But if these kids are just normal, average 10-year-olds, most 10-year-olds have not been exposed to this. If they are sexually acting out . . . you certainly want to look at what's going on because it is indicative of abuse."

Van Hoozer said another child in the same circle of friends might have taught the acts to the boys.

"I think it's definitely a red flag that a child somewhere within this network of kids has been abused," she said. "But again, you have to stress that it may not be any of these kids."

Officials with the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, which investigates allegations of child abuse, said they are aware of the situation but have not opened an investigation.

"At this point, it doesn't appear to have been any neglect or abuse by the caregiver, because it was child on child," said Marla Sheely, spokeswoman for the agency. "We're still following it. We're still looking over the whole issue of supervision."

The teacher, who was not identified by school officials, is still teaching the class, and there have been no changes of policy, Marable said.

"I'm sure that particular teacher has changed her policy," she said.

[Edited by Waco Jesus on 03-27-2002 at 08:32 PM]

Asharak

03-27-2002, 08:00 PM

Condition causes violent 'sleep sex' (http://cbc.ca/stories/2002/03/26/sleepsex020326)
Last Updated Tue, 26 Mar 2002 18:04:04

STANFORD, CALIF. - Sleep researchers have identified a condition which causes people to commit violent sexual acts in their sleep.

They called the condition "sleep sex" and were able to treat it with medication, in much the same way as sleepwalking is treated.

The patients experience disruptive sexual behaviour in their sleep, ranging from moaning to violent sexual advances.

"What was surprising was the duration of the abnormal behaviour and the fact that people weren't reporting it," Stanford Medical School psychiatrist Christian Guilleminault said in a statement.

In their study, appearing in the March/April issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, the Stanford researchers divided the eleven patients into three groups according to the severity of their symptoms.

In the first group were two women who made sexual sounds in their sleep. While embarrassing, their symptoms were considered relatively harmless.

The second group, consisting of a man and a woman, experience periods of violent masturbation in their sleep, which left them bruised and sore.

The third group was made up of six men and one woman who made unwanted, and sometimes violent, sexual advances on their partners.

In one case, a patient tried to strangle his wife.

Researchers at the Stanford Sleep Clinic found that the behaviours coincided with unusual brain-wave patterns and short interruption in sleep, just as sleepwalking does.

Standard sleep disorder treatments, including Valium-like drugs, worked in all but one of the cases.

Guilleminault said each of the patients had emotional problems which may have changed sleepwalking into sleep sex.

"What your state of mind is will colour the presentation" of the sleep disturbance, he said

unreal

03-27-2002, 08:40 PM

damn..this news is wack...

stryfe

04-01-2002, 06:51 AM

<a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/State/mar02/31536.asp">Death of a game addict</a href> (complete text of story)

Shawn Woolley loved an online computer game so much that he played it just minutes before his suicide.

EverQuest is played by more than 400,000 people worldwide.
The 21-year-old Hudson man was addicted to EverQuest, says his mother, Elizabeth Woolley of Osceola. He sacrificed everything so he could play for hours, ignoring his family, quitting his job and losing himself in a 3-D virtual world where more than 400,000 people worldwide adventure in a never-ending fantasy.

On Thanksgiving morning last year, Shawn Woolley shot himself to death at his apartment in Hudson. His mother blames the game for her son's suicide. She is angry that Sony Online Entertainment, which owns EverQuest, won't give her the answers she desires. She has hired an attorney who plans to sue the company in an effort to get warning labels put on the games.

"It's like any other addiction," Elizabeth Woolley said last week. "Either you die, go insane or you quit. My son died."

In the virtual world of EverQuest, players control their characters through treasure- gathering, monster-slaying missions called quests. Success makes the characters stronger as they interact with other players from all over the real world.

Woolley has tried tracing her son's EverQuest identity to discover what might have pushed him over the edge. Sony Online cites its privacy policy in refusing to unlock the secrets held in her son's account.

She has a list of names her son scrawled while playing the game: "Phargun." "Occuler." "Cybernine." But Woolley is not sure if they are names of online friends, places he explored in the game or treasures his character may have captured in quests.

"Shawn was playing 12 hours a day, and he wasn't supposed to because he was epileptic, and the game would cause seizures," she said. "Probably the last eight times he had seizures were because of stints on the computer."

Woolley knows her son had problems beyond EverQuest, and she tried to get him help by contacting a mental health program and trying to get him to live in a group home. A psychologist diagnosed him with depression and schizoid personality disorder, symptoms of which include a lack of desire for social relationships, little or no sex drive and a limited range of emotions in social settings.

"This fed right into the EverQuest playing," Woolley said. "It was the perfect escape."

Vulnerable to addiction

Jay Parker, a chemical dependency counselor and co-founder of Internet/ Computer Addiction Services in Redmond, Wash., said Woolley's mental health problems put him in a category of people more likely to be at risk of getting addicted to online games.

Parker said people who are isolated, prone to boredom, lonely or sexually anorexic are much more susceptible to becoming addicted to online games. Having low self-esteem or poor body image are also important factors, he said.

"The manufacturer of EverQuest purposely made it in such a way that it is more intriguing to the addict," Parker said. "It could be created in a less addictive way, but (that) would be the difference between powdered cocaine and crack cocaine."

Parker doesn't make the narcotics analogy lightly. One client - a 21-year- old college student - stopped going to class within eight weeks after he started playing EverQuest his senior year.

After playing the game for 36 hours straight, he had a psychotic break because of sleep deprivation, Parker said.

"He thought the characters had come out of the game and were chasing him," Parker said. "He was running through his neighborhood having hallucinations. I can't think of a drug he could have taken where he would have disintegrated in 15 weeks."

stryfe

04-04-2002, 08:13 AM

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020404/od_nm/note_dc_1&e=1&ncid=573">Woman Hangs Self in Jail, Wants to Sue</a href>
BROOKSVILLE, Fla. (Reuters) - A murder suspect who hanged herself in a Florida jail left a suicide note asking her lawyer to sue the jail for failing to prevent her from killing herself, authorities said.

Laren Sims, who was being held in a Hernando County, Florida, jail awaiting extradition to California, suggested any money from the lawsuit could be used to support her two children.

Sims, 36, was found in her cell on Saturday and died a day later. She was charged in San Joaquin County, California, with killing husband Larry McNabney and burying him in a vineyard.

"This is all I can give to my children. ...My actions now will allow them to move into the future without this heavy burden. They won't have to watch my trial on Court TV," Sims wrote to her attorney Tom Hogan in the note dated Friday. "It should all die with me.

In her suicide note, which was found in a sandwich wrapper, Sims said she was not checked regularly in her cell.

Steven Owen, spokesman for Corrections Corporation of America, the company that operates the jail, said Wednesday an internal investigation by the company found Sims was properly supervised.

"If somebody is so determined to commit suicide then it's hard to stop them," Owen said.

stryfe

04-15-2002, 07:02 AM

<a href="http://www.odt.co.nz/cgi-bin/search-display-story-online-new?date=20Mar2002&object=FJG23I7590IP&type=html&WORDS=explosion+truck&DB=Editorial">Sewage truck contents explode</a href>
Joe Callahan
<img src="http://www.odt.co.nz/cgi-bin/getitem?date=20Mar2002&object=n101&type=jpg">

A brown sludge covers cars and parts of State Highway 1 yesterday after an explosion blew out the rear cover (pictured in foreground) of a septic tank vacuum truck.
<img src="http://www.odt.co.nz/cgi-bin/getitem?date=20Mar2002&object=n102&type=jpg">

Lorraine Isaacs inspects her damaged car after it was hit by a metal sluice valve.
<img src="http://www.odt.co.nz/cgi-bin/getitem?date=20Mar2002&object=n103&type=jpg">

The Dakins truck involved in yesterday's accident.
<img src="http://www.odt.co.nz/cgi-bin/getitem?date=20Mar2002&object=n104&type=jpg">
By Craig Page

Inner city traffic was showered with effluent and hydrogen peroxide after the back end of a septic tank vacuum truck exploded in Dunedin yesterday.

The explosion, which could heard and felt several blocks away, blew out a window at the nearby Leviathan Hotel and sent a metal sluice valve flying about 15m into the windscreen of a parked car. No-one was hurt.

A 50m trail of effluent was visible along Cumberland St, State Highway 1. The buckled rear cover of the tank was also lying in the middle of the road.

The incident caused "major" delays for southbound motorists, Senior Sergeant Allan Grindell said. The one-way system south was closed for almost three hours, forcing peak-hour traffic to be diverted through the heavy traffic bypass on Thomas Burns St. Some bus services were also delayed or cancelled.

Police said the cause of the explosion was under investigation.

Toilet jokes were flowing thick and fast among the dozens of people who rushed to the area to see what the commotion was all about. The incident occurred about 3.20pm as the Dakins liquid waste truck travelled south past the Leviathan Hotel.

The vehicle had been at the RF Woolscour near Logan Park cleaning out a sump and was understood to be returning to the company's Green island depot when the accident occurred.

The back end of the truck, which can be removed for cleaning purposes, blew out, covering several parked cars and the four-wheel-drive vehicle travelling behind it in sludge.

The truck's driver, Joe Callahan, was visibly shaken by the incident and at a loss to explain why it occurred. "There must have been a build-up of gas or something," he said.

He confirmed the truck contained a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and sludge.

"There was just this loud boom. It threw the truck across the road. I had trouble keeping it straight."

The truck travelled for about 50m before he was able to stop it.

Mr Callahan, who has worked for Dakins for nine years, said he could not repeat his words when he realised what had actually happened.

"My main concern was to see if anyone was injured. Luckily, no-one was."

Parry Thomas was travelling directly behind the truck when the explosion occurred. "You could see steam start to come from the side of the truck and then, boom."

The back end door of the truck was thrown metres into the air.

Mr Thomas' slammed on the brakes as effluent covered his vehicle."I had no idea what was going on. It all just happened so quickly. I thought I was going to end up with a car crashing into my backside."

Mr Thomas said his vehicle was not seriously damaged, although it was now overdue for a decent clean.

"Perhaps I might get that new paint job done now," he said.

Both Mr Callahan and Mr Thomas were treated by ambulance staff as a precaution.

Former Channel 9 head of production Lorraine Isaacs was one of the unlucky ones in the accident, her car being hit by a flying sluice valve. The valve left a dent in the roof of the car before smashing the windscreen.

"I just thought how lucky it was I wasn't in it at the time," she said.

The incident caused a traffic backlog for rush-hour traffic as Cumberland St was cordoned off between lower Stuart St and Queens Gardens. Southbound vehicles were diverted through the heavy traffic bypass through Thomas Burns St. Three lanes of the road reopened about 5.15pm and the remaining lane reopened about 6pm.

The Dunedin hazardous substances committee was called out to determine the best way to clean up the spill. Dunedin chief fire officer Dave Seque said that, once firefighters were given the all clear by Otago Regional Council and Dunedin City Council staff, the sludge was washed off the road into the storm water system.

Because of the heat of the road some of the sludge, which was not deemed to be toxic, had already evaporated, he said.

angoraphobia

04-15-2002, 07:12 AM

ewwwww gross!!!! haha...i feel so sorry for those on the receiving end of that!

trigonometry_vs_velvet

04-15-2002, 08:43 AM

Astro-noodles on Japan's space menu
April 15, 2002 Posted: 9:27 PM HKT (1327 GMT)

Instant noodles are big sellers in Japan

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- Japan's Nissin Food Products Co is determined to develop the ultimate fast food for hungry astronauts -- space-safe instant noodles.

A team of 10 experts from Japan's biggest instant noodle manufacturer will develop a cup and other means of preventing noodles from flying in different directions when confronted with

zero gravity, the Osaka-based food company said.

Nissin hopes to have the noodles ready in time for the launch of Japan's work to connect a research structure to the International Space Station now being built by 15 countries.

"We will develop the ultimate instant noodle product," Kyodo news agency quoted a Nissin official as saying.

Instant noodles require the hungry consumer just to add boiling water to noodles and spices in a polystyrene cup.

First launched in Japan almost five decades ago instant noodles have become one of the most popular snack foods in the world with an estimated 35 billion packs consumed each year.

stryfe

04-15-2002, 01:27 PM

<a href="http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_566545.html">Patient having op on backside breaks wind, causing fire</a href>

A Danish man having surgery on his backside broke wind and set his genitals alight.

A surgeon was removing a mole on his backside with an electric knife when the man broke wind, lighting a spark.

His genitals had been washed with surgical spirits and caught fire.

He's suing the hospital for pain and suffering and loss of income.

He says he had to take extra time off work and can't have sex with his wife. The hospital says it was an unfortunate accident.

"When I woke up, my penis and scrotum were burning like hell," the man told Danish Newspaper BT.

Surgeon Dr Jorn Kristensen said: "No-one considered the possibility the man would break wind during the operation, let alone that it would catch fire. It was an unfortunate accident."

The 30-year-old patient said: "I've had to be booked off work for longer than expected and, besides the pain, I can't have sex with my wife."

The operation which was being carried out at the Kjellerups hospital, was aborted immediately after the accident.

Reports says it's unlikely the doctor will face disciplinary action.

Story filed: 11:33 Sunday 14th April 2002

stryfe

04-30-2002, 07:23 AM

<a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/29040210.htm">MIT Accidentally Invents Cellular Sex Toy</a>
Good vibrations

By Tony Dennis, 29/04/2002 10:56:55 BST

MIT'S MEDIA Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts appears to have combined an intelligent vibrator with a mobile phone, according to a recent report in The New Scientist.

By doing so it may have inadvertly invented a mobile sex toy. Prototypes, made from latex, boast five tiny speakers which vibrate against your skin around 250 times per second.

Underneath these speakers sit pressure sensors enabling the recipient to send vi[agra]brations back to the sender.

The vibraphones are the work of the Media Lab's Tangible Media Group, whose representative, Angela Chang, says that current vibrating phones that have a motor spinning an eccentric weight inside the device are too crude for subtle communication.

The MIT vibraphones were given to a number of students who quickly developed their own 'vibra language'. It's not the first time that a handset's vibrations have been put to a novel use.

Mobile games company, In-Fusio, already markets a racing car game that does so. When the player crashes, the handset shakes accordingly. Chang is quoted as saying, "Imagine actually being able to shake someone's hand when you close a business deal?" Gives a whole new meaning to a hand job doesn't it?

Asharak

05-01-2002, 01:28 AM

Llamas' attacker pleads guilty (http://www.sptimes.com/2002/04/27/TampaBay/Llamas__attacker_plea.shtml)

Robert Pettyjohn agrees to eight years in prison for a series of charges, and could face 40 more years if he violates probation.

By ED QUIOCO, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 27, 2002

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The lead defendant in Pinellas County's most notorious animal abuse case pleaded guilty Friday to the golf-club beating of two pet llamas and numerous other crimes.

Robert "Bobby" Pettyjohn agreed to serve a total of eight years in prison. First he will serve a three-year sentence he already received for killing a bull in Hillsborough County. Then he will serve a five-year sentence for the llama-beating and other Pinellas charges, followed by five years of probation.

If he violates his probation, the 19-year-old could return to prison for as long as 40 years, prosecutors said.

"He, in effect, has a life sentence hanging over his head," assistant state attorney Bill Burgess said.

The case against Pettyjohn and his co-defendant, Brandon Eldred, began Feb. 11, 2001. On a moonlit night, they stumbled over the fence to Keith and Susan Appenzeller's livestock pen on Ranch Road in rural East Lake. They had been drinking beer, smoking marijuana and taking the prescription drug Xanax. They carried golf clubs.

They dragged a 3-month-old llama named Willie Wonka under a fence. It struggled to get away but was clubbed, kicked and punched. Its left eye was gouged out. When an adult female llama named Monopoly approached, they turned their attack on it.

Monopoly died a few hours later on the way to a hospital. A necropsy found that the llama had been sodomized and suffered 50 to 100 blows, mostly around its reproductive organs.

"From day one, we kept coming up with leads that we couldn't believe," said Pinellas County sheriff's Detective Tom Hoddinott, who investigated the case with Detective Mike Weaver. "I don't believe Pinellas County has ever seen anything like this."

One of the keys to the state's case, Burgess said, was that the deputies who responded to Ranch Road quickly found and interviewed Eldred and Pettyjohn. Deputies originally were called to Ranch Road when a neighbor reported seeing someone suspicious on his property.

Before learning of the llama attack, deputies encountered Eldred walking down Ranch Road, swinging a broken golf club shaft in his hand. When Deputy Robert Loveland stopped Eldred, the 18-year-old came at him in a threatening manner, according to court reports.

Loveland drew his gun and ordered Eldred to drop the club. Loveland then took the club, which ended up being a crucial piece of evidence, questioned Eldred briefly and let him go. First, however, Eldred mentioned that he had been with his friend Bobby Pettyjohn and that he was looking for him.

That statement tied the two together.

Soon after, with morning fog still blanketing the street, Keith Appenzeller flagged down deputies. He had discovered Willie Wonka grunting and lying next to a blood-splattered clump of leaves. The animal was beaten so badly that Appenzeller first thought it had been hit by a car.

Appenzeller also found a shiny metal rod near the injured llama. He thought it was a car antenna. In fact, it was the broken shaft of a golf club.

Deputies immediately brought Eldred back for questioning. While he was being questioned, another deputy found Pettyjohn in the driveway of his parents' home on Ranch Road. He was passed out in a Jeep, one foot hanging out of the door. Deputies tried to nudge him awake but couldn't. Then his mother came out to the Jeep and roused him by slapping him. Talking to a deputy, Pettyjohn suddenly said, "We were just f------ around with the llamas, man."

In the weeks that followed, detectives delved into a "subculture" of Pettyjohn's friends, Hoddinott said.

"It just opened the floodgates," Weaver said.

In Hillsborough, the two were charged with shooting arrows at two bulls at a ranch in Odessa. In Pinellas, Eldred was charged with hacking a third llama in the face with a titanium meat cleaver. Pettyjohn was charged with mutilating a pet goat named Peter.

Investigators say the goat was stabbed and beaten to death, its head cracked into 29 pieces. It was buried in the back yard of Pettyjohn's former home on Ranch Road.

One witness decribed the goat as being used as a "living pinata." When Pettyjohn was asked for a motive, he replied, "Pure pleasure," deputies said.

At the time, detectives said to themselves, "this is completely unbelievable," Hoddinott said.

Court records also reveal the other tips that Pettyjohn's friends gave detectives and prosecutors. They described how he watched the movie Hannibal -- about a cannibalistic serial killer -- the weekend of the llama attacks. They also said he threw large parties where teens used drugs openly in the front yard of his parents' former home on Ranch Road. They told of Pettyjohn hunting squirrels with a BB gun, cutting off their tails and pinning them to a wall.

Another friend reported seeing Pettyjohn throw a dead hawk into a bonfire. Still another saw him place an opossum's head on a stick and hack armadillos with a machete.

In videotaped conversations with relatives and friends visiting him at Pinellas County Jail last year, Pettyjohn was, by turns, brash with friends, rude to deputies and emotional with relatives. He talked of suing "the news" for slandering him.

At one point, Pettyjohn talked of going on a cruise with his mother when he got out of jail and said he faced no real jail time. Other times, he sounded confused.

"I'd feel better if I knew what the h--- was going on," Pettyjohn said to his mother during one visit about a year ago. "I'd feel better if someone would actually do something. I can't do s--- in here. I've been in here forever. They don't care. They just want to keep me in here for as long as they can."

On Friday, Pettyjohn's guilty plea brought the owners of the two llamas both closure and sadness.

"My feelings go back and forth," Susan Appenzeller said, fighting back tears. "I'm really angry that it happened, but I feel really bad for him. We are just sorry that this is his life now."

Wearing thin-rimmed glasses, a green shirt and pants with a dark tie, a slender Pettyjohn seemed to be in a good mood during Friday's 30-minute hearing, blowing a kiss to his family and friends at the beginning of the proceedings.

In Pinellas, Pettyjohn faced nine felony charges -- three for cruelty to animals -- and a misdemeanor charge for trespassing. The felonies, which carried a maximum penalty of five years, ranged from distribution of a controlled substance to grand theft.

In return for his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop a Pasco County escape charge for Pettyjohn's walking out the front door of jail in October.

The weight of what Pettyjohn was facing was the reason for the plea, said his attorney, Chip Purcell, who called it "risk management."

"Was it the right thing to do?" Purcell said. "I hope so. Do I know for sure? No. I just know that we couldn't run the risk."

Pettyjohn's family had little to say after the hearing.

"We have a couple of weeks before we talk to anybody," said Pettyjohn's mother, Janet. "Right now, our emotions are too high."

Pettyjohn's co-defendant, Eldred, has so far escaped a prison sentence. Eldred was sentenced to house arrest and probation for the attack on the bulls, while Pettyjohn got the three-year sentence.

Eldred's attorney has argued that his client is different from Pettyjohn because he has shown remorse and offered to help the state against Pettyjohn.

When asked whether he thought there was a difference between Eldred and Pettyjohn, Detective Hoddinott said, "they were both there."

Eldred is waiting to be sentenced for his part of the attack on the Appenzellers' llamas. Pinellas prosecutors intend to recommend that he go to prison, too.

On Friday, as the courtroom cleared, prosecutor Bill Burgess looked at the Appenzellers and said, "One down. One to go."

Asharak

05-12-2002, 05:55 PM

Penis puppeteers told to zip it (http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,4294488%255E12216,00.html)

11may02
THEY'VE toured the world and have more than 1000 performances under their belts, but Australian touring show Puppetry of the Penis have been told by the New Zealand city of Wanganui, on the north island, to zip up and shove off.

The town's council called an emergency meeting on Thursday and voted to ban the show from performing at the Royal Wanganui Opera House on May 28.
Ross Mollison Productions are now searching the city for an alternative venue to stage the show in which two men twist and turn their genitals into shapes ranging from the Eiffel Tower to a hamburger.

Executive producer Thomas Milazzo said if the people of Wanganui still wanted the show, they would do their best to find a suitable theatre.

He was annoyed the council did not speak to the company before the vote, which was split 7-5 in favour of banning the show.

Milazzo believes those against it had a misconception it was a "raunchy" show and the people should have been left to "vote" with their wallets.

"Our show has absolutely no sexual references, violence or coarse language," he said.

"It's about two blokes with no pants, doing very silly things and making us laugh.

"If people are offended by nudity they should not buy a ticket."

Wanganui mayor Chas Poynter said the community was "aghast and upset about this show".

Poynter said the council could not ban it from the city but did not want it at the opera house, which the city controls.

While callers to local radio station poll voted overwhelmingly for council to stay out of it, there is some support for the ban.

"It's corrupt and it doesn't give a good image to this town," one local told a TV station.

stryfe

05-14-2002, 01:18 PM

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=579&e=2&cid=579&u=/nm/20020514/en_nm/media_penthouse_dc_1">Sunbather Mistaken for Kournikova Due to Nipples</a>
Tue May 14, 4:34 PM ET

By Gail Appleson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A St. Louis jewelry salesman who sold Penthouse Magazine a video of a topless sunbather misidentified as Anna Kournikova testified on Tuesday he mistook the woman for the tennis star because of the diameter of her nipples.

Frank Ramaesiri, the salesman, testified at a hearing to determine whether Penthouse will be forced to recall unsold issues of June magazine which carries about a dozen photos of the sunbather, who is actually Judith Soltesz- Benetton, the daughter-in-law of Italian fashion designer Luciano Benetton.

nancyK

05-14-2002, 05:28 PM

not news.. just facts

1. It is impossible to lick your elbow
2. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit
3. Rats and horses can't vomit
4. Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes
5. The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache
6. Walt Disney was afraid of mice
7. Pirates thought that wearing earrings improved their eyesight
8. There are more plastic flamingos in the U.S. than real ones
9. Humans and Armadillos are the only animals that can get leprosy
10. Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."

cosmicgrrl

06-05-2002, 06:26 PM

<a href=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/06/05/state1856EDT0165.DTL target=new> Tonga court jester accused of bungling kingdom's investments </a>
06-05 AP

Tonga, the Pacific's only kingdom, says the king's court jester is laughing all the way to the bank in a scandal involving the loss of millions of dollars in investments, according to a lawsuit filed here.

Millions have been wiped from a fund the impoverished nation of 100,000 Polynesians built up by selling passports -- mainly to Chinese from Hong Kong worried about the return of the territory to Beijing, the suit alleges.

Exact details of the missing money remain unclear, but according to a suit filed by the Tongan government in U.S. District Court here Monday, as much as $24 million has vanished from the $26 million fund that an American businessman invested in the United States beginning in 1999.

The loss is staggering for a nation run on a budget of around $55 million a year and dependent mainly on revenue from exporting pumpkins and money sent home by Tongans living overseas. The suit said the fund was set up for "the benefit of the Tongan people."

Tonga is a small archipelago of 170 islands located about two-thirds of the way between Hawaii and New Zealand. The former British protectorate gained independence in 1970.

According to the suit, the money was withdrawn from a Bank of America account in San Francisco by the king's official court jester, Jesse Bogdonoff, a California-based investment adviser living in Sonoma County's Penngrove. The suit alleges that the funds were transferred to failed investments and pocketed by Bogdonoff and others.

The suit also said that Bogdonoff and associates paid themselves "millions of dollars in charges, commissions and fees" that were not disclosed to the trust.

Bogdonoff, who reportedly was appointed jester after impressing King Tupou Taufa'ahau with investment advice and because he was born April 1, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The nation's consulate here did not return messages.

The losses from the secretive Tongan account came to light last year when the nation's 10-year-old pro-democracy movement began probing it in parliament, which is dominated by lawmakers appointed by the royal family and Tonga's 33 noble families.

The disclosure of the missing money led to the resignation of one of the government's investment fund trustees, Deputy Prime Minister Tevita Tupou. Also resigning was Education Minister Tutotasi Fakafanua, who was finance minister in 1999 when the money was withdrawn.

The case is Tonga Trust Fund v. Bogdonoff, 02-2654.

stryfe

06-07-2002, 12:22 PM

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/06/06/crime.spitball.reut/index.html">Spitball felon, 13, avoids 8-year jail sentence</a>

June 6, 2002 Posted: 10:57 PM EDT (0257 GMT)

WALNUT CREEK, California (Reuters) -- A 13-year-old California boy who was facing a possible eight years in juvenile prison for a spitball attack on a fellow student was given a much lighter sentence Thursday -- although he will still log some time behind bars.

Jeffrey Figueroa, who made national headlines after he was convicted of two felonies for injuring a 14-year-old boy with the speedy spitball, was ordered to spend a spend a total of one week in juvenile detention -- logged on weekends -- in a case that his lawyer said showed prosecutors intent on "criminalizing childhood behavior."

"These kids aren't going to get into any trouble. We're going to keep them in the house," Jeffrey's father, Steve Figueroa, told reporters after the hearing, which also saw Jeffrey's 14-year-old brother given a slightly lesser sentence for egging Jeffrey on in the spitball incident.

In addition to their time in juvenile detention, both boys were ordered to attend anger management classes, told to obey a 7 p.m. curfew as part of home probation and instructed to undergo counseling.

They will both also be required to perform up to 150 hours of community service at a local eye bank.

Figueroa admitted that he shot the spitball -- a gum wrapper moistened with saliva -- on the first day of school last September at a middle school in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, California.

While Figueroa said he was not aiming at anybody in particular, the spitball hit a 14-year-old boy in the right eye, requiring a trip to the hospital and surgery.

Last month Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Araceli Ramirez found Jeffrey guilty of battery causing serious bodily injury and mayhem, both felonies. His brother was found guilty on a lesser charge.

Numerous neighbors testified at Thursday's sentencing hearing, saying the boys frequently ran wild in the neighborhood and at times appeared threatening.

Ramirez, while declining to throw the book at the boys, did have sharp words for both the young men and their parents, saying they had been "in denial" about their sons' behavior.

Figueroa's lawyer, Caren Johnson, criticized Contra Costa County District Attorney Robert Burke as overreacting to the case, saying prosecutors were intent on "criminalizing childhood behavior."

"I've got little boys. They've got swords, they whack each other with swords. What if they whack a neighbor kid with a sword. Is Burke going to charge my little 5-year-old with battery?" she said.

But the principal investigator for the district attorney's office testified that both boys were frequently out of control and needed to be taught a lesson.

"Normal boy activity is responsible and does responsible things," said investigator Mark Ernst.

"Occasionally they may do something that they shouldn't do, but they generally respect authority, respect adult figures and correct their behavior."

Burke, speaking after the sentencing, said he was fairly satisfied with the sentence but that Jeffrey Figueroa's spitball victim was still being treated for damage to his eye.

"I couldn't replace that young man's eye, and that's what we'd all like to have happen. So I guess you never feel like you've done everything you could do," Burke said.

stryfe

06-11-2002, 11:32 AM

<a href="http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_605668.html?menu=news.latestheadlines">Police investigate after man cuts off testicles of man he met on the internet</a>

Police are considering charges against a US man who cut off the testicles of a man he met on the internet.

Officers found the apparently willing victim sitting on a kerb in blood-stained jeans in Oak Park, Michigan.

They later found his testicles in a Tupperware container in a refrigerator at the home of the suspect.

Police say the victim met the Oak Park man through the internet. The pair chatted online before meeting in person.

