Puppies and Flowers

Tornado damages houses in Meath. Link

From the article:

POLICE in eastern India have rescued a Muslim man who had been shackled in chains for a month for marrying his childhood lover against the wishes of his father and village clerics, authorities said on today.

This is sad -in so many ways:

As a proud and courageous RAF pilot, he served with distinction during the Second World War.

And when the time came for Terry Prendergast to make his final sortie, his family wanted him to go in appropriate style.

So they built a coffin in the shape of his beloved Hawker Hurricane fighter plane - complete with cardboard cockpit, wings, propeller and tailplane.

Doode! Sorry to add to your embarassment, but...

When fitness trainer Peter Sullivan fell for a pretty receptionist, he thought she could not fail to be impressed by the he-man photographs on his personal website.

How wrong he was.

Instead of agreeing to a date, Lucy Holland forwarded his website link to a colleague. And within days it had multiplied in cyberspace, turning 25-year-old Mr Sullivan into an international figure of fun.

Link to article

Hudson, Florida -- Deputies say they have shut down a marijuana grow house, seizing 94 pot plants and arresting the resident, 31-year-old Jason Robert Stoner.

Investigators say he may also be in trouble with the power company, since he tampered with the electric meter to bypass the wiring and run his grow lights.

The former TV star recalls the trauma of being called gay by the conservative preacher.

May 16, 2007 | Eight years ago the Rev. Jerry Falwell warned parents that BBC children's television star Tinky Winky was a hidden symbol of homosexuality. Falwell died Tuesday at 73, and the world wanted to talk to Tinky Winky.

"They're calling again, again, again," he said by phone from his home in Islington, in London. A spokesman said the former "Teletubbies" costar got more than 100 calls from reporters in the hour following news of Falwell's death.

Link to Salon.com

Soccer stars win sex toy suit

GERMAN sex shop chain Beate Uhse must pay German soccer stars Michael Ballack and Oliver Kahn 50,000 euros ($81,205) each for using their names for vibrators without permission, the company said today.

The company had marketed the sex toys, dubbed "Michael B." and "Olli K.", before Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006.

Although the surnames of the two German soccer stars were not used, it was clear they referred to Chelsea midfielder Michael Ballack and Bayern Munich goalkeeper Oliver Kahn.

Kahn and national team captain Ballack sued Beate Uhse in court for unauthorised use of their names and won.

"The products have been withdrawn," the spokeswoman said. "We have to pay 50,000 euros to each of them."

Sailing past traffic jams is every commuter’s dream but David Grimes does that almost every day - literally.

The 37-year-old IT manager puts on a wetsuit each morning and kitesurfs to his office in Brighton.

He lives in a beach house along the coast west of the city in Shoreham, West Sussex, and the trip to the shore nearest his office takes about 30 minutes.

Link to article with more pictures

Guerilla Art?

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - The Little Mermaid statue in Denmark's capital was found draped in a Muslim dress and head scarf Sunday morning. Police removed the clothing after a telephone caller reported it, spokesman Jorgen Thomsen said.

Careful with those brownies...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - It was a big enough bummer for Kenneth Affolter when he was sentenced to more than five years in prison for making pot-laced treats and soft drinks. Now he faces the wrath of a candy giant. The Hershey Co. has sued Affolter, 40, for giving his marijuana goodies names like Stoney Rancher, Rasta Reese's and Keef Kat. Each came in packaging similar to Hershey's Jolly Rancher, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kat candies, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

From the article:

An 18-year girl's life-and-death experience had a happy ending because of an umbrella she was holding when she was blown off the roof of a six-story building in a storm. The umbrella allowed her to land relatively softly on the ground and saved her life. Zhang Haijing, a school student from Jingning County in neighboring Zhejiang Province, was caught in the rain on her way home in the evening of May 15. She intended to wash her soaked clothes in a laundry located at the top of her six-story building, Today Morning Express reported today.

John Waters, Devine? Well not quite...

LONDON (AFP) - A pair of gay flamingos have adopted an abandoned chick, becoming parents after being together for six years, a British conservation organisation said Monday. Carlos and Fernando had been desperate to start a family, even chasing other flamingos from their nests to take over their eggs at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) in Slimbridge near Bristol.
But their egg-sitting prowess made them the top choice for taking an unhatched egg under their wings when one of the Greater Flamingo nests was abandoned.

A CALIFORNIAN man who tried to kill his girlfriend by leaving her in a car parked across railway lines was himself killed when an oncoming train hurled the car into him as he fled.
His girlfriend survived, the Associated Press reported.
The man drove the car to the head of a line of traffic stopped at a level crossing in the San Fernando Valley neighbourhood of Sunland on Monday, police spokesman Mike Lopez said.
The man, who was seen arguing with the woman, then parked the car on the tracks and jumped out, leaving her behind, Mr Lopez said.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chen Yan waves at a crowd of onlookers bemused at seeing China's late helmsman, Mao Zedong, brought back to life by a middle-aged woman.

Chen, 51, from Mianyang, in China's southwestern province of Sichuan, has been dressing up as Mao since she was discovered on a local TV show in 2005 impersonating another actor who had played Mao in movies.

Link to Reuters with more photos

SINGAPORE: A waterspout has been spotted from the eastern parts of Singapore. Most callers to the MediaCorp News Hotline reported seeing what looked like a tornado or a twister over the sea. Most said they saw the phenomenon at about 2.30pm and that the phenomenon lasted about 15 minutes. Witnesses said it was moving in a circular motion.

"Now I see people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin."

Link to article

The Pink Dolphin lives in the Amazon Rainforest. It is usually found in the tributaries and main rivers of the Orinoco River systems in South America.

Link to article

Link to list

Wow, that's terrifically awful. Enough to make me hurl my beans 'n toast.

Fortunately many English are petitioning for a re-design.

BBC readers have already begun suggesting alternatives

Digital paper that can speak to you has been created by scientists.

Researchers from Mid Sweden University have constructed an interactive paper billboard that emits recorded sound in response to a user's touch.

The prototype display uses conductive inks, which are sensitive to pressure, and printed speakers.

Link to BBC article

ROME (Reuters) - A group of Italian senators want ice cream in their cafeteria to "improve the quality of life" in the Senate, astonishing observers as Italy's political class faces a growing backlash over its handsome pay and perks.

Link to article

Link to article on Slate.com

Two "ace" sniffer dogs who have performed sterling service combating drug trafficking in Thailand's Chiang Rai airport have been given their marching orders for urinating on luggage and "sexually harassing" female passengers, the Bangkok Post reports. Mok and Lai had apparently been "plucked from obscurity" as part of a cunning King Bhumibol Adulyadej plan to use strays as police dogs. They were deployed at said airport close to the border with Laos and Myanmar, but quickly attracted numerous complaints from the public due to their uninhibited behaviour. Mok's former handler, Police Lieutenant Colonel Jakapop Kamhon, explained: "Both were just as good as foreign dogs trained for use in drug missions. But they were stray dogs, so their manners were worse than those of foreign breeds. "He [Mok] liked to pee on luggage while searching for drugs inside. He also liked to hold on to women's legs." Mok and Lai have been reassigned to farm duties, including "herding chickens and pigs", the Bangkok Post confirms. ®

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt -- more than a century ago.

Link to CNN article

"If you walk up and your pants drop, you get a fine," he added. "They're better off taking the pants off and just wearing a dress."

Link to article

image found on Flickr

Link to article

LUXEMBOURG glugs more than 15.5 litres of alcohol per person in a year, more than any other country. One explanation is that the duty on alcohol is relatively cheap in the tiny nation, encouraging booze tourism from its more heavily taxed neighbours. No such explanation for the Irish, however, who quaff 13.7 litres a year, according to the World Health Organisation. European countries, with their cultural acceptance of alcohol, tend to dominate the top places. In America, where stricter minumum-age requirements apply, the average person drinks 8.6 litres a year.

Source The Economist

A two-year-old girl from Hampshire has become the youngest ever female member of British Mensa.

Georgia Brown, from Aldershot, Hampshire, astounded experts by scoring 152 in an IQ test - putting her in the top 2% of the population for her age.

Psychologist Joan Freeman, who tested Georgia, said she thought the toddler could have scored even higher but needed a nap after 45 minutes of work.

Link to article

"I feel ashamed that I couldn't notice the alarm bells set off by my own body," he said. "But with the goal to win another title with a new record, I couldn't stop my training so close to the competition. "I was continuing my training and bearing with the pain but finally I destroyed my jaw." But he said he still wanted to go to the competition in New York. "I want to be the pride of my mother," he said in the blog entry posted Sunday.

(image credit Drew Ford)

As the 2007 Munger Potato Festival Potato Queen, Allison Nowicki wasn't planning to relinquish her sash and crown until next month, when the next festival queen is to be named.

But the Munger Potato Festival Queen Committee thought otherwise.

Nowicki, of Hampton Township, received a letter from the committee saying she did not attend enough events to remain the Potato Queen.

Link to article

"Pub landlord fights smoke ban by declaring his boozer an embassy. For pub-goers who enjoy a cigarette with their drink, next week's ban will make England a very different place.

So one landlord has claims to have found a loophole to fight the new law - by declaring his pub to be part of a different country.

The Wellington Arms in Southampton is set to transform itself from a public house into the official embassy for a tiny Caribbean island."

Link to Daily Mail article

This photograph, taken June 18 from a Japan Coast Guard aircraft off the northeastern coast of Hokkaido, shows a bird’s-eye view of cloud streets over the Sea of Okhotsk. According to the Sapporo Meteorological Observatory, these low-altitude stratocumulus clouds were rolled into long, distinctive ribbons after becoming trapped in air currents. While it is not uncommon for wind to form such patterns in stratocumulus clouds, photos that clearly show the clouds rolled into strips are rare, says the observatory.

Link to Mainichi via Pink Tentacle

Dad was a zebra stallion, mum was a horse . . . so their odd-looking offspring is known as a zorse.

Found at The Sun

image found on Flickr

A Serbian farmer has replaced his wife's name on the family grave with a picture of his favourite cow.

Zivomir Nesic, 58, from Markovac, demanded his pre-ordered gravestone be changed after a row with his wife.

He said: 'I always said my wife was a cow so, if I'm going to have a cow on my grave, I would rather it was one I actually liked.'

Found at The Metro

The male participants who reported moderate drinking were 1.27 times more likely to report above-average health, compared with those who were lifetime abstainers and former light drinkers. The moderate drinking women were more than twice as likely as abstainers to report above-average health.

Previous good news reported here

Link to article

Link to YouTube

(image found on Flickr)

I regret the passing of this friend from our culture, just as I regret knowing that I’ll never again see a pretty woman in nylons, garter belt and spiked heels.