The Oak Park man allegedly removed the testicles with a scalpel while the other man was on the kitchen table.

The suspect first stitched the wound, and the two sat around eating pie. Soon afterward, the victim started bleeding uncontrollably.

Detective Lieutenant Bruce Smith told The Daily Tribune: "The victim said this is something he wanted to do. I don't know why. It's unbelievable."

He said the 48-year-old victim, from Birmingham, later underwent three hours of surgery in hospital. The suspect, who was 29, was released while authorities determine whether a crime was committed.

stryfe

06-11-2002, 11:37 AM

<a href="http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_603977.html?menu=news.weirdworld.sexlife">Impotent man chops off penis in public</a>

A Thai man suffering from impotence has chopped off his penis with a meat cleaver.

Bangkok police say the 49-year-old asked his doctor to arrange an amputation because of his impotence.

The doctor advised Jaruwat Techawachayanun to seek help for the condition at another clinic. He refused.

Witnesses say they saw him rest his penis on a stone and chop it off. He then threw it in a bin.

A witness picked it out, packed it in ice and phoned police. Officers took him to hospital. It is not known if it can be reattached.

Witness Tongdee Kongsombat told the Thai Daily News: "I saw a man pull up outside my house in a pick-up truck.

"The man caught my attention because when he got out of the truck he had a towel wrapped around his waist and a meat cleaver in his hand.

"He walked down a side street, sat down, rested his penis on a large stone and with three chops severed it completely."

The witness retrieved it from the bin and called police who found Mr Techawachayanun sitting in his truck bleeding heavily.

ocd

06-11-2002, 11:39 AM

Jesus christ! Three chops, that's fucking insane.

stryfe

06-11-2002, 11:42 AM

i'm thinking that it had to hurt...i don't know what makes me say that but...hmm...

stryfe

06-11-2002, 11:43 AM

<a href="http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_602813.html?menu=news.weirdworld.badtaste">Politicians swig cocktail containing human toe</a>

<table><td>Two Canadian politicians have received certificates for downing whiskey with a pickled human toe in it.

Gary Doer and Gordon Campbel swigged the 'Sour toe Cocktail' in the Yukon.

They were given certificates for letting the toe touch their lips as they each drank a shot of Yukon Jack whiskey.</td><td><img src="http://www.sourtoecocktailclub.com/toe/images/toe.gif"></td></table>

Doer said: "It was a little rare."

The two premiers are in Dawson City, site of the 1896 Klondike Gold Rush, for the annual western premiers conference.

More than 10,000 people have received official Sour toe Cocktail certificates.

The tradition started in the early 1970s. The first toe was believed to have come from a frost-bitten gold miner's foot, according to the Canada.com website. There have been several toes involved since.

According to the Sour toe Cocktail Club, the second was donated by a Mrs Lawrence of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. Her middle toe had been amputated thirteen years earlier due to an inoperable corn.

The third was sent in 1982 by a trapper in Faro. He'd had his big toe removed due to frostbite.

The fourth was sent by an anonymous donor, and the eighth arrived in a jar of medical alcohol. It's understood the donor had been mowing a lawn in open-toed sandals.

[Edited by stryfe on 06-11-2002 at 12:47 PM]

Margin Walker

06-17-2002, 04:13 PM

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/158/nation/Satire_in_US_becomes_news_in_China-.shtml

Satire in US becomes news in China
By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times, 6/7/2002

BEIJING - An embarrassing gaffe by China's usually staid state-run media has left a popular newspaper here with onion on its face.

Readers of the Beijing Evening News, the capital's largest-circulation newspaper, learned this week that the US Congress had threatened to move out of Washington unless a fancy new Capitol was built.
(snip)
The story seems newsworthy enough. Trouble is, it was lifted straight from The Onion, the satirical ''news'' publication based in New York that has caused countless American readers to double over with laughter at its weekly spoofs on current events.

Its story on the Capitol appeared in its May 29 edition, alongside such headlines as ''Sexual Tension Between Arafat, Sharon Reaches Breaking Point'' and ''Man Blames Hangover on Everything But How Much He Drank.''

kamenriderv3

06-17-2002, 05:22 PM

the onion is real news!!! its all true!

<i>stabble, stabble, stabble....</i>

stryfe

06-19-2002, 10:09 AM

<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=573&e=3&u=/nm/20020619/od_nm/alligator_dc_1">Body Found in Florida Pond After Alligator Scare</a>
Wed Jun 19, 6:06 AM ET

STUART, Fla. (Reuters) - Rescue crews pulled the body of a car theft suspect from a Florida pond Tuesday, a day after persuading four alleged accomplices to abandon the watery hiding place because it was full of alligators.

The 18-year-old suspect's body was found on Tuesday morning but bore no signs of an alligator attack.

"He died of drowning as far as we know," a Martin County sheriff's dispatcher told Reuters.

Deputies were chasing a group of teen-agers suspected of stealing cars early on Monday. When they blocked the fleeing vehicles' path, the suspects jumped out, fled on foot and dived into the pond, a sheriff's report said.

Deputies persuaded the teens to surrender by shining their flashlights into the water, illuminating the red eyes of several nearby alligators.

"The kids realized they were more afraid of the alligators than they were of us," a deputy told the Palm Beach Post.

Four suspects surrendered and were booked into a juvenile holding center on charges of grand theft and resisting arrest.

Deputies thought they had all the suspects and left the scene but "there was one more person that we didn't know about," the dispatcher said.

Investigators only learned the fifth suspect was in the pond when his mother reported him missing and said he had been with the other boys.

Margin Walker

06-21-2002, 03:44 PM

Oscar Meyer Wienermobile Almost Busted
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/jun02/52849.asp?source=tmj4

It's the most famous motorized sausage in the nation, but even the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile can't drive on a restricted road next to the Pentagon.

The crew of the 27-foot-long hot dog on wheels got grilled by police when it mistakenly traveled on a road closed to commercial traffic.

Ever since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, Route 110 has been off limits to vehicles with six wheels or more because of concerns that someone could drive a truck bomb close to the home of the nation's defense department.

So when the Wienermobile that departed from Madison lumbered down Route 110 Tuesday evening, a Virginia state trooper's eyes widened. Perhaps expecting the wurst, he flipped on his flashing lights and pulled over the lost dog.

Traffic on the busy road that runs along the Potomac River backed up for a short time as people craned their heads and gawked, obviously relishing the sight of the Wienermobile getting busted.

A passing motorist gave a frank appraisal of the sausage pilot's gaffe.

"Everyone around here knows you don't bring trucks on that road, and it wasn't just any truck, it was the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile," said Carrie Witt, who was driving to her home in Alexandria, Va., after visiting a friend.

That stretch of Route 110 is lighted with large spotlights and staffed around the clock by armed officers in squad cars and Humvees at checkpoints, said Witt, who travels on the road several times a week.

"So here was this very serious (security) detail and they're pulling over a cartoon truck," said Witt. "It's probably the most benign truck on the road - that's why it's so funny."

At the Wienermobile wheel were Will Keller and Paula Pendleton, both 22 and recent college graduates from Illinois and California, who had just finished the two-week-long Hot Dog High at Oscar Mayer headquarters in Madison.

Packed in the back of the Wienermobile, which will travel throughout the East for a year, were boxes of Wienermobile whistles, Wienermobile Hot Wheels, Wienermobile-shaped bean bag toys and a karaoke machine featuring the Oscar Mayer wiener and bologna jingles.

After learning how to parallel park as well as boning up on the history of the company and Oscar Mayer jingles, Keller and Pendleton, who are called hot-doggers - like the drivers of the six other Wienermobiles - drove from Madison to Washington, D.C., for visits to a barbecue cook-off and charity events.

They didn't know Route 110 is verboten to Wienermobiles.

"They were very apologetic," said Sarah Delea, Oscar Mayer spokeswoman. "They just did not realize. They were sorry for any sort of traffic delay."

Trooper Robert Stacy knew the Wienermobile drivers probably weren't casing the Pentagon. He knew it was also highly unlikely a terrorist would choose a 27-foot-long bright orange vehicle shaped like a hot dog to pack with explosives and commit mayhem.

So after checking them out, Stacy directed Keller and Pendleton to the nearest exit. He didn't give them a ticket either.

"Obviously, this was a mistake," said Virginia State Police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell. "This hot dog posed no threat to us."

stryfe

06-24-2002, 10:03 AM

<a href="http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/0621funeralfight21-ON.html">Preacher says he was dragged, beat up after sermon</a>

Associated Press
June 21, 2002 05:45:00

LOXLEY, Ala. - Authorities are investigating the alleged beating of a preacher by funeral mourners who didn't like his blunt eulogy.

Glynis Bethel tells the Associated Press that her husband, Pastor Orlando Bethel, was attacked during a June 14 funeral and dragged out of the church. That's because Bethel told mourners the deceased was in hell and that they were headed the same way. The dead man was Mrs. Bethel's uncle. Pastor Bethel referred to him as a "drunkard and a fornicator." Mrs. Bethel, who's also a preacher, says, "the fornicators didn't like what he said so they got up and beat him." She says police didn't make any arrests, so she and her husband, who may have a broken nose, are taking out warrants.

Asharak

06-24-2002, 04:35 PM

Man's assertions land him in jail in sex abuse case (http://www.sptimes.com/2002/06/24/TampaBay/Man_s_assertions_land.shtml)

He boasted of being a pedophile, and police say he informed them he had child porn on his computer.

By TAMARA LUSH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published June 24, 2002

TEMPLE TERRACE -- On his Web site, Steven Schurgard called himself "a full-fledged pedophile."

He hung out at a local roller skating rink with kids and kept photos of shirtless young boys in his home, police said.

The 33-year-old man also used the Internet to boldly defend his sexual preferences. "I am very proud of the fact that I was able to express myself so freely," he wrote on his Web site, which has since been shut down. "I had thoughts inside me that had to be released. . . . I hope I have entertained, educated and encouraged my fellow boy lovers."

And, detectives said, Schurgard knew the law.

"This guy is smart enough to know that he has freedom of speech," said agent Al Danna of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

But Schurgard's honesty may have led to his arrest.

On June 4, when Temple Terrace police tried to confront him about sending potentially threatening e-mails to his family in another state, Schurgard answered the door with a gun tucked in the waist of his pants. He threatened the officers and then informed them that he had child pornography on his computer, police said.

He wasn't lying, said Temple Terrace police Capt. Tracy Mishler. Officers found a computer, videotapes and photos of young boys posing in sexual situations, he said.

Schurgard, who had been living with his mother in Temple Terrace, was charged with three counts of possession of child pornography. The case was then turned over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which discovered that the children in the photos lived in Town 'N Country near Schurgard's old apartment.

The FDLE investigation led to the interviews of dozens of children, and seven more charges against Schurgard, including sexual battery of a child and use of a child in a sexual performance. He may face other charges because investigators aren't finished scrutinizing Schurgard's computer.

Agent Danna interviewed Schurgard in the Hillsborough County Jail, where he is being held without bail. Schurgard had no prior arrest record in Florida.

Schurgard said his Web site was "all a big joke," the agent said.

Danna said that interviews with children in Schurgard's former apartment complex revealed that he used to give boys gifts, hold sleepovers and ask older teenage boys to bring younger boys back to his apartment.

"It is not normal for a single, adult male to have children socializing with him all the time," said Danna.

The detective also talked to a young boy who said that Schurgard assaulted him. The boy's statement led to the sexual battery charge.

"He had children coming in and out of his place," said Danna. "Law enforcement never got a call complaining about him."

One national child advocacy group said it told the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the FBI about Schurgard's Web site a year and a half ago.

"This guy presented himself as a predator," said Wendell Krueth, the president of Predator Hunter, a national nonprofit organization that tracks suspected child molesters.

But Danna said that information never reached the FDLE. Temple Terrace police said the same. And even though Schurgard declared that he was a pedophile, there was little authorities could have done with just that information.

"Saying you're a pedophile . . . doesn't open the door for a search warrant," said Danna. "You need witnesses and victims."

Schurgard, who also posted numerous messages on electronic bulletin boards discussing pedophilia before he was arrested, once tried to explain his predilection for young boys.

"It's not as if I volunteered to be a weirdo," wrote Schurgard. "I've got no choice but to play the cards that God, Mother Nature, (or whoever) dealt me. No, I wasn't molested when I was a kid. I just guess I was given the gift of being able to see life in a different perspective than most. Am I normal and everyone else is sick? I doubt it."

-- Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report

Margin Walker

06-25-2002, 01:55 PM

Wanna see mybest "His Girl Friday" impression? OK.:

"Stop the presses!! STOP THE PRESSES!!

(catches breath)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=529&ncid=529&e=8&u=/ap/20020625/ap_en_ot/beetle_bailey_1

Beetle Bailey To Get New Character!!!!"

There. That geek enough for ya?

Margin Walker

06-26-2002, 04:57 PM

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_612848.html?menu=news.latestheadlines

Doctors baffled by boy, 6, covered in ape-like hair

http://www.ananova.com/images/news/apeboy410x309.jpg

Doctors in Kazakhstan are baffled after finding a six-year-old boy covered in ape-like hair.

The boy, called Ablay, was found in a remote mountain village close to the Chinese border.

He is covered in thick hair from head to toe and has an oval shaped skull.

Doctors suspect nuclear radiation or a genetic disorder may be responsible.

Ablay was found by a visiting team of doctors holding a medical camp for children in the village of Terymagash.

They believe he is suffering from a rare and incurable condition known as hyperthrihos.

His mother Ayaulym, 26, and father Bahyt, 33, are distant relatives. Such marriages are common in Kazakhstan mountain hamlets.

Ayaulym said village elders advised them to send their son to the circus but she wanted him to go to school.

She said: "His life will be full of difficulties. Looking in mirror will bring him pain. He will be ridiculed and mocked."

Doctors from Aksay hospital said the boy has surprising mobility, flexibility, sociability, a kind of special intuition and a unique sense of direction.

Asharak

06-26-2002, 05:27 PM

Rockin'!

Margin Walker

07-05-2002, 04:49 PM

"The Sopranos" offend individual dignity' of Italian-Americans??

http://abcnews.go.com:80/wire/Entertainment/ap20020703_402.html

Italian-American Group Will Seek Another Hearing in Lawsuit Over TV's 'Sopranos'

U.S.C H I C A G O, July 3 — Attorneys in a lawsuit that accuses the makers of the TV series "The Sopranos" of offending Italian Americans by depicting them as mobsters say they will seek another hearing in the case.

The Italian-American Defense Association had filed the lawsuit against Time Warner Entertainment Co. under the "individual dignity" clause of the Illinois Constitution.

Attorneys for the association said the group didn't want money or the HBO show's cancellation, but a declaration from a jury that the show offends the dignity of Italian Americans.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Richard Siebel dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice last September, ruling that the clause in the state's Constitution was merely advisory.

The Illinois Appellate Court upheld that ruling June 28.

The association plans to file a motion for a rehearing, Michael Polelle, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Tuesday. He said if the group loses in circuit court, it will ask for a hearing before the Illinois Supreme Court.

Time Warner's lawyer, Tom Yannucci, previously argued that viewers would not assume from watching the show that all Italian Americans are mobsters or morally corrupt.

ocd

07-11-2002, 11:09 AM

<font size="3" face=arial color=black>Malaysian addicts get natural high... from cow dung</font>

<font size="1" face=arial>July 11, 2002 Posted: 6:09 PM HKT (1009 GMT)</font>

A regular supplier .
------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Faced with some of the world's strictest anti-drug laws, some addicts in Malaysia are sniffing fresh cow dung to get high.

An official at the National Narcotics Agency said Thursday the problem was small but growing among addicts who cannot buy drugs.

Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz was quoted in The New Straits Times newspaper Wednesday as saying she wanted the government to deal with addicts who sniff cow dung, glue and even polystyrene smoke.

She did not elaborate.

"The cow dung emits gases like sulfur, and addicts sniff on these gases to get high," the official at the agency said on condition of anonymity.

Despite harsh anti-narcotics laws that call for death by hanging for drug traffickers, Malaysia does not have legislation to cover such acts as cow dung sniffing, the official said.
.
"The problem is not very serious yet, but we are worried as this method means addicts can get high for free," the official said.

Malaysia, a nation of 23 million people, had more than 200,000 drug addicts. About 40,000 of them are repeat users who had not kicked the habit despite undergoing government-funded rehabilitation programs.

Malaysia approved a law last month that allows for punishing hard-core addicts who repeatedly fail rehabilitation with five to 13 years in prison and six lashes from a rattan cane.

http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/07/11/malaysia.dung.ap/index.html

stryfe

07-12-2002, 09:00 AM

<a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2002320182,00.html">Gut saves fatty in attack</a>
By ANDREW PARKER

PORKY Shaun Reaney was saved by his beer gut when thugs slashed open his belly with a circular saw.

The 22-stone builder suffered a gaping 18-inch wound that would have killed a normal weight man.

But docs were able to sew up the wound without complications — because the blade did not get through his blubber.

Shaun, who loves beer and curry, said: “It’s a good job I had that layer to protect me.”

And wife Theresa, 36, said: “The docs told me if he had been ten stone lighter he would have died. The saw would have sliced into his internal organs. When Shaun came round he reminded me that his years of boozing had saved his life.”

Shaun, 37, was attacked when he and a pal went to challenge four yobs trespassing at a footie ground where he is club secretary.

He was beaten around the head with a wheel brace and then one of the yobs shouted: “I’m going to cut him.”

Shaun, of Chelmsley Wood, West Midlands, recalled: “He ran over to their Jeep and I heard him start up a circular cutter.

“I knew the noise from ones we use on building sites to cut bricks. The next thing I knew he had lunged at me and my stomach was gaping open.”

Cops are hunting the thugs, in their late teens or early 20s, who escaped in the stolen Jeep.

stryfe

07-18-2002, 06:56 AM

<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/computergames/story/0,11500,667942,00.html">Game publicity plan raises grave concerns</a>

Mark Oliver
Friday March 15, 2002

A computer games firm has been accused of pushing back the frontiers of bad taste after it announced that it was seeking to advertise its latest title on gravestones.

Acclaim Entertainment said yesterday that it would pay relatives of the recently bereaved in return for placing small billboards on headstones, and that the offer might "particularly interest poorer families".

The Church of England said that there was no way it would allow any of its graveyards to be used in such a fashion. A spokesman said: "There was enough fuss with plastic flowers in churchyards."

A spokeswoman for the company, which bills the game as a "journey to the Deathside", said: "It's a dark, gory type of game and we thought it was appropriate to raise advertising to a new level."

The firm insisted that it was a genuine offer and claimed that the marketing ideas for its new PlayStation 2 game, ShadowMan 2, were valid.

Acclaim Entertainment went on to claim that "advertising on gravestones falls outside of codes of conduct and regulations of any formal advertising bodies".

However, Matthew Carrington, chairman of the Outdoor Advertising Association, said that any attempt to advertise on headstones would require planning permission from local authorities whether the land was public or private.

Mr Carrington said: "It is illegal to put any advertising up outdoors without planning permission ... and of course there could be issues of desecration."

He said the concept of advertising in graveyards was "clearly objectionable" but said he was not surprised as advertising firms were continually "upping the ante to shock". He added that he thought it unlikely that the firm would get approval for its plan.

Sony, which makes the PlayStation 2 consoles, said it would not comment on the advertising tactics of third parties who produce games for them under licence. A spokeswoman rejected suggestions that Sony was responsible for creating an "edgy" advertising culture around its console which may have galvanised Acclaim Entertainment's marketing tactics.

On the ShadowMan 2 website, the game is described as incorporating "fierce and gruesome" fighting. It involves users playing a New York policeman who has a "living dead" alter ago who is seeking a confrontation with the devil. He has magic and voodoo weapons to help him.

A London spokesman for Acclaim Entertainment, which is based in New York, said that was appreciated that people may find its advertising offer offensive but that others might see it as a good way of procuring "a subsidy to burial costs to give their loved one a good send-off". He rejected the suggestion it was a cynical media stunt.

No one has yet to volunteer and the firm said payments would be calculated with regard to the exposure potential of any particular headstone.

Margin Walker

07-24-2002, 09:40 PM

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2002/07/24/chocolate/index.html

Man Dies in Vat of Chocolate
July 24, 2002 .|. HATFIELD, Pa. (AP) -- A candy factory worker died after being submerged in a 1,200-gallon vat of liquefied chocolate, police said.

Yoni Cordon, 19, of Philadelphia, was discovered in the vat by co-workers at the Kargher Corporation on Tuesday, authorities said.

Police said they believe Cordon had been working on a platform near the opening of the vat, which is used for mixing and melting chocolate.

Nobody saw Cordon fall and it was unknown how long he was submerged before he was found, Hatfield Township police detective Patrick M. Hanrahan said.

Hanrahan said foul play was not suspected and the death was being investigated as an accident.

nikel

07-25-2002, 12:49 AM

i read that death-by-chocolate account earlier. how bizarrely awful.
crunch nougat center?

stryfe

07-25-2002, 07:14 AM

hmm...wonder if they disposed of all of the chocolate?

perseus

08-04-2002, 02:23 PM

old but funny...

excerpt:

Publicity stunts and milder special events aren't ever a sure thing. Your parade can get rained on and a breaking news story elsewhere can pull the media away. When Massachusetts retailer Rick Segel sponsored a gala contest for the Best Hairdresser of Medford, the fur coats that bore contestants' numbers got switched, causing prizes to be awarded to the wrong people. Two judges walked out and fistfights almost broke out among the hairdressers.

http://www.yudkin.com/stunts.htm

stryfe

08-08-2002, 07:31 AM

<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-376704,00.html">Debit card victim wins against odds</a>
By Robin Young

A WOMAN whose debit card was stolen found
herself in profit when she checked her bank balance — because the thief had used it to bet on the horses and his winnings were paid directly into her account.

Jacqueline Boanson was described in court yesterday as “the happiest victim of theft ever”. Magistrates at Cheltenham were told that after her card was stolen she looked at her bank statement, and found that the balance had gone up by £291.40.

The money had been paid into her account by Ladbrokes as Andrew Cameron’s winnings from two £50 bets on horse races.

Cameron, of Cheltenham, admitted stealing Mrs Boanson’s card from the communal post at the block of flats where she lived.

His solicitor, Howard Ogden, told the court: “The horses won but, instead of paying my client the cash, Ladbrokes paid the winnings into her account. It was only when she inquired at Ladbrokes that they discovered how the money had been credited to her. Andy Cameron did her proud and she must be the happiest victim that we ever had in this court.”

In fact, Mrs Boanson had inadvertently placed that punter’s dream: a no-risk bet, as Sean Boyce of Ladbrokes explained: “If the bets placed on a stolen debit card had been losing ones they would have been voided and the stake money would have been returned, but in these exceptional circumstances it would seem a bit churlish to deprive Mrs Boanson of her winnings.

“Cameron was on a hiding to nothing, because he would have needed complete ID matching the card to get paid in cash.”

Cameron, who pleaded guilty to stealing the card and obtaining the two bets by deception, was placed on probation for 12 months.

Asharak

08-11-2002, 05:21 AM

Heaven-or-hell argument ends with shotgun slaying (http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/07/29/afterlife.argument.reut/index.html)

July 29, 2002 Posted: 11:45 PM EDT (0345 GMT)

GODLEY, Texas (Reuters) -- An argument over who was going to heaven and who was going to hell ended with one Texas man shooting another to death with a shotgun, police said Monday.

The man charged in the slaying is a corrections officer.

Johnny Joslin, 20, was allegedly shot by Clayton Frank Stoker, 21, on Sunday. The two had spent Saturday night bar hopping with two other men in Fort Worth, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Godley.

Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said a witness who was the designated driver for the group told police the four men were sitting at a table outside a trailer park after their night on the town and began arguing about religion.

The talk became heated when the subject turned to who would go to heaven and who would go to hell.

Stoker said he would settle the argument and went into a house and returned with a shotgun, which he loaded and placed in his mouth, Alford said the witness reported.

"The victim Joslin then took the gun out of Stoker's mouth, saying, 'If you have to shoot somebody, shoot me,"' Alford said, citing the witness report.

The shotgun went off, hitting Joslin in the chest and killing him.

Stoker, a Johnson County corrections officer, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder, Alford said.
________________________________

I wonder who was right.

stryfe

08-15-2002, 11:14 AM

he should've saved one to give to the sore toe whiskey club.

<a href="http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_650810.html?menu=news.quirkies">Inmate eats toes after girlfriend marries and emigrates</a>

A Romanian prisoner cut off both his little toes and ate them after he heard his girlfriend had married another man.

Neculai Berariu is serving a seven-year sentence at Timisoara prison in Timis county for stealing cars.

The 27-year-old said: "I wanted to shock everybody. I cut my toes with a knife and ate them raw.

"I also took a piece of flesh from my thigh, I fried it on some burned papers and ate it too."

The National newspaper says his ex-girlfriend has emigrated to Germany with her new husband.

He says he'll never mutilate his body again.

Story filed: 10:02 Thursday 15th August 2002

fmstlr

08-15-2002, 08:25 PM

http://www.ananova.com/news/stroy/sm_650167.html?menu=news.quirkies

Spider-Man gas deliverymen told to wear monkey suits

Bangkok gas deliverymen have been told to stop wearing
Spider-Man outfits but that it's okay for them to
dress as monkeys.

Gas shop owner Narongwit Suthiviriyakul says business
has almost doubled in the 10 days since his delivery
team started wearing the outfits.

Lawyers representing Bongkoch Publishing Company - the
Thai agent for Marvel Enterprises which publishes
Spider-Man comics - have threatened legal action.

Licensing manager Sirijan Phipitrangsee says the
deliverymen can wear monkey suits "because monkeys
don't have intellectual property rights."

The Nation says orders for supplies of cooking gas at
the shop have increased from 30 to 50 a day since the
gimmick started.

Narongwit says he was unaware of the copyright law
when he launched the promotion.

stryfe

09-04-2002, 07:46 AM

Gamers face jail in Greece (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2121692,00.html)

13:55 Tuesday 3rd September 2002
Rupert Goodwins and Matt Loney

A new law passed in Greece means that anybody
carrying an electronic game - even if it is just on a mobile phone - could face a hefty fine or lengthy jail sentence

Thousands of British tourists in Greece are unknowingly facing heavy fines or long terms in prison for owning mobile phones or portable video games. The Greek government has banned all electronic games across Greece, including those in home computers, Game Boy-style portable consoles, and on mobile phones.

Law Number 3037, enacted at the end of July, explicitly forbids electronic games with 'electronic mechanisms and software' from public and private places, and people have already been fined tens of thousands of euros for playing or owning games.

Internet cafes are allowed to continue to operate, providing all gaming is prohibited: if a client is found to be running any sort of game, including online chess, the café owner will be fined and the place closed. The law applies equally to visitors from abroad: "If you know these things are banned, you should not bring them in," said the commercial attaché at the Greek Embassy in London -- who declined to give her name.

The law was passed to prevent illegal gambling. According to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, "The police will be responsible for catching offenders, who will face fines of 5,000 to 75,000 euros and imprisonment of one to 12 months. The blanket ban was decided in February after the government admitted it was incapable of distinguishing innocuous video games from illegal gambling machines." One online report said that even watching a film on DVD -- many of which contain promotional games linked to the movie -- had resulted in an arrest and a 10,000-euro fine.

The Greek gaming community has reacted with a mixture of shock, disbelief and anger. One site, www.gameland.gr, has opened a petition and a news service on the ban, as well as providing English translations of the law and messages of support from around the world.

A test case is to come before the Greek courts next week, and the Greek gaming community is already planning protests in the event that the defendant is convicted.

"We are trying to organise a protest against this law," said Petros Tipis of Thessaloniki-based gaming company Reload Entertainment, which has had to cancel a gaming tournament that was to be held this week.

If the prosecution of the defendant next week is successful, said Tipis, the Greek gaming industry will take the case to the European Court.

In the meantime, Tipis told ZDNet UK, a lot of people in Greece are very worried about the new law. "They are taking it very seriously," he said. "It even affects the games that come with Windows. This law isn't the right one," he added. "It is unfair. It was introduced too quickly."

Reload's tournament, which was to be held on 6 September, was a qualifier for the CPL Oslo 2002 gaming tournament. "Now we are trying not to lose the two slots we were given from CPL for the tournament," said Tipis. "This was the first time for a qualifier (for this tournament) in Greece."

cosmicgrrl

09-09-2002, 11:57 AM

Hawk gets stuck on Wing (http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/09/09/offbeat.hawk.ap/index.html)
September 9, 2002 Posted: 2:51 PM EDT (1851 GMT)
cnn.com

ARLINGTON, Washington (AP) -- "Call 911! I have a hawk stuck to my arm."

It didn't take long for gas station customers to see Jamie Wing wasn't kidding.

A red-tailed hawk collided with Wing's pickup truck Thursday, and after she freed the bird's wing from the side-view mirror, the hawk invaded the truck, bit Wing's lip and then sank its talons into her right arm.

Wing, 38, said she threw a coat over the bird, tried without success to get it off her arm -- and then drove to the nearest highway exit.

"Every time you touched the bird, it gripped harder," she said. "There was a point where it got so painful that I was going to reach down and break its neck myself, but I love animals and I realized the bird was in shock and pain."