Martinis, garter belts, bathing suits and high heels – why do good things pass away? Tonight I’m going to pour myself a martini, light up my pipe, sit in my backyard and give this matter a lot more thought.

Link to letter

Letters. Painted on shop shutters in the east end of London. Apparently they're by a graffiti artist called Eine. I found 10 in one night and then wondered whether all 26 were available. Comments on the pictures helped me to locate more. I found another 16 the next day, but 3 of them repeated letters I'd already found... so I was still 3 short of a full alphabet.

Link to FlickrSet

Mike Schilling, who runs the winery with his wife, Sharon, is confident Git-R-Done beer will appeal to the comedian's fan base.

"Rednecks love quality, too," he said.

Link to CNN

The European Union has turned to shock tactics in its latest bid for self-promotion... making its own dirty video. In a bid to boost interest in the workings of the EU, the communications commission have made a video of 18 couples having sex.

Link to Daily Mail article, link to YouTube clip

A 10-year-old Nepali girl worshipped as a living goddess, or Kumari, has lost her "divine" status for defying tradition and visiting the United States.

Not to be confused with the Munger article

A curate has done a disappearing act from a church – to become a full-time magician.

The Rev Mark Townsend turned down the chance to become vicar of a parish and has converted to conjuring.

The 40-year-old said he still had faith and wanted to use magic to touch people's 'spiritual side' – but insisted he would not perform miracles.

'There are lots of Christian magicians but they tend to be very evangelical and use magic as a way of bringing people into the church,' he said. 'Everybody needs a little magic in their lives and I want to push spirituality rather than religion. I'm not performing miracles.'

Mr Townsend, from Weston-under-Penyard, Hertfordshire, has been a member of the Magic Circle for ten years and has the support of wife Jodie, and children Aisha and Jamie.

He said his magic was 'more Derren Brown than Paul Daniels' and has performed for nuns, African Masai warrior and to congregations across Britain.

Brief: Draw attention to the Zoo Neunkirchen and achieve an increase in attendance.

Link with more pictures via Presurfer

(image credit: Flickr)

A grandmother won second prize in a cake-baking contest at a fete, only to discover she was the only entrant.

Jenny Brown, 62, entered her Victoria Sponge into the competition and was initially pleased to have come second.

But she was left shocked when a friend revealed to her that she was the only person to take part.

The contest was organised by the Wimblington Sports Committee and judges marked down the cake because it had indentations from the oven rack.

'Judges' expectations'

Ms Brown said: "My friend came over to me at the fete and said I had come second.

"I asked her how many more entries there had been, but she just started laughing and said I was the only one.

"I definitely wasn't annoyed about it."

Although the cake was not deemed fit to win the competition, Ms Brown said it was soon polished off with no complaints.

Julie Dent, from the Wimblington Sports Committee, said: "The judges had an expectation and I suppose they didn't feel as though it qualified for first place.

"This was the first year but the cake competition will become an annual event."

She said her own baking was subject to another strange decision.

"About 11 years ago I entered a show with some fruit scones. I was the only entrant but I came third."

Link to BBC article

(image credit: Flickr)

NEW YORK: Latest research by Italian scientists has shown that drinking wine can help prevent tooth decay, gum disease and sore throats.

Both red and white wines contain some powerful germ killing ingredients. Drinking a glass of wine regularly can act as an effective agent against disease causing streptococci bacteria and upper respiratory tract infections, said a study published in the American Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Moderate consumption of red wine is already known to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's. Recent studies also show that drinking a glass of red wine every day can have a positive effect on cholesterol levels and blood pressure.

But wine's antibacterial qualities, although well known by the ancient Romans, have been little investigated, said Italian researcher Gabriella Gazzani.

Gazzani's team used bottles of supermarket Valpolicella and Pinot Nero for their research, pouring the wines into bowls containing bacteria, said the online edition of Daily Mail.

"Overall, our findings seem to indicate that wine can act as an effective anti-microbial agent against streptococci bacteria and upper respiratory tract infections," said Gazzani.

Previous good news on P&F [1] [2] Link to article

(image credit: Flickr)

That may seem like an odd question for straight-laced government types to tackle. But it's a serious attempt to shore up the state's medical marijuana law, which has been around for nearly a decade without defining the "60-day supply" patients are allowed to have on hand.

Now, after years of unsuccessful attempts to amend the law, the state Health Department has been ordered to spell out how much marijuana makes up that theoretical two-month cache.

Prosecutors and police seem generally happy with the change, saying it should help rank-and-file officers determine whom to arrest and whom to leave alone.

The American Civil Liberties Union and supportive state lawmakers think it could be the beginning of even broader reforms by the state's Democratic-controlled Legislature.

But some patients wish the state simply wouldn't bother, spooked that the government will make the limits too restrictive and spark far more arrests for people in frail health.

Read more

(image credit: Flickr)

After getting struck by a car Sunday and beaten by an intruder Monday, Tony Hicks returned to a hospital a third straight day when police investigating a convenience store robbery in Athens shot him.

A McMinn County judge today set a $100,000 bond for Hicks. He is charged with aggravated robbery and attempted first degree murder.

Police say Hicks was shot after making "aggressive movements" toward officers who were looking to question him as part of an investigation of a Tuesday night convenience store robbery.

Hicks was treated at a Knoxville hospital and has been released. He is back in jail.

Police reports show that before dawn Sunday, Hicks was struck outside his apartment by a car driven by a woman who had been revving the engine. Police say Hicks went on his own to a hospital.

On Monday night, Hicks' apartment was broken into by a knife-wielding burglar. He was robbed after being struck in the face with a coffee mug. Hicks was taken to a hospital for treatment.

An Athens investigator says the unrelated sequence of hospitalizations--Sunday, Monday and Tuesday--is not the first time police have dealt with Hicks.

Link to article

Link to Flickrset

Locate a Kwik-E-Mart near you

(Keenesburg, Co.) - Flora Zimbelman says it all started 54 years ago when she put an uncooked hot dog in her sister’s suitcase.

 "I don’t know what made me do it. The devil I guess," she said.

Flora’s sister, Rose, found the hot dog when she opened the suitcase back up in Idaho, where she lived at the time.

"She mailed it back to me telling me to keep my garbage at home," said Flora. The game was on.

In the years that followed, Flora would find a way to sneak the hot dog back into Rose's life. And Rose would find another way to sneak it back to Flora.

"I found it under my pillow once, I found it in between the drapes and once I found it in the kitchen drawer," said Flora. Flora still has that hot dog.

It looks just about as disgusting as you might expect.

Link to article via Spulch

PORT ST. LUCIE — The city has accumulated so much evidence from its 74 marijuana grow house seizures in the past year, it doesn't have enough room to store it.

The police department is using several empty city-owned houses, as well as the defunct Ravenswood Community Center, to store materials ranging from grow house lights, air-conditioning units, hydroponics gear and the green leafy stuff itself. But police say they need more space as the city grows. They want to shift money from planning the eastern substation at the future City Center to build a new evidence warehouse.

Link to article 

(image credit: bigtimebrewery) 

The Acadiana Center for the Arts is looking for volunteers to help staff the inaugural Gulf Brew beer-tasting festival, to be held from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. July 14 in downtown Lafayette.

The festival features samples from breweries across the Gulf South, as well as activities for children.

In exchange for working a two-hour shift, volunteers — ages 21 or older — will get one “Taster Ticket” good for 15 three-ounce samples from the participating breweries.

Volunteers also get free draft beer at the end of their shift.

Gulf Brew is modeled in the style of Germany’s Oktoberfest.

Participating breweries include Saint Arnold Brewing Co. of Houston; Lazy Magnolia Brewing Co., Kiln, Miss.; Abita Brewing Co., Abita Springs; and Zea Brewery, Metairie.

Lafayette’s own beer-brewing club, the Dead Yeast Society, will participate.

Link to article  

10,000 yen notes rain down into Tokyo

About 30 or 40 10,000 yen notes were spotted floating down from an area near a bridge over the Sumida River in Tokyo on Friday, police said, adding that several residents apparently walked off with the cash.

Police arrived and recovered four 10,000 yen notes, one 5,000 yen note and one 1,000 yen note after receiving a call from a resident at about 11 a.m. saying that about 30 or 40 10,000 yen notes had fallen down from an area near the Kototoi Bridge over the Sumida River in Sumida-ku, Tokyo.

"A few people picked up the notes and left the area," the woman who alerted police was quoted as saying.

Investigators suspect the notes fell from a vehicle traveling along route No. 6 on the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway. As of 1 p.m. on Friday the owner of the cash had not turned up.

People who picked up the money could face charges of misappropriation if they didn't take the cash to police, law enforcers said. (Mainichi)

Money falls from sky

BERLIN - A German motorist surprised by euro notes swirling in the air around her car hit the brakes and collected a "substantial amount of money" before turning it over to police, authorities in Worms said on Thursday.

When police went with her to the scene they could not find any more cash.

A spokesman at Worms city hall said police were withholding details on the exact sum and location of the find in the hope of learning more about the money's origin. (Reuters)

(image credit: commonroman)

DUBLIN (Reuters) - An Irish bookmaker who offered odds of 14/1 that Al Gore would be the next high profile American to be arrested paid out on Friday after police detained the former Vice President's son, also named Al.

Having not specified which Al bettors could back, Paddy Power said some of the 50 or so people who placed money on the rank outsider being arrested had been quick to claim their winnings.

"We got a good stoning thanks to the Vice President's son," the company said in a statement. The "bizarre coincidence" would cost it more than 10,000 euros (6,775 pounds).

Paddy Power, which is well known in Ireland for wacky publicity stunts and for offering bizarre and sometimes controversial bets, offered odds on July 3 that had made Paris Hilton the 2/1 favourite to be arrested.

It had ranked President George W. Bush and Bill Gates among the outsiders on odds of 33/1 and 50/1 respectively.

Link to Reuters

Houston sculptors Dan Havel and Dean Ruck sculpturally altered two buildings in a Montrose neighborhood.

The project Inversion transformed two Art League houses on the corner of Montrose Boulevard and Willard Street. The Art League offered Havel and Ruck the old studio buildings before they were demolished to make way for a new Art League building.

Link to art league houston

A dog has been rescued after falling 50ft down a gorge at a Highland beauty spot called Dog Falls.

Kyle, a partially deaf and blind 14-year-old collie-Jack Russell cross, fell down the embankment on Sunday evening while out with his owner.

The dog spent three hours in the water at the popular walking spot in Glen Affric in the Highlands.

An inland rescue coastguard team and firefighters managed to rescue the animal shortly after 0100 BST.

Elaine Callander, 53, was walking her dog at about 2200 BST when it fell into the water.

She said: "I was out walking with a friend and Kyle was trotting along behind us.

"One minute he was there and the next he was gone. We went looking for him and looked over the edge to see Kyle scrambling out of the fast moving water on to a rock."