Firefighters administered morphine to help ease Wing's pain, and two women from the nearby Sarvey Wildlife Center pulled the hawk off her arm.

Wing was treated at a local hospital for puncture wounds on her right arm, hand and thumb. "I feel lucky it didn't chew me up more," she said.

The hawk had to be euthanized because both wings were broken too badly to heal or be repaired, said Kestrel SkyHawk, who cares for birds of prey at the center and is on its board of directors.

ocd

09-09-2002, 12:15 PM

Originally posted by stryfe
Gamers face jail in Greece (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2121692,00.html)

13:55 Tuesday 3rd September 2002
Rupert Goodwins and Matt Loney

A new law passed in Greece means that anybody
carrying an electronic game - even if it is just on a mobile phone - could face a hefty fine or lengthy jail sentence

Thousands of British tourists in Greece are unknowingly facing heavy fines or long terms in prison for owning mobile phones or portable video games. The Greek government has banned all electronic games across Greece, including those in home computers, Game Boy-style portable consoles, and on mobile phones.

Law Number 3037, enacted at the end of July, explicitly forbids electronic games with 'electronic mechanisms and software' from public and private places, and people have already been fined tens of thousands of euros for playing or owning games.

Internet cafes are allowed to continue to operate, providing all gaming is prohibited: if a client is found to be running any sort of game, including online chess, the café owner will be fined and the place closed. The law applies equally to visitors from abroad: "If you know these things are banned, you should not bring them in," said the commercial attaché at the Greek Embassy in London -- who declined to give her name.

The law was passed to prevent illegal gambling. According to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, "The police will be responsible for catching offenders, who will face fines of 5,000 to 75,000 euros and imprisonment of one to 12 months. The blanket ban was decided in February after the government admitted it was incapable of distinguishing innocuous video games from illegal gambling machines." One online report said that even watching a film on DVD -- many of which contain promotional games linked to the movie -- had resulted in an arrest and a 10,000-euro fine.

The Greek gaming community has reacted with a mixture of shock, disbelief and anger. One site, www.gameland.gr, has opened a petition and a news service on the ban, as well as providing English translations of the law and messages of support from around the world.

A test case is to come before the Greek courts next week, and the Greek gaming community is already planning protests in the event that the defendant is convicted.

"We are trying to organise a protest against this law," said Petros Tipis of Thessaloniki-based gaming company Reload Entertainment, which has had to cancel a gaming tournament that was to be held this week.

If the prosecution of the defendant next week is successful, said Tipis, the Greek gaming industry will take the case to the European Court.

In the meantime, Tipis told ZDNet UK, a lot of people in Greece are very worried about the new law. "They are taking it very seriously," he said. "It even affects the games that come with Windows. This law isn't the right one," he added. "It is unfair. It was introduced too quickly."

Reload's tournament, which was to be held on 6 September, was a qualifier for the CPL Oslo 2002 gaming tournament. "Now we are trying not to lose the two slots we were given from CPL for the tournament," said Tipis. "This was the first time for a qualifier (for this tournament) in Greece." Oh my god. This is absurd.

Jack

09-09-2002, 12:16 PM

Damnit! I had 2-1 on Mario saving the Princess!

fmstlr

09-11-2002, 09:46 PM

Research Holds Hope for Genitally Challenged Men
Updated 2:02 PM ET September 11, 2002

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists in the United States have come up with news that may help millions of men -- they have succeeded in growing major parts of penises in the laboratory.

The test tube penile parts were successfully used to rebuild the members of rabbits who -- after rest and recuperation -- put them to the use that rabbits are famous for.

"They were able to copulate, penetrate and produce sperm," Anthony Atala, whose team at Harvard Medical School carried out the experiments, told New Scientist magazine.

He said the researchers were now trying to grow entire penises in the test tube.

But he also said the technique was at an early stage and that it would be a while before the technique was tried with human tissue.

The scientists had only been successful in growing the erectile tissues of rabbit penises -- not the entire organ -- and in all cases the erect member had the reduced firmness of a 60-year-old against that of a more virile 30-year-old.

stryfe

09-26-2002, 12:24 PM

Unemployed to compete for jobs in German TV show (http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_677767.html?menu=news.quirkies)

A German TV network has been criticised over a game show in which some of the country's four million jobless people compete for a job.

Unemployed people are set a series of practical tasks on screen in hour long programmes screened by the Neun Live network.

The plan has been criticised as "sick and unfeeling" by unions but the network is going ahead with the series from mid-October.

One job will be given away each week and at the end of the programme the last two will be filmed in real job interview for the vacancy.

Director Markus Wolter said: "The viewers will decide by telephone votes who wins the job at the end of the programme.

"The employment contract will be signed immediately at the end of the programme by a company that has

sponsored the programme."

Marion Knappe, spokeswoman for the German Trades Union Federation said: "Unemployment is not fun. A TV show is no place for a job to be gained. Jobs only come from employers in the normal way."

And a spokesman for the giant IG Metall Union, Europe's most powerful union, said the plan was "sick and unfeeling."

He added: "People will get jobs on the strength of their personality, not their abilities."

Story filed: 11:46 Wednesday 25th September 2002

jinzoningen

10-01-2002, 09:32 AM

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,4-2002450311,00.html

akuma

10-01-2002, 03:52 PM

Bush Seeks U.N. Support For 'U.S. Does Whatever It Wants' Plan
http://theonion.com/onion3836/bush_seeks_un_support.html

in the immortal words of homer j. simpson:
"it's funny cause it's true"

fmstlr

10-02-2002, 08:40 AM

Super Goop to Be Pumped in Robot Veins

Updated 12:10 PM ET October 2, 2002

- A fluid that can transform from a liquid to a solid within milliseconds could soon be running through the "veins" of robots to give them a soft, human-like touch.

When not near a magnetic pull, so-called MR fluids appear as gray, unextraordinary oily liquids. But apply a magnetic force and the fluid instantly becomes the texture of thick clay. By pumping the fluid into an electronic sensing system that activates a magnetic field, it can be used to power robots, stabilize buildings and smooth bumpy automobile rides.

"These fluids have properties that can change in an instant when you apply magnetic fields," says Henri Gavin, a professor of engineering at Duke University. "This gives great flexibility in how you can design devices."

MR fluids are not new — the substance was discovered in the 1940s — but recently the fluid has been improved and researchers are devising new ways of putting it to use. The stiffness of the fluids can now be adjusted a thousand times a second.

NASA thinks they can do better and will be sending an MR fluid experiment to the space station in November to study the fluid so they can further improve it.

"We're trying to take it to the next level," says Juan Agui, project scientist with NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

Iron in Oil

MR fluid is already applied in a wide range of mechanisms. It's used to provide resistance in Nautilus home step machines and exercise bicycles. The fluid is incorporated into advanced shock absorption systems in some cars and even prosthetic limbs. And North Carolina's Lord Corporation is now working on developing washing machines with the magnetic dampers so they can operate with little vibration and virtually no noise.

Some are hopeful it could offer the next wave in building stabilization.

Engineers in Japan have become the first to install the technology to help stabilize buildings against tremors. And China's Dong Ting Lake Bridge is kept steady by the technology.

A primitive version of MR fluid can be crafted by adding iron filings to corn oil. Hold a magnet nearby and the mixture stiffens as the iron filings form lattice structures pointing toward the magnet. Professional MR fluids contain basically the same mix, but use a specially designed hydrocarbon as the oil and soft iron particles shaved so small that a bag of them looks like dark sand.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh recently concocted another substance for adding to the mix that prevents a common problem — clumping.

"The additive transforms the fluid from a free flowing liquid to something like a yogurt over a period of hours," explains Gavin. "The 'yogurt' holds the iron filings in place."

When activated, Gavin explains, the yogurt-like substance instantly becomes liquid again and then transforms into its stiffer, more solid form.

This kind of advance is particularly key for damping systems in buildings since the MR fluid is rarely activated and iron filings are more likely to clump after time. Gavin explains the MR fluid would be placed in a shock absorbing system that fits into an isolation system of a building. As motion detectors sense movement, they trigger a matching magnetic pulse. The pulse then stiffens the MR fluid accordingly and steels the building against shaking.

General Motors is installing the magnetic damping system in the seats of their 2003 Corvette and Oldsmobile models to offer a super smooth ride. Prosthetic joint manufacturers have also begun installing MR fluids in artificial leg joints to soften a wearer's steps. And Russian company recently announced plans to use MR fluids in super cushioned running shoes.

Fighting Clumping in Space

This November, engineers at NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hope to better understand how the tiny suspended particles interact and improve the fluid's performance by studying their interaction in the low gravity environment of the space station.

"The force between any two particles is minuscule," explains Alice Gast, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT who is leading the research. "We think by understanding the details of these forces, we'll be able to understand how to keep the filings from clumping and make them more effective."

The research could eventually be applied to help NASA smooth space station docking, minimize wear and tear from repositioning satellites and better suppress vibrations during rocket launches. But Gast believes one of the best applications for the fluid will be in animating the hands and limbs of robots so they move as naturally as any human's.

"Think about using a robot to pick up an egg," she says. "If the magnetic fluid were running in the veins of the hand you could tune it so it would apply just the right force and no eggs would be broken."

wnoodle

10-04-2002, 10:02 AM

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27433.html

"Claire Swires MK II: Man suspended over sex boast email
By Tim Richardson
Posted: 04/10/2002 at 09:00 GMT

A bank worker has been suspended from his job in the City after he sent an email to friends boasting about a chance sexual encounter while watching football on the telly,

Trevor Luxton, who works as a clerk at Credit Lyonnais, sent the email to five friends on Wednesday morning. Within hours it had been forwarded around the world making it the latest example of a private email being made public.

If you haven't seen it, the text of the email reads:

"Last night I was all geared up for a night in front of the telly watching football, having a ruby and a couple of beers while Jo's still away. Suddenly I get a text from Laura my mates ex which says I'm coming round because I need to see you.

So she comes round and we get chatting about all sorts of stuff and then we start kissing a fondling (as you do). Then I find my self sitting in the arm chair with a beer in one hand remote in the other, West ham on the box and Laura on her knees sucking my piece…

Then the phone rings and it's Jo who was bored at the airport...

So now I've got my beer, Laura sucking and Jo chatting to me on the dog…when Laura stops sucking looks up at me winks and whispers "say hello to Jo for me" and then gets back to the job in hand...

Am I the worst boyfriend in the world or what?????"

Now, there is only one thing that is shocking about this incident. It's not the fact he wrote it and sent it in the first place; nor is it that one of his friends decided to forward it on to someone else.

Even the comments that became attached to the email can be forgiven. Comments like: "think we should get this dirty love rat in as much trouble as possible" and "LETS GET THIS TWO TIMING *RSE HOLE IN TROUBLE.....SEND THIS TO EVERY ONE YOU KNOW WHO WORKS IN THE CITY AND HOPEFULLY IT WILL GET BACK TO HIS BIRD!!!!! I LOVE BEING EVIL!!!!".

No, the truly shocking thing about this email hysteria and public humiliation is that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often."

fmstlr

10-06-2002, 07:22 AM

Ostrich Sex, Barking Dogs Score 'Ig Nobel' Prizes

Updated 8:11 AM ET October 5, 2002

By Elinor Mills Abreu

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Ever wonder why belly button lint tends to be blue? Curious about the sex life of ostriches? Want to know what Fido is really trying to say or how best to bathe him?

The answers to these probing questions are included in research honored this week by the irreverent and quirky science magazine "Annals of Improbable Research."

The 12th annual "Ig Nobel Prizes," are awarded to scientific achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced." The awards are presented in the week before the real Nobel prizes are announced.

"Most scientists don't get much attention for their work. For the winners it's an opportunity for people to pay attention to them and ask them what they do," Marc Abrahams, editor of the journal, told Reuters on Friday.

"We hope that this can get a lot of people curious about science, maybe for the first time in their lives," he added. "But mostly, it's about having a lot of fun."

While the subjects are treated with humor, the research is all genuine.

Karl Kruszelnicki, a physicist, TV and radio science reporter and fellow at The University of Sydney, won an award for his profound research into an area previously untouched by lab researchers -- belly button lint (BBL).

His statistical survey of 4,799 people found that "you're more likely to have BBL if you're male, older, hairy and have an innie."

WET PETS, SEXY BEASTS

Winning in the biology category was a report, published in the journal "British Poultry Science" and titled "Courtship Behavior of Ostriches Toward Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain." It posits that the presence of humans can arouse the proud plumed birds.

Researchers in Japan were presented with the peace award for "promoting peace and harmony between the species" by inventing a computer-based dog-to-human language translation device, called "Bow-Lingual."

Canines were popular test subjects. The hygiene award was given to Eduardo Segura, of Tarragona, Spain, for inventing a washing machine for dogs and cats.

Researchers in India won an award for their analytical report on "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants."

A psychology professor at University College of London was honored for his scrutiny of another mammal's anatomy. Chris McManus, received an award for "his excruciatingly balanced report" titled "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture," which was published in Nature magazine.

And in the economics category, executives from companies that are struggling financially in six countries won for "adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world" -- an apparent reference to creative accounting practices.

Among the more than 20 U.S. companies listed were: Enron Corp., Tyco International, WorldCom Inc., Arthur Andersen, Adelphia Communications Corp., Duke Energy Corp., Global Crossing Ltd. and Qwest Communications International Inc.

The award ceremony, held on Thursday night at Harvard University, followed tradition by having Nobel laureates present the awards and the audience launch paper airplanes at the winners.

"I still don't quite understand how we get most of the winners to travel, at their own expense, sometimes halfway across the world to come to this," said Abrahams, of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based journal.

perseus

10-16-2002, 10:09 PM

excerpt:

It is with heavy heart that I pass on the following tragic news:

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes in the belly.

He was 71.

ocd

10-24-2002, 03:48 PM

Man dies after playing computer games non-stop

October 10 2002

A 24-year-old South Korean man died after playing computer games nonstop for 86 hours, police said yesterday.

The jobless man, identified by police only by his last name Kim, was found dead at an Internet cafe in Kwangju, 260 kilometres southwest of Seoul, they said.

Quoting witnesses, police detective Oh Myong-sik in Kwangju said the man had been virtually glued to the computer since late last Friday and had no decent sleep and meals.

The man collapsed in front of the counter early yesterday but soon regained consciousness. He then went to the toilet where he later was found dead, the police officer said.

Initial investigation ruled out the possibility of murder, police said. An autopsy was planned.

South Korea is among the world's most Internet-savvy nations with more than half of its 47 million people having access to the Internet. South Korea has some 22,000 Internet cafes, also known as PC rooms.

Many PC rooms are open 24 hours, but no minors are allowed after 10 pm.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/10/1034061260831.html

akuma

10-27-2002, 04:30 PM

no, not from the onion- for real! (http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Midwest/10/25/offbeat.dog.shot.man.ap/index.html)

vegAsian

10-27-2002, 05:12 PM

Originally posted by akuma
no, not from the onion- for real! (http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/Midwest/10/25/offbeat.dog.shot.man.ap/index.html)

yeah, its always a good thing to leave your loaded shotgun just chillin.

falcor

10-28-2002, 09:15 AM

A construction worker in Chestnuthill Township, PA was charged with aggravated assault after he allegedly crushed a 1999 Lexus with a pavement roller during a parking dispute.

55-year-old Richard Howard Frantz got into a argument with a real estate agent named Kevin Hay while Hay was showing a house to a prospective buyer. Hay and Frantz argued about where Hay should park his car, police said. Hay moved his car to another spot when a second dispute erupted.

Frantz then climbed aboard his pavement roller and determined to let Hay know exactly where he could park his car, police said. Hay had actually gotten into his car and was attempting to turn around when Frantz drove the roller into the driver's side door of the Lexus, pushing the car 12 feet and forcing it onto two wheels.

falcor

10-28-2002, 09:16 AM

god bless her...

Teres Kirpikli, a Christian Democrat running for a seat in Sweden's Parliament, is calling for porn to be broadcast on television all day every Saturday in Sweden to help boost the population and the economy. Kirpikli believes the best way for couples to have more sex and procreate is to watch pornography. "I want erotica and porn on television every Saturday, all day. Then people would feel like having more sex. I think most people like porn, even though they don't want to admit it," the Mercury News reported she said in a statement. "There is nothing wrong with a man and his wife or partner watching porn together." Kirpikli's proposal did not have the full backing of her party.

fmstlr

11-04-2002, 08:42 PM

Gay Sheep May Help Explain Biology of Homosexuals

Updated 1:43 PM ET November 4, 2002

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gay sheep that mate only with other rams have different brain structures from "straight" sheep, a finding that may shed light on human sexuality, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

The differences are similar to those seen in some homosexual humans, but probably only go a small way to explaining the causes of different sexual preferences, the team at Oregon Health & Science University said.

"We are not trying to explain human sexuality by this study," Charles Roselli, a professor of physiology and pharmacology who led the study, said in a telephone interview. "Whether this is a big component of what contributes in humans, that's still debatable."

Working with a team at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Sheep Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho, Roselli's team studied 27 sheep -- 10 ewes, nine rams that mated only with other rams and eight rams that mated only with females.

The "gay" sheep are strongly homosexual, Roselli said.

"They don't pair-bond," he said. "But they are exclusive. They don't court or mate with females. They only court and mate with males."

First the scientists watched the sheep to be sure of their behavior -- something that cannot be done with humans. Then they took apart their brains.

"There had been reports in humans that a certain area of the hypothalamus, the preoptic area ... was usually larger in males than females," Roselli said. This area was also found to be larger in heterosexual humans than in homosexual men.

But the researchers had used the brains of men who had died of AIDS in their study, which meant the disease or drugs used to treat it could have had an effect on the brain.

"With an animal model you can be more selective and do more controlled studies," Roselli said.

The sheep had similar differences in their brains, the researchers told a meeting in Orlando, Florida, of the Society for Neuroscience.

"In a sense we confirmed what been found in humans," Roselli said.

The brain cells in this area also made greater amounts of an enzyme called aromatase in the heterosexual rams. Aromatase is involved in the action of testosterone, the so-called male hormone.

This does not mean the gay rams had less testosterone in their brains, Roselli stressed. "It is not necessarily the activational effect of the hormone," he said. Other types of neurons are probably active -- they just have not found them yet.

No differences in testosterone relating to sexuality have been found either in the sheep or in humans, he said.

"It's not that gay men have lower levels of testosterone," he said. "And it's not the case with these sheep."

Roselli believes that exposure to hormones while still in the mother's womb may affect the brain and cause differences in sexual preference, and more experiments will aim to show whether this is true.

yangnome

11-04-2002, 09:19 PM

Originally posted by ocd

Man dies after playing computer games non-stop

October 10 2002

A 24-year-old South Korean man died after playing computer games nonstop for 86 hours, police said yesterday.

The jobless man, identified by police only by his last name Kim, was found dead at an Internet cafe in Kwangju, 260 kilometres southwest of Seoul, they said.

Quoting witnesses, police detective Oh Myong-sik in Kwangju said the man had been virtually glued to the computer since late last Friday and had no decent sleep and meals.

The man collapsed in front of the counter early yesterday but soon regained consciousness. He then went to the toilet where he later was found dead, the police officer said.

Initial investigation ruled out the possibility of murder, police said. An autopsy was planned.

South Korea is among the world's most Internet-savvy nations with more than half of its 47 million people having access to the Internet. South Korea has some 22,000 Internet cafes, also known as PC rooms.

Many PC rooms are open 24 hours, but no minors are allowed after 10 pm.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/10/1034061260831.html

I am suprised they didn't blame it on a fan in the room...

perseus

11-05-2002, 12:01 AM

Originally posted by fmstlr
Gay Sheep May Help Explain Biology of Homosexuals

Roselli believes that exposure to hormones while still in the mother's womb may affect the brain and cause differences in sexual preference, and more experiments will aim to show whether this is true.

so they have a "cure" on the horizon at last? perhaps it will end up on that wish list they are developing where prospective parents check off if they want a boy or a girl, blond or brown, straight or gay..

Miso

11-05-2002, 06:40 AM

*shudders* i just did an essay on the human genome project and its ethical issues. on the bright side i got to watch gattica again.

stryfe

11-13-2002, 07:47 AM

The human Swiss Army Knife (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/13/1037080776940.html)

November 13 2002

Lyon, France: An eccentric Frenchman who goes by the name of Crazy Eric has entered the record books for the unusual feat of carrying permanently about his body more than 1,000 useful objects.

Dubbed the human Swiss Army Knife, Eric is a 30-year-old electrician from the central-eastern city of Lyon who has a psychological obsession with neatness and an ingenious line in clothes design.

"It all began very gradually about 10 years ago. First of all it was a screwdriver, then a pair of scissors, then some snack-bars and a torch ... just in case," says Eric, who refuses to give his family name.

But quickly the backpack which he used became too heavy, so he decided to "integrate my things about my person".

The result is a sartorial tool-kit comprising a panoply of pockets, folds and attachments that puts any one of 1,300 items within immediate hand's reach.

The number has been verified by the Guinness book of records, which in its last edition grants Eric a slot as
owner of the world's "most practical suit of clothing".

Eric's outfits weigh 15kg - 12 kilos of which are gadgets of every kind.

Among his latest innovations is a Velcro leg-pocket containing a fold-up umbrella and a paint-brush.

"I use the brush a lot because I often end up sleeping in odd places and this is the best way I have found for removing dust," he says.

Elsewhere he carries a shaving kit, comprehensive first aid gear, a mini-saw, blow-up mattress, spare batteries, a change of clothes, a water-pouch, a water-filtering unit, soldering iron, tape-measure, digital camera ...

Eric says his aim is not self-publicity but simply to be prepared for all eventualities.

"It is like a doctor with his medicine bag. I always have my kit," he says.

"But if I don't need something, I don't bring it. I used to carry a pedometer, for example, but I've just taken it off. I never found I needed it."

AFP

jiggles

11-15-2002, 12:34 PM

http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=%7B2E1F9897-932D-4700-8AF6-25F3C286428B%7D

Ms. Ferrari had more than 20 operations to transform her body and face. The Guinness Book of Records measured her bust, which had been designed by an aircraft engineer, at 54G.

Reportedly, each of her pneumonic breasts contained two litres of saline solution, and Ms. Ferrari was afraid of flying in case they exploded.

Flop Top

11-21-2002, 04:58 AM

An argument between two New Jersey men over who had the hairiest butt ended in violence when one slashed the other in the face.

Emmanuel Nieves, 23, was charged with taking a knife to Erik Saporito, 21, in a Mansfield Township parking lot when the two squared off on the furry-fanny issue.

Cops charged Nieves with aggravated assault, terroristic threats and weapons offenses, and planted his derriere in a cell at the Warren County jail in lieu of $25,000 bail.

Bill Hoffmann, Wire Services

akuma

11-21-2002, 08:02 AM

they're putting ads on cop cars now.

Liver_on_a_Stick

11-21-2002, 08:08 AM

Wacko Jacko at it again...

http://www.canada.com/entertainment/story.asp?id={FF917F75-E767-4C7D-8877-27D2502FA3D8}

U.S. pop star Michael Jackson dangles an unidentified child, its head hidden by a towel, over a balcony of the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, Tuesday

I sense that his kids are going to have serious problems.
I assume the unidentified child is his kid Prince, what's the deal with the towel over the head?

fmstlr

11-21-2002, 08:34 AM

Teen Girls Petition for Modest Clothes

Updated 8:33 AM ET November 19, 2002

- Many teenage girls like wearing belly-baring, hip-hugging clothes like pop star Britney Spears. But, for one group of girls, the provocative style is not cutting it.

Sexy, revealing clothes are barely getting by with a group of teenage girls from Mountain View High School in Phoenix, Ariz.

But rather than getting annoyed with the slim picking in clothing selections that they are forced to choose from in most department stores, the girls have decided to take action.

Their game plan — taking on the department stores in their area with a petition of 1,500 signatures of people who agree that the stores should sell more modest clothes for girls their age.

"I feel more comfortable with myself when I'm dressed more modestly," said Lisa Prince, one of the student shoppers. "It's been really hard for me to go school-clothes shopping or shopping in general. I just want to have more of a selection."

The girls are simply asking the stores to sell a bit more of the clothes they prefer to wear. One department store buyer said she is willing to try to appease them.

"We do recognize the need that there is for this, but more so the bigger challenge is to find the right merchandise for them," said Rachel Wilds, a buyer for Dillard's department store.

Cute While Exposing Less

The girls plan to arrange sketches, photos and ideas to illustrate all the types of clothing they would prefer to start seeing on department store racks — everything from tops and pants to dresses and ball gowns. The new clothing ideas will contain the same amount of style as current popular options with one addition — more coverage.

They say they still want the clothes to be fun, cute, and fashion-forward, without having to expose a lot of skin while wearing them.

Aside from having the opportunity to pave the way for a modest clothing style for teenage girls, the girls say they are proud to stand up for what they believe in.

"Oh, it's awesome," said Joani Garrett, another teenage student shopper. "I like that because it makes me feel like I am a person, and that my opinion matters."

Shaftoe

11-21-2002, 08:51 AM

Originally posted by Liver_on_a_Stick
Wacko Jacko at it again...

http://www.canada.com/entertainment/story.asp?id={FF917F75-E767-4C7D-8877-27D2502FA3D8}

I sense that his kids are going to have serious problems.
I assume the unidentified child is his kid Prince, what's the deal with the towel over the head?

Regarding this whole thing -

It is stupid to dangle a kid from a balcony.

His reasoning, I think, was in no way malicious.

Maybe he thought, "Prince might get scared being up so high; I want to show him to everybody but I don't want him to get scared so I will put this towel over his head. Here he is everybody! Okay, bye!"

But it is fucking stupid to dangle a kid off the edge of a balcony.

Dangle is a very funny word.

Dangle. Dangle. Dangle. Dangle. Dangle. Dangle.

fmstlr

11-21-2002, 04:37 PM

Genome Pioneer to Try to Build Artificial Life

Updated 5:10 PM ET November 21, 2002

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A scientist who helped lead the way in mapping the human genome said on Thursday he was taking on a new project -- trying to create a partly artificial life form.

Craig Venter, former scientific director of Celera Genomics <CRA.N>, and now head of The Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives, said his new institute would try to create an artificial chromosome.

The synthetic chromosome will carry artificial genes to replace the genetic material of a living bacterium. The idea is to try to make microbes that can scrub the air of excess carbon dioxide -- perhaps helping to alleviate global warming -- or to produce cheap hydrogen fuel.

It would be a first step toward creating an artificial life form, said Venter, who has won a modest $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to fund his research.

They will work with the tiniest known living organism, the Mycoplasma genitalium bacteria. It has just 517 genes on a single chromosome.

Some scientists are working to genetically engineer living bacteria to do dirty work, such as absorbing radiation or toxic chemicals. Their approach is to insert genes from one species into another.

Venter wants to take a different approach -- stripping down Mycoplasma to the bare essentials and then adding back genes to do the job at hand.

"What we are doing is just trying to substitute a synthetic chromosome for the existing chromosome," Venter said in a telephone interview.

"To do that we have to either remove or destroy the chromosome that is already in the cell and replace it with an artificial one and see if the cell could use the chromosome as its instruction set."

It would be a first step toward his eventual goal of creating an artificial organism from scratch.

"We have just begun what will probably be long but intellectually challenging work in trying to create a synthetic genome," Hamilton Smith, a Nobel prizewinning geneticist who has left Celera to work on the new project, said in a statement.

Mycoplasma genitalium lives in the human genital tract and lungs, causing no known disease, but has fewer genes than any other organism mapped so far. While humans have between 30,000 and 40,000 genes, this bug gets along fine with just 517.

In 1999, Venter and colleagues at The Institute for Genomic Research said they had removed all the genes not essential for life from the little bacteria. The streamlined version seemed to function fine on 300 genes.

Using a stripped-down, artificial set of genetic instructions should make it possible to control the bacteria, Venter said.

"We want genes just associated with the process we want to do so there is no way these organisms could survive outside the test tube, let alone outside the lab," he said.

It might be someday possible to build a car that could run on garbage, he said.

"Fuel cells are all you need," he said, noting that garbage dumps now produce methane, a natural gas.

"Wouldn't it be easy if everybody just had a little pool of bacteria that did that instead of relying on fossil fuels and even going to war over them?"

Flop Top

11-21-2002, 06:05 PM

His reasoning, I think, was in no way malicious.

Maybe he thought, "Prince might get scared being up so high; I want to show him to everybody but I don't want him to get scared so I will put this towel over his head. Here he is everybody! Okay, bye!" I think the towel was on the baby's head to protect his identity. There were other pictures of him walking his kids at the zoo and they're wearing red burqa type things over their heads/shoulders. He's a freak. I wouldn't try to make sense of anything he does with a rational explanation.

stryfe

11-22-2002, 01:19 PM

Friday, 22 November, 2002, 14:39 GMT
Did quark matter strike Earth? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2502755.stm)

By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor

A group of researchers have identified two seismic events that they think provide the first evidence of a previously undetected form of matter passing through the Earth.

The so-called strange quark matter is so dense that a piece the size of a human cell would weigh a tonne.

The two events under study both took place in 1993.

Other scientists are tantalised, saying that while these seismic disturbances are unlikely to have been caused by strange quark matter, they do not as yet have alternative explanations. <cont'd (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2502755.stm)>

stryfe

11-22-2002, 02:22 PM

11-21, local: Police find 17 sex toys in local woman's car during DUI traffic stop (http://www.news-journal.com/news/newsfd/auto/feed/news/2002/11/21/1037856026.03162.8221.2870.html)

By JOHN LYNCH

WHITE OAK — A Longview woman who sells sex toys has been charged with felony obscenity after White Oak police found some of her wares in her car during a traffic stop

The arrest report describes the 17 items as "obscene materials and obscene devices," but Police Chief Charlie Smith said the items were mostly lotions and objects defined in a dictionary as having the shape and often the appearance of the male genitalia, used in sexual stimulation.

How illegal is that? Prosecutors will have to decide when White Oak investigators forward their findings to the district attorney's office sometime in the next week, Smith said.

"We'll see what they do with it," Smith said.

Kathleen Elizabeth "Kathy" Grubbs, a distributor for the national company Slumber Parties Inc., calls the charge, which carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail, "kind of ridiculous."

State law appears a little less forgiving: It's illegal to "wholesale promote" obscene materials or devices. Texas statute says an obscene device is a simulated sexual organ or an item designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs. The law allows investigators to assume that anyone with six or more of the items is intending to promote them.

In April, Kilgore police raided the Adult Book Store/Video Store at 1907 Industrial Blvd., seizing 12 large trash bags full of devices police said were being sold illegally. The raid came after an undercover officer visited the shop twice before the raid, making at least one purchase. An 11-page inventory compiled by police estimated the materials were worth $19,082. The sexual devices on the 11-page inventory ranged in price from a "Climax Band" that sold for $5.95 to a "Wild and Crazy Tickler" for $11.95; a "Hyper Sonic G" for $69.95; a "Plush Playmate" for $89.95; and a "Cyber Sexploration Kit" for $44.95.

The store owner, Robert Duggan III, was never arrested, but he agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of obscene display, a charge equivalent to a traffic ticket, and agreed to pay a fine and let police destroy the items.

Grubbs, 47, said she has been selling the items for about two months as a distributor for Slumber Parties Inc., a national sex toy party business that operates out of Ohio and Louisiana.

Slumber Parties is where the Tupperware party meets Victoria's Secret, the company says on its Web site. The distributors host women-only parties in private homes to show off their merchandise. Grubbs stresses the parties are only for adults, meaning no one allowed under age 18, and men are definitely prohibited.

"Believe it or not, there's a lot of women who go to these parties," Grubbs said. "It's very popular."

Company officials did not return a call Wednesday, but Slumber Parties claims its network of distributors sold $15 million in "romance-enriching" products, including lotions, powders, lingerie and private bedroom accessories, with prices ranging from $2.50 to $139. Sales this year are expected to reach $20 million.

The seizure of the items occured during a traffic stop on Texas 42 on Old Highway 80 in White Oak at 10:27 p.m. Monday. Police stopped Grubbs' truck after seeing her driving erratically, an arrest report said. She failed or refused to perform field sobriety tests and was charged with driving while intoxicated, and a breath test showed she had blood-alcohol levels of 0.228 percent and 0.22 percent, the report said.

Police searching her truck after the arrest found the box of erotic items. The White Oak police chief said investigators are used to finding drugs and guns, but sex toys are the first in his 22 years of experience.

"There's no telling what you'll find on one of these stops," Smith said.

akuma

11-25-2002, 02:03 PM

horny frogs (http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/11/25/offbeat.britain.sex.reut/index.html)

megalomaniac

11-25-2002, 02:27 PM

A new type of grave robber

Man finds his grave has been taken

LONDON, England (AP) -- A man who reserved a burial plot in a country churchyard was shocked to discover that somebody had stolen his grave.

The plot in Gamlingay, 12 miles west of Cambridge, was booked by local postman Sid Hibbitt but recently filled, a parish official said Monday.

"It's a mystery," parish council clerk Lesley Mayne said. "I couldn't find any record of any burial taking place. I checked with the local undertakers and they knew nothing about it."

Mayne said she noticed the grave, which had no headstone, about six weeks ago.

"It could just be that some paperwork has gone missing and there will be an innocent explanation. I don't think it will be anything sinister," she said.

Police said they planned to remove whatever is buried, but said nothing suggested foul play.

Hibbitt, 54, booked the plot in 1989 because it was next to the grave of a woman who had helped care for him when he was a child.

"I was at a funeral a few weeks ago when I noticed that the grave had been taken," Hibbitt said. "I was shocked. It's annoying but it's no use me getting cross about it."

He said he still hoped to be buried in the plot but his decision would depend on the outcome of the police investigation.

"If anything sinister has been going on I'm not going in there," Hibbitt said
___________________________________________________

wtf?

Make Room

11-29-2002, 12:17 AM

Drug dog's crotch-sniffing 'just being friendly'
Friday, November 29, 2002 Posted: 1:35 PM HKT (0535 GMT)

Sniffer dogs are routinely used at Australian ports

If your honour were to do as this dog did..., it would be an indecent assault
-- Lawyer, Clive Steirn

CANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) -- Rocky the police dog was just being friendly when he nuzzled the crotch of a drug suspect and did not breach the man's rights, an Australian court has ruled.

The 22-year-old suspect was found to be carrying amphetamines and cannabis but the man's lawyers had argued that Rocky's crotch nuzzle amounted to assault.

"If your honour were to do as this dog did and nuzzle the defendant's genitals, it would be an indecent assault," lawyer Clive Steirn was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on Friday.

But Supreme Court Justice Barry O'Keefe said the crotch nuzzle by Rocky outside a Sydney nightclub in February 2001 did not constitute a search and the act of sniffing involved no trespass.

"When a 'crotch nuzzle'...is performed by a dog in relation to a human being, it may be no more than a conventional, friendly, social gesture with no hostile intent, and unlikely to constitute an assault," O'Keefe said.

O'Keefe's ruling on Thursday overturned an earlier decision to dismiss drug charges against the man, the newspaper reported.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 2002 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

fmstlr

12-02-2002, 08:41 AM

Austrian Study Finds Mountain Biking Harms Scrotum

Updated 10:00 AM ET December 2, 2002

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Men who log 3,000 miles or more a year on their mountain bikes suffer scrotal damage that could reduce their fertility, according to a study released on Monday.

The report, based on examinations of 40 "extreme" bikers and 35 non-cyclists, suggests that men who spend the most time on their bikes should invest in shock absorbers and suspension systems that could double the cost of a standard mountain bike, the study said.

Scrotal examinations of the bikers found that 88 percent had cysts, calcification, varicose veins and other abnormalities compared to 26 percent of the non-biking group.

Sperm samples showed that the extreme bikers had a count that was only a third that of the non-cyclists while bikers' sperm had less motility or movement than non-bikers.

"We believe that extreme mountain biking results in semen alteration, which may have an impact on fertility," said lead author Ferdinand Frauscher of University Hospital in Innsbruck, Austria.

"We believe that repeated mechanical trauma to the testicles results in some degree of vascular damage and may thereby cause a reduction in sperm motility," he said.

His report was released at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America."

wnoodle

12-02-2002, 05:16 PM

Please let this never happen to any of us (men):

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&art_id=ct2002113019293582B420825&set_id=1

12-03-2002, 01:18 PM

yay! I'm going to heaven!
http://www.local6.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-181715320021203-121247.html

wnoodle

12-04-2002, 06:52 PM

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993136

The knotty problem of choosing the optimum way of lacing up shoes has been solved by a new mathematical proof.

There are many millions of different possibilities but, reassuringly, the proof shows that centuries of human trial and error has already selected out the strongest lacing patterns. However, the pattern using the least amount of lace possible, the decorative "bowtie" lacing, is usually only seen in shoe shop displays.

Burkard Polster, of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, used combinatorial mathematics to come up with his proof. This branch of maths is used to solve a huge variety of problems, including resource allocation and finding the best ways to lay chips in a computer.

Formulas describing the physics of pulleys were used to work out how much force is exerted on the sides of a shoe using different lacing techniques. The most widely used "criss-cross" and "straight" lacing patterns were identified as the strongest.

But criss-cross came out on top for a short, wide set of eyeholes - that is, when the vertical distance between eyeholes is low, and horizontal distance is high. Straight lacing came out tops for a long, skinny set of eyeholes.

Ideal shoe

Both sets of calculations, which ran to over 30 pages, were based on an idealised shoe. For example, the eyelets are perfectly aligned, and the shoe exists only in one plane. The proofs also ignore certain physical properties, such as the friction exerted by the lace on the eyehole.

Nonetheless, for an idealised shoe, the proofs cover every conceivable lacing pattern. There are 400 million different ways of lacing a shoe with only seven pairs of eyelets. "Even if God wears shoes with 100 eyelets, these proofs will predict the shortest and the strongest lacings," says Polster.

"It's mathematical entertainment - I like it," says Hyam Rubinstein of the University of Melbourne.

In practice, however, the changes in efficiency and strength of different types of lacing are likely to be tiny, says Polster. "Nike probably won't go out and re-lace all their sneakers on the basis of these calculations."

Furthermore, most people, including Polster, opt for criss-cross lacing not because it is stronger, but because it is easy and you do not end up with uneven ends - a big risk with straight lacing. Straight lacing is sometimes used in the army because, if the foot is injured, you can cut the lace with one swipe.

12-05-2002, 12:02 PM

http://www.restrooms.org/standing.html

stryfe

12-24-2002, 08:17 AM

'Dinosaur' will roam free in Disney park (http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/article.do?id=17286)
Imagineering's first Animatronic figure to walk will interact with visitors.
By MICHELE HIMMELBERG
The Orange County Register

ANAHEIM – Walt Disney Imagineering has brought us birds that sing, pirates that wink and presidents that stand to greet us. Now, it plans to introduce the first walking Audio-Animatronic figure in a theme park.

An as-yet unnamed dinosaur will begin roaming through a designated area of either California Adventure or Disneyland this spring, said Marty Sklar, vice chairman of Imagineering. This will be the first test of untethered Audio-Animatronics and the next phase in Imagineering's quest to increase interaction with visitors.

Disney created Audio-Animatronic figures and has used them in attractions since 1963, beginning with birds in the Enchanted Tiki Room. But this will be the first one that's not fixed to a spot. An unseen operator will guide the dinosaur's movements, allowing it to respond to guests.

"That's the magic," Sklar said. "When people see, hear and touch this character, it will be a real groundbreaking experience."

The character doesn't talk, but can respond with movements. Some of its potential antics are eating popcorn, "stealing" a guest's hat and sneezing.

Imagineers have long dreamed about walking Animatronics, but it took technology a while to catch up with their creative minds.

The first Animatronic figures, called A-4s, could turn and open their mouths to be synchronized with music. The next phase, called A-100s, had more real-life movement and were used in Pirates of the Caribbean and "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" at Disneyland, where the figure stands and talks to the audience. But none have been able to directly interact with visitors.

Always coy about its "magic," Disney declined to talk about how the dinosaur works. But a neuroscience professor with experience in robotics said Imagineers would have confronted issues with software to help the creature stay balanced as it walks. Robotics experts also have been searching for the right kind of spongy material to mimic muscle tissue and make movements less jerky.

A robotic figure on four legs is more common, said Thomas Fikes, of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, because "it's incredibly hard to get a biped to walk." They tip over easily and can't self-correct when they lose balance.

"We do have things that move around on their own," Fikes said. "But if (Imagineers) have something that's relatively autonomous - if there aren't 40 people in the background pulling switches like the Wizard of Oz – and if they can give it some very general commands like walk this direction, or surprise that kid, that would be pretty amazing."

That's the intent. Children expect a higher level of interactivity in entertainment in today's era of video and computer games, said Don Goodman, Imagineering president.

"The way kids play changes the way we see things," Goodman said. "It takes a lot more to wow kids today."

Disney chose a dinosaur because children are so fascinated with them, Sklar said, plus "it's a large enough character to get their attention."

nikel

01-07-2003, 05:04 PM

Family keeps pet eel in bath, for 33 years

Tuesday, January 7, 2003

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- A German family has kept a live eel in its bathtub for the last 33 years and even trained it to swim into a bucket when someone needs to wash.

"He's part of our family," said Hannelore Richter of Bochum in western Germany, whose husband Paul caught the eel on a fishing trip in 1969 and took it home for supper.

His children fell in love with the eel, refusing to let him kill and cook it, and since then it has lived in the bath, shared it with the children when they were small -- and has even moved house with the family, German newspapers reported.

"It's a weird situation," zoologist Walter Gettmann told Reuters. "He has certainly lost the skills needed to survive in the wild. But if he is fed properly, he can survive in a tub."

01-07-2003, 07:55 PM

Originally posted by nikel
Family keeps pet eel in bath, for 33 years

Tuesday, January 7, 2003

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- A German family has kept a live eel in its bathtub for the last 33 years and even trained it to swim into a bucket when someone needs to wash.

"He's part of our family," said Hannelore Richter of Bochum in western Germany, whose husband Paul caught the eel on a fishing trip in 1969 and took it home for supper.

His children fell in love with the eel, refusing to let him kill and cook it, and since then it has lived in the bath, shared it with the children when they were small -- and has even moved house with the family, German newspapers reported.

"It's a weird situation," zoologist Walter Gettmann told Reuters. "He has certainly lost the skills needed to survive in the wild. But if he is fed properly, he can survive in a tub."

Happy eel.

:*)

EK-4000

01-08-2003, 02:06 AM

je crois qu'il y a anguille sous roche ici.

banchan

01-08-2003, 11:08 AM

okie dokie... lets start rolling!

Escalator frenzy sweeps Cambodia

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A new craze is sweeping the dusty Cambodian capital -- riding the escalators in the war-ravaged country's first shopping mall.

Just one small step for most Cambodians, the escalator also represents a giant leap for Cambodia -- one of Asia's poorest countries -- in its quest to catch up on its more prosperous neighbours and put its bloody past behind it.

Due to decades of conflict and the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s, Cambodians have missed out on the shopping complexes common across most cities in southeast Asia.

But the Shopping Centre Sorya, a glitzy five-storey edifice opened in Phnom Penh last month, is changing that. Its escalators, with their trained instructors, have become an overnight sensation.

"I've been here for two weeks just to tell people how to use the escalator," said attendant Thy Da. "At first people were afraid to use it. Some of them fell over."

Crowds of excited Khmers, young and old, inch suspiciously forward before taking a leap of faith onto the moving steps.

"I've brought my kids to see what the market and the moving stairs are like," said Siem Sytha, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who had travelled some 200 km (125 miles) for his maiden voyage.

"I am not familiar with it. I find it difficult to follow modern technology," he said before stepping gingerly onto the moving stairway.

But for some, modernity is still too daunting. "I'm too scared to use the escalator so I'm using the normal staircase," said shopper Rith Da.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030108/80/di28m.html

kamenriderv3

01-08-2003, 11:25 AM

some old asian americans act the same way. they pause and prepare themselves before getting on.

kyoppolife

01-09-2003, 02:47 PM

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/sttammany/index.ssf?/newsstory/t_scammed09.html

Woman scammed of $4,000 via Net

Phony cashier's check sent to pay for piano

01/09/03
By Paul Rioux
St. Tammany bureau/The Times-Picayune

An Abita Springs area woman who tried to sell an electronic piano over the Internet for money to buy Christmas presents was bilked out of $4,000 by a Nigerian man who sent her a phony cashier's check, authorities said.

"You hear about things like this, but you never think it can happen to you," said the 25-year-old woman, who asked not to be identified. "It really ruined my Christmas."

Using an Internet auction site, the woman arranged to sell the Kurzweil piano for $1,000 to a man in Nigeria named Aliyu Mohammed.

Instead of sending her a check directly, Mohammed told the woman in an e-mail message that a Florida man who owed him money would send her a cashier's check for $5,000. He said he would trust her to wire him the difference, or $4,000.

When the woman received the check in mid-December, she deposited it in her bank account but decided to wait before withdrawing any of the money, despite assurances from the bank that the check was good.

"They told me the money is guaranteed to be there because it was a cashier's check. They said the check couldn't bounce," she said. "But I wasn't sure, so I waited."

Meanwhile, Mohammed pressured her in a series of e-mail messages to send him the money.

"At first, he said, 'I need it because my dad is sick in the hospital.' " she said. "Later, he said, 'My dad died and his corpse is sitting in the morgue. I need the money right away or they won't let me bury him.' "

Five days after depositing the check, the woman withdrew $1,000 to go Christmas shopping and $4,000 that she sent to Mohammed via Western Union, authorities said.

But on the day after Christmas, the woman discovered her bank account was thousands of dollars in the red because the check was a fake and had bounced. Her account has since been frozen as her bank investigates the case.

"For now, I'm responsible for repaying the money," said the woman, who reported the incident to the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office. "I'm upset because I asked questions. It's not like I just assumed the check was good."

The Sheriff's Office forwarded the case to the FBI.

"There is little that local law enforcement can do with regard to international scams," Sheriff's Office spokesman James Hartman said.

Officials at the Florida bank named on the bogus check told detectives that more than a half-dozen similar counterfeit checks have surfaced in the past few months, Hartman said.

"In the age of instant communication, scams such as this one are increasingly common," St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said. "Internet users need to exercise extreme caution when conducting business online, particularly with unknown parties."

Meanwhile, the piano was never shipped, and the woman said she still plans to sell it. But this time, she said she will use a newspaper classified ad.

"And I'm only going to accept cash," she said.
. . . . . . .
Paul Rioux can be reached at prioux@timespicayune.com or (985) 645-2852.

kamenriderv3

01-13-2003, 11:38 AM

BEND, Oregon (AP) -- You better hit the shower before you board the bus in Bend.

Proposed new city rules would ban spitting, defecating, smoking, skateboarding, and stinking on city buses.

The regulations ban anyone who "emanates a grossly repulsive odor that is unavoidable by other Bend Extended Area Transit customers" from being in the bus station or on a bus.

"It's an effort to keep the riding experience as pleasant and safe as possible," said city attorney Jim Forbes. He noted that the city already has an ordinance prohibiting people from releasing "highly objectionable odors" from their property.

The City Council will consider preliminary approval of the ordinance Wednesday.

The city's transit system is currently reservations-based. Last year, the city expanded the transit service for seniors and the disabled into a service for the general public, but no scheduled routes have been established.

stryfe

01-15-2003, 06:57 AM

http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/features/0109/images/0912dog.jpg

Dog translation device -- barking mad or marketing marvel? (http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/features/0109/20010911dog.html)
By Ayako Oguni
Mainichi Shimbun

Canine conversation: Takara's decoding device.
A new device that converts dogs' yelps into words is quickly gaining the attention of canine lovers, but some say its makers could be barking up the wrong tree.

The device, dubbed "Bow-lingual," is set to hit the shelves in February next year. Produced by toy manufacturer Takara Co. Ltd., it will retail for 12,800 yen.

A small microphone attached to the dog's collar decodes the tone of any barks it picks up and zaps the information to a portable hand-sized display. After separating the dog's barks into one of six emotional categories, the device emits such phrases as "I'm annoyed" or "I've done it!" through a speaker. At the end of the day, it sums up the dog's feelings, saying things like, "I'm a bit lonely today."

In creating data for the dog's barks, the manufacturer collected about 2,000 sounds from 100 dogs. Since Takara announced it would begin selling the devices, it has gained attention from media in Japan and overseas.

"It seems like the trial device is the first of its kind," a Takara spokesman said. The toy maker is also reportedly receiving calls from pet owners asking them to create a similar device for cats.

However, some have their doubts about the gadget.

"It's like a dream, but you probably don't need it to build good ties with your dog," said Australian shepherd dog owner Chiho Mizutani. "It would be ridiculous for a machine to understand my dog's feelings better than me," the 18-year-old said.

Takara, which employed the help of animal movement study specialists in developing the decoder, says it aims for "90 percent accuracy" in converting canines' barks into speech, but experts say accurate translation remains impossible.

"There are no objective standards when it comes to judging dogs' feelings. Even if leading technology is used, accurate translation is impossible," said Yoichi Tokura of the NTT Science and Core Technology Laboratory Group. "Communication with animals is fun precisely because owners can interpret their responses however they like."

Others warn that the translator could lead to owners unnecessarily trying to force communication with their pets.

"It will be all right if dogs don't suffer stress from their owners going out of their way to make them bark," said a doubtful Fumio Imoto, of the Society for the Study of Human-Animal Relations. "Dogs don't make much noise when they are satisfied or having a good time. It's when they are uneasy, want something or are assuming a threat that they bark. But I suppose it's fun for the owners to 'hear' those feelings in words."

Takara hopes to sell at least 200,000 of the gadgets. It has even planned a system tentatively entitled "bow-lingual mail" that automatically e-mails translations of a dog's barks to its owner.

So will the decoding devices sell hot off the shelves? Imoto predicts they will. "Today, when a veterinarian says something won't be popular, it sells wildly."

nikel

01-15-2003, 07:16 AM

Monday, January 13, 2003
Posted: 4:04 PM EST (2104 GMT)

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) -- A Jordanian couple who kept up a secret relationship by using a dog to carry their love letters were revealed when the woman's brother discovered one of the notes, sparking an argument in which the pet was killed.

The tale had a bittersweet ending, a friend of the couple reported Monday: The woman's father agreed to let the couple marry. The proposal came in the last letter delivered by the man's 3-year-old German shepherd, Big Joe.

"They keep saying, 'We'll never forget him,"' neighbor Nashaat't al-Majali told The Associated Press. He identified the man by his first name only, Thamer, and would not give the woman's name.

As the dog had done often in the last year, Big Joe walked a few blocks Saturday from Thamer's home to the woman's, a letter in a cloth pouch strapped to his back. The two lived in a community north of the capital Amman is predominantly conservative Muslim, where dating is prohibited and marriages are usually arranged by parents.

The Jordanian news agency Petra said the woman's brother surprised her, snatched the letter and read it. In a screaming match that ensued, the dog attacked the brother. The brother grabbed a stone and hit the dog on the head, killing him.

Neighbors in Zarqa, 17 miles northeast of Amman, rallied around the couple and pressed the father to accept Thamer's proposal to his daughter, Petra said. The marriage was expected to take place soon, said al-Majali.

Big Joe was buried Saturday in the backyard of Thamer's house, al-Majali said.

:(

jiggles

01-15-2003, 02:56 PM

This bums me out. Reminds me of the Simpsons when Homer starts singing "Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today" and started crying.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030115/sc_nm/food_banana_dc

LONDON (Reuters) - It is one of the world's favorite fruits, but the banana hasn't had sex in years and its days may be are numbered.

Without scientific help the sterile, seedless fruit could disappear with 10 years, according to a Belgian plant pathologist.

Emile Frison, the head of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain in Monpellier, France, said the fruit lacks the genetic diversity to fight off diseases and pests that are plaguing banana plantations and only biotechnology and genetic manipulation may be able to save it.

"Frison sees it as the only hope for the banana," New Scientist said on Wednesday.

Without assistance banana production could drop and mark the beginning of the end of the fruit.

"We may even see the extinction of the banana as both a lifesaver for hungry and impoverished Africans and as the most popular product on the world's supermarket shelves," the magazine added.

Liver_on_a_Stick

01-15-2003, 02:57 PM

The story about bananas is devistating. Imagine a world without bananas? I can't....

01-15-2003, 05:40 PM

angrykitty

01-17-2003, 12:46 PM

:( no bananas?

on a different note;

Y'Osama, where you bin? (http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2003021955,00.html)

fmstlr

01-18-2003, 10:16 PM

:(

http://www.vosgouny.com/Terror1.html

The Family who owns Zankou Chicken is decimated.

archonemis

01-20-2003, 08:11 PM

WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO WITHOUT NANERS AND MILK?!

perseus

01-20-2003, 09:34 PM

Originally posted by Liver_on_a_Stick
The story about bananas is devistating. Imagine a world without bananas? I can't....

that is fucked up.. now Monsanto or some giant genetic foods corp. can trumpet their cause.

and bananas are one of the worst crops in terms of the exploitation of workers and domination by a few giant corporations. perhap this disaster will bring them some attention and somehow improve their fate.

archonemis

01-21-2003, 10:31 PM

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association
for Forensic Science, AAFS President Don Harper Mills astounded his
audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre
death.

"On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of one,
Ronald Opus [remember the name], and concluded that he died from a
shotgun wound of the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a
ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note
indicating his despondency).

As Opus fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a
shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly.

The first of several interesting side notes is that neither the
shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been
erected at the eighth floor level to protect the window washers and
that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide because
of this.

"Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit
suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be
what he/she intended."

The fact that Opus was shot on the way to (what was to be) certain
death nine stories below probably would not have changed his mode
of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that his intent to
commit suicide would not have been successful eventually caused the
medical examiner to feel he had homicide before him.

The room on the ninth floor where the shotgun blast emanated was
occupied by an elderly man and his wife. At the time of the suicide
attempt, the couple were arguing and the husband was threatening
the wife with the shotgun. The man was so upset that when he
pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the shotgun
pellets went through the a window striking Opus as he happened to
be falling toward the safety net.

When one intends to kill subject A but instead kills subject B in
the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When
confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both
adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded.

The old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his
wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her
-- therefore, the murder of Opus appeared to be an accident. That
is because the gun had been accidentally loaded.

The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old
couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to
the fatal incident.

It turned out that the old lady had cut off her son's financial
support and her son, knowing the propensity of his father to use
the shotgun to threaten his mother, loaded the gun with the
expectation that his father would end up shooting his mother for
him. The case then became one of murder on the part of the son for
the death of Ronald Opus.

That which follows is another most interesting twist in this case
that helps to illustrate the definition of irony.

Further investigation revealed that the son [who turned out to be
Ronald Opus] had become increasingly despondent over the failure of
his attempt to engineer his mother's murder through his father's
consistent use of a shotgun in anger to threaten his mother.

In his frustration and anger that stemmed from his greed, Ronald
Opus chose to end his own life and jumped off the ten-story
building on March 23, only to be killed by his father with the
shotgun blast (through the ninth story window) which Ronald
engineered to originally kill his own mother.

The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

soundmurderer

01-22-2003, 01:44 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2681609.stm

Tuesday, 21 January, 2003, 18:57 GMT
Woman drove car with 27 dogs

Barbara Byrne told police she was driving to the beach
An animal lover had 27 dogs in her car including one on her lap when she was stopped by police on a dual carriageway, a court heard.
Barbara Byrne, 60, was also smoking and holding a can of drink between her thighs, Huntingdon magistrates were told.

Two police officers tried to pull over the former care worker in her Renault Laguna estate after they saw her driving at 40 mph and veering across the A1 dual carriageway in heavy rain at Brampton, Cambridgeshire.

She carried on driving for more than 15 miles after officers sounded sirens and flashed the patrol car's lights.

A second police car had to be used to box in her car and force her to stop on 13 May last year.

Beach walk

Five dogs were travelling unrestrained. Another 22 small ones were in a cage in the back of the car.

Byrne later told the police that she had been driving more than 100 miles from her home to take her pets for a walk on the beach at Skegness.

Byrne of Manor Close, Tongham, Surrey, was found guilty of careless driving, failing to stop and driving otherwise than in accordance with a licence.

She was banned from driving for a year, fined £50 and ordered to pay £75 costs.

akuma

01-22-2003, 02:26 PM

is dude ever gonna learn....
and where's r.kelly 2009 when you need him?

-----------------------------------------

1.22.03

R KELLY ARRESTED ON PORN CHARGES AGAIN

Already awaiting trial on child pornography charges in Chicago, R. Kelly was arrested Wednesday morning in Miami on additional child porn charges. Authorities said they found 12 photos of a nude girl at the singer's home.

The Polk County Sheriff's office, with the assistance of Miami-Dade police, arrested the singer at the Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove, where he had been staying. Kelly was in town to shoot a video for the remix of his latest single, "Ignition."

Authorities said the charges stem from the discovery of child pornography images during a search of the singer's rented Davenport, Florida, residence in June. That search was conducted during his initial arrest in Polk County on an Illinois fugitive warrant. Then two search warrants were executed at his home, and 12 digital images were found that depicted an underage female. Three images also depicted Kelly involved in sexual conduct with the female minor, authorities said.

Kelly is being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Facility. Bond is set at $12,000 ($1,000 per count).

Kelly's new album, Chocolate Factory, has been pushed back to February 18.

YelloKitty

01-22-2003, 02:30 PM

kelly wonka and the chocolate factory!

fmstlr

01-23-2003, 09:30 AM

MEDIA ALERT
January 23, 2003 | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Iowa Professor Owns Phrase Freedom of Expression, Threatens Suit
Against AT&T for Violating His Trademark.

New York Times reporter Nat Ives writes, "Freedom of Expression, it
turns out, may not be for everyone."

At a January 25, 2003 press conference in Chicago, IL, University of
Iowa professor Kembrew McLeod will formally announce his plans to
pursue legal action against AT&T for trademark infringement. The
telecommunications giant used "Freedom of Expression" as the slogan
for a recent print ad campaign, which violates Dr. McLeod's federally
registered trademark, Freedom of Expression, which is also the name
of his long-running publication.