She dialled 999 and triggered a rescue involving 30 people from the fire and rescue services, coastguards from Inverness, Fortrose and Cromarty, police and Kintail Mountain Rescue Team.

"I was really shocked and phoned the fire brigade immediately", Ms Callender added.

"It took me some convincing them that it was not a hoax - that my dog had fallen in Dog Falls.

"I couldn't believe the scale of the call-out when the services arrived."

"I can't thank everyone enough for their help."

Guide books say Dog Falls gets its name because the water course follows the shape of a dog's leg.

Three fire appliances attended the scene and provided various rescue equipment and lighting while the coastguard members tried to reach the animal.

The coastguard managed to access the water from a bridge and wade upstream to reach the animal.

A spokesman for the Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service said: "The dog was returned to its owner with no harm done."

A spokesman for Aberdeen Coastguard added: "The name of the spot was quite appropriate on this occasion."

Link to BBC 

(image: Macrotim) 

HIALEAH A man making a trip from Puerto Rico to South Florida to raise money for his religious education remains hospitalized Monday after he was struck down by a bolt of lightning which flew from clear blue sky on Sunday. He was selling religious materials when he was hit.

Hailu Kidane Marian was working with members of his religious group, selling religious materials door-to-door in a Northwest Miami-Dade neighborhood, when the bolt from the blue struck him down.

"I heard a boom, and I looked and the guy jumped back, and he just laid there, stiff," said witness Maria Martinez.

Paramedics say Marian was not breathing and his heart was not beating when they arrived, but they were able to revive him and rushed him to Jackson Memorial hospital, where he was in critical condition Sunday night.

Link to article 

 (image: exeterCentral)

By all accounts, Tahoe is a typical kitten: cute, sleepy and hungry. But his eating habits are far from typical, as the stray's been nursing from a 3-year-old dog named Lillie.

Ever since the kitten was found under the hood of Eunice Collins' running Chevrolet Tahoe a few weeks ago, he's been feeding from the unusually cooperative longhaired dachshund. Tahoe feeds in the morning, at night and after naps, purring and pawing at the dog's belly.

"That's not going to happen very often," said veterinarian John Beck, who added that the "kitten got lucky, basically" that he found a dog with those maternal instincts.

Collins said she was confused by the sound of a kitten meowing as she drove her Tahoe.

"I thought I was going crazy," Collins said. "I came to a light and heard it again. So I pulled into a gas station."

Collins took the kitten in and kept him in a bedroom. Four days later, she saw Lillie feeding him.

"I couldn't believe it," she said. "She has just taken Tahoe on as her baby and has been nurturing and taking care of him. They're just very close."

Beck said having Tahoe in the house "induced a false pregnancy, a nursing response."

"It made the hormones needed to produce milk," Beck said. "Now, I'm sure the cat obviously had it in mind the dog was (his) mother."

Link to SF Chronicle article 

(credit: small the beetle) 

A woman juror has been arrested after she was allegedly caught listening to an MP3 player hidden beneath her hijab during a murder trial.

The Muslim woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is accused of concealing the device beneath her headscarf so that she could listen to music during the testimony of a man who bludgeoned his disabled wife to death.

Judge Roger Chapple, presiding, said that he thought he could hear “tinny music” in the courtroom at Blackfriars Crown Court in Central London, but dismissed it as a figment of his imagination until another juror sent him a note.

The woman was arrested for contempt of court on the direction of the judge on June 27 and is bailed to appear at the court before Judge Aidan Marron on July 23. The arrest can only be reported now after Alan Wicks, 72, the defendant at the trial, was convicted yesterday.

The juror, who is in her early twenties, was discharged by Judge Chapple and given warning that her behaviour, if proved, would amount to contempt of court. Outside the court she was searched by a police officer and an MP3 player was confiscated.

Link to article 

Motorists were lucky to survive after a 560 kilogram wrecking ball broke loose from a crane and slammed into numerous cars.

The incident in Meadville, Pennsylvania yesterday saw the huge ball fly off a crane on the campus of Allegheny College and roll down North Main Street like a monster pinball.

It came to a crunching stop after slamming into the back of a Ford Taurus.

The driver of the car was stretchered away and two other people were also taken for medical treatment, police said.

Link to The Age 

Not to be confused with the post from last week.

(image: trunc) 

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan police are holding a Ghanaian preacher over a stage magic device they fear may dupe people into believing they have experienced miracles.

Customs officials seized the Electric Touch device -- which magicians use to give small electric shocks to volunteers -- from "Prophet" Obiri Yeboah at the airport last week, the state owned New Vision daily reported Tuesday.

The pastor heads one of many Pentecostal churches in Uganda, receiving large sums of money from congregations seeking miracle cures for diseases or help with financial problems.

The Electric Touch device is usually sold in magic shops alongside card tricks, magic coins and disappearing balls.

"With a simple touch, make a fluorescent bulb glow on and off at your command, make confetti move, charge a spoon and watch as it shocks a volunteer!" says one online magic shop selling the device.

"People could be duped to think it is a miracle," the New Vision quoted Civil Aviation Authority security chief Herman Owomugisha as saying.

Officials are worried about the proliferation of "miracle" churches in Uganda, many of which claim to cure HIV/AIDS.

Link to Reuters

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen recently paid $12 million for his 40-foot long sub.
(It’s yellow. It’s a yellow submarine.)

Link to submarines for the super rich via valleywag

(image: sheilaz413) 

Officials in Honduras are trying to solve the mystery of a woman believed to be from Africa who has been living at an airport there for over a month.

The woman, who says her name is Sara Williams and comes from Burkina Faso, told the BBC she was stranded after being robbed of her travel documents.

But Honduran authorities say they are baffled as there is no record of her entering the country on any airline.

Her case echoes that of an Iranian man stuck at Paris airport for years.

The story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri who lived at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris was turned into a film starring Tom Hanks, and there have been several other documented cases of people "living" at airport terminals.

Ms Williams told the BBC's Spanish American Service that people were treating her well at the airport in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, and giving her money to buy food.

Link to BBC article

A mushroom weighing more than 20 kilograms has been picked in a forest in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, university officials say.

The white mushroom, macrocybe titans, measured a towering 70 cm tall, was found near Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, according to the Southern Border University Centre.

There is no word as to what the researchers plan to do with the specimen.

Link to Aussie ABC  

Link to tax stamp site

and check out 10 related links here 

Update:

A U.N. report showing Canadians use more marijuana than people in any other industrialized country is more evidence that the drug should be legalized, activists said on Tuesday.

The 2007 World Drug Report found that 16.8 percent of Canadians between 15 and 64 used marijuana, otherwise known as cannabis or pot, at least once in the past year, four times more than the global average of 3.8 percent.

Continue reading article 

photo: dazed.and.confused

Romanian witches go online

Romanian witches are going online in a bid to win more customers now the country is in the EU.

Witchcraft is a recognised profession in Romania where white witches offer spells, potions and readings of the future.

But witches say the EU has offered a much wider market, and they need to move with the times and embrace modern technology to reach even more people.

One of the country's most famous witches, Witch Rodica, has set up her own web and blog site - http://vrajitoare.blogspot.com - offering everything from a dream interpretation book to tarot card reading.

Rodica calls herself the "incontestable and undisputed leader of the Romanian witches" and claims she can cure impotence, epilepsy and alcoholism.

She said: "I still do spells and potions the traditional way, but the blog keeps me closer to potential clients and can be used to convince the sceptical that witchcraft is real."

The witches are also offering a new range of spells such as love potions for gay men and lucky charms guaranteed to win EU grant money.

Link to Anaova via neatorama

photo: Tom Cruze/Sun-Times

It has its own video game, mock documentary and, later this month, a tournament at Soldier Field.

It's that bean bag game you see being played more and more in backyards, alleys, bars and the parking lot at U.S. Cellular Field.

The bag-throwing craze has spread from Cincinnati -- where folks say it originated more than 50 years ago as a backyard diversion -- to Chicago, Indianapolis and Milwaukee.

On July 28, some 1,000 people are expected to converge on Soldier Field for the first Windy City Cornhole Classic, which promises a year's supply of Chipotle burritos to the winner. The expected turnout has surprised organizers.

Link to article 

From BBC:

A car made famous by the cartoon series The Pink Panther is expected to fetch up to £100,000 at auction.

The sleek pink car appeared in the titles and credits of the television series featuring the legendary pink cat and Inspector Clouseau.

The 23ft (7m) car is a lengthened 1969 Oldsmobile Toronado, complete with pink plush interior.

It will be auctioned at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, on Saturday and is expected to fetch £75,000 to £90,000.

But Christian Penwill, from auctioneers Coys, said the famous vehicle may fetch a lot more.

Fully working

"At the auction of the Batmobile in February, the price rocketed. It sold for £119,000 in the end," he said.

Although the Pink Panther car has been stored in a museum for years, it is in full working order and has recently been used for charity and promotional work.

It was the only Pink Panther car ever produced. It was built in 1969 by Californian car customiser Jay Ohrberg, who also created the open-top Batmobile for the 1992 film Batman Returns.

The car will go under the hammer at the Fine Motor Cars and the Jaguar Legend Auction on 14 July.  Link to BBC 

Link to Coys auction via Arbroath

photo: National Archives)

From NPR:

A bit of national history occurred Wednesday morning when 11 1/2 hours of previously unreleased tapes from Richard Nixon's presidential years were released to the public.

The release was part of a change in oversight for the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Previously run by the Nixon Foundation, which was made up of Nixon family and friends, the library now falls under the domain of the National Archives. Continue reading

From Yahoo:

"This is a great day for history. The hallmark of this new institution will be true acceptance and love for history — the good, the bad and the ugly," said Timothy Naftali, the museum's new federal director.

"The challenge is to present a controversial, traumatic and important story in a fair and historically accurate way," he said.

For nearly 20 years, library visitors were told the Watergate scandal was really a "coup" by Nixon's rivals and the investigative reporting team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein offered bribes for their nation-shaking scoops. Continue reading

If you need a presidential sized laugh after reading these click here 

Pizza and porn delivery:

Winnipeg pizza place serves up side of porn

It's only about a week old, but a new pizza place in Winnipeg has already aroused attention — not for its pizza pie, but for the racy extra that comes with it.

Patrons must be 18 years and older to order from Porno Pizza, which delivers pornographic material inserted under every pizza.

The venture, the brainchild of local entrepreneur Corey Wildeman, is raising eyebrows in the Manitoba capital.

"We cater to certain crowds," Wildeman told CBC News, adding that he realizes not everyone would be sold on the idea.

"I'm pleased to see that it might not be everybody, but it's most people," he said with a laugh.   more

Pizza and lapdance:

Lap Dances Offered In Back Of Pizza Restaurant

NEW YORK CITY - In a city that seems to have everything, it's amazing you might still be surprised to find in New York City. Take, for example, what was recently uncovered by a WCBS-TV investigation in the back of a Big Apple pizzeria.