"Yesterday, Mr. McLeod sent AT&T a 'cease and desist' letter,
asserting that consumers might infer a link between the company and
his anti-corporate publication, 'Freedom of Expression,'" wrote Ives
in a January 23, 2003 New York Times column. McLeod objects to the
fact that AT&T, in reality, cares little for freedom of expression;
he is also concerned with the way intellectual property law is
accelerating the privatization of our culture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/23/business/media/23ADCO.html

"Your company has usurped my client's registered trademark in its
attempts to sell long-distance telephone service to college
students," McLeod's Iowa City-based attorney Gregory Williams wrote
in the cease and desist letter mailed to AT&T on January 22, 2003.
"Consequently, we demand that you immediately cease and desist from
further use of the registered mark 'Freedom of Expression.'"

"I want AT&T to think twice the next time they try to use 'Freedom of
Expression' without my permission," states McLeod. He acknowledges
the irony of trademarking the very phrase that sums up the American
commitment to free speech. "But 99.999% of the time it is
corporations that shut down individuals' Freedom of Expression," he
said, "so it's satisfying that trademark law allows me to do the same
to AT&T." McLeod is an assistant professor at the University of Iowa
who has written about the impact of intellectual property law and the
privatization of culture in his book Owning Culture (2001).

This is not the first time a commonly used phrase has been
trademarked. Food manufacturing company Mrs. Smith's fires off cease
and desist letters to bakeries that dare to infringe on its
trademark, "home style." University of Massachusetts ex-basketball
coach John Calipari trademarked "Refuse to Lose" and charges the
school royalties to use his slogan. And Ohio University and Ohio
State engaged in a lengthy, expensive battle over the word "Ohio."

The Trademark for Freedom of Expression (no. 2,127,381) was filed
under Class 16 of the international register of services and goods,
which covers printed matter, and the like.

The press conference is part of the Chicago opening of "Illegal Art:
Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age," an art show that runs
from January 25 through February 21. "Illegal Art"
(http://illegal-art.org) debuted in New York City, and it will also
travel to San Francisco. The show is sponsored by Stay Free! magazine
and the Chicago exhibit is hosted by In These Times magazine.
McLeod's framed Freedom of Expression trademark certificate is part
of the show, which highlights art and ideas on the legal fringes of
intellectual property law. Works include the cover art of
Negativland's infamous "U2" sound collage, which prompted a lawsuit
by the Irish band's record company, as well as director Todd Haynes'
"Superstar," a short film that sympathetically tells the story of
Karen Carpenter with Barbie dolls, but which was enjoined from
distribution.

Media representatives and others are invited to the press conference
at 5pm on January 25, 2003. It is located at 2040 N. Milwaukee
Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60647, at the In These Times magazine building.
The show opens at the same location at 6pm.

High Resolution Images Available for Media at http://kembrew.com.

CONTACT INFO:
Kembrew McLeod
319-621-4620
kembrew@kembrew.com

stryfe

01-28-2003, 07:45 AM

Half of Koreans Surnamed Kim, Lee, Park (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/lpage/200301/kt2003012817304710230.htm)

By Lee Chi-dong
Staff Reporter

If you come across a person on the street, you may choose to call them by the surname Kim, Lee, and Park _ and chances are you have almost 50 percent of being right.

According to the National Statistical Office (NSO), more than 20 million of the nation’s 47 million population have one of these three surnames.

The surname Kim is the most popular, with 9.9 million or 21.6 percent sharing the name. That means one out of every five Koreans has the surname Kim, followed by Lee with 6.8 million (14.8 percent), and Park with 3.8 million (8.5 percent).

The NSO announced yesterday that at the end of November in 2000, there were a total of 286 surnames in the country, with the exception of naturalized Koreans, and 4,179 different family origins, called ``Ponkwan.’’

Ponkwan refers to a town or village where the original member of a clan with a title of nobility lived.

``Eleven new surnames were made after our previous survey in 1985,’’ NSO official Hyun Young-ki said, ``and there were a total of 442 surnames registered by those who became naturalized in Korea.

Of those who registered surnames as naturalized citizens, 83 had Chinese origins, 130 had Japanese, 145 had Filipino and 75 had other origins.

He added that 96.2 percent of naturalized citizens decided to change their nationality due to marriage and 87.3 percent were women.

While most Western women adopt their husbands’ surname upon marriage, Korean women maintain their family names, usually the surname of their fathers.

Genealogy expert Kim Hun points out that Korean people have traditionally been proud of their last names and family origins.

``The surname and Ponkwan are a means of further identifying people who belong to the same clan, and the first name is a code to identify individuals,’’ Kim said. Kim is a director at the Korea Heaven Earth Mankind Co, which specializes in studying the family tree.

He added that most Korean people started to have surnames during the Koryo Kingdom (918-1392).

``In many cases, descendants created their own family names to enhance their identity,’’ Kim noted, ``and an estimated 20-30 percent of surnames here came from China.’’

He added that there are more than 130,000 surnames in Japan, while some South Asian people, such as those in Myanmar and Indonesia, don’t use family names.

lcd@koreatimes.co.kr

01-28-2003 17:31

Liver_on_a_Stick

01-30-2003, 10:11 AM

This new snippet is odd and scary.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-558570,00.html

GERMAN youths have taken up a dangerous new pastime: firing potatoes as fast as a rocket from “bazookas” made from drainage pipes.
One man almost lost an eye, a woman had her leg broken and one teenager was badly burnt when the hairspray used as the propellant exploded in his face as he prepared to fire.

A 16-year-old in the university city of Göttingen lost part of his ear when the firing chamber ripped open as he pulled the trigger.

The so-called Kartoffelkanone are made from piping and masking tape bought at any hardware store. With a range of 200 metres they could split a man’s head at 15 metres and penetrate a wooden wall at 90 metres.

The guns are not governed by the usual strict firearms regulations in Germany, but prosecutors in the republic’s 16 states are passing emergency rulings to try to outlaw them.

Horst Przbyla, a munitions expert for police in Brandenburg near Berlin, said: “What started out as an extreme form of paintball has become deadly dangerous. Certainly, anyone caught in the path of the projectiles can expect to sustain very serious injuries indeed. It can only be a matter of time until the first death.”

Police are considering asking leading hardware chains to sell piping only to adults.

Local stores that sell hairsprays and pressurised lighter fluid, the favourite propellants for the DIY weapons, may also be asked to sell them only to adults. Failing that, police suggest that youngsters should have to explain why they are buying them.

A website used by the Kartoffelkanone enthusiasts was receiving only 20 hits a day just three months ago: now there are more than 700.

German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.

An apple fired from one of the guns almost took out the eye of a middle-aged man near the Baltic coast.

In Bavaria a 55-year-old woman suffered severe injuries when a potato smashed into her thigh as she walked near woodland with her dog. A school in Weinstadt in Baden-Württemberg recently came under a potato barrage from children playing truant, while in the Taunus region several windows of a block of flats were smashed.

The hairspray is ignited using a battery which provides a spark. Some youths have made multi-barrelled potato cannons, resembling the Soviet Katyusha rocket launchers of the Second World War and capable of firing at a phenomenal rate.

Thuringia in the east has imposed a ban on the guns and four youngsters in the town of Schlotheim caught by police had their weapons destroyed and were sentenced to 25 hours community service. Police also caught two teenagers with a cannon nearly 6ft long in one Rhineland town. A spokesman for the police in Brandenburg said: “Woodland on Sundays echoes to the thump-thump of these guns. It is a growing social problem that needs to be tackled.”

akuma

01-30-2003, 10:51 AM

/dev/null is an idiot.

angrykitty

01-30-2003, 11:50 AM

Originally posted by Liver_on_a_Stick
This new snippet is odd and scary.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-558570,00.html

GERMAN youths have taken up a dangerous new pastime: firing potatoes as fast as a rocket from “bazookas” made from drainage pipes.
One man almost lost an eye, a woman had her leg broken and one teenager was badly burnt when the hairspray used as the propellant exploded in his face as he prepared to fire.

heh...leave it to the german youth to fuck up something as cool as a potato gun.

01-31-2003, 04:51 AM

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030130/hl_nm/infants_diet_dc_1

Babies' Mental Delay Tied to Moms' Vegan Diet

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The breast-fed infants of two mothers who did not eat any animal products, including milk and eggs, developed brain abnormalities as a result of a vitamin-B12 deficiency, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) (CDC) reported Thursday.

The primary sources of vitamin B12, which is essential for brain development, are animal products like meat, dairy products and eggs. Since the mothers ate little or no animal products, too little vitamin B12 was transmitted to their children through breast milk, according to the CDC's Dr. Maria Elena Jefferds.

Jefferds added that these cases serve as a reminder to parents and pediatricians to ensure that both pregnant women and mothers who breast-feed their infants consume enough B12, either through diet or B12-containing supplements.

"You have to make sure you're getting it," she said, in reference to vitamin B12.

And don't abandon breast-feeding altogether, Jefferds cautioned. Breast-feeding has many advantages, and mothers who choose to not eat animal products should still continue to breast-feed their infants.

"Vegetarians should absolutely breast-feed, there's no question about that," she said.

In the January 31st issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Jefferds and her colleagues describe the cases of two babies who showed signs of brain abnormalities as a result of a deficiency in vitamin B12.

In one case, doctors examined and diagnosed the deficiency in a 15-month-old child with slow growth and mental development. Her mother said she had avoided consuming all animal products for many years, and had breast-fed the baby for 8 months after birth.

After receiving supplements of vitamin B12, the child began to improve, but was still below her age group in speech and language at 32 months of age.

Jefferds explained in an interview that many children fully recover from vitamin-B12 deficiencies but that, in some cases, a prolonged period of low consumption of vitamin B12 can cause irreversible damage.

"I think it really depends on how severe the deficiency was, and how long it was taking place for," she said.

She added that while both children described in the report showed lingering symptoms of low vitamin B12, over time, those impairments may disappear.

The initial symptoms of low vitamin B12 in infants are often vague and not obvious, Jefferds noted. She recommended that doctors keep the possibility of a deficiency "on their radar screen," and ask mothers if they eat animal products or take supplements that contain enough vitamin B12, also known as cobalamin.

Vegans eat only plant-based foods, using grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables to fill all their dietary needs. Vegetarians, on the other hand, typically avoid meat, but may eat some animal products, such as milk, eggs and possibly fish.

stryfe

02-07-2003, 09:25 AM

Mini craters key to 'blackest ever black' (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993356)
14:45 06 February 03
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

Researchers have created the blackest black ever made on Earth, by bubbling a shiny metal plate in nitric acid for a few seconds.

Ultimate darkness
This new super-black coating produced by Richard Brown and his colleagues at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington is designed to revolutionise the manufacture of optical instruments.

It reflects 10 to 20 times less light than the black paint currently used to reduce unwanted reflections in instruments. And this means the super-black coating may one day help improve the vision of the Hubble Space Telescope, says Nigel Fox, who heads the optics group at NPL.

The idea of making a blacker black by chemically etching a nickel-phosphorus alloy goes back 20 years. But early attempts to come up with a nickel-phosphorus formulation and etching process that was better at absorbing light than black paint came to naught. Now using many different etching processes, and varying the composition of the alloy in hundreds of tests, NPL has made the crucial breakthrough.

Stalagmites and craters

By examining the surface of hundreds of alloy plates under an
electron microscope, NPL has discovered where previous researchers went wrong. It has developed a two-stage technique that produces the blacker black New Scientist saw emerge from the acid tank last week.

In the first stage, an object to be blackened is immersed for five hours in a solution of nickel sulphate and sodium hypophosphite. This produces a nickel and phosphorus coating containing between five and seven per cent phosphorus. Then the surface is etched with nitric acid to produce the super-black surface structure.

One of the crucial discoveries, says Brown, was how the percentage of phosphorus in the nickel coating affected the surface after etching. An electron micrograph of the surface of an alloy containing more than eight per cent phosphorus (see graphic) looks like a collection of stalagmites.

But if the phosphorus content is around six per cent the surface becomes pitted with craters. The curved craters reflect less light that the straighter-sided stalagmites, so super-black reflects about half as much light as the high-phosphorus surfaces.

Right angle

Super-black is especially effective at absorbing light that hits it at an angle. With the light source at right angles the super-black coating reflects less than 0.35 per cent. Black paint, by comparison, reflects about 2.5 per cent, or seven times as much. With the light source at an angle of 45°, black paint reflects 25 times as much light as the super-black.

Brown says a wide range of materials can be coated with super-black, including metals and ceramics. And unlike some black paints the coating will not crack at cryogenic temperatures used on some space instruments, such as the Earth radiation monitors used to keep a check on global warming. But the super-black alloy is quite fragile and can easily be scratched.

One of the early applications of the coating, says Fox, is likely to be on star trackers, which help spacecraft maintain their position by fixing on the pinpricks of light from the heavens. These black- painted tubes often have to be at least 50 centimetres long to allow the walls to absorb any stray light. But with a super-black coating the tube can be one-third shorter and correspondingly lighter yet still absorb the same amount of light.

One of the more interesting applications for the new black outside space and optical applications may be in fine art. NPL says that several artists are keen to use the new material. "When you look at the black, it is an incredibly beautiful surface. It's like black velvet."

Mick Hamer

fmstlr

02-11-2003, 12:32 AM

Keep popping those pills and make the trouble go away...

Pfizer's Zoloft Wins OK for Social Phobia

Updated 6:03 PM ET February 10, 2003

By Ransdell Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc. <PFE.N> on Monday said it had won permission from U.S. regulators to market its blockbuster depression drug Zoloft for additional use as a treatment for "social anxiety disorder."

People with the disorder often fear public speaking, acting in plays, playing musical instruments in public and eating in front of others, according to the Merck Manual of medical information -- situations that in an earlier era might have been characterized as shyness.

The New York-based company said Zoloft is the first member in its popular class of depression drugs, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), to win approval for long-term treatment of patients with the anxiety disorder.

It was also approved for acute, or short-term, treatment of the disorder, also known as social phobia. GlaxoSmithKline's <GSK.L> rival depression drug, Paxil, is already approved for acute episodes of the disorder.

Pfizer said people with social phobia experience "anxiety, fear and avoidance behaviors" in certain social situations.

Analysts have said its approved use for social phobia could help sustain or boost sales of Zoloft, which boasted fourth-quarter global revenues of $775 million. Pfizer said Zoloft is the most-prescribed SSRI in the United States. Other members of the class include Paxil and Eli Lilly's <LLY.N> Prozac.

Social phobia is among many modern conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, that some critics argue are often "medicalizations" of common human behavior for the purpose of selling more drugs.

But Pfizer spokesman Jeff Cook said social phobia is indeed a real condition that demands treatment.

"People suffering with social anxiety disorder are much more than shy. They experience significant emotional distress and sometimes even physical symptoms such as heart palpitations during common everyday activities that most people take for granted," Cook said.

Dr. Michael Liebowitz, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and Pfizer consultant, estimated about 6 percent of the U.S. population during their lifetimes have social anxiety serious enough to qualify as social phobia.

"They have distressing or disabling anxiety or avoid most performance and social situations," Liebowitz said.

He said such people can be truly terrified of talking to a colleague or to a stranger on the telephone, or of asking for a date or going to a party.

"Many people are fearful in these situations, but people with social phobia can actually be crippled by such fears, to the point of becoming reclusive," Liebowitz said. (Additional reporting by Toni Clarke)

stryfe

02-13-2003, 07:21 AM

Korean Females’ Legs Get Longer (http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200302/kt2003021317244710230.htm)

By Kim Sung-jin
Staff Reporter

South Korean women’s legs have grown longer while their waists and hips have thickened over the past 18 years, according to the Agency for Technology and Standards.

The average Korean female in her 20s was found to be 162 centimeters tall, with a bust measurement of 82 cm (32.2 inches), a waist measurement of 66 cm (26 inches) and a hip measurement of 90 cm (35.6 inches), the standards agency said yesterday.

The research indicates the average height of South Korean women has increased 6.6 cm since 1986, and their legs have grown 7.8 cm longer to 81.7 cm.

The agency, under the wing of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy (MOCIE), surveyed 450 unmarried women in their 20s in Seoul, Kyonggi Province and South Cholla Province to find out the average body size.

The proportion of leg length to total height has increased from 47.6 percent in 1986 to 50.4 percent last year, while younger women have longer legs, the survey found.

The agency said the bust measurements of Korean women had shrunk from 82.4 cm in 1986 to 81.9 cm this year, while waist and hip measurements had increased from 64.8 centimeters and 87.8 cm to 66.1 cm and 90.4 cm, respectively.

``South Korean females’ body size is changing differently from westerners, whose breast are becoming bigger. In Korea, females’ hips are getting larger and this change is probably caused by altered eating habits,’’ a MOCIE official said.

When asked about how satisfied they were about their body size, 70 percent of the respondents said they are dissatisfied with only 12 percent happy with their body shape.

Of the women surveyed, 38 percent said they thought their body was average among young Korean females.

The agency plans to measure the body size of Korean females and males nationwide to find out standard proportions by age group later this year.

akuma

02-20-2003, 08:39 AM

FREAKING is BANNED!
http://www.bayarea.com/images/bayarea/mercurynews/5223/27283493783.jpg

Students at Palo Alto High are about to learn that ``freaking'' -- a popular way of dancing that simulates sex -- will get them kicked out of school dances.

It's just too nasty, school officials say.

Principal Sandra Pearson plans to tell the school's 1,650 students today that she is banning sexually provocative dance moves in response to suggestions from some parents and students. Critics say the amorphous dance known as freaking is a ``demeaning'' activity that looks like something that would be seen in an X-rated movie rather than at a high school dance.

``Freak dancing, to me, is like pornography,'' Pearson said. ``I may not be able to define it, but I sure know it when I see it.''

The ban puts Palo Alto on par with high schools across the country, from Wilcox High in Santa Clara to Oakland Mills High in Columbia, Md., that are taking steps to foster an atmosphere in which students respect each other, both inside and outside of the classroom. But some observers say the crackdown will be hard to enforce and could spark a backlash that's even harder to control.

Over the past two months, Pearson and the student council have tried to pin down what is appropriate behavior for school dances. They drafted seven rules, including no chewing gum (so the new gym floor won't be ruined) and ``no demeaning or sexually explicit dancing.''

How is the news going over?

``It's freaking the kids out,'' said Joann Vaars, director of student activities.

Teens who protest the new restriction say freaking is a harmless way to cozy up to each other while grooving to pulsating hip-hop and rap music. If they can't freak, they can't have fun, advocates say.

``They can't put a ban on it,'' said sophomore Blake Wilson. ``If they kick people out, there will be two people left.''

The test will come at a dance Friday night.

``I'm very concerned that dances should be a safe place and a place everybody wants to come to,'' said Pearson, who noted only 500 students, or one-third of the student body, typically attend dances. ``I've heard too many stories about ninth- and 10th-graders not feeling comfortable coming to dances.''

Pearson said frowning upon freaking is not an issue of old fogeys forgetting how to be hip.

``When I was younger, the older generation was concerned about the Twist,'' Pearson said. ``We all know the older generation will look at the younger generation and see how things have degenerated.''

Freaking, however, isn't like the Twist.

``It's different because there are instances when a girl will be on the floor and there will be guys on top of her,'' rising and falling in sync with the song, Pearson explained.

And there are times when a student's head is nuzzled in another's crotch. Or legs are hung around hips as pelvises thrust against each other. Basically, it's anything that looks like sex.

``I don't understand why it's an issue,'' said Blake, 16. ``You have four layers of clothing between you.''

But administrators would like to see a little space between the dancers, too.

When sophomore Jessica Lee, 15, heard the news, she said, ``I don't think it's going to change anything.''

``I don't think it's necessary,'' chimed in her friend Jessie Herzog, also a 15-year-old sophomore. ``It's trying to change it into a middle school dance.''

Freaking has been outlawed at Terman Middle School's dances since the Palo Alto school opened two years ago. It's also not allowed at Palo Alto's Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School.

At Stanford Middle School, chaperons who spot students freaking casually tap the offenders' shoulders. If the students don't cut it out, they are asked to sit down or leave.

Freshman Sonia Srnigish thinks it's unreasonable to regulate the popular dance style.

``Let's look at what freaking is,'' said Sonia, 14. ``It's dancing really close to another person. They've done that for years and years.''

Denouncing a dance for being too sexual reaches back to the end of the 18th century, said Stanford University dance lecturer Richard Powers.

``The waltz was the first notorious one,'' Powers said. ``In our country, which was a little more conservative and puritanical, a lot of etiquette books advised young women should not waltz under any circumstances. That created a whole generation of young people who wanted to waltz. It was the forbidden fruit.''

Then there was swing dancing, which was derided as ``orchestrated sex.'' And the tango, which the archbishop of Paris warned Christians to shun.

The repercussions of the older generations' moral outcry and clamp down on dancing resulted in rebellion by the younger generations, who rejected their elders' values, Powers said.

And compared with other types of dances, freaking isn't all that bad, said Powers.

Disco dancing in the 1970s was ``very sexually explicit, much more than you saw in the movies -- in `Saturday Night Fever' or `Dirty Dancing,' '' Powers said. ``It was no worse than freak dancing. It was maybe a little bit more vertical, but . . . nobody minded.''

Powers speculates the different perception of disco dancing and freaking is that disco was done by dancers who were old enough to drink and that the mainstream culture was more liberal in the '70s.

He said a backlash may emerge as a today's youth grow to resent the ban on freaking. However, he doesn't foresee the freaking craze lasting for long.

``I could be wrong,'' Powers said, ``but I don't see it as how everybody's going to be dancing in 10 or 20 years from now.''

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/5221878.htm

Liver_on_a_Stick

02-22-2003, 04:59 AM

eating to help the hungry

DULUTH -- What better way to raise money for the hungry than by eating more than 1,400 hamburgers?

That's what 112 University of Minnesota-Duluth students did Wednesday, with money for each burger wolfed down going to the Duluth Salvation Army Food Shelf.

A White Castle restaurant donated more than enough of its famous ``Slyders'' - 2.5-inch, 100-percent-beef square patties steamed on a bed of onions - for the event.

Jerod Wendt, a UMD senior from Ramsey, organized the event to raise money for food for those less fortunate than the students. Wendt estimated the contest raised about $700 in pledges for the Salvation Army.

Each student tried to down as many hamburgers in an hour as they could.

Mitch Born won the contest by eating and keeping down 30 burgers.

Another UMD student made the mistake of trying to outdo Born. Steve Peterson finished his 30th and went for 31.

He ended up with less than 30.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1451/3664550.html

why didn't they just donate the food to a shelter????
Do some other stupid fund raising stunt.

02-26-2003, 07:12 PM

i'm going to fucking bed. ta! ta! not odd enough? accelera deck relaxes me...

stryfe

03-11-2003, 09:12 AM

After 30 minutes it's free, after 2 hours you're fired (http://cbc.ca/stories/2003/03/10/pizza_shooting030310)
Last Updated Mon, 10 Mar 2003 15:52:08

SELKIRK, MAN. - A single mother lost her job delivering pizza because she took time off duty to attend to a man who had been shot in the stomach.

Mom loses pizza job after helping gunshot victim
Marcella McAulay was working part-time for Frank's Pizza in Selkirk, a town of 10,000 about 30 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

In February, she was driving with a friend in her pizza car when the friend's daughter called to say there had been a shooting on her street. McAulay drove her friend home, but as she pulled up one of two shooting victims called for help.

McAulay, 34, went in the house and stayed with the victims until police and paramedics arrived.

One man was shot in the stomach; another in the wrist. The shooter had fled the scene.

"He was pretty scared and he felt he was dying," McAulay told the weekly Selkirk Journal, referring to the man shot in the stomach. She tried to keep him awake and applied pillows to the wound to slow the bleeding.

Police detained McAulay for questioning, and when she reported back to Frank's Pizza her supervisor, Jason Boyd, fired her. "We feel just as bad as the next guy, but we don't pay employees to be EMTs (emergency medical technicians)," Boyd said.

Boyd wasn't at the store Monday morning, but his assistant, Randy Saluk, told CBC News Online that McAulay was out "joy-riding" with her friend.

He said when she went to help the shooting victim she left her nightly float money in the unlocked pizza car.

The man shot in the stomach is a 33-year-old Winnipeg man. The victim shot in the wrist is a 33- year-old Selkirk man.

Daniel Keep, 33, of Selkirk was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. He remains in custody.

Written by CBC News Online staff

perseus

03-11-2003, 10:25 AM

Ms. Kaila Yu has been charming us with her beauty and sensual appeal for years on end. Who out there hasn't already fallen prey to her temptress eyes and drum-taut physique? And having added the title of recording artist to her resume, the southern cali bombshell-turned-songstress is now out to serenade us with her sultry voice. Cue the sweet melodies...

http://www.kailapop.com/images/gallery/bpop01.jpgSo has your modeling taken a backseat to your singing?

I will probably always model, but singing is my true passion and singing will always come first. It is much more interesting to get on stage and be heard by an audience than to sit behind a booth and take pictures. Modeling only expresses surface emotions while singing requires real emotion.

What has it been like to live out your dream of starting a singing career?

It has been very difficult to make the transition and it will continue to be very difficult. Out of acting and modeling I believe that singing is the hardest career to pursue and not one single Asian has broken out in the mainstream music world yet. However, the rewards of recording a great track and performing on stage to a crowd who feels you and your music is the best feeling in the world.

Were you one of those little girls that dressed up and pretended you were a famous songbird?

Yes, I was a dorky and bossy kid who would put on elaborate shows for the neighborhood, friends and family. My favorite movie was The Little Mermaid and I cast myself as Ariel and cast everyone else as the fish, crab and other characters.

http://www.kailapop.com/images/gallery/music10.jpgDo you sing in the shower?

I do! The best acoustics and sounds are in the shower! For some reason I always sound the best in there!

We noticed that you've notched a number of performances under your belt. How do you feel about performing in front of large crowds?

I used to get very scared and nervous before I got on stage. However, I now know that I always go on and give my 100% so I'm pretty calm before I go on. The one thing that scares me is talking to the audience during and after the performance. My friends say that I have a tendency to sing my songs and run off stage without saying anything.

What's currently in rotation in your CD player?

Eminem, Britney Spears, Utada Hikaru and anything by the Neptunes...which is basically everything on the radio these days.

http://www.kailapop.com/images/gallery/weekly_07_08_02.jpgA quick search on Kazaa turned up a few of your songs, how do you feel about music being downloaded from the net?

It is never fun to lose sales, but in the end I want my music to be heard. It's a good thing that people are going out and downloading my music!

Your true passion for music started at an early age, has music always been a big part of your life?

Music has always been a part of my life. I played the piano for at least seven years and I grew up performing Chinese folk songs as a kid.

http://www.kailapop.com/images/gallery/music13.jpgHave you seen any cool music videos lately?

J-Lo, Britney, and Willa Ford all have really cool videos.

Any last words for your countless fans and our viewers?

Thank you so much for all your love and support! Without you, I wouldnt have a career! For more information about me and appearances go to www.KailaPop.com.

stryfe

03-12-2003, 07:12 AM

Arm-wrestle settles network battle (http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/03/10/offbeat.nz.wrestle/index.html)
By CNN's Marianne Bray in Hong Kong
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 Posted: 12:11 AM EST (0511 GMT)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (CNN) -- Two New Zealand telecom bosses have resolved a network battle in a most unorthodox way -- using brute force to wrestle their way to an out-of-court settlement.

Unable to reach a deal on access to a mobile radio network, the chief executive of a Wellington-based telecom company challenged his counterpart from a rival firm to a best-of-three bouts arm-wrestling contest.

Worried that the relatively small nine-month dispute could get out of hand, Teamtalk boss, David Ware asked Auckland-based MCS Digital chief Allan Cosford to square off around the table.

The companies had taken their NZ$200,000 ($112,000) spat to the commerce commission who didn't resolve it, and a court battle was looming, Ware said.

"The whole thing was becoming a distraction," says Ware. "The process was becoming a lot more than the original dispute was worth. This was a win-win."

So last Friday, 42-year-old Ware and 45-year-old Cosford shed their suits and trundled down to a "low-rent box of a gym" in Mt. Eden, Auckland to let strength settle the score.

"It could have got rather nasty and lawyers could have won," Cosford said of the row over MCS's bid to win access to TeamTalk's network.

"I took it (the wrestling) as a great gesture and reciprocated in kind."

In front of around 60 spectators the two faced off, hands interlocked and elbows firmly planted on a table, bidding to force each other's arm down.

"He was shorter than me and an accountant so I was quietly confident I would win," says Ware, of his arm-wrestling debut.

"I'm a bit heavier than him."

Ware won the first bout, which according to both parties, seemed to go on forever, but then faded after that, with Cosford coming back to pin his opponent down in the second and third rounds.

Steroid accusation

"I got him in the end because of persistence," said Cosford of his 2-1 victory. "My shoulder told the news for the next two days."

Ware seemed a little put out by the loss, accusing Cosford of ingesting illegal substances.

"Between rounds 2 and 3, Allan took his ventolin (asthmatic inhaler) and I reckon there were steroids in it," Ware said in jest of his loss.

But Cosford refuted the performance enhancing allegations, saying the two beers he had before the bout to ease his anxiety "probably helped," as did "rugby training from a few too many years ago."

While Cosford said the wrestle was a "damned good way to settle a score," with both contestants fielding sore arms, they will look to other options in future.

"Next time I'll use the child's game, stone-paper-scissors," said a defeated Ware.

Cosford advises companies to try to resolve their issues before resorting to arm- wrestling, which "is not that easy."

stryfe

03-12-2003, 07:13 AM

Originally posted by perseus
Ms. Kaila Yu has been charming us with her beauty and sensual appeal for years on end. Who out there hasn't already fallen prey to her temptress eyes and drum-taut physique? And having added the title of recording artist to her resume, the southern cali bombshell-turned-songstress is now out to serenade us with her sultry voice. Cue the sweet melodies...

if she becomes moderately big, her very brief pr0n career is going to come back to haunt her.

Jack

03-12-2003, 07:15 AM

http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/a-e/baskerville/03/baskerville031103.htm

liquid mass

03-12-2003, 07:20 AM

That's Iowa for you.

jiggles

03-17-2003, 12:14 PM

'Talking fish' stuns New York (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2854189.stm)

A fish heading for slaughter in a New York market shouted warnings about the end of the world before it was killed, two fish cutters have claimed.

Zalmen Rosen, from the Skver sect of Hasidic Jews, says co-worker Luis Nivelo, a Christian, was about to kill a carp to be made into gefilte fish in the city's New Square Fish Market in January when it began shouting in Hebrew.

"It said 'Tzaruch shemirah' and 'Hasof bah'," Mr Rosen later told the New York Times newspaper.

"[It] essentially means [in Hebrew] that everyone needs to account for themselves because the end is nigh."

kamenriderv3

03-17-2003, 12:50 PM

cool story until they admitted to killing and selling the fish. why kill a talking fish? its a reincarnated person.

if you hated the reincarnated guy then you could sell it alive for more money.

megalomaniac

03-17-2003, 03:03 PM

China launches new stealth fighter project

By Yihong Chang, JDW Correspondent, Zhuhai

The Shenyang Aircraft Company has been selected to head research and development of a new heavyweight fighter for China's People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), according to a senior source at the China Aviation Industry Corp I (AVIC I).

Development of the engines and weapon subsystems for the fourth-generation fighter has been underway for some time, according to the source, who revealed that a number of design concepts have already been created. Wind-tunnel tests of these are about to start. Images of the concepts show a twin-engine aircraft sharing some design traits with Lockheed Martin's stealthy F/A-22 multirole fighter, now undergoing tests with the US Air Force, such as the internal carriage of its weapon systems. The Chinese designs retain a more conventional wing, however, and use a single vertical tail fin.

AVIC I officials told JDW that the new aircraft - tentatively dubbed the J-X and possibly to receive the service designation J-13A - could use the WS10A turbofan engine designed by the Shenyang Liming Motor Company during its development and trials process.

In development for more than a decade, the WS10-series powerplant completed air trials earlier this year with an Su-27SK (NATO reporting name: 'Flanker-B') fighter. The WS10A is scheduled for introduction with the PLAAF's new J-10A fighter, which has yet to be formally unveiled.

Continuing research into advanced control techniques is expected to in time allow the air force to field WS10A-powered J-10A and J-X fighters equipped with thrust-vectoring nozzles offering improved aircraft manoeuvrability.

While AVIC I sources will not speculate when the new fighter might make its first test flight, a debut around the end of the decade could be expected if the project matches the development process for China's J-10A and J-8D projects.China launches new stealth fighter project China launches new stealth fighter project

kamenriderv3

03-17-2003, 04:15 PM

if i wrote for the onion....

stealth fighter project lost!

the engineers have done too good a job and now comrades can't find their jets. too stealthy....

public execution to begin at 5pm.

kamenriderv3

04-16-2003, 10:57 PM

http://starbulletin.com/2003/04/16/news/story6.html

WAILUKU >> A marlin apparently fighting off a pod of false killer whales speared a researcher who was swimming nearby recording the event.

Whale researcher Mark Ferrari was about three miles off Puamana in West Maui when the marlin attacked him, leaving a 5- to 6-inch-wide gash in his shoulder beneath his collarbone.

"He (the marlin) was fighting for his life, and he was trying to take out anything he could," said Ferrari, 52, resting at Maui Memorial Medical Center after surgery yesterday.

His right arm was in a sling, and a bandage covered the right side of his neck near the shoulder. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Carrying a waterproof video camera, Ferrari had gone into the water at about 9 a.m. yesterday to find out why the false killer whales were in a frenzy.

Ferrari said the water was murky, and had he realized the whales were attacking a marlin, he would not have gone in.

His wife, Deborah, who was on a research catamaran about 10 yards from him, said she was getting ready to go into the water herself, when she saw a marlin make a zigzag maneuver as it came toward Ferrari. At first she thought it was a shark.

After spearing him, the marlin swung its bill back and forth and withdrew it, she said.

"Thank God it was able to free itself. Otherwise, it might have pulled him (Mark) down," Deborah Ferrari said.

She and boat pilot Jim Peckarsky helped Ferrari climb aboard the catamaran.

"He was very calm and didn't pass out," Peckarsky said.

Deborah Ferrari said no major arteries or organs were injured, but her husband suffered lacerations to nerves and the surgeon found bone chips from his collarbone.

She said the family would not know for a while if the wound had caused any permanent damage to the shoulder or arm.

Based on Ferrari's estimate of the marlin being 10 to 15 feet long, a state official said the fish could have weighed about 500 pounds, Deborah said.

Randy Draper, a captain of a snorkeling boat, said he was nearby and saw about 30 false killer whales jumping.

Draper said marlin are mean fish, faster and more agile than a shark.

"Hardly anything touches a marlin, including a pilot whale," he said.

The Ferraris, who operate their nonprofit Center for Whale Studies, are known for their research in determining the sex of whales.

Federal whale rescue coordinator David Matilla said he has heard of marlins attacking whales and boats, but never a man until this incident.

False killer whales are bigger than bottlenose dolphins but much smaller than orcas (killer whales), which they resemble.

stryfe

04-23-2003, 11:57 AM

Teens Accused of Concocting Poison Slush (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=573&ncid=573&e=4&u=/nm/20030423/od_nm/crime_canada_slush_dc)
Wed Apr 23,10:12 AM ET

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Three teenage girls face attempted murder charges after several Canadian students fell ill and were rushed to hospital when they shared a slush drink laced with poison, police said Tuesday.

Two girls in the west-central Alberta vacation community of Sylvan Lake were arrested and a warrant was issued for another accused of the poisoning, which apparently targeted one student but sickened seven, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.

The Mounties said officials at H.J. Cody School in Sylvan Lake reported last week that seven girls, aged 14 and 15, were taken to hospital after consuming the crushed-ice drink, purchased at a convenience store. They were treated and released.

Investigators learned the chemical compound, copper sulfate, was meant for one student and the others -- including two of those charged -- drank it inadvertently.

A police spokesman declined to give any details about a possible motive. All those involved are said to know each other.

The copper sulfate, which can cause nausea, headaches and rashes, was taken from the school after a science experiment on April 10, police said.

The three accused girls face charges of attempted murder and administering a noxious substance. Their first court appearance is set for May 1 in Red Deer, Alberta.

maple

04-23-2003, 12:19 PM

....even worse, a fourth girl has been added to the charged list.

It turns out the poisoning was over a boy. quel surprise.

liquid mass

04-23-2003, 12:21 PM

All's fair in love and slurpees?

04-23-2003, 12:22 PM

Oy vey... :/

maple

04-23-2003, 12:23 PM

"slush cat" cat fight.

liquid mass

04-23-2003, 12:23 PM

What's a "slush cat?"

maple

04-23-2003, 12:26 PM

I think it must be a strange Canadianism. I think the "Mac's" convenience stores (like 7-11 only different) call them "slush cats". Their logo used to be a cat or something.

liquid mass

04-23-2003, 12:29 PM

That's what I thought.

We have "slurpees" and "icees"

BornInJapan

04-23-2003, 07:17 PM

WTF?

OJ-TV

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,85017,00.html

maple

04-24-2003, 10:45 AM

This was sent to our mailboxes today (I edited the parts where I could get in trouble) from head office-types....holy contradiction! Be afraid, don't be afraid...Toronto's good...Toronto's not good...

*****************
April 24, 2003

SARS

Following previous communications with regard to the SARS virus in Toronto, you may have heard over the last few days that the World Health Organization has announced travel advisories for the Greater Toronto Area. Although Health Canada has not issued such an advisory, %&^%&$#$# (place I work) takes these advisories seriously and would encourage employees to reconsider non critical travel to Toronto. We will continue to monitor the situation closely. Health Canada SARS info line (1-800-454-8302) is also available to provide further guidance.

(Mr. Sars pants)
Senior Vice-President
Human Resources and Organization

stryfe

05-29-2003, 07:14 AM

warming the cockles of your heart.

Seniors Get New Lease on Love and Sex
Wed May 28, 8:15 AM ET
By Andrea Orr

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - What happens when a sexually frustrated 66- year-old woman advertises her plight and calls for men of all ages to step up to the plate?

If Jane Juska's experience is typical, she spends a weekend in a romantic hotel room with a man who makes her feel young again. Young by comparison, at least. Her new lover is 82.

So much for friendly companionship in the golden years. Juska's new memoir "A Round Heeled Woman" is a graphic reminder that not everyone approaching 70, 80 or even 90 is content just to hold hands and gaze at the sunset.

Long-divorced, widowed and never-married older people are finding it easier than ever to satisfy their desires, partially due to the growing popularity of online dating. The same dating Web sites that were first adopted by people a third their age are helping isolated senior citizens connect with others who do not wish to spend all their days doting on grandchildren.

The popular Internet dating service Match.com features hundreds of members over the age of 80, including one 83-year-old man from Missouri who said he wanted a woman who was "lovely to look at, delightful to know and heaven to kiss."

One 70-year-old retired New Jersey school teacher who tried the service thinking it might be a good way to find someone to go to lunch with said she was turned off by the overtly sexual messages of most of the men who wrote to her.

Match.com said a survey of its members suggests that seniors as a whole remain a lot less romantically and sexually active than their children and grandchildren.

Only 20 percent of those who responded to one survey said they had been in a romantic relationship in the last year. Just 37 percent said they had been kissed.

Juska, a long-divorced schoolteacher living in liberal Berkeley, California, took a more conservative approach when she decided it was time to end a 15-year celibacy. Rather than placing an ad on the Internet, she turned to the august New York Review of Books, where she thought she might meet someone who shared her love of literature.

"Before I turn 67," her ad said, "I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me."

Juska minced no words either, when she began to hear from eager suitors. "If I can't kiss you all over then cancel your travel plans," she wrote to one suitor. "Because long walks on the beach will simply not do."

A recent study of 1,300 men and women over the age of 60 by the National Council on the Aging found that 61 percent of the men and 37 percent of the women were sexually active. Some 61 percent of the men and 62 percent of the women said that sex was as satisfying or more satisfying than it was in their 40s.

Juska, who slept with a handful of men ranging from 32 to 84, and her book are drawing attention to sex among seniors.

"Dating is just as terrifying and interesting, risky, fun and exciting at 70 as it is at 26," she said in an interview. The "round-heeled woman" the book is named for is an old-fashioned term for a promiscuous female.

Still, her frank memoir also devotes considerable time to showing that sex after a certain age is different.

"What once was firm was loose, what once went up went down," she writes of her own body. Perhaps because of these flaws, a baggy sweater is her preferred attire when she goes to meet a new man.

The men, of course, are flawed too.

"His color is gone, his hair is gone, and My God, I think this man is old," she wrote of her initial reaction when her 82-year-old lover stepped off the plane.

But Juska spent a torrid weekend with him anyway. After a 15-year dry spell, she said, just about any man would have done.

"I was just teeming. If he had gotten off the plane in a wheelchair -- or on a stretcher -- it probably would not have dissuaded me. I was just in white heat."

kamenriderv3

05-29-2003, 03:29 PM

there's still hope for me....

wnoodle

06-06-2003, 08:05 PM

Fo' shizzle!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20030605/od_uk_nm/oukoe_britain_rap&e=2

excerpt:
"This led to the faintly surreal experience of three gentlemen in horsehair wigs examining the meaning of such phrases as 'mish mish man' and 'shizzle my nizzle'", the judge said

stryfe

06-13-2003, 07:49 AM

JoongAng Illbo
Police prepare force to keep rally orderly (http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200306/13/200306130122374509900090409041.html)
In a massive show of force, 10,000 riot policemen will surround the U.S. Embassy in Seoul and Seoul City Hall this evening before a rally is held in the area. A year ago today, two teenage girls were killed after being struck by a U.S. military vehicle north of Seoul.
Police say they expect about 15,000 persons to join the commemorative candlelight ceremony. The Pan National Committee, the rally’s organizer, said it would be peaceful, but warned the police against excessive force that could trigger violence.
The banned student group Hanchongryun may join the rally, police said, adding that they would intervene if the focus turns from commemoration to anti-U.S. protests. No flag burning or masks with the visage of U.S. President George W. Bush would be allowed, police said.

Korea Times
Candlelight Vigils Unfold Across the Nation (http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200306/kt2003061322370510160.htm)
A massive wave of candles was witnessed in downtown Seoul yesterday as people gathered to remember the deaths of two schoolgirls who were run over by a U.S. armored vehicle last year. Similar rallies took place across the country...

The crowd chanted slogans that called for the punishment of the U.S. soldiers responsible for the deaths of the two girls. They chanted; ``Let’s prevent war through candles,’’ and ``Go Home, U.S. soldiers.’’ They also demanded revisions of the Status of Forces Agreement that governs U.S. troops stationed here and a personal apology from U.S. President George W. Bush...

Yahoo News
S. Koreans Stage Huge Anti-U.S. Rallies (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=3&u=/ap/20030613/ap_on_re_as/skorea_us_protest)

Thousands of South Koreans rallied Friday to protest the U.S. military presence on the anniversary of the deaths of two girls struck by a U.S. military vehicle.

The largest protest was in the capital, Seoul, where about 20,000 people, many holding candles gathered at a plaza near the U.S. Embassy, chanting "Punish the murderous GIs!" and "Withdraw U.S. troops!"

At one point, several hundred students, some wearing masks and wielding plastic poles, charged toward the embassy, as thousands of other demonstrators set fire to paper American flags. ...

perseus

06-13-2003, 10:31 AM

Ashcroft is coming!
Ashcroft is coming!

http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel06092003.html

June 9, 2003

Ashcroft is Coming! Ashcroft is Coming!

One Way or Another He's Gonna Getcha

By ELAINE CASSEL

FBI Director Robert Mueller recently agreed with President Bush's assessment that "we" had Al Qaeda on the run." Of course Osama and Saddam are out there somewhere, but whatever Al Qaeda is (see Steve Perry's post that queries whether there really is an Al Qaeda), we have routed them. So Michael Chertoff, chief of the criminal division and head of the antiterrorism prosecutions to date, is out of Justice and off to be a federal judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals (read my warning about him). And Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, who wrote the Patriot Act (and no doubt had a lot to do with Patriot II), is leaving boss John to teach constitutional law at Georgetown University Law School (the Dean must have a sense of humor, irony, or both).

And John is getting plea bargains left and right--though not to the charges prosecuted--and claiming, along with Bush, victory in the war on terror. Though he does, mind you, need a few more "tool" in his little black bag to finish up the task (and there is a stray right or two left in the Bill of Rights that he has not fully dispatched).

Nonetheless, things are getting a little boring around the Justice Department, what with the nude statues draped and all, and some of John's best buddies gone.

So, this week, John brought together some of his favorite prosecutors from around the country and hauled out boxes of files. Old files. Old surveillance files. Maybe on you and me. And John said to his disciples, charge these people. I don't care with what. They must have done something or we wouldn't have a file on them. Charge them with inhaling marijuana, or jaywalking, or copying a VHS tape, or writing an article, or attending a mosque, or voting Democratic (or Green, or Libertarian). Charge them. Indict them. Tell the judge they are terrorist threats (remember, terror is what I say it is) and don't let them out on bail. Set their trials for 18 months away, like we did with that professor in Florida, who won't see the sun shine until at least January 2005. Maybe when they have been locked up for a few months, without lawyers, mind you. I forgot to tell you that. No lawyers. They are a threat to national security. Terrorists will not have the benefit of my Constitution. And mark those you think have done something really bad--like speak out in favor of Palestinian rights, or human rights. I will get George to name them unlawful combatants. Then they can get shipped out of the country. Call Putin up. See if he will get some of those gulags out of mothballs for us.

This is not just a funny story from a blogger who has had too much caffeine. This week, Ashcroft told his prosecutors to start reviewing 25 years of telephone and e-mail wiretaps and results from secret searches--in files on 4.500 people-- and decide whether they can file criminal charges under anti-terrorist laws.

The wiretaps and searches were performed on "suspected" spies and terrorists-suspected, as in no probable cause, but mere suspicion-- under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. With permission from a super-secret U.S. spy court, the FBI has used such warrants to break into homes, offices and hotel rooms to install hidden cameras, copy computer files and eavesdrop on telephones. Agents also have intercepted e-mails and pried into safe deposit boxes.

Criminal prosecutors previously were not entitled to the contents of intelligence files, which were limited under Justice Department policies to government espionage and counterterrorism experts. But a court ruling this year by the appellate branch of the secret court lowered that wall, allowing the review of old surveillance. The efforts of a trial FISA judge to curtail Ashcroft's runaway snooping was met not only with resistance by the appeals court, but the court gave Ashcroft more than a win. Yo, John, they said. Didn't you know that you could go back and use past searches to prosecute those new laws you wrote into the PATRIOT ACT?

So, Ashcroft reported this week that all U.S. attorney offices around the country are looking at the closed and open intelligence investigations to review for criminal purposes nationwide. There is no telling when charges will be brought, but the boots could some looking for you any day now.

And the evidence used against you may be too secret for even you to know! You may be charged with smoking weed, but they may actually be telling the judge that you are sending money to Osama.

U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty of Virginia, whose office is responsible for the terrorism case against Zacarias Moussaoui, said the review of the files allows federal prosecutors to "make sure we are aware of who is out there in the community and that we know what they're doing and be able to make some enforcement decisions as a result." (On a personal note, I live a couple of miles from McNulty's home court in the Eastern District of Virginia, so they won't have far to come for me).

As he left the meeting, Ashcroft promised that he would be asking for new terrorism tools, saying that the Patriot Act did not go far enough. He dismissed criticisms of the long and secret detentions of aliens, as reported by his own Inspector General. He would do it again, he said.

And you may be next.

perseus

06-13-2003, 10:35 AM

God Only Knows

Rogue deity must decide which side he is on.

By Jodie T. Allen

You gotta feel a little sorry for God these days. The hotline from the White House has been hopping off the heavenly hook; the pope has urged shrines, parishes, communities and families to " persevere in unceasing prayer ;" and cries of "Allahu Akbar" echo from the streets of Gaza to those of Baghdad. In Touch Ministries even distributed a pamphlet to U.S. soldiers in Iraq urging them to pray for?George W. Bush. One suggested prayer : "Pray that the president and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding."

Being omnipotent, God of course has no problem fielding all these calls. He can probably even take time out to mediate a dispute in the Louisiana state legislature over whether painting a giant U.S. flag with the words "God Bless America" in 37-foot-tall letters on the roof of the New Orleans Superdome would cut the value of the naming rights to the stadium, which are up for sale. Still, it is hard to imagine that he isn't experiencing a wee bit of cognitive dissonance.

President Bush, of course, has frequently invoked God's blessing on our incursion into Iraq. (The president's close friend, Commerce Secretary Don Evans, according to USA Today , says that "Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time,"?a belief reinforced, he says, by the knowledge gained while earning his history degree at Yale.) But even as the president's invasion message was being broadcast, there was a televised Saddam Hussein assuring his nation that "God's victory will be ours soon." He also transmitted a message from the Almighty that had apparently sneaked by U.S. signal blockers: "God has ordered you...to cut their throats."

Meanwhile Osama bin Laden, in a taped message noting that he was "following anxiously the preparations of the crusaders to conquer the former capital of Islam and steal their wealth," called upon the Muslim world "to fight for the sake of God , not for nationalism or any infidel regime, including Iraq."

Osama's mention of crusaders inevitably brings to mind the long history of divine invocations in support of battlefield mayhem. "[T]he two kings were causing Te Deums to be sung in their camps," Voltaire dryly wrote of two Christian armies poised for mutual dismemberment, to be followed by the usual round of rape and pillage. Viewing the aftermath, his hero, Candide, "took a resolution to go and reason somewhere else upon causes and effects."

But of course, the ways of God are not the ways of man. And while the divine injunction "Thou shalt not kill," may seem pretty straightforward, religious scholars have long pointed to numerous Old Testament texts to demonstrate, as one Christian pastor wrote recently in The Columbus [Ohio] Dispatch , "The God of the Bible is not a pacifist! God loves and protects the innocent and the weak. He often does so by declaring war on tyrants and oppressors."

That being the case, and Saddam and Osama being joined in perfidy if not in friendship, it seems reasonable to assume that the mandate of heaven has indeed been conferred on the White House in its chosen war. (True, there was that sandstorm shortly after the invasion began, but that was probably just a little reminder about where the ultimate Commander-in-Chief resides.) That does not mean, however, that the president and his most ardent supporters call upon heaven with one voice. For instance, the alliance between evangelical Christians and predominately Jewish neo-conservatives in opposition to Saddam, both within the White House and among the larger population, has drawn attention in the press.

As some have noted, from an historical perspective the coalition might seem odd, given that Jews, along with Catholics and blacks, were once the frequent targets of the more irredentist denizens of the Bible Belt. The route to their latter-day meeting of minds runs through Israel. In the final decades of the last century, with the millennium and its many portents looming near, evangelical thoughts naturally turned to the prospect of the long-awaited Second Coming of Christ. From there it was only a short jump to? Armageddon . On that hill, or at least on the plain it overlooks, say those who parse the New Testament's enigmatic book of Revelation, armies of the East and West will be enticed by Satan to draw together. Thence they will march to Jerusalem where (as is often overlooked) they will do joint battle with the returning Christ.

What happens next is open to many interpretations, not least of which involves different views about who gets "raptured" (i.e. raised bodily into heaven) and when (before or after the time of "tribulations"). Controversies rage among such factions as the Pretribulationists and Posttribulations and the Pseudo-Ephraemists and the Psuedo-Psuedo-Ephraemists ?not to mention among believers in the Manifest Sons doctrine or the doctrine of the lost 10 tribes. But it is generally agreed that an important precursor is for the Jewish people to be back in control of the land of Israel before the action begins.

Despite this coalescing of interests in the protection of Israel, a point of contention between the two groups remains: Will anyone but the Christians have a shot at being raptured? Evangelicals have hastened in recent years to assure Jews that they will not be automatically excluded. According to the World of the Bible , "Those Gentiles...who came to faith in the Jewish Messiah during the time of Jacob's trouble...will join with redeemed Israelites in the true worship of God." Says the Pretribulationist Ed Tarkowski , "What lies ahead of them is seven years of tribulation, out of which he will bring a Jewish remnant ." [emphases added] Whaddya mean by redeemed ? And what's a remnant ? God only knows.

Nor are all members of the coalition in tune with the we-don't blame-Islam White House line. While Bush has showcased his visits to mosques and he and his aides have gone out of their way to stress that our fight is not with Islam per se, some of his adherents are less circumspect. "I think Muhammad was a terrorist," the Rev. Jerry Falwell told a 60 Minutes audience in October. "Islam as a whole is evil," said the Rev. Franklin Graham at the National Prayer Service in Washington in November. Graham (son of Billy) spoke at Bush's inauguration. Howard Davis of the United Church of God provides a more nuanced perspective. Even as he reclaimed Jerusalem after the First Crusade, Davis writes , "Saladin was amazingly merciful, in dramatic contrast to the Crusaders of the previous century." More representative of evangelical web opinion is Randall Price , who writes, "[D]espite the U.S. administration's desire to separate the religion of Islam from the tactic of terrorism, the religion of Islam is the common denominator for all the groups with which we are at war."

Add to this those troublesome messages from "old church" prelates. Start with the pope and his tiresome remonstrances about a "religious catastrophe" and stubborn refusal to christen the Iraq incursion a "just war." Small wonder that some bible web sites devote lengthy sections to the apostasies of Rome and its errant vicars. "The Catholic Church has all too often been at the center of the 1,400-year-old struggle between Islam and Christianity," avers one such critic darkly.

If these doctrinal disputes weren't enough to clog the celestial pipelines, across the country Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu religious leaders have gathered to pray for, of all things, peace. Back to you, God.

Jodie Allen is a managing editor at U.S. News & World Report.

http://www.reason.com/hod/ja041703.shtml

akuma

06-18-2003, 07:48 AM

Judge says nizzle-shizzling not an offense

LONDON (Reuters) - A judge has ruled that the lyrics of a rap record urging the listener to "shizzle my nizzle" and referring to a "mish mish man" did not constitute an offence.

Presiding in the case of UK rap artist Andrew Alcee against the Heartless Crew, High Court Judge Lewison ruled that not only were the lyrics not necessarily offensive but that they may as well have been in a foreign language.

Alcee is claiming that a remix by Heartless Crew of the Ant'ill Mob's 2001 garage hit "Burnin" constituted "derogatory treatment" of his copyright because the lyrics contained references to violence and drugs.

"This led to the faintly surreal experience of three gentlemen in horsehair wigs examining the meaning of such phrases as "mish mish man" and "shizzle my nizzle", the judge said.

Dismissing the claim, he added that despite extensive surfing of the Internet in search of illumination, he had been unable to establish whether the words complained of in the rap were actually references to violence and drugs.

"Some definitions carried sexual connotations. The most popular definitions were definitions of the phrase "fo' shizzle my nizzle" and indicated that it meant "for sure". There were no entries for "mish mish man," he said.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030605/80/e1n3n.html

ironmonqui

06-19-2003, 11:14 AM

Holy-fucking-hardcore, Batman!
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20030618/capt.1055956770.topix_france_iran_opposition_par812.jpg
(That guy is not a stuntman, by the way..)

wnoodle

06-19-2003, 12:00 PM

Hulk is strongest there is!!!

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/06/19/popsci.characters.macho/index.html

ironmonqui

06-19-2003, 01:54 PM

Originally posted by puppy fields
Why is he on fire? http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1756&e=3&u=/030618/168/4fkiy.html

An Iranian runs on the road after setting himself on fire during a protest near the headquarters of the French counter intelligence agency, Wednesday, June 18, 2003 in Paris. At least three Iranians set themselves on fire Wednesday after the agency led a massive raid on Tuesday on the offices of an Iranian opposition group, The People's Mujahedeen of Iran. The protest was the latest in a series of dramatic protests in Europe against Tuesday's crackdown onthe Mujahedeen Khalq, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. (AP Photo/KR Images Presse, Nicolas Marques)

ocd

06-19-2003, 03:03 PM

New Zealand Herald
(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3508451&thesection=news&thesubsection=general) Livestock burp tax sticks in throats

20.06.2003
By LIAM DANN primary industries editor
Farmers will be taxed on the flatulence of their livestock in a bid to reduce New Zealand's contribution to global warming.

The levy could cost a typical family farmer up to $300 a year. Larger corporate farmers could pay up to $10,000.

Sheep will be levied at 9c each and cows at up to 72c under the Government's proposals.

Deer and goat farmers will also be taxed.

The money will be used for research on meeting New Zealand's Kyoto Protocol commitment to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The new Agriculture Emissions Research body will be financed by sheep, cattle, deer and goat farmers and will cost $8.4 million a year.

The levy, expected to be in place by the middle of next year, has infuriated farming organisations.

"That's overkill," said Meat New Zealand chairman Jeff Grant.

"This is a public good rather than an industry good. It should be funded by the Government, not farmers."

Livestock accounts for about half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions.

The emissions are caused by the complex process of digesting grass, and are belched into the air.

Mr Grant said the levy was bad news at the worst possible time for farmers already hit by a high dollar, low commodity prices and drought.

The industry was already paying for its own research through the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium, he said.

The consortium, less than a year old, is made up of representatives from Fonterra, AgResearch, Wrightson, DeerResearch and Meat New Zealand.

The participants are investing $800,000 a year in emission research. The Government has supported the group by matching its investment, taking its total funding to $1.6 million.

Chairman Mark Leslie said the levy was "a real kick in the teeth for the consortium".

The new Government recommendations mirrored those from the consortium, he said.

"The Government is telling the industry consortium that 'It is too little too late' after giving us less than a year to prove ourselves."

Mr Leslie said throwing money at the issue would not necessarily speed things.

Time was needed to train skilled researchers and to understand how the digestion process worked.

Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton said agriculture had been exempted from emission charges in the climate change policy, but was expected to meet the costs of research.

The Government will introduce an emissions tax for other industries in 2007.

Federated Farmers president Tom Lambie said the levy disadvantaged farmers struggling to compete in the world markets.

"As far as I'm aware, we're the only country in the world to impose a levy like this."

Farmers will have until July 31 to voice their concerns, although the Government says consultation will be about how the levy is paid, not whether it will be paid.

It has decided against a levy on pig and poultry farms, as these produce less than 1 per cent of agricultural emissions.