Let's just say it's hotter than the pizza served up front.

On the outside, Cordatos might look like an ordinary pizzeria, but inside customers are offered something way too hot and spicy to be found on the menu.

Lap dances. Yes, you read that correctly.   more

Pizza as aphrodisiac:

Man's Dream Come True

Yes, pizza, a food that is right up there with cupid’s arrow as a symbolic image to convey love, romance and Valentine’s Day. Remember Dean Martin singing, “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.”

That’s not all. Historically, many of our favourite pizza toppings are known to contain sexual-stimulant properties. Researchers have noted the smell, taste, and even appearance of certain foods, such as pizza, can act as aphrodisiacs.  more

photo: Ella's Dad

XBIZ article: 

SAN ANTONIO — A group of atheists at the University of Texas at San Antonio is putting a novel twist on the toys-for-guns programs run by many urban police departments. But instead of toys, they are handing out porn in exchange for bibles.

“We consider the bible to be a very negative force in the history of the world,” student Ryan Walker said. Walker is part of a student group that calls itself the Atheist Agenda.

Club members this week posted fliers promoting what they call the “Smut for Smut” campaign then set up a table in the student union to collect religious materials and pass out adult magazines such as Black Label and Playboy.

The group is not officially sanctioned by the university and has raised the ire of several religious organizations on campus.

“In my opinion, there are no atheists. There are fools,” Pastor Rick Hawkins of UTSA’s Family Praise Center said. “So, that would be foolish propaganda. I don't know one believer that would take his Bible and turn it in for pornography.”

Hawkins obviously didn’t stop by the Atheist Agenda table, where several students had dropped off copies of the good book and walked away with skin mags.

Athiest Agenda isn’t the first student group to explore the idea of introducing porn to former bible toters. Members say they got the idea from students in Austin who ran a similar pro-porn drive.

Walker added that members thought it sounded like a creative way to exercise their freedom of speech.

photo: Xosé Castro

A THIRD OF Japanese cars could run on biofuel made from cultivating seaweed on a number of 10,000 square metre plots of ocean, according to boffins quoted on nikkei.net.

The idea, according to the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Tech, is to grow sargassum fulvellum in the Yamatotai shoal which is 30,000 kilometres wide.

That, reckon the boffins there, is capable of generating 20 kilolitres of bio-ethanol for each 10,000 square metres of cultivated seaweed on nets.

Even if the seaweed idea doesn't work, other boffins reckon they could use high yield rice, unsuitable for human consumption, as a source for bio-fuel.

Thanks for the images Jeff J. Not sure where they originated from. 

photo: mjross 

from article:

In 2001, male Hypolimnas bolina butterflies on the Samoan islands of Savaii and Upolu were extremely rare. Just 1 percent of these butterflies -- known commonly as Blue Moon or Great Eggfly -- were male. They were under attack by the Wolbachia bacteria, a parasite passed down through the female that kills off male butterflies before they can hatch.

Last year, the numbers of males had either reached or were approaching those of females. They were helped by the development of a genetic mutation that suppresses the bacteria, sparing the males and allowing them to quickly repopulate.

"This is one of the most clear and fastest cases of evolution under natural selection," said Sylvain Charlat of University College London, whose study appears in the journal Science.  more

via Fark

previously on P&F disputing the creationist argument

photo/art: Buddy Stone

Snow attacked proposals to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, claiming:

To walk out of Iraq right now would plant a seed that ultimately would lead to destabilization there, hundreds of thousands of deaths, loss of our influence in the region, would create instability throughout the Middle East throughout East Asia, throughout Europe. And sooner or later it would come to our shores, to a shopping mall near you.  more

source: Think Progress

previously about fearmongering on P&F 

photo: ClydeHouse 

Last week I posted about Yen and Euros falling from the sky, this week its the ATM machines. 

From article:

CUSTOMERS flocked to a bank’s ATM when it started dishing out FREE cash.

Twenty pound notes were dispensed instead of tenners when a bank worker loaded the wrong cartridge.

A queue of City workers built up at the HSBC cashpoint — and over two hours it is thought to have doled out wads worth THOUSANDS.

Drama student Alex Vevers, 19, lives near the branch in Clerkenwell, central London. He said: “It was amazing how quickly a crowd gathered. People were phoning their friends to come down.

“They were asking for £200 — and their on-screen statement showed they had taken out that amount — but they were getting double. They were doing it again and again.” Local Amit Panesar, 17, added: “It went on from 12.30pm to 2.30pm. Bank staff seemed oblivious.”

HSBC said: “Due to human error, our Clerkenwell branch cash machine dispensed a small amount extra. The mistake was realised and the ATM reprogrammed.”

The bank has not decided if it will try to reclaim the overpayments. A spokesman added: “If the amounts are small individually and taken by non-HSBC customers, the likelihood is that we will not.

“But if there are large amounts and they are our own customers, we may try to reclaim the money.”

A similar bungle last week at a Lloyds TSB branch in Grays, Essex, lost thousands for the bank, which is NOT asking for the money back.

Found at The Sun Online 

From article:

Someone spread butter all over two cars in Gastonia early Tuesday morning.

The cars, a 2005 Saturn Vue and a 2003 Jeep Wrangler, were outside a home on the 500 block of Hillcrest Avenue.

Gastonia police do not have any suspects. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 704-861-8000.

Sweet suffering mother of Jaysus if you must

From article:

Police in Derry, Pennsylvania are baffled by a June ATM robbery in which an unidentified man wearing flip flops and shorts strolled into Mastrorocco's Market and reprogrammed the cash machine to think it was dispensing dollar bills instead of twenties.

Along with a female accomplice, the crook netted over $1,540 in two visits on June 19 and 20, according to store owner Vince Mastrorocco. "They came in, they hit me the first day -- a man and a woman -- and they cleaned me out," Mastrorocco told THREAT LEVEL. "Then they came back the next day and cleaned me out again."

A sergeant with the Derry Borough Police Department they're still investigating the crime, and no arrests have been made.

Of course, THREAT LEVEL readers know exactly what happened. The machine was a Triton 9100, and like competitor Tranax, Triton printed its default administrative passcodes in its ATM service manuals, which have been widely available online.  We reported on this last September after a Virginia Beach gas station ATM (a Tranax) got hit with the same hack.

The ATM in the Derry heist was owned by the store, but operated by a company called Cardtronics. COO Mike Clinard says in a statement that it was Mastrorocco's responsibility to change the passcode from its default, which is (I kid you not) 123456.  more

 

Photo: r_rahul

This seems like a no-brainer but Ananova is reporting that Danish drivers can get insurance against speeding and parking tickets, costing 10% of what the limit of tickets would cost in fines. Wonder if the premiums go up when you max out…

From Ananova: 

Drivers in Denmark can insure themselves against speeding fines and parking tickets under a new scheme launched by the Danish automobile association.

Motorists can take out various cover from insurance against speeding for £90 per year that covers drivers for either four speeding tickets or a total of £900 in speeding fines.

Insurance against parking fines costs £36 and covers either four tickets or a maximum of £182 in fines.

But the Danish Council for Traffic Security has attacked the scheme saying that it will make people less afraid of collecting fines and encourage them to risk an offence.

From Daily Mail article:

According to the biggest study carried out into sexual motivations, these include that it is a "reasonably effective way of overcoming boredom", help you fall asleep or gets rid of a stress headache.

For others, the desire for revenge was the major factor, while some lovers were motivated by a purely selfless wish to make the other person feel good.

The researchers also confirmed what most already consider obvious - men and women think differently about sex.

They found it was more about the physical experience for men, while women's desires were based on an emotional need.

Women were much more likely to say: "I realised that I was in love." Men were more likely to say: "I wanted to increase the number of partners I had experienced."

Link to article 

From article:

By all accounts, Tahoe is a typical kitten: cute, sleepy and hungry.

But his eating habits are far from typical, as the stray's been nursing from a 3-year-old dog named Lillie.

Ever since the kitten was found under the hood of Eunice Collins' running Chevrolet Tahoe a few weeks ago, he's been feeding from the unusually cooperative longhaired dachshund. Tahoe feeds in the morning, at night and after naps, pawing at the dog's belly.

"That's not going to happen very often," said veterinarian John Beck, who added that the "kitten got lucky, basically" that he found a dog with those maternal instincts.

Collins said she was confused by the sound of a kitten meowing as she drove her Tahoe.

"I thought I was going crazy," Collins said. "I came to a light and heard it again. So I pulled into a gas station."

Collins took the kitten in and kept him in a bedroom. Four days later, she saw Lillie feeding him.

"I couldn't believe it," she said. "She has just taken Tahoe on as her baby and has been nurturing and taking care of him. They're just very close."

Beck said having Tahoe in the house "induced a false pregnancy, a nursing response."

"It made the hormones needed to produce milk," Beck said. "Now, I'm sure the cat obviously had it in mind the dog was (his) mother."

Link 

Photo: AP Darko Vojinovic

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia:

Man's best friend helped save this tiny cat.

A 15-day-old female panther named Milica has been adopted by a Rhodesian Ridgeback after her mother refused to feed her and tried to kill her in the Belgrade zoo.

"The mother panther has killed all her cubs since 1999," zookeeper Dragan Jovanovic said.

"We believe she has been traumatized by the sound of NATO bombs" during airstrikes in the Serbian capital intended to stop former President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists in 1999, he said.

Now Milica fights with several newborn puppies over milk from her adopted mother. She also appears to enjoy every bit of attention she gets from her new family.

Link to article 

Previously posted on P&F: Dachshund nurses rescued kitten 

From the Sun:

PAGANS have pledged to perform “rain magic” to wash away cartoon character Homer Simpson who was painted next to their famous fertility symbol - the Cerne Abbas giant.

The 17th century chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused, club-wielding giant is believed by many to be a symbol of ancient spirituality.

Many couples also believe the 180ft giant, which is carved in the hillside above Cerne Abbas, Dorset, is an aid to fertility.

A giant 180ft Homer Simpson brandishing a doughnut was painted next to the well-endowed figure today in a publicity stunt to promote The Simpsons Movie released later this month.

It has been painted with water-based biodegradable paint which will wash away as soon as it rains.

Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation, said: “It’s very disrespectful and not at all aesthetically pleasing.

“We were hoping for some dry weather but I think I have changed my mind. We’ll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away.”

She added: “I’m amazed they got permission to do something so ridiculous. It’s an area of scientific interest.”

She also expressed fears that the painting of Homer, from the animated television series The Simpsons, would cause a mess as it washed away.

During the Second World War, he was disguised to prevent the Germans from using him as an aerial landmark.

Since then he has always been visible, receiving regular grass trimming and a full re-chalking every 25 years.