Flatulence tax

How much: $8.4 million a year, or $300 for a typical farmer

What it means: A cost of 9c a year for every sheep and 54c to 72c for every beef and dairy cow in the country.

When: The levy is expected to be in place by the middle of next year.

Why: Livestock generates about half New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions.

How: Animals expel belch greenhouse gases as they digest grass.

perseus

06-24-2003, 12:45 PM

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,6649867%255E2702,00.html

Church extends gay ban but polygamy OK
By Vanessa Walker
25jun03

THE Sydney Anglican diocese yesterday widened its list of banned clergy to include celibate homosexuals and those who had pre-marital sex and failed to repent, but would still accept polygamists.

The diocese justified the apparent contradiction by arguing the Bible's outright condemnation of homosexuality compared with its oblique disapproval of a man taking several wives.

The diocese released a statement on Monday from its six bishops that said two overseas homosexual bishops-elect, and a third who had allowed same-sex blessings, were unwelcome in the diocese. They said the nomination of Canon Jeffrey John, who has had the same homosexual partner for 27 years, as Bishop of Reading in Britain, the same-sex blessings allowed by Bishop Michael Ingham in the Canadian diocese of New Westminster, and the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in the US, a priest who left his wife to be with his gay partner, had threatened to rupture the Anglican communion.

However, a spokeswoman for Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen, who is currently in London, said he would be unable to say that his own diocese had no practising homosexual clergy. She said that while he refused to license homosexuals, he was unable to confirm the honesty of those who had repented and said they were celibate. "It's not the kind of thing an archbishop seeks out and checks up, but if it came to his attention he would have to act."

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, released a statement yesterday responding to criticism of the nomination of Canon John.

He said Canon John had given "explicit assurances on various matters, including his personal circumstance", a reference to the fact homosexuals could take up a ministry as long as they were celibate.

He also issued a stern message to those such as Dr Jensen who were outspoken about their opposition. "It is not for anyone outside the diocese to override or pre-empt what is obviously a painful and complex process . . .," Dr Williams said.

One of the signatories to the Sydney statement, Bishop of North Sydney Glenn Davies, stressed that the diocese's opposition to Canon John was based on his lack of repentance for his years of homosexual activity, rather than his current celibacy. Dr Davies said priests who had sex outside marriage also were banned because of biblical teaching.

Asked whether polygamists were acceptable to the Sydney diocese, Dr Davies said while it was far from ideal, it was tolerable to have a minister with more than one wife.

"The Bible doesn't condemn polygamy like it does homosexuality".

kamenriderv3

06-24-2003, 03:34 PM

Originally posted by ironmonqui
Holy-fucking-hardcore, Batman!
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20030618/capt.1055956770.topix_france_iran_opposition_par812.jpg
(That guy is not a stuntman, by the way..)

if he was really hardcore then he would not be running. let the flames burn his hair and face instead of letting flow behind him. :)

ocd

06-30-2003, 08:56 AM

Paris Menswear Shows (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/photo_gallery/3031824.stm)
You really just have to look.

perseus

06-30-2003, 11:35 AM

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

excerpt:

Never Promised You a Ruse Garden -- A Letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush

June 26, 2003

Dear Lt. George W. Bush,

I hope you don't mind me referring to you by the only true military rank you ever achieved, that being the one from your on-again, off-again "days" in the, um, Texas Air National Guard. Ever since I saw you in that flyboy outfit, landing on that ship, I assumed you now wanted to be addressed by your military title, as opposed to the civilian rank imposed on you by your dad's friends.

So, Lieutenant, I was wondering, would you do me a favor?

Could you PLEASE do better than a ROSE BUSH?

I saw the guy on TV yesterday that your boys found, the Iraqi who said he had "planted" some nuclear plans in his "back yard" in Baghdad -- 12 years ago -- "under a rose bush."

Woo boy. That's a good one. Do you really think we are as dumb as we look? I know our fascination with "American Idol" and Scott Peterson may make us Americans look a little light in the head, but when it comes to lying to us to lead us into war, we really do demand a bit more of an EFFORT and a FOLLOW-THROUGH.

You see, George, it's not the lying and the doctoring of intelligence that has me all upset. It's that you've had control of Iraq for over two months now -- and you couldn't even find the time to plant just a few nukes or vats of nerve gas and at least make it LOOK like you weren't lying to us.

You see, by not faking some evidence of weapons of mass destruction, it shows that you thought no one would mind if it turned out you made everything up. A different kind of president, who believes that the American public would be outraged if they ever found out the truth, would go to great lengths to cover up his subterfuge.

Johnson did it with the Gulf of Tonkin. He said our ships were "attacked" by the North Vietnamese. They weren't, but he knew he had to at least make it LOOK like it happened. Nixon said he wasn't "a crook," but he knew that wasn't enough, so he paid hush money to the burglars and somehow had 18 1/2 minutes erased from a tape in the Oval Office. Why did he do this? Because he knew the American people would be pissed if they found out the truth.

<CONTINUED (http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php)>

stranger

06-30-2003, 11:44 AM

Originally posted by ocd
Paris Menswear Shows (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/photo_gallery/3031824.stm)
You really just have to look.

teheheheee. Me likes, only a gay frenchie would come up with something so absurd. I think it looks really cool at the same time though. Men wearing make-up can be cool. think new wave 80's and crap.

ironmonqui

07-02-2003, 05:30 AM

Although there's all kindsa' fucked up shit going on all the time, all over the world, sometimes I can only relate to really trite or pedestrian tragedies. This brings us to the next installment of:
THAT Would SUCK!

yeah who? (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1756&e=2&u=/030702/168/4k8tn.html)
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20030702/capt.1057110948.roller_coaster_stuck_wxs202.jpg
Tue Jul 1, 9:55 PM ET

A roller coaster at a Six Flags amusement park in Largo, Md. [in this image
from video] stalled nearly 140 feet off the ground Tuesday, July, 1, 2003,
stranding 24 passengers for more than two hours before workers repaired
the ride. No one was injured.The malfunction occurred on the 'Two Face: The
Flip Side' rollercoaster, billed as a ride 'for those who want to look terror in
the eyes'. (AP Photo/ABC via APTN)

People Person

07-02-2003, 06:41 AM

Giant sea creature baffles Chilean scientists (http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/07/02/chile.science.reut/index.html)

I looked this up on CNN.com because the footer on the telly said something like "Gelatenous Monster Washes up In Chile." I just had to find out more.
------------------

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) -- Chilean scientists were baffled on Tuesday by a huge, gelatinous sea creature found washed up on the southern Pacific coast and were seeking international help identifying the mystery specimen.

The dead creature was mistaken for a beached whale when first reported about a week ago, but experts who went to see it said the 40-foot-long (12-meter) mass of decomposing lumpy grey flesh apparently was an invertebrate.

READ THE REST HERE (http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/07/02/chile.science.reut/index.html)

ocd

07-02-2003, 07:03 AM

Originally posted by People Person
Giant sea creature baffles Chilean scientists (http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/07/02/chile.science.reut/index.html) That's awesome! I hope there's some follow up on that soon

perseus

07-02-2003, 11:55 AM

Interactivist Info Exchange
Independent Media & Analysis (http://slash.autonomedia.org/)

From the sow-for-dragons,-reap-but-fleas dept.

This edited introduction is from Han's latest book: The Economics of Competition: A Critique of Paul Samuelson's "Economics," published by Jingji Kexue, Chubanshe, 2002

"The Economics of Competition: A Critique of Paul Samuelson"
Han Deqiang, China Study Group

A Collective "Prisoners' Dilemma"
China has switched to a market economy for a whole decade now. People once hoped, and may still be dreaming that, as the institution matures and perfects itself, China would become a strong developed country, where democracy rules and people enjoy high quality of life not only in material terms but also in spiritual and moral terms.

But reality seems to be moving farther away from such a dream. Since the late 1990's, all kinds of Chinese enterprises have gone bankrupt en masse. With it came increased unemployment, lower mandatory retirement age, lower wages for workers, decreased income for farmers and slack domestic demand. With the influx of foreign enterprises and foreign products, many Chinese enterprises have switched their business lines because they no longer have the confidence to run a high-tech business at a profit. They become de facto employees of those foreign enterprises, earning meager fees for their efforts.

In the meantime, there has been a staggering number of tragic mine accidents that kill thousands year after year. Major accidents involving large number of deaths, such as firework factory explosions, plane crashes, as well as fires at cyber cafes, night clubs, theaters and shopping malls have occurred with mind-numbing frequency; villages and small towns are flooded with fake or poor quality products; drugs and AIDS are rampant. Not only has corruption become a normal way of doing things among many officials, but it has also become a normal part of the values/belief system of the collective national psyche, marked by an egregious lack of civil-mindedness and ethical awareness. Teachers, doctors, lawyers and accountants all share the belief that " One must make use of one's position of power for self-enrichment before one loses it"; schools have become agencies that sell diplomas; hospitals force patients to pay up or leave.

The lawyers are again edifying their clients by reverting to an old saying: "court houses are for those who have money, not those who have a case"; accountants have learned to "twist the numbers for money"; reporters routinely accept "gifts" of cash from those who desire a favorable write-up, young girls are not ashamed of providing sex-related services as a source of income and businessmen openly boast about their ability to concoct a confidence scheme to lure unwitting investors.

As this tide of corruption engulfs the nation, it is the workers and farmers who work the machines and land that are left utterly powerless and unable to defend themselves. They work more than twelve hours a day at the risk of death, maiming and deterioration of health, earning a meager pay that is often reduced or withheld by employer on arbitrary grounds. Their low income barely feeds their families. Finally even the elite segment of the society, which has ready access to state power, capital and knowledge, feels threatened by this rising tide of corruption. Members of the ruling elite have now begun to talk at length in the media about the importance of "honesty and integrity". But the irony is that they only became rich because of their lack of honesty and integrity. They don't have the right to talk about "honesty and integrity" until they part with their ill-begotten wealth. When they, however, become ordained spokespersons for integrity, the word integrity has been rendered largely meaningless.

What went wrong? Why is it that where dragon's seeds were sown, only fleas have been reaped? Many Believers of market economy, who are not blind to the distressing realities of China today are wondering aloud: why has the market economy, when transplanted to China, produced so many undesirable consequences, just like the proverbial sweet orange trees, which would bear only bitter fruits when transplanted to the soil on the other side of Huai River? Is it because the soil of China is uniquely unfit for healthy growth of market economy?

China, however, is by no means a unique place where market economy has gone astray. Lately a huge bitter fruit has likewise been born in the United States, which is widely regarded as paragon of market economy. Enron, WorldCom Communications and Xerox Corporation have one by one been revealed to cook their books. And it was the venerable eighty-year-old firm, Andersen Accounting, that helped them do it. And before these were revealed, stocks on the NASDAQ, a very mature stock exchange, lost more than 60% of their market value, or about half of U.S. GDP.

This is by no means something new. Back in the 1980's, the US government was forced to infuse close to 100 billion US dollars into saving and loan institutions in order to save them from bankruptcies. During this time period, junk-bond king Milken launched many hostile takeovers, causing well-run corporations to be broken apart or auctioned off one after another.

ironmonqui

07-03-2003, 06:36 PM

"Real Headline Looks Just Like Onion Headline:

Armoured tornado camera destroyed... by a tornado.

Ananova "Gaffes" (http://www.ananova.com/news/index.html?keywords=Quirkies,gaffes&menu=news.quirkies.quirkygaffes)

ironmonqui

07-08-2003, 03:02 AM

Singapore:

Iranian Twins Die After Separation Surgery
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:15 a.m. ET

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Neurosurgeons separated 29-year-old Iranian twins joined at the head Tuesday after two days of delicate surgery, but both sisters died shortly after their parting.

The hospital announced Ladan Bijani's death, then, a few hours later, a nurse involved in the surgery said her sister Lelah had died.

``Everyone upstairs is crying,'' said the nurse, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``We treated them like family because they had been here for seven months.''

Hospital officials have yet to officially announce the second death.

Earlier, doctors said Ladan died after they were unable to stabilize her condition.

``As the separation was coming to a close, a lot of blood was lost. The twins were subsequently in a critical state,'' said Raffles hospital spokesman Dr. Prem Kumar.

The risky, marathon separation procedure began about 10 p.m. EDT Saturday. Before the operation, doctors had warned that the surgery could kill one or both of the twins, or leave them brain-dead.

The brains of Ladan and Laleh Bijani were separate, but were nonetheless stuck together after years lying alongside each other.

Kumar had warned that controlling the bleeding and moving the twins from a seated position onto separate beds would be the biggest challenge, and that the condition of either twin would remain largely unknown until they wake up after surgery. The twins were seated during the operation.

As one of the final points of the separation procedure, surgeons cut a finger-thick shared vein from Ladan -- leaving her to rely on a similar sized vein taken from her right thigh that was grafter [sic] to her brain.

Rerouting the finger-thick shared vein, which drained blood to their hearts, was considered one of the biggest obstacles in the surgery. German doctors told the twins in 1996 that shared vein made surgery too dangerous.

The team of doctors had to contend with unstable pressure levels inside the twins' brains just before they worked to uncouple the sisters' brains and cut through the last bit of skull joining them, Kumar said.

The sisters' brains had ``to be teased apart very slowly,'' Kumar said. ``Cut. Teased apart. Cut. Teased apart. In the process, you encounter a lot of blood vessels and other tissues.''

He said surgeon worked ``millimeter by millimeter.''

The operation was complicated further when the team discovered that the pressure in the twins' brains and circulatory system was fluctuating.

Dr. Marc Mayberg, chairman of neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, had said by telephone the pressure fluctuations could be fatal.

Although the sisters knew the operation could kill one or both of them, they decided to face those dangers after a lifetime of living conjoined and compromising on everything from when to wake up to what career to pursue.

``If God wants us to live the rest of our lives as two separate, independent individuals, we will,'' Ladan said before the operation.

An international team of 28 doctors and about 100 medical assistants were enlisted for the surgery. The Iranian government said Monday it would pay the nearly $300,000 cost of the operation and care for the twins.

This is the first time surgeons have tried to separate adult craniopagus twins -- siblings born joined at the head. The surgery has been performed successfully since 1952 on infants, whose brains can more easily recover.

Participating neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore, has separated three sets of craniopagus twins.

Because this operation is a medical first, surgeons have encountered unexpected obstacles not seen in infants. It took longer to cut through portions of their skulls because their older bones were denser than previously believed, Kumar said.

As the procedure dragged on, surgeons tried to get adequate rest, slipping out of the operating room for breaks when their expertise was not needed, Kumar said.

Classical music played softly as surgeons worked simultaneously in tight spaces in front of and behind the twins, who sat in a custom-built brace connected to an array of lines feeding them intravenously and monitoring their vital signs, Kumar said.

The sisters were born into a poor family of 11 children in Firouzabad, southern Iran, but grew up in Tehran under doctors' care.
----------

Editor's Note: Emma Ross, an AP medical writer, contributed to this story from London; AP writer Ali Akbar Dareini contributed from Tehran.

Or look at CNN. (http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/07/08/conjoined.twins/index.html)

nytimes.com requires creating a "login" but you can really just fake it... (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Singapore-Conjoined-Twins.html?hp)

07-09-2003, 07:22 AM

ST. PETERSBURG - Sunday morning, when a Lincoln Continental plowed into a string of roughly 20 bicyclists riding two by two, John Walters was six or seven bikes back in the column.

George ``Kip'' Vosburgh was riding more toward the rear of the orderly pack.

On Monday, they lay next to each other in hospital beds at Bayfront Medical Center.

Walters, a 44-year-old St. Petersburg engineer, had broken his leg. When he found himself on the ground Sunday morning, he saw his tibia protruding through the skin.

Vosburgh's injuries were more numerous. The 56-year- old Treasure Island man, retired from IBM's marketing department, had broken his right hip and leg, his left ankle and arm.

Still, the two men are optimistic they will be back on the road bicycling again someday and were grateful that things were not worse.

By the end of Monday, none of the 14 bicyclists transported to hospitals after the accident in the 5300 block of 30th Avenue North was in critical condition, said Mike Jockers, a St. Petersburg traffic homicide investigator.

The eight most seriously hurt had been taken to Bayfront. On Monday, all but two were in fair condition, a hospital spokeswoman said. Two others asked that their medical conditions not be released.

Meanwhile, a clearer picture of what happened snapped into focus, Jockers said.

A 43-year-old woman went to the police station Monday, saying she had been driving in front of the Lincoln, driven by Joseph Pastore, 60, of Pinellas Park, before it started drifting into the oncoming lane. There it struck head-on the column of bicyclists, the investigator said.

The woman saw the resulting chaos in her rearview mirror, Jockers said.

As the Lincoln was traveling east at about 30 mph and ran into the stream of cyclists traveling west at roughly 25 mph, it was the equivalent of the bicyclists running into a brick wall at 55 mph, Jockers said.

As the Lincoln plowed through the line, straightening out a bit before veering onto the curb and running over a traffic sign, it appeared to maintain that 30 mph speed, with no effort by the driver to brake, Jockers said.

``For some unknown reason, he drifted across the double yellow line,'' Jockers said. ``We don't know if it was a medical problem; we don't know if it was impairment; we don't know if something else was going on in the vehicle. He doesn't remember anything.''

Jockers said Pastore was cooperating with authorities. ``At first he thought he had hit a car. He knew he had hit something. When he finally came to rest, and he looked out, and he saw the bicycles and the bodies laying around, that's when he realized he had run into'' them.

Pastore's medical problems include diabetes, kidney and heart problems and abnormal blood pressure, Jockers said. Pastore, a widower, also takes medication for anxiety and pain, Jockers said.

Alcohol has been ruled out as a factor, he said. If Pastore was on prescription medicine a patient is not supposed to take before driving, then he could be charged with multiple counts of driving under the influence and causing serious bodily injury, the investigator said.

Pastore's blood test results are not expected back from the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office for six to 10 days.

No charges have been filed.

The bicyclists are not suspected of having done anything wrong, Jockers said.

State law allows them to ride two-by-two. They are required to merge into a single file when traffic backed up behind them is trying to pass. That was not the case Sunday, Jockers said.

Under Florida law, bicycles are considered vehicles, and cyclists must act like other drivers. Riders may drive in the middle of a traffic lane but must move to the right side of the road if they are moving more slowly than traffic.

According to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, 1,850 bicyclists were injured in Hillsborough County between 1997 and 2001. Of those, 45 were fatal.

In Pinellas County, 2,167 were injured and 35 died in the same period.

As they lay in their hospital beds, Walters and Vosburgh said they hoped the incident would make the public more aware of bicyclists and their right to be on the road. They hoped, too, that it might bring about more bicycle lanes.

They also acknowledged that the typical bicycle accident, where a motorist is trying to pass a bicyclist on a crowded road, was not the case Sunday morning.

Even if the bicyclists had a specially marked lane, the outcome would have been the same, Vosburgh said.

``In this particular incident, it wouldn't have made a difference.''

ironmonqui

07-09-2003, 12:44 PM

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20030709/i/1057782768.3556991065.jpg
Wed Jul 9, 4:32 PM ET

A Chilean scientist shows a black-widow spider at his laboratory in Temuco (700 Km south of Santiago) June 9, 2003. Chilean researchers say they aim to develop a new pill to combat impotence that would have the added bonus of being a male contraceptive!! based on experiments with the venom of black-widow spiders!!!! REUTERS/Carlos Barria

* esclamations added -ed

fmstlr

07-09-2003, 01:16 PM

Thailand's government orders curfew for online gamers
Tue Jul 8, 7:21 AM ET

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand is to impose a night curfew on online gaming to curb rising rates of addiction by young players, Information and Communications Technology Minister Surapong Suebwonglee revealed.

Game servers, both local and overseas, will be blocked from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am daily from July 15 to September 30, while Internet cafes will also have their hours curbed to those times, Surapong told reporters Tuesday.

Under particular attack is Korean role-playing game Ragnarok, which was introduced to Thailand seven months ago and reportedly now has more than 600,000 registered players here.

"As a matter of fact Ragnarok is not a violent game but its problem is that child players are becoming addicted, so we have to prevent children playing for long periods of time," Surapong said.

The minister said the curfew would be evaluated after September 30.

"If the measure is proved to be effective, it will continue. If it is not effective, additional measures will be taken into consideration," he said.

Other restrictions in the pipeline, according to the Nation newspaper, include mandatory player breaks every two hours and identification cards to ensure that players do not make profits from the games.

"Some of them play online games as a job," Surapong told the daily.

Internet cafes specialising in online gaming have mushroomed in Thailand in recent years as access prices have fallen to as little as 10 to 20 baht (24 to 48 cents) per hour.

Parents and politicians have expressed concern over children as young as seven playing games for long periods of time.

driver8

07-09-2003, 03:11 PM

:D
This describes half of my friends that play EQ! But here, they would curfew it so workers won't show up at work having only 3 hours sleep. In Europe tho', they tacked on a VAT, like 17% to it. They gonna make buckazoids on their kid's addictions! YA!

perseus

07-10-2003, 09:22 PM

"Anarchism and the Politics of Ressentiment" (http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/10/1520239&mode=nested)
Saul Newman

excerpt:

"A word in the ear of the psychologists, assuming they are inclined to study ressentiment close up for once: this plant thrives best amongst anarchists...."[1]
Of all the nineteenth century political movements that Nietzsche decries -- from socialism to liberalism -- he reserves his most venomous words for the anarchists. He calls them the "anarchist dogs" that are roaming the streets of European culture, the epitome of the "herd-animal morality" that characterizes modern democratic politics.[2]

stryfe

07-14-2003, 02:47 PM

Fake lie-detector reveals women's sex lies (http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993936)
14:16 14 July 03
NewScientist.com news service

Women are more likely than men to lie about their sex lives, reveals a new study. Women's coyness about their sexual behaviour was unveiled by a US study involving a fake lie detector test.

07-16-2003, 08:02 AM

Khanas Lake

Title: Scientist rejects claims of "Loch Ness monster" in China

New Zealand Press Association December 13, 1997

A scientist has rejected claims that a Chinese lake is harbouring its own version of Scotland's fabled Loch Ness monster, the Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

It is said local ethnic minorities believed in the existence of a "monster" living in Khanas Lake in the northwestern Xinjiang province which frequently attacked people and cattle.

A group of university tutors and students claimed to have recently taken a picture of the animal, which they said could be a kind of "red fish" the size of a 10-metre boat and weighing over a tonne, the agency said.

But it said Gao Ailiu of the Xinjiang Aquatic Science Research Institute had rejected the possibility of such a monster existing.

"The water of Khanas Lake is quite cold and there is not enough food to support any animal weighing over one hundred kilograms," he was quoted as saying.

"Several research teams, including one from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have studied the lake, but didn't find any such animal," Gao said.

He thought the "monster" might be the result of refracted light or an inverted image in the water.

"Another possibility is that people thought the thousands of red fish that gathered to lay eggs were one fish, when seen from far away," he aid.

The Xinjiang creature is vying with another animal said to live in Tianchi Lake near North Korea to be China's version of the Loch Ness monster.

"People say that it is a Chinese version of the Loch Ness monster, but many scientists are sceptical about it," Xinhua added.
Note: The lake mentioned is actually Lake Hanas and not Khanas Lake

kamenriderv3

07-17-2003, 11:01 PM

ALMATY, Kazakhstan (Reuters) -- A distraught Kazakh mother kept her daughter's mummified corpse in her apartment for three years hoping she would be resurrected by aliens.

Police spokeswoman Nina Tsys said Tuesday from the town of Pavlodar in northern Kazakhstan that Olga, 27, was believed to have died from an auto-immune disorder after her mother failed -- or declined -- to call for medical help.

She said Olga's cousin, worried by her long absence, had repeatedly tried to see her, but the mother would always refuse to let him in under various pretexts. Finally police broke in and made the gruesome discovery.

"We believe death was from natural causes, although due to the long time that had passed we can't be absolutely sure," Tsys said. "At least we found no signs of vandalism."

Popular Kazakh daily newspaper Vremya carried a picture of the mummified body, with withered limbs and parched skin, lying on a plain bed in the flat in this industrial town.

Vremya suggested the mother -- a former nurse -- could have known how to treat the body to preserve it.

Tsys said the mother appeared to have been influenced by a sect preaching "cosmology" that promised resurrection of her child with the help of a "third cosmic eye" or by aliens.

She said the mother was undergoing medical checks at a psychiatric clinic. Her daughter's remains had been given a proper burial

stryfe

07-18-2003, 07:21 AM

Originally posted by atomiclotusbox
Khanas Lake

Title: Scientist rejects claims of "Loch Ness monster" in China

New Zealand Press Association December 13, 1997
Dino Fossil Recovered at Loch Ness (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20030714/nessfossil.html)

Dino Fossil Recovered at Loch Ness
The Classic Nessie 'Photo' — Not a Plesiosaur

July 16, 2003 — A Scottish retiree has discovered a fossil of a 150-million-year-old reptile on the shores of Scotland's mythical Loch Ness, press reports said Wednesday.

Retired junkyard dealer Gerald McSorley, 67, said he "literally tripped over" the algae-covered fossil in shallow water near Loch Ness, Scotland's most famous inland body of water.

He took it to experts at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where the fossil was confirmed to be that of a plesiosaur, a long-necked sea reptile about 150 million years old.

"I have always believed in the Loch Ness Monster, but this proves it for me. The resemblance between this and the sightings which have been made are so similar," McSorley told Scotland's The Daily Record newspaper.

The fossil shows four well-preserved vertebrae, complete with spinal cord and blood vessels, set in grey limestone.

"The plesiosaur is the image people have of the Loch Ness Monster," said paleontologist Lyall Anderson. "But Loch Ness is a glacially scoured trough created during the last Ice Age, which only finished about 12,000 years ago."

The plesiosaur, a meat-eating reptile that grew to about 35 feet (11 meters) in length, probably went out with the dinosaurs.

Stories of the Loch Ness monster, so enthusiastically promoted by the Scottish tourist industry, date back to the seventh century, when a water beast is said to have appeared before Saint Columba, the founder of Christianity in Scotland.

stryfe

07-18-2003, 07:28 AM

you'll be blind, but at least cancer free
Masturbation “protects against prostate cancer” (http://www.health-news.co.uk/showstory.asp?id=115320)
Friday, July 18, 2003
LONDON

By Mark Cowen
Australian researchers say frequent masturbation could help protect against prostrate cancer.

Masturbation may protect against prostate cancer
Scientists from the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne asked 1,079

men with prostate cancer about their sexual habits. Their answers were then compared to those given by 1,259 healthy men who were free of the disease.

According to New Scientist magazine, the researchers say the more men ejaculate between the ages of 20 and 50, the more they seemed to be protected against prostate cancer.

This protective effect also seemed to be greater for men in their 20s. For example, those who ejaculated five times or more at this age were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer in later life, according to the study published in BJU International.

The results, say the researchers are at odds with previous studies, which found that having a high levels of sexual activity, or many partners, increased the risk of prostate cancer development by up to 40 per cent. However, the present study differed in that it asked about numbers of ejaculations, rather than frequency of sexual intercourse.

The team speculates that infections caused by intercourse could be responsible for the increased risk of prostate cancer in previous studies.

They add that the reason for the protective effects conferred by increased ejaculations could be because carcinogens are prevented from building up in the glands.

“It’s a prostatic stagnation hypothesis,” said lead researcher Graham Giles. “The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them.”

Alternatively ejaculation may induce prostate cancer cells to fully mature, thus making them less susceptible to carcinogens.

Whatever the reasons, if the findings are confirmed, doctors will not only be prescribing changes in diet and exercise habits as a means of reducing the risk of prostate cancer.

Anthony Smith, deputy director of the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University in Melbourne, said, “Masturbation is part of people’s sexual repertoire. If these findings hold up, then it’s perfectly reasonable that men should be encouraged to masturbate.”

driver8

07-18-2003, 10:05 AM

Only because it's true.

What is next: Giant Robots in my pants? ;)

Little robots in your pants (http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/18/popsci.nantech.pants/index.html)
Making sense of revolutionary nanotechnology claim
Popular Science

(POPULAR SCIENCE) -- Dockers recently came out with a new brand of pants, the Go Khakis, which promise to keep your legs stain-free using revolutionary nanotechnology.

We couldn't help thinking that Dockers might be using the word "nanotechnology" more for marketing muscle than for true scientific purposes, so we called its customer service line to ask a few pointed questions. Here's a slice of the conversation.

Dockers: How can I help you today?

Popular Science: I just bought a pair of the Go Khakis, and I noticed it says they use something called nanotechnology for stain resistance. Can you please explain how that works?

D: Umm, it's, uh, DuPont Teflon coating, and basically what we're asking you to do is not to use powdered detergent and press them after every fifth wash, and dry cleaning is an option also. And do not use fabric softener, because it can interfere with that stain-defending property.

PS: Great, but can you explain what makes this nanotechnology rather than just a coating? What is nanotechnology?

D: One moment please. Did you get the pleated or flat-front?

PS: Flat-front.

D: OK, one moment please. Because the one that says nanotechnology is the versatile pant that wicks moisture away from you.

PS: It says nanotechnology repels stains.

D: OK, one moment please. Can you give me a style number off that?

PS: Sorry, I don't have it with me. But it was a "stain defender," and I believe it said "Go Khaki."