Link

Photo: ms_cwang 

From article:

For the first time, the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart will sell a line of religious toys, according to a WKMG-TV report.

More than 420 Wal-Mart stores nationwide will begin carrying the faith-based toys that include Jesus and Samson action figures.Only about one-sixth of stores will carry the toys.

Link to Local6

From Spiegel article: 

The stripper was Tom Luszeit, a 34-year-old who -- for his day job -- dresses up in various period military outfits to pose with souvenir-seeking tourists. The widow was Alexandra Hildebrandt, 48, who has run the Wall Museum at Checkpoint Charlie since her husband passed away in 2004. She has taken issue with Luszeit's antics in the past, in particular with his penchant for dressing in the uniform of East Germany's secret police, the Stasi. And the court case is one that has gone a long way toward eroding the dignity of one of the Cold War's central sites -- and has yet to reach its conclusion.

It is unclear who Tom Luszeit will call to the stand to back up his view of what happened in the spring of 2004. But there is at least one man who might be helpful. Three years ago, Gerhard Lindner, owner of a souvenir shop at Checkpoint Charlie, came to Luszeit's defense, saying he found nothing wrong with his posing as an East German policeman.

But then, his testimony might not be worth all that much. It didn't take long for Berlin journalists to discover that Lindner himself had worked as a Stasi spy in the 1980s.

Link to Spiegel online 

Over the last few weeks I've been running into articles on this topic including an excellent documentary by Channel 4.

Link to documentary 'Guys and Dolls'.

This phenomenom is not to restricted to Japan, if you've watched the video above you'll see Americans and an Englishman.

c-r-e-e-p-y 

From Reuters article: 

Real love is hard to find for one Japanese man, who has transferred his affection and desires to dozens of plastic sex dolls.

When the 45-year-old, who uses a pseudonym of Ta-Bo, returns home, it's not a wife or girlfriend who await him, but a row of dolls lined up neatly on his sofa.

Each has a name. Ta-Bo often watches television with his toys before bathing them, powdering them so that their skin feels more human, dressing them in lingerie and then taking them to bed.

"A human girl can cheat on you or betray you sometimes, but these dolls never do those thing. They belong to me 100 percent," says the engineer who has spent more than 2 million yen ($16,000) over the past decade on the dolls.

"Sometimes it takes too much time before I can have sex with the person I meet. But with these dolls, it's just a matter of a click of the mouse. With one click, they are delivered to you."

Link to Reuters article 

Photo: Tito Herrera

From article:

What's in a name? How about a scheme to get out of prison? Four federal inmates were indicted Tuesday on allegations that they copyrighted their names, then demanded millions of dollars from prison officials for using the names without authorization.

The indictment alleges inmates Russell Dean Landers, Clayton Heath Albers, Carl Ervin Batts and Barry Dean Bischof sent demand notices to the warden of the El Reno federal prison, filed liens against his property and then hired an individual to seize his vehicles, freeze his bank accounts, and change the locks on his house.

Then, believing the warden's property had been seized, the inmates demanded to be released from prison before they would negotiate with the warden to give his property back, according to the indictment.

U.S. Attorney John C. Richter said the individual hired by the inmates turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.

Richter said the four men and William Michael Roberson, 50, of Baton Rouge, La., were indicted on accusations of conspiring to impede the duties of federal prison officials. Richter said Roberson is accused of assisting the four inmates in the scheme that allegedly took place in late 2003 and early 2004.

All five were also indicted on charges of mailing threatening communications with the intent to extort.

The conspiracy count carries maximum penalties of six years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The mail charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Link to MyWay via FARK

Bacon ice cream anyone? 

Don't forget 'Tuesday is bacon night' at Harris Grill, Pittsburg, PA. 

Bacon is a versatile breakfast ingredient but not limited to morning fare.

Keep abreast of what's happening in the bacon world, for example, did you know that scientists have cloned pigs that are engineered to contain omega-3 fatty acids, which produce healthier pork?

Mary Keller,
Librarian
"Can't they put some of that omega stuff in cigarettes?"

Apologies to my vegetarian friends for this posting, you need to look here now. 

 From Daily Mail article:

For when a budding author sent typed chapters of Jane Austen's novels to 18 of them, changing just the titles and characters' names, only one recognised her words.

Another managed to recognise they were 'a really original read'. But the rest simply rejected them or never responded, according to the man who posted the manuscripts, David Lassman.

"It was unbelievable," he said. "If the major publishers can't recognise great literature, who knows what might be slipping through the net?

Continue reading 

Via the folks at Neatorama 

From The Daily Telegraph: 

A FEUD between two Chinese towns over access to valuable wild fungus has erupted into a gun battle that left eight people dead and 44 wounded, Xinhua news agency has said.

The violence occurred in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of mountainous Sichuan province on Friday.

"A county government official said around 200 residents from Danba and Sumdo townships clashed in a dispute over access to wild fungus and firewood," Xinhua news agency said.

Some of those involved drew rifles and the gun battle lasted around 10 minutes, the official said.

China is grappling with growing social unrest, fuelled by disputes over land rights, corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor.

The official said that in April, residents from Sumdo were expelled by Danba township when they were caught collecting fungi in Danba.

In May, two people from Danba were assaulted near Sumdo.

"County officials had tried dozens of times since then to mediate, but their suggestions were rejected by residents of both townships," the official said.

The fungus is what Tibetans call "summer-grass winter-worm".

It forms when a parasitic fungus hijacks and devours the bodies of ghost moth larvae that have burrowed into the alpine soil for up to five years.

It then steers their bodies to the surface so it can spread its spores.

The mummified moths are a traditional Tibetan cure-all that promoters say helps fight AIDS, cancer and ageing.

As Tibetan medical ingredients have won adherents in China and abroad, the fungus and other alpine fungi and plants have become lucrative commodities, luring almost entire villages on harvests from May to July.

Link to article

Previously on P&F this is a mushroom

Update to previous post:

A 10-year-old girl who is worshipped as a living goddess in Nepal has had her title reinstated after defying tradition and visiting the US.

Temple authorities at her home town say that she will not be stripped of her title because she is willing shortly to undergo a "cleansing" ceremony.

Sajani Shakya was one of the three most-revered Kumaris, who are honoured by Hindus and Buddhists alike.

She was chosen after undergoing tests at the age of two.

Since then she has been expected to bless devotees and attend festivals until she reaches puberty.

But she provoked the ire of temple elders by travelling to the US.

Sajani returned from her visit to America on Wednesday. Correspondents say that she was "seemingly unaware" of the controversy.

Link BBC article with more pictures 

James R Ford is a multi-media artist currently based in London, England. For this project, initiated in 2003, he aims to transform a second-hand Ford Capri into the General Lee, from Dukes of Hazzard, by covering it in little toy cars in the appropriate colours (mainly red and orange). Ford is going to need around three to four thousand and so, in addition to searching out and purchasing appropriate toy cars himself, an appeal has been started for people all over the world to send him their disused toy cars. The donator can leave a little message in the toy car, or mark it in some way, so they actually become part of the art whilst contributing to the sculpture and thus creating a global art collaboration.

Link to artists website 

Link to YouTube

Link to YouTube 

From article:

Road Work Rage Closes Calif. Highway

WRIGHTWOOD, Calif. - California highways have been shut down by wildfires, mudslides, earthquakes and police chases. Add one more hazard to the list: road rage.

Drivers inconvenienced by a road-widening project subjected construction workers to so much abuse , including death threats, BB gun shootings, even a flying burrito , that the state revoked a rush-hour window and shut down the highway altogether.

Now drivers who relied on California Highway 138 are being forced to take a detour that costs them at least a half-hour a day and businesses along the road are suffering.

Link to article 

Photo: sfegette 

From article:

The San Francisco Taxi Commission is set to decide this evening whether one of the city's cabs is "associated with evil and Satan.''

 A few years ago, Thigpen said, the cab held by medallion holder 666 "burned to a crisp on Good Friday ... and the only thing remaining after the fire were the numbers 666, visible in the rubble.''

Byrne, a 30-year veteran driver, was assigned No. 666 only last August, Thigpen said, after another applicant refused to accept the number. Since then, sources said, Byrne has been involved in at least one accident -- even after taking the precaution of having the cab blessed at Mission Dolores.

A commission clerk, who asked not to be identified, said Byrne "had many deaths around him and his family'' and that getting rid of the cursed number "is an idea that speaks for itself.''

Read article

Update:

The devil gets to keep riding around in a San Francisco cab, the San Francisco taxi commission decreed on Tuesday.

After nearly half an hour of discussion and debate, the commission brought the weight of government to the question of whether to grant a request by a San Francisco cab driver seeking to retire Medallion No. 666 because of the number's association with Satan.

The debate was the best show to play City Hall in some time. It featured commissioners bickering good-naturedly with one another, the head of the cab drivers union arguing before the board with red horns on his head and several other cabbies pleading for common sense, a quality not always found in the stone building at Civic Center.

At issue was the request of veteran driver Michael Byrne, who said he has had bad luck and misfortune since being assigned the supposedly cursed number last year.

Commission President Paul Gillespie said he favored granting the request, "and hopefully we can do this quickly so we never have to deal with this again.''

But with the underworld, the Book of Revelation and the Mark of the Beast at stake, quickness was not to be. Six cabbies had something to say during public comment.

"How dare you take Lucifer's number away,'' said Thomas George-Williams, president of the cab drivers union, who was sporting the red horns. "This is a serious issue.''

A cabbie named Tom warned the commission that it was "opening a can of worms" and would soon be deluged with requests to retire other numbers. A cabbie named Barry pointed out that 666 was the address of SS Peter and Paul's Church on Filbert Street, an outfit not thought to be in Satan's pocket. A cabbie named Grasshopper said it was a "bad idea to get into mysticism and voodoo.''

Photo: hardran3

Article:

The mail-order minister of a Hollywood church that burns marijuana during services and allegedly sells it to members says that's protected under federal law because the drug is a religious sacrament.

But Judge Mary Strobel has ruled that the Reverend Craig X. Rubin can't use federal law as a defense because he faces only state charges.

Rubin, who's representing himself at his drug trial, says members of his Temple 420 believe that marijuana is the tree of life mentioned in the Bible.

Though ordained in 1990 by the Universal Life Church, police and prosecutors describe Rubin as a drug dealer. He faces up to seven years in prison if convicted of possessing marijuana for sale.

The 41-year-old Rubin has no legal experience, and says he spent last weekend praying and smoking marijuana with Indians in a sweat lodge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Found here 

Images found here

From article:

A mysterious blonde paid a visit to a petrol station shop in the small eastern German town of Doemitz on Sunday -- wearing nothing but a pair of golden stilettos and a thin gold bracelet.

The tall, slender woman strolled into the shop in the town of Doemitz on the warm afternoon and bought cigarettes, petrol station employee Ines Swoboda told Reuters on Monday.

"I wasn't surprised because she's come in naked before -- she's a very nice woman," Swoboda said, adding none of the other customers was bothered. The woman could have faced charges of creating a public disturbance if anyone had complained.

A quick-witted customer did, however, snap pictures of the woman believed to be about 30 years old as she walked back to a waiting Ferrari and climbed into the passenger seat. Several of those photos appeared in the German media on Monday.

Wonder if she knows this woman 

Link to Reuters 

Come join the slowest-growing religion in the world - Dudeism. An ancient philosophy that preaches non-preachiness, practices as little as possible, and above all, uh...lost my train of thought there. Anyway, if you'd like to find peace on earth and goodwill, man, we'll help you get started. Right after a little nap.

Link to Dudeism.com via The Presurfer

Previously on P&F:

Link to YouTube

From thedudeiseverywhere.com, you might be a dude if:

1. You wear your dressing gown to the supermarket.
2. You have begun writing cheques for less than £1 (or $1).
3. You are partial to Thai Stick and a good ‘caucasian’.
4. You have a habit of using the royal ‘we’, you know, the editorial…
5. Your car has developed some rust ‘colouration’.
6. You enjoy the occasional acid flashback.
7. You have been known to occupy various administrative buildings.
8. You hate the Eagles, no, you really hate the f-ing Eagles.
9. You have no idea what day this is.
10. You are unemployed.

Lebowski lexicon

Lots more with pictures 

This is a departure from what I usually post but this product is just so wonderfully strange, I had to do it.

From site:

The SiFeet Pussy Foot is the ultimate fantasy sex toy for foot fetishists. This size 6, 100% silicone foot is cast in pure silicone from a real life actual, beautiful female foot. In the sole of this lovely foot is a fully functional and totally fuck-able silicone vagina.

Link to site Thanks Jeff J

Maybe there's a theme developing today.

Found at Miss Cellania 

Photo: Alice and Indiana Jones

Dublin, Ireland: 

The theft of National Wax Museum figures will not stop next month's reopening of the tourist attraction, the museum's management insisted today.

Dozens of models, including Bob the Builder, the Teletubbies and Frankenstein , were stolen from a warehouse in central Dublin last month.

Replica uniforms from the Easter Rising and World War Two periods were also taken in the robbery, which occurred in the south inner city at some time between June 3rd and 20th.

Silence of the Lambs character Hannibal Lecter, Gollum from Lord of the Rings and guitars used by The Edge of U2 and Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott were stolen.

A new Dublin location for the National Museum is expected to be announced in a fortnight. The museum's former building in Parnell Square was sold in 2005, but its stock of wax figures was purchased by new owners.

"The damage was quite extensive," museum owner Kay Murray said today. "Whoever did it was looking for uniforms, because most of our uniforms were stolen. They're really worth nothing to the person who has them, they're of no material worth. They can't wear them."

The museum's sculptor is working to repair damaged wax figures for the reopening.

"It's not going to stop the museum reopening. It will just delay us. We hope to make an announcement in two weeks," said Ms Murray.

"I didn't go to the press because I wanted the Garda to handle this themselves and do it their way. But as of yet, they have come up with nothing," she told RTÉ Radio.

The museum will feature previous favourites like the Chamber of Horrors, a Hall of Megastars and the Children's World of Fairytale and Fantasy.

Life-sized figures from the historical, cultural and political development of Ireland including WB Yeats, James Joyce and Eamon De Valera will also be on show.

Found at Ireland.com 

I think you'll find this site is interesting whether or not you work in the industry. 

Link via The Presurfer 

When traffic wardens started to blitz a quiet corner of suburban London, one shopkeeper decided it was his duty to fight back.

Martin Herdman put up a 1,000-watt public address system outside his shop near Twickenham and recruited a network of "spies" to alert him the instant they spotted a parking attendant in the area.

Then, as soon as the alarm was raised, he started playing a recording of a Second World War-style air raid siren over the system.

Mr Herdman's early warning system gives customers a chance to move their cars before they are ticketed by the warden.

The 50-year-old carpet shop owner and former part-time actor and musician said: "I put it up a few weeks ago. I get a phone call from other shop owners or residents whenever wardens are around, so everyone knows they are about to be nicked.

"It does work - it lets everyone know and then it's up to them if they get a fine or not."

Mr Herdman said that within a few days of his PA system starting, the number of wardens in the area had gone down, "although there were seven of them around this morning".

He said he had resorted to the "deterrent" because he feared trade at his shopping parade would be destroyed by over-zealous officers.

He said: "Richmond council put in 19 parking bays for the 39 shops on the parade. They are very busy, interesting shops that include art galleries and herbal clinics as well as butchers and cafés. It is a really useful, trendy place to go shopping.

"We have had roadworks for two months now that have knocked out five or six of the bays, but the wardens are still hounding the remaining bays.

"Now there is talk about turning the single yellow lines into double yellows, so there would be no parking at night as well."

He accused the Liberal Democrat-controlled council of favouring big supermarket chains such as Tesco, which has an Express store nearby.

Mr Herdman said: "If we ask the council for a loading bay for Crown Road, they would tell us to forget it but Tesco have got two loading bays in a road which is totally unsuitable for them."

He said that it was only fair his road should be allowed to have 39 parking bays so that each shop had access to one, particularly as supermarkets were routinely granted planning permission for huge free car parks.

Without urgent action, the traders would be driven out of business, leaving yet another corner of London bereft of the local independent shops that provide character

Mr Herdman said: "I shouldn't have to do things like this to get attention - I'm just trying to make it a better place for our customers and, hopefully, the council will come back with a sensible solution that will stop the decimation of our community.

David Trigg, Richmond's cabinet member for traffic, transport and parking, said: "Ideally, we would like to provide more parking for business but we have to juggle priorities.

"If we can benefit them that's what we will do."

Found on DailyMail 

Painting Likely Done While Artist Was In Asylum, Experts Say

From article:

Art expert and historians in Boston and Amsterdam announced Friday that they have discovered a valuable lost work by the painter Vincent Van Gogh hidden under an existing canvas at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, discovered the Van Gogh painting underneath the artist's painting entitled "Ravine," which is owned by the MFA.

MFA conservator Meta Chavannes was conducting a technical examination of "Ravine" and discovered the existence of the second painting below the paint surface of the work.

Upon meeting with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam and Louis van Tilborgh, the Van Gogh research curator at the Van Gogh Museum, it was established that the underlying composition was most likely painted in June 1889, the museum said, during the early period of Van Gogh's stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul de Mausole near the Provençal town of Saint-Rémy, and was reused as a support for Ravine a few months later, in October 1889.

Van Tilborgh related the X-radiograph of Ravine to a drawing Van Gogh sent his brother in mid-1889 entitled "Wild Vegetation."

Scholars have suggested that this drawing, in the Van Gogh Museum, forms part of group of around a dozen drawn copies of paintings that the artist sent to his brother Theo in July 1889, but no painting was known upon which this particular drawing could have been based. As a result of this current research, the lost painting has been rediscovered, officials said.

Video and performance artist Amber Hawk Swanson ordered a life-sized, realistic sex doll made to look just like her, and named it Amber. The couple scampered off to Vegas and got married. "Their wedding video and other footage documenting their relationship will screen for the public this week," reports the Chicago Reader. Link.

Previous doll posts on P&F: 

Real Dolls and the men who love them…

Over the last few weeks I've been running into articles on this topic including an excellent documentary by Channel 4.

Link to documentary 'Guys and Dolls'.

Link

I find it hysterical that because "Simple warnings no longer work" they have to mete out such a harsh deterrant!

From SFGate:

Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.

Police officers caught littering, parking in a prohibited area, or arriving late — among other misdemeanors — will be forced to stay in the division office and wear the armband all day, said Police Col. Pongpat Chayaphan. The officers won't wear the armband in public.

The striking armband features Hello Kitty sitting atop two hearts.

"Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor," said Pongpat, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok.

"(Hello) Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It's not something macho police officers want covering their biceps," Pongpat said.

He said police caught breaking the law will be subject the same fines and penalties as any other members of the public.

"We want to make sure that we do not condone small offenses," Pongpat said, adding that the CSD believed that getting tough on petty misdemeanors would lead to fewer cases of more serious offenses including abuse of power and mistreatment of the public by police officers.

Hello Kitty, invented by Sanrio Co. in 1974, has been popular for years with children and young women. The celebrity cat adorns everything from diamond-studded jewelry, Fender guitars and digital cameras to lunch boxes, T-shirts and stationery.

Really how much can you get in damages?

From article:

August 6, 2007 -- A man says he was unjustly fired after spurning the advances of his boss - who bared her breasts to him repeatedly, tried to touch his genitals and offered to help him quit smoking by substituting "real" kisses for cigarettes, according to a blockbuster lawsuit.

"She'd leave [her blouse] unbuttoned lower than the cleavage area," said José Carrion, 46, who has a common-law wife and two kids. "Basically, keeping herself on display." 

Farmers in Isle of Ruegen, Northern Germany have used Global Positioning System (GPS) to plough a huge pig image (37,000 square metres) on a cornfield. Not the best quality of crop art, but looks cute…

Link via spulch 

Link to YouTube via BBC 

If you didn't know the name Rhain Davis before, you almost certainly do now.

The nine-year-old, a recent recruit for Manchester United's academy, is now the talk of football - thanks to a DVD of him in action for Brisbane club Redlands United.

He even made the front page of The Sun newspaper - who have immediately, and somewhat inevitably, dubbed him the new Wayne Rooney.

An unnamed 'source' told the paper: "He has created a huge buzz and people are raving about him all over the world."

The video, which is said to have already had more than three million viewers on YouTube, is undeniably impressive. The youngster dances round defenders, performs some step-overs a la Cristiano Ronaldo and delivers defence-splitting passes. 

F Cup Cookies make breast implants obsolete. Making your breasts bigger is now as simple as eating 2 cookies a day. They come in packs of 4 for ¥290, each cookie containing 50mg of that miracle breast enlarging herb Pueraria Mirifica. How many cookies you'll have to eat to get size F Cup is unknown.

Link via neatorama 

Found here 

Wait a minute, homeless  world cup?

From Spiegel:

The Homeless World Cup brought 500 homeless people from around the world to Denmark to play soccer. But Copenhagen appears to have been too welcoming -- 15 players have overstayed their visas and gone underground.

The Afghanistan team parades in Copenhagen's City Hall Square during the opening ceremonies of the Homeless World Cup. One of their players has gone missing, along with 14 Africans.

Photo: Woody Norvell

From The Guardian:

Federal police said Monday that the beer tap failed aboard a special train carrying Bayer Leverkusen fans to Hamburg on Saturday. The fault was discovered half an hour into the journey.