D: And that was the flat-front one.

PS: I believe so.

D: OK, I believe it does say nanotechnology because it's the 60-cotton, 40-micropoly blend.

PS: So that's where the nanotechnology comes in?

D: Uh-huh.

PS: I still don't understand. Are there microscopic machines repelling the stain? How does it work?

D: Umm . . . I guess it's the type of fabric that makes it the nano.

PS: So the "nano" has more to do with the size of the fibers? And water is small enough to get through for washing, but other liquids are not—they bead up and roll off?

D: You know, I'm really not sure, but I do know they'll come clean. My kid has a pair of these. Messy kid. So I got the shirt and pants, and he's doing great with them. You just need to remember to press after every fifth wash.

PS: But would you say the stain defender was the Teflon coating or the size of the fibers?

D: It's a Teflon finish on the pants.

PS: So is nanotechnology affecting the stain resistance?

D: I would say not. I need to help other customers, ma'am. Can I ask how you got the number to call us today?

PS: 1-800-DOCKERS? Lucky guess.

kamenriderv3

07-22-2003, 06:50 PM

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- A patient who doctors say is the first-ever recipient of a human tongue transplant was recovering Tuesday and showed no signs of rejecting his new organ, his doctors said.

The patient, a 42-year-old man who suffered from a malignant tumor on his tongue and part of his jaw, underwent a 14-hour operation on Saturday in which doctors amputated his tongue and attached the new one.

"The tongue now looks as if it were his own -- it's as red and colorful and getting good blood circulation," said Dr. Rolf Ewers, the head of the team of nine physicians who performed the operation in Vienna's General Hospital.

"The tongue is just slightly swollen," Ewers added. "That's also a good sign which means that probably no transplant rejection has begun."

But the doctors also said that the patient, whose name was not released, could still face risks such as infection or rejection of the organ.

He will have to take medication for the rest of his life to prevent rejection.

The team will consider the operation successful if the patient, who could no longer open his mouth because of the tumor, regains his ability to eat and speak. Surgeons worked meticulously to attach the nerves of the tongue to the severed nerve endings.

"It's very unlikely he'll regain his sense of taste," Ewers said. "But (regaining) feeling and primarily, movement, would be an optimal result."

Traditionally, in cases where patients lose their tongues, surgeons remove a small piece of their small intestines and graft that onto the tongue stump, the doctors said. Such patients, however, are never able to speak clearly or swallow again, and must be fed through tubes.

The recipient's "new" tongue was first removed from a brain-dead donor by a separate team of doctors in an adjacent operating room and quickly handed over for transplantation, said Dr. Franz Watzinger, one of the leading surgeons.

The donor -- chosen because his blood type and tongue sized matched that of the 42-year old -- was then taken off life support.

Ewers said the team of doctors had been preparing for two years to carry out the tongue transplant, but had until now either lacked a candidate for the operation or an appropriate donor.

"And now finally after long training we were able to carry it out," Dr. Christian Kermer said.

He said there is no evidence in the medical literature that such an operation has even been carried out on humans and that his team felt convinced they were the first.

perseus

07-24-2003, 08:19 PM

Holding severed head in place, he defied death (http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IEP20030721133653&Title=States&rLink=0)

excerpt:
Tuesday July 22 2003 00:00 IST

Holding severed head in place, he defied death

IANS

AGRA: A 28-year-old carrier van driver's head nearly got chopped off in a road accident. Weeks later he is alive, thanks to sheer grit.

His head almost severed, blood oozing and eyes popping out, Balram was in a dazed state when the accident took place on July 5 in Fatehabad in Uttar Pradesh.

He, however, kept his head attached to his body with some cloth. When no one came to help him, he drove his own vehicle for 30 km to reach a nursing home in Agra.

perseus

07-24-2003, 08:19 PM

> > 'Fly boy' continues to suffer as doctors struggle

> > By Indo-Asian News Service

> >

> >

> > Kolkata, June 24 (IANS) A 13-year-old boy whose bizarre ailment has

> a fly-like insect emerging out of him is far from being cured as

> doctors struggle to detect the source of the parasite.

> >

> > The fully-grown flies, as doctors described the parasites, have

> been emerging out of Chandan Goswami's genitals and flying off for

> more than two weeks now.

> >

> > Chandan, now receiving treatment at a state-run hospital in West

> Bengal's Burdwan district, is said to be suffering from a condition

> called myiasis, a disease seen mostly in Central and Latin America.

> >

> > In myiasis, the larvae of a type of fly invade a human or animal

> body, dead or alive. The deposited eggs can then enter the body

> through pores, the mucous membrane or even the mouth. The hatched

> larvae then emerge out the host's skin and pupate.

> >

> > However, in Chandan's case, whole flies complete with wings are

> emerging out of his body and flying off.

> >

> > "This is very, very rare. We are trying to find out how the fly

> entered the boy's body," says Sudhansu Pan, the surgeon attending

> Chandan.

> >

> > Doctors carried out a cystoscopy to clear the boy's urinary tract,

> but the treatment has failed because two more flies emerged out of

> his penis on Monday.

> >

> > Doctors admitted they have not been able to identify where the

> parasite deposit lay inside Chandan's body.

> >

> > Health authorities have formed a medical board of seven doctors to

> treat Chandan. Doctors were also "coordinating" with physicians

> abroad who have experience in dealing with myiasis.

> >

> > In myiasis, the maggots usually are found underneath the skin and

> are removed by minor surgery. But whole flies emerging out of a human

> body is rare, doctors said.

> >

> > Chandan told doctors he first felt pain in his abdomen almost a

> month ago. And then he saw the flies intermittently coming out of his

> penis.

> >

> > He told his parents, but they didn't initially believe him. Earlier

> this month, they saw the strange occurrence and took their son to

> Burdwan hospital, where doctors too were stunned to see the rare

> case.

lakebottom

08-04-2003, 01:22 PM

What: Mob Scene. Who: Strangers. Point: None.
By OTTO POHL

BERLIN, Aug. 3 — All at once at 6:01 on Friday evening, about 40 people in the middle of a crowded street pulled out their cellphones and started shouting "yes, yes!" Then they began clapping.

Margarethe Müller, emerging from a nearby department store, sensed that something was happening. She just wasn't sure what.

"Someone told me Jan Ullrich is here," the 66-year-old retiree said, straining to see if the Tour de France runner-up was on the scene. She spotted a man on a bicycle, decked out in the spandex peacock garb of serious cyclists, his cellphone in hand, and holding forth into a television camera.

"That's not Jan Ullrich," she said, disappointed. "Can you please tell me what is going on?"

Many people were asking the same question. The telephone-wielding crowd was the latest incarnation of something called flash mobs. Called into being on short notice by Web sites and e-mail distribution lists, flash mobs meet at an appointed time, engage in some organized spontaneity for a few minutes, then rapidly disperse. The activities are innocent, if mysterious, and tend to bring together loose groupings of surprisingly conventional looking young adults.

Brimming with such a lack of purpose, the fad has found a home in Berlin and across Germany. On Monday, at 5:05 p.m., mobbers have been called to gather at the washing machine display in a department store in the German city of Dortmund, eat a banana, and leave. But events have also been organized in Rome, Vienna and Zurich. Australia is planning one.

As might be suspected, New York is the acknowledged place where people first used the latest technology to gather and delight in pointlessness. In June, more than 100 people gathered in the rug department of Macy's, claiming to a bewildered clerk that they were looking for a "love rug" for their suburban commune. The concept quickly took on a life of its own, propelled by e-mail, cellphones and the Internet.

Typically, instructions include somewhat awkward reminders to avoid the press even while spreading the word, and to stay within the law. At the Friday nonprotest, a contingent of 11 policemen stood by, unsure what to do. "We are here to look for people breaking rules or criminal acts," explained Uwe Stellmacher, a policeman who clearly wasn't sure if he had witnessed either.

He admitted to feeling fairly superfluous. "If someone had stepped out on the street or something, we could have done something," he said.

The idea of using the Internet and mobile phones to organize groups quickly is not new. But until recently, it has been used for greater goals, or at least more practical ones. In Seattle, protesters used the Internet and cellphone messaging to help organize anti-globalization protests. In Britain, teenage girls alert each other to Prince William sightings.

The lack of apparent purpose only broadens the appeal of flash mobs. Still, woven among the cheerful inanity of like-minded Web sites like cheesebikini.com and flashmob.info is some discussion of their importance. Howard Rheingold, who has published a book entitled "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution," thinks flash mobs are part of a larger trend. "Right now, it's just people wanting to do something silly and it's not hurting anybody, so what's the harm?" he says on smartmobs.com, a Web site that is dedicated to his book. "But it shouldn't come as a surprise when this becomes a major outlet of political activism soon as well," he says, perhaps hopefully.

Others only see proof of society's decay. "Do none of these people believe in anything that might be worth gathering for?" someone using the name YllabianBitPipe asked on slashdot.org.

On Saturday, a flash mob collected near the American Embassy in Berlin, and far from deriding Iraqi policies or some other momentous topic, they wore silly hats, waved flags and popped Champagne. "Here's to Natasha!" they toasted, before vanishing.

Tobias von Schönebeck, a tour guide, shook his head when he heard about how the phenomenon was traced back to Macy's. "This is just the sort of thing that happens when you forbid New York to smoke."

from nytimes.com

08-04-2003, 01:25 PM

i want to be a surprisingly conventional looking young adult

ocd

08-06-2003, 12:05 PM

Sikh models are very macho,
very masculine and very
passionate - they are not
like those hanky-panky guys,
you know those girl-like guys (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3127855.stm)
Jaskirant Singh Reki
–model

stryfe

08-12-2003, 08:26 AM

'Painless' mosquito sting injection needles developed (http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20030812p2a00m0fp018000c.html)

OSAKA -- A local university professor and a Kansai-based venture company have jointly developed 'painless' injection needles modeled on a mosquito's sting.

Seiji Aoyagi, professor at Kansai University's engineering department, and Lightnix Co., headquartered in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, have applied for a patent for the needles. The company is aiming to put the needles on the market in December this year.

"Japanese people are good at making products from natural materials. We modeled the needles on (the stings of) mosquitoes," Mitsuo Fukuda, president of Rightniks, said.

A mosquito's sting is as thin as 80 micrometers -- or 2/25 millimeters -- and is made of a flexible substance called chitin.

When a mosquito inserts its sting into a human body, it slightly vibrates and pushes asides cells without damaging them.

Moreover, the side of a mosquito's sting is notched and the area of the sting that directly touches the cells is comparatively small.

After analyzing these characteristics, the professor and the company developed injection needles measuring 85 micrometers in thickness, slightly thicker than a mosquito's sting, with a length of 1 to 2 millimeters.

They are made of polylactic acid, a substance used to produce stitches for surgical operations.

When such a needle is inserted into a patient's body, a small motor or a phenomenon called "electric potential differences" is used to vibrate it. The drug is subsequently inserted in the patient's body and reaches the affected part.

Even though the newly developed needles cannot be used to inject a large amount of drugs into a patient, they are expected to be effective in pinpoint treatment in which a small amount of a drug is injected into the affected part of patients with blood vessel disease in their brains or hearts.

The needles will likely be priced at some 100 yen each, about five times the price of a conventional injection needle, company officials said. (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, Aug. 12, 2003

fmstlr

08-12-2003, 08:39 AM

there's a story on the LA Times about 'nekkid sushi'.
I'm expecting to see an angry letter to the editor from Invictus.

stryfe

08-17-2003, 01:59 AM

Anna Kournikova to be ambassador for "sex industry" resort (http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_809105.html?menu=news.quirkies)

Anna Kournikova has agreed to become a tourism ambassador for a Thai resort known for its sex industry.

The tennis player will visit Pattaya between November 6 and 9 to play an exhibition match.
Pattaya was known for its beaches but in recent years has developed a seedy reputation for its sex industry.
Kournikova will also appear in "Unseen in Thailand" - a promotional video on lesser known places of interest in and around the city.
The match against Tamarine will be held on November 9 after the women's singles final of the WTA Volvo Women's Open at the Dusit Resort Hotel court in Pattaya.

stryfe

08-17-2003, 02:00 AM

Book bound with murderer's skin goes on public display (http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_809026.html?menu=news.quirkies)

A book bound with a murderer's skin is going on public display for the first time.
John Horwood was hanged on in April 1821 for killing a girl who had spurned his advances.
His body was given to a surgeon at Bristol Royal Infirmary to be dissected for the benefit of medical students, reports The Times.
The anatomist kept a detailed record of his findings and, after completing his work, had them bound together with a transcript of Horwood's trial.
His flayed skin was taken to a local tanner, who turned it into leather for the equivalent of £1.50. The surgeon, Richard Smith, spent a further £10 having the book bound and the front cover embossed with the skull and crossbones at each corner. The words Cutis Vera Johannis Horwood (The Skin of John Horwood) were added in gilt letters.
For decades the tome languished in the infirmary's library before being transferred to the Bristol Record Office, where it has gone on display as an exhibit in the National Archive Awareness Month.

stryfe

09-04-2003, 08:09 AM

Baboon noses raise a stink in airport (http://www.expatica.com/main.asp?pad=2,18,&item_id=33989)

4 September 2003

AMSTERDAM — A highly trained dog used by the customs service in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport sniffed up a mystery last week when the hound literally came nose-to-nose with a bag containing 2,000 rotting baboon snouts.

Customs officials were drawn to the left luggage area by a horrible stench and sniffer dogs were used to locate the suitcase, an airport official told the Dutch media. The owner of the bag has not come forward to claim it.

Baboons are a protected species and their body parts cannot be exported without a special licence.

BBC Online reported that the suitcase was on route from Nigeria to the US and the Dutch authorities have contacted their counterparts in Nigeria to help in the investigation.

Louis Steens of the Agricultural Ministry's Inspectorate said that the suitcase weighed 30 kilograms. "It is not unusual to find animal organs, such as eyes and brains or plants in baggage from Asia and Africa - whose people use them as ingredients of their traditional medicines for healing purposes", Steens told the BBC.

But he said they had never before come across such a huge number of baboon noses.

The noses were destroyed.

``The baboon noses are suspected to have been destined for consumption or for use in the manufacture of traditional medicines,'' the inspectorate said.

ocd

09-04-2003, 08:39 AM

Originally posted by stryfe
Book bound with murderer's skin goes on public display (http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_809026.html?menu=news.quirkies)GROSS!

stryfe

09-04-2003, 08:49 AM

Originally posted by ocd
GROSS!
they make great salad toppers.

ocd

09-04-2003, 09:38 AM

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39292000/jpg/_39292870_sesame_st_203152.jpg
Is Elmo Bush's secret weapon?
By Ryan Dilley
BBC News Online

Images of heavily-armed Marines patrolling Iraq may not be winning the US many friends in the Islamic world. So it could be time to enlist the soft and fluffy inhabitants of Sesame Street in the battle against anti-Americanism.

Is Sesame Street really brought to you by the letters U, S and A?

The US Army - which partly sponsors the show's makers, the New York-based Children's Television Workshop - certainly loves Sesame Street. Especially its saccharine theme music about everything being "A-OK".

Iraqi prisoners were treated to repeated playings of the ditty at ear-splitting volume by US psychological operations officers intent on encouraging their captives to submit to questioning.

This revelation seems to run contrary to everything the TV show for pre-school children has stood for since its first broadcast in 1969. Also, by bringing Big Bird, Elmo and Mr Snuffleupagus into such disrepute, the US soldiers may have tarnished a more subtle plan hatched by their masters back in Washington.

The programme - which is already aired in more than 120 countries - has been praised by the US State Department officials who have been set the task of turning the tide of anti-Americanism.

Charlotte Beers, the former ad executive made undersecretary of State for public diplomacy in 2001, warned a Senate committee that the "people we need to talk to do not even know the basics about us. They are taught to distrust our every motive. Such distortions, married to a lack of knowledge, is a deadly cocktail. Engaging, teaching common values are preventive medicine".

But how to administer this medicine, and even help it down with a spoonful of sugar? Ms Beers says there is "an army willing to be signed up to engage the world on behalf of the United States".

And in the vanguard of this army? Bert, Ernie and Oscar the Grouch.

The undersecretary said she was "dazzled" by a co-production of Sesame Street broadcast in Egypt since 2000. "The children are glued to the set. They are learning English, they are learning about American values."

The government's Agency for International Development (USAID) is now giving $6.26m for Sesame Street to produce a show for viewers in Bangladesh - a nation with a considerable Muslim population.

One unnamed official told the Daily Telegraph newspaper that the project is "aiming to promote greater understanding of American morality and culture".

Certainly, the show seems not to have shied away from promoting values which typify the US, such as capitalism.

The cute, squeaky-voiced puppet Elmo has just been sponsored by Wall Street firm Merrill Lynch to explain business to American pre-schoolers. And in Russia's Ulitsa Sezam, a storyline about a lemonade stall has been included to show, that in a nation where many people suspect all businesses of corruption, someone "can make a profit and be a nice person".

However, the Children's Television Workshop has told BBC News Online that it does not accept that it is an exporter of so-called American values. Even a policy for foreign licensing decided back in 1969 stipulated that non-US versions of the show reflect the morals and traditions of the host nation.

"We don't set out in any way to push American or western values. That's not our mission at all," says Beatrice Chow, spokeswoman for Sesame Street's foreign co-productions.

"There are universal values that we encourage, such as sharing, co-operation, respect and understanding. But we see what the needs are of the specific country where the show is being broadcast - such as in South Africa where we introduced an HIV-positive character because of the Aids problem there."

Indeed, the Muppet character Kami - while enthusiastically received in Takalani Sesame - was seen as so offending American morals that a group of influential Republican politicians issued a letter calling for Sesame Street not to introduce a similar storyline to its domestic shows.

In its attempts to promote what it calls "universal values", Sesame Street has also encouraged Egyptian girls to be more ambitious with the inclusion of Muppet Khokha (Peach) who wants to be an astronaut or a doctor. This empowering of Egyptian women directly reflects policies agreed with the Cairo government.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Sesame Street has tried to tackle even thornier regional issues.

Israeli and Palestinian programme makers have tried to combat the negative stereotypes by writing sequences which combine both Jewish and Arab Muppets.

The current intifada has at times interrupted production and seen the show's ambitions scaled down - having Muppets from both communities living on the same street seems utterly ridiculous, even to pre-school children.

However, in the short time the original show, Rechov Sumsum/Shara'a Simsim, was broadcast, it had positive effects on its young viewers.

Professor Nathan Fox, of Maryland University, says Palestinian children particularly were seen to benefit from seeing positive images of their culture on the screen.

Though "good science" was difficult under the circumstances, Professor Fox says he expects that had he had longer to conduct research he would have revealed other positive effects.

He says Sesame Street "may not change entrenched cultural stereotypes", but by showing scenarios of sharing and interaction, it may prevent these stereotypes being acted out by viewers when they meet their counterparts.

This may give added impetus to projects planned for Afghanistan and Northern Ireland and one already under way in Kosovo.

So perhaps the US government officials are mistaking the generous spirit and scrupulous fairness of Big Bird as exclusively American virtues.

Melanie Killen, a colleague of Professor Fox, recently found that children around the world share a body of values which cut across cultures. "That has surprised many people," says Professor Fox.

When it comes to sharing, equality and fairness, it seems we're all on the same side of the street.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3200699.stm

ocd

09-18-2003, 12:09 PM

"This is the dream - we're going to get this sensational footage of the giant squid trying to do obscene things with the camera." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3114124.stm)

liquid mass

09-18-2003, 12:25 PM

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39344000/jpg/_39344816_giantsquid2203.jpg
I'm all for research into the sex habits of squid, but this is pushing it. They do make a cute couple though.

ocd

09-19-2003, 07:55 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/03/sci_nat_enl_1063911656/img/1.jpg

The 700-kilogram beast - about the size of a buffalo -
lived among the reeds and grasses of an ancient
river system that threaded its way into the
Caribbean Sea eight million years ago. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3120950.stm)

stryfe

09-19-2003, 08:00 AM

little girll: awwww...it's soo kewt!! ^_^
fur trader: all i need is a few of 'em.

fmstlr

09-19-2003, 08:06 AM

Originally posted by liquid mass
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39344000/jpg/_39344816_giantsquid2203.jpg
I'm all for research into the sex habits of squid, but this is pushing it. They do make a cute couple though.

Squids like 69! I didn't know that.

fmstlr

09-19-2003, 08:10 AM

Originally posted by ocd
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39292000/jpg/_39292870_sesame_st_203152.jpg
Is Elmo Bush's secret weapon?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3200699.stm

that stories echoes the brain-dead suggestions of Deepak Chopra made a while back about how to solve the Iraq situation, one of which was to build a Disneyland in the mid-east so children will grow up liking instead of hating America.

Stupid minds think alike.

stryfe

09-19-2003, 09:09 AM

Front man for Hell on Earth takes his case to Bay area airwaves (http://www.baynews9.com/site/NewsStory.cfm?storyid=24731)

The leader of the shock/rock band Hell on Earth took to the airwaves Wednesday to explain why someone would want to commit suicide during the group's concert at the State Theatre in St. Petersburg next month.

Billy Tourtelot told 98 Rock's Bubba the Love Sponge - aka Todd Clem - that a terminally ill person in the Bay area contacted him via email through the band's web site. He says the suicide is not a stunt to gain publicity for Hell on Earth.

"They'd rather have an assisted suicide but because of the way the laws are written, they can't do it," Tourtelot said in an interview Wednesday morning with Bubba. "So, bringing dying with dignity to the forefront is really what it's all about."

Tourtelot even read a suicide letter, allegedly written by the unnamed person.

The letter read as follows: "I have chosen this event on Saturday, October 4th for my self deliverance to raise awareness of dying with dignity. I am of rational mind and do not hold Hell on Earth or the State Theatre liable for my actions."

That statement is not enough to convince local law enforcement officials to allow a live suicide on stage at the state theater. The St. Petersburg Police Department and the State Attorney's Office are working diligently to find out what their options are as far as the law is concerned.

St. Petersburg City Councilman Bill Foster says he feels pretty confident that the event won't happen at the State Theater on October 4.

"This activity will not be tolerated in the City of St. Petersburg," Foster said.

The councilman, who happens to be an attorney, cites the Florida Statute that makes assisted suicide a second- degree felony.

"If it's a stunt, then they have very right to perform this stunt on stage," Foster added. "If somebody loses their life, they will be prosecuted as conspirators."

On Bubba's show, Tourtelot insists that he's not doing anything illegal

ironmonqui

09-21-2003, 11:43 AM

I found this while looing for another current story. This one is over a year old, but it seems it was never posted. Shock!
-------------------
http://www.guerrillanews.com/corporate_crime/doc584.html

Guerrillas of the Week
Editor's Pick, July 15, 2002

Last Monday, hundreds of Nigerian women stormed a Chevron oil terminal demanding justice, holding hundreds of workers hostage. It was a desperate act of a desperate people:

“The people in the Niger Delta are among the poorest in Nigeria,” writes Indymedia. “The land they live on, however, is the source of Nigeria's $20 billion in annual oil exports. The people in the region are demanding that the multinationals pumping out the oil give them the roads, water service and electricity that the government has not provided. Anunu Uwawah, a spokeswoman for the protesters said that the women were tired of living in poverty in the shadow of the oil terminal.”

Today, the women released 200 of the hostages, but threatened an unusual act of defiance if their demands aren’t met. The AP has more:

ESCRAVOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Unarmed village women holding 700 ChevronTexaco workers inside a southeast Nigeria oil terminal let 200 of the men go Sunday but threatened a traditional and powerful shaming gesture if the others try to leave -- removing their own clothes.

"Our weapon is our nakedness," said Helen Odeworitse, a representative for the villagers in the extraordinary week-old protest for jobs, electricity and development in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta.

Most Nigerian tribes consider unwanted displays of nudity by wives, mothers or grandmothers as an extremely damning protest measure that can inspire a collective source of shame for those at whom the action is directed.

About 600 women from two nearby communities are holding ChevronTexaco's giant Escravos terminal. They range in age from 30 to 90 -- with the core group being married women aged 40 or older.

The women want the oil giant to hire their sons and use some of the region's oil riches to develop their remote and run-down villages -- most of which lack even electricity. The people in the Niger Delta are among the poorest in Nigeria, despite living on the oil-rich land.

ChevronTexaco officials have refused to identify the trapped workers, but an employee at the plant said Wednesday they included Americans, Britons and Canadians as well as Nigerians.

Both sides took a break Sunday from their often heated negotiations. They were to meet again Monday, Odeworitse said.

The oil company has emphasized that it wants to resolve the so-far peaceful standoff by dialogue. About 100 police and soldiers armed with assault rifles have been sent to the terminal to protect the facility. They are under strict orders not to harm the women, though one beat up a woman on Thursday.

The takeover began Monday when 150 women managed to sneak into the facility. The women have occupied the terminal ever since, blocking the airstrip, helipad and port that provide the only exit routes from the facility, which is surrounded by rivers and swamps.

The protest has shut down a facility that accounts for the bulk of the company's Nigeria production, with an estimated half-million barrels a day.

Oil site takeovers are common in Nigeria, the world's sixth-largest producer of oil, and the fifth-largest supplier to the United States.

But this protest is a departure for Nigeria, where such disputes often are settled with machetes and guns. In the oil-rich Niger Delta, armed young men routinely resort to kidnapping and sabotage to pressure oil multinationals into giving them jobs, protection money or compensation for alleged environmental damage.

Hostages generally are released unharmed.

On Sunday the women released 200 of the workers -- to show "good faith," Odeworitse said.

Four ferries bound for Warri, the nearest city two hours away by boat, carried the freed workers off. The workers released Sunday were nearing the end of their tour of duty, which can last weeks at a time.

ChevronTexaco "begged us to allow the boats to go so they can bring food back, and allow those on staff who were due to go on time-off leave," Odeworitse said.

ChevronTexaco executives could not be immediately reached for comment Sunday. The talks have been playing out in a village of rusty tin shacks within 100 yards of the oil terminal.

The women are occupying the plant in shifts and constantly communicating with those outside using walkie-talkies, Odeworitse said.

The women took bundles of food with them when they began the takeover and ChevronTexaco has also supplied them some. The women are cooking their own meals inside the terminal mess hall. The occupiers say everyone, including themselves, so far has had enough food.

The struggle between international oil firms and local communities drew international attention in the mid-1990s, when violent protests by the tiny Ogoni tribe forced Shell to abandon its wells on their land.

The late dictator Gen. Sani Abacha responded in 1995 by hanging nine Ogoni leaders, including writer Ken Saro Wiwa -- triggering international outrage and Nigeria's expulsion from the Commonwealth.

http://www.guerrillanews.com/images/newswire/nigeriawomen.jpg
http://www.hrw.org/worldreport99/africa/nigeria3.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Africa/Nigeria_Shell_State.html
http://www.guerrillanews.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/wwwthreads.pl?Cat=&C=1
-----------------------

Sure, it caught my eye because it had the word "NUDITY" in an odd context, but it is a pretty fascinating concept used to full advantage.

ironmonqui

09-23-2003, 05:33 PM

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/rids/20030923/i/1064319350.3557384255.jpg (http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3492764)

Hungarians Get Horny While Singapore Sleeps
Tue September 23, 2003 10:09 AM ET
By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - Forget Latin lovers -- horny Hungarians are now the most active between the sheets, leading a charge of eastern Europeans in the global sex charts.

Condom maker Durex's annual global sex survey published on Tuesday showed that Hungarian lovers enjoy sex 152 times a year. The French -- fiercely proud of their sexual prowess -- only manage 144 performances a year.

The Italians and Spanish lag even further with scores of 119 and 123 times a year, while Americans make love an average of 118 times a year, Germans 120 and Australians 125.

"Bedtime in Budapest is the most passionate of all," Durex said in its survey.

Eastern Europe performed well, with Bulgaria, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro all showing above average annual ratings.

But if you want sex in Sweden or Singapore, you may be disappointed. Swedes chalk up a below-average score of 102 times a year, while Singaporeans only manage 96.

The survey of more than 150,000 people found lovers across the globe are having sex an average of 127 times a year and 73 percent of people say they are happy with their sex lives.

The most sexually satisfied couples are in Thailand with 92 percent, Vietnam with 90 percent, China and Spain with 83 percent, and Iceland with 80 percent.

Russians were the least happy with their lot. Only 59 percent said they were satisfied, despite having sex an average of 150 times a year.

One-night stands proved relatively popular across the world with 45 percent of people admitting to having had one.

But Nordic nights were the most adventurous -- 71 percent of Icelanders, 70 percent of Norwegians and 68 percent of Finns have had sex with someone they had just met, compared with only 37 percent of Germans and 24 percent of Indians.

Keeping up with the times, Americans are at the forefront of the techno trend for virtual reality sex with 54 percent saying they have had sex via phone, e-mail or text message.

The French scoffed at such modern nonsense -- only 20 percent of them saying they could see the point of it.

Lovers in Hong Kong are the most likely to be honest in bed -- only 15 percent say their passion is a pretence. But many Australians have no such scruples -- 47 percent say they have faked orgasms."
--------------------------------------

I have NO idea how I compare... A 100 times a year? mmmmmaybe. Sheesh, it depends!