"In order not to endanger the good mood" of the passengers, railway officials halted the train in Wuppertal for 25 minutes and had a replacement part delivered by taxi, a police statement said. It added that there was no trouble among the fans.

Their team was less obliging. Top-division Leverkusen's 1-0 elimination from the cup by second-division St. Pauli in a first-round upset left its fans with plenty of sorrows to drown on the way home.

 Link

Link to Flash movie 

Link to more pictures 

From  ABC:

A giant, smiling Lego man has been fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort.

Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5-metre tall model, which had a yellow head and blue torso.

"We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water," said a stall worker. "It was a life-sized Lego toy."

A woman nearby added: "I saw the Lego toy floating towards the beach from the direction of England."

The toy was later placed in front of the drinks stall. 

A woman insists her pet's name belongs on his tombstone even though others say the name is obscene and has no place in a cemetery.

Link via arbroath

A Chinese man has built a house out of two cement pipes.

Xin Yucai, 50, of Shenyang city, even turned down the chance to move into his daughter's apartment he enjoyed living in his unusual home so much.

"My father likes to do things differently," she explained.

"He bought two cement pipes from a construction company and turned them into a real house, with windows, door, and even a chimney."

The daughter says her apartment has enough space for her father but Xin still insisted on making a house of his own.

"We moved once, and he took the pipe house with him."

The house has become a city attraction.

"From time to time, people will come to have a look and take pictures with the pipe house," a neighbour told Huashang Morning News.

From Ananova 

Photo: Davydutchy

From article:

A German farmer angry with police for trying to confiscate his tractor wrecked three patrol cars and evaded capture for seven hours before an elite unit managed to arrest him, a police spokesman said Wednesday.

The farmer, 53, was pulled over by police for driving his tractor without a license, despite several previous warnings.

The officers called in three patrol cars for help before asking the farmer to get out of his vehicle.

He refused, and proceeded to ram the cars with his tractor, making full use of its attached muck spreader and hydraulic fork. Officers were only just able to scramble out of harm's way.

The farmer then drove into a forest, where he eluded a manhunt involving two helicopters and an armored car for seven hours.

He was finally found by an elite police team in a barn on his farm in Lauterbach, in central Germany.

"In the countryside we're used to people going at police with muck spreaders, but this was something else," a police spokesman said.

The farmer faces charges of assault and resisting police.

Link

From englishrussia: 

Lately some Russian newspapers post photos of these strange Chinese dolls. You can see the scanned piece of article from one Russian regional newspaper. The reason for the panic is that in Russian children toy stores have appeared strange Chinese dolls looking like a girl-doll but if fully undressed there can be something found that better would suit for a boy-doll.
People demand to band those dolls from being sold on the territory of Russia and claim that it maybe done on purpose by some evil forces from outside of Russia in order to form a bad perception of female/male orientation from the early age.

From article:

A controversy is brewing in this Cascade foothill town involving a famous bird on four wheels.

Hanna Dahlquist's pet rooster is one bird that's got game.

"He skateboards," says Hanna. "He thinks he can go faster when he's aerodynamic."

In fact, the rooster rides so well, Hanna named him Tony Chickenhawk.

Video

Rooster causes controversy

Raw: Scateboarding rooster

"I named him after Tony Hawk because he is like a really famous skateboarder and my chicken skateboards," says Hanna.

Link 

Drunk driving defendant says he needs the source code to the Intoxilyzer 5000EN to fight the charges in court. Without seeing the code he claims it may just be a random number generator.

He won the argument. This is unfortunate because typically, CMI, the maker of the Intoxilyzer 5000EN refuses to release the source and the case is subsequently thrown out. like what happened two years ago in Florida:

"Unless the defense can see how the breathalyzer works," the judges wrote, the device amounts to "nothing more than a 'mystical machine' used to establish an accused's guilt.

It appears that CMI will have to comply with the Court order now.

Here is an unrelated but another funny ruse that apparently worked.

Photo: elindbloom

photo: digikuva

From Yahoo news: 

EDINBURGH - Joseph and Mary boogie on down to Bethlehem with their loud-mouthed donkey in a disco version of the Nativity that is pure kitsch.

If awards were handed out at the Edinburgh Fringe for camp humour, then "Discotivity" would be a leading contender for top honours at the world's largest and zaniest arts festival.

Michelle McManus, winner of the reality TV talent show "Pop Idol", was understandably nervous about taking on the part of the Virgin Mary in the boisterous production.

Xingu is said to be intelligent and fond of salty biscuits

From article: 

Explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell has had close encounters with vampire bats and angry bees, but his latest brush has been with a rather odd dog.

He spotted a rare breed of Double-Nosed Andean tiger hound, which has two noses, on a recent trip to Bolivia.

The chairman of the Scientific Exploration Society said the dog, named Xingu, was "not terribly handsome". 

Bella is Xingu's mother and was spotted on an expedition in 2005

From news article:

Bay Area zero-emission advocates got their first test ride Thursday on a zippy new all-electric motor scooter that can take two commuters on a silent freeway ride that will cost them just pennies in electrical power.

The plug-in hybrid automobile crowd, in the news these days because of advances in the technology of fuel-efficient hybrids, gathered at San Francisco's Presidio to see the latest wrinkle in emission-free transportation - an electric motor scooter called the Vectrix that can whiz along at 60 miles an hour.

At $11,000, the Vectrix may be a bit pricey, but it is a first of sorts and it will probably appeal to the same high-income people who have ordered the $100,000 all-electric Tesla sports car. "We want to get to the right consumer demographics," said Jeff Morrill, Vectrix's managing director for marketing. "It's for urban commuting, and it targets environmentalists, active (electric power) enthusiasts."

Ad for Mondo Pasta in Hamburg, Germany.

Found here 

Funny, but it sounds exactly like why the US shouldn't have invaded in 2003. 

Link 

An Iraqi carries a Russian-designed machine gun at a funeral, July 27, 2007, in Karbala, an Iraqi city dominated by Shiite Muslim militias. Italian authorities have broken up an alleged illegal plot to ship 5,000 such machine guns, along with 100,000 assault rifles, into Iraq. Iraqi police supposedly would have been the end users, but Shiite militias are known to have obtained weapons through police channels. (AP Photo/Ghassan al-Yassiri, File)

For one thing, The Associated Press has learned that Iraqi government officials were involved in the deal, apparently without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command _ a departure from the usual pattern of U.S.-overseen arms purchases.

Why these officials resorted to "black" channels and where the weapons were headed is unclear.

Article 

Photo: kuba.wawa (Russian roulette, sex and vodka. Nothing to do with article)

Moscow - A Russian region of Ulyanovsk has found a novel way to fight the nation's birth-rate crisis: It has declared Sept. 12 the Day of Conception and for the third year running is giving couples time off from work to procreate.

The hope is for a brood of babies exactly nine months later on Russia's national day. Couples who "give birth to a patriot" during the June 12 festivities win money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.

Ulyanovsk, about 550 miles east of Moscow, has held similar contests since 2005. Since then, the number of competitors, and the number of babies born to them, has been on the rise.

Russia, with one-seventh of Earth's land surface, has just 141.4 million citizens, making it one of the most sparsely settled countries in the world. With a low birth rate and a high death rate, the population has been shrinking since the early 1990s.

In his state-of-the-nation address last year, President Vladimir Putin called the demographic crisis the most acute problem facing Russia and announced a broad effort to boost Russia's birth rate, including cash incentives to families that have more than one child.

Ulyanovsk Gov. Sergei Morozov has added an element of fun to the national campaign.

The 2007 grand prize went to Irina and Andrei Kartuzov, who received a UAZ-Patriot, a sport utility vehicle. Other contestants won video cameras, TVs, refrigerators and washing machines.

Link to article

AP Photo/Brian Kersey

British singer Amy Winehouse is reportedly addicted to heroin, according to her mother-in-law Georgette Civil.

Winehouse and husband Blake Fielder-Civil have checked into a rehab clinic in the U.S., according to British newspaper reports, after the singer collapsed following three days of hard partying last week.

And now Fielder-Civil's mother tells the Daily Mirror newspaper, "You can't blame Amy, you can't blame Blake. They're just as bad as each other. It's the hardest thing in the world for me to say in public that my son and his wife have a drug problem...

"I know my son has had a drug problem ever since he was 20 and moved down to London. I needed to know about Amy's problems and we had a chat -- just the two of us. She told me she was addicted to heroin and cocaine."

Los Angeles Pop Art involves an art form commonly known as Micrography. This art form has been around for centuries and has primarily been used by artists of Israeli decent; it is the style of creating an image strictly using the words that tell the story of that specific image. 

LA Pop Art

photo: htmlnerd

From ZDNet article:

German scientists claim to have broken the light-speed barrier, which could blow away the known limitations of modern networking, but the technology is unlikely to make it into a product--if at all--until most administrators working today have retired.

Exceeding the speed of light, approximately 300,000km per second, is supposed to be completely impossible. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object through the light barrier.

But two German physicists claim to have forced light to overcome its own speed limit using the strange phenomenon known as "quantum tunneling." 

Photo: aremac

From Yahoo News: 

A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas base, U.S. officials said.
ADVERTISEMENT

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

From article: 

A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@", claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said on Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.

"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.   read more

Then there is the couple that tried to name their kid 4real

Pat and Sheena Wheaton were told by the government registry in New Zealand they could not register the name because it included a digit.

Other wacky baby names:

1. Kal-el Coppola (Son of actor Nicolas Cage)

2. Audio Science (Son of actress Shannyn Sossaman)

3. Bluebell Madonna (Daughter of Singer Geri Halliwell)

4. Daisy Boo (Daughter of chef Jamie Oliver)

5. Pilot Inspektor (Son of actress Beth Riesgraf and actor Jason Lee)

6. Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily (Daughter of television presenter Paula Yates and Singer Michael Hutchence)

7. Dixie Dot (Daughter of television presenter Anna Ryder Richardson)

8. God'Iss Love Stone (Daughter of Singer Lil'Mo)

9. Jermajesty (Son of Singer Jermaine Jackson)

10. Apple (Daughter of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and singer Chris Martin)

Apparently the doll is edible —jelly perhaps? Anyhow it was too good to pass up for all its edible goodness. Note the 'hand stick' on the side that you can use for whatever…

From BBC article:

Author Stephen King was mistaken for a vandal when he started signing books during an unannounced visit to a shop in Australia, according to local media.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said staff at the Alice Springs book store did not initially realise the writer was autographing his own novels.

Bookshop manager Bev Ellis said: "When you see someone writing in one of your books you get a bit toey [nervous].

"We immediately ran to the books and lo and behold, there was the signature."

Link 

#3 The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are You Lactating?"

Link to list  via GeekAlerts

Photo: RainAtDawn

From article:

New research suggests an extract of cocoa powder that occurs naturally in chocolates, teas, and other products might be an effective natural alternative to fluoride in toothpaste, according to Tulane University doctoral candidate Arman Sadeghpour.

Sadeghpour said his research revealed that the cocoa extract was even more effective than fluoride in fighting cavities, according to a news release from the university. Read more

Prtevious good news on P&F 

Link to larger JPG image

From neatorama:

The pottery, named Yuanyang II, is one of the collections of Hong Kong Museum of Art now displaying at the Central Concourse of Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA). It is produced by Tsang Cheung-shing, a ceramic art tutor and product designer.

Yuanyang II is modeled in a distinctive form with two figures indulged in kissing each other. Their heads support two elegant cups for drinking tea and coffee. The form and concept design fully complement the theme “Yuanyang” (a typical Hong Kong beverage of mixing tea and coffee), a symbol of marriage and love, with a touch of humour for artistic creation.

Like the directions on the packaging of the Irish pill, "put between knees and squeeze". 

Link to site via

"No comment"
— Bill Clinton

Adobe, very clever (as usual) and witty to boot. 

From the SJMercury news:

The code is cracked.

And for anyone who thought a simple message was being transmitted by the rotating disks atop the Adobe tower in downtown San Jose, boy, were you wrong.

The message of San Jose Semaphore is the entire text of the Thomas Pynchon book, "The Crying of Lot 49."

The solution was discovered by two Silicon Valley tech workers, Bob Mayo and Mark Snesrud, who received a commendation at San Jose City Hall today.

Link

i

Kinda Totally cheesey 'Top-of the Pops' circa 1970's video effects.

Beautiful music if you close your eyes.

Should you need any advice on building, repairing, restoring a stringed instrument, Andy Carruthers is an amazing craftsman, he used to have a really cool website, but now there are just plain pictures. 

Found at Ursi's 

From Speigel online: 

One hundred German women braved broken heels and sprained ankles in Saturday's second annual "Stiletto Run" 100-meter race in Berlin

The distance was 100 meters. The field was 100 women. The prize was €10,000. The setting was Berlin. And the shoes were stilettos.

Link

A ringmaster's top hat doubled as a font when a circus troupe gathered inside a big top for the christening of two performers' godchildren.

Honey Hunt, three, and her sister Poppy, 10 months old, were baptised inside Zippo's Circus ring on Hove Lawns on the Sussex seafront.

The service was performed by the Rev Roly Bain, from Bristol, who is a clown - and a Church of England priest.

Link 

not to be confused with the curate that became a magician... 

Contains supposedly useful phrases, however "Who's your father referee?" (scroll down to #44) and "Scottish kiss" seem to be missing.
From book:

- 'Le coup d’envoi est à 15 heures' The kick-off is at 3pm

- 'Où en est le match?' What’s the score?

- 'On prend une bière?' How about a beer?

- 'C’est ma tournée' It’s my round

- 'J’ai la gueule de bois' I’ve got a hangover

- 'J’ai la tête qui tourne' I feel dizzy

- 'Au secours!' Help!

- 'L’arbitre' The referee

- 'Les joueurs' The players

- 'Un pilier' A prop

- 'Le talonneur' The hooker

- 'Le demi de mêlée' The scrum half

- 'Un ailier' A winger

 Link

Not quite sure what this means…

Link to more 

Previous funny bathroom signs 

He spent 15 years, from 1983 to 1998, typing out all of the numbers from one to one million (in letters not numerals), simply because he “wanted something to do.”

Link

Burritoeater.com aims to be the Web’s most complete source of information on San Francisco taquerias – where they’re located, what they look like, if they’re open late, whether they serve breakfast, what the SF Department of Public Health says about them, which ones double as cell phone retailers, etc. etc. And while we realize that food may be one of the most objectively regarded things in life, we’re not shy about offering our opinion on any given burrito shop in town.

Link 

TOKYO - Lose a game of chess to a computer, and you could bruise your ego. Lose an arm-wrestling match to a Japanese arcade machine, and you could break your arm.

Distributor Atlus Co. said Tuesday it will remove all 150 "Arm Spirit" arm wrestling machines from Japanese arcades after three players broke their arms grappling with the machine's mechanized appendage.

"The machine isn't that strong, much less so than a muscular man. Even women should be able to beat it," said Atlus spokeswoman Ayano Sakiyama, calling the recall "a precaution."

"We think that maybe some players get overexcited and twist their arms in an unnatural way," she said. The company was investigating the incidents and checking the machines for any signs of malfunction.

Players of "Arm Spirit" advance through 10 levels, battling a French maid, drunken martial arts master and a Chihuahua before reaching the final showdown with a professional wrestler.

The arcade machine is not distributed overseas.

Link 

From BBC:

Daleks bid to make world record

A bid to create a new world record and have the biggest number of people dressed up as daleks in one location has taken place in Manchester.

The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester brought together 67 home-made Daleks on Sunday afternoon.

Their original creator, Raymond Cusick, who was there to judge the world record attempt said the initial design 40 years ago was very basic.

The museum is currently featuring an exhibition on Dr Who and the Daleks.
An official decision is yet to be announced as to whether the daleks succeeded in the world record bid.

Link to Flickr set 

From article:

The unusual sporting event was dreamed up by mastermind and organiser Dmitry Bulawinov.

He said the idea of floating down the river in the embraces of a rubber woman was conceived as a joke at a party where the men got drunk and the women didn't show up.

While considering the possible uses for a rubber woman on a camping trip, someone suggested that a sex doll would make a handy flotation device. Thus the 'Bubble Baba Challenge' was born.

Article with two more pictures

YouTube clip 

photo: gailatlarge

From article:

On Sunday evening, Murray hit the town with some golfers who had participated in the Scandinavian Masters tournament. When the evening's festivities at Café Opera drew to a close, he hopped into a golf cart and made a beeline for his hotel.
…

The officer, who described Murray as "very pleasant", added that he had never before come across a golf cart in the city centre during his thirty years in the force.

Link via dethroner

photo: mummajinx

Skippi Eluded German Authorities For Almost A Month After Escaping Zoo

BERLIN Skippi, a wily kangaroo on the run since early August was returned to his home at a petting zoo Monday in southern Germany, but not after a chase through the German Alps that left the animal with a strained leg.

The injured marsupial was captured in a cornfield near Leutkirch im Allgaeu, almost 10 miles from where his journey began, police in the nearby town of Ravensburg said.

found photo: lafrancevi

From article:

KABUL, Afghanistan —  The U.S. military regrets any offense it may have caused by handing out a soccer ball emblazoned with the name of Allah on it as part of a public relations exercise in Afghanistan, a spokesman said.

found photo: JPaul23

From article: 

ABBOTSFORD, Wis. Two men, driving the same pickup truck, have been cited for driving drunk in central Wisconsin.

Police stopped their truck in Abbotsford, Wis. recently and found 43-year-old Harvey Miller was steering the truck. Miller has no legs.

Officers say 55-year-old Edwin Marzinske was operating the gas pedals and brake.

The police report says Miller admitted he was too drunk to drive, but argued he wasn't actually operating the truck because he couldn't push the gas pedal. Officers disagreed and cited him for drunken driving, third offense.

Marzinske was cited for his second drunken driving offense.

Both men were also cited for operating a vehicle after revocation.

Link to CBS13 

According to Scott Beale at Laughing Squid: 

Wow, this is a shocker. At around 3 am Tuesday morning at Burning Man 2007, during a rare lunar eclipse, the Burning Man sculpture was set on fire prematurely (it is normally burned on Saturday). The Black Rock City Emergency Services Department was able to put out the fire in time and salvage the sculpture (it had not yet been loaded with fuel or explosives). It is still scheduled for its normal burn on Saturday and they will be working throughout the week to repair any burn damage and re-install the neon.

Lots more info, pictures and updates at Laughing Squid 

UPDATE: arsonist arrested 

Link to SF Bay Guardian blog 

C'mon folks, what kind of blog do you think this is? 

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

It's a "comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, cellular phones, SMS and push-to-talk systems," says Steven Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor and longtime surveillance expert.

Link to Wired article by Ryan Singel via boingboing

Via Neatorama:

When this 3-year-old girl was asked what she was going to do if a monster came after her, the girl’s answer was far more intelligible than the recent Miss South Carolina hubbub.

Link to YouTube 

The Twingo. Little did its creators know it would become the cause of so much marital strife

From article: 

Hundreds of angry Dutch women have complained to car manufacturer Renault after receiving handwritten letters purporting to come from a unknown admirer who called them "darling", suggested meeting soon for a drink and signed themselves "lots of love, M".

Some 30,000 letters were sent out - and Renault is now writing 30,000 apologies.

The letter was in fact part of an advertising campaign for a new version of their car, the Twingo, to be launched next month in the Netherlands where it has proved a particularly big seller.

Link to article

Entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of a sprawling spider web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard stretch of trail in a North Texas park.

Officials at Lake Tawakoni State Park say the massive mosquito trap is a big attraction for some visitors, while others won't go anywhere near it.

"At first, it was so white it looked like fairyland," said Donna Garde, superintendent of the park about 45 miles east of Dallas. "Now it's filled with so many mosquitoes that it's turned a little brown. There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs."

Spider experts say the web may have been constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together, or could be the result of a mass dispersal in which the arachnids spin webs to spread out from one another.

"I've been hearing from entomologists from Ohio, Kansas, British Columbia -- all over the place," said Mike Quinn, an invertebrate biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department who first posted photos online.

Herbert A. "Joe" Pase, a Texas Forest Service entomologist, said the massive web is very unusual.

"From what I'm hearing it could be a once-in-a-lifetime event," he said.

Link to article

From Ich Bin Ein Beijinger's blog

The Midi Music Festival has become a real cultural phenomenon, drawing young people from all over the country and giving me increasing hope that the still-marginal rock culture has reached critical mass and momentum. This year, I hear there were 80,000 people on the first day, and the line for tickets was nearly a kilometer long, wrapping from the east gate of Haidian Park all the way around the north side. Organizers did a terrific job of crowd control and security, but I still worry whether the auhorities will squash the thing next year--especially if there's as much dope-themed stuff for sale as I saw this year.

Interesting Flickr set here 

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A loud explosion heard inside an Apopka home led a family to a 30-foot sinkhole swallowing their kitchen, bathroom and other rooms inside the structure.

Rodrigo Coronado, who is renting the home with nine other family members, said the structure could be heard cracking Thursday.
Click here to find out more!

Coronado spoke to Local 6 through an interpreter.

"(Coronado) said basically what happened was last night at about 7:30, the first thing he heard was an extreme explosion in the house," interpreter R.L. Colina said. "When he went to go investigate what it was, he said he looked in the bathroom, the entire floor was gone."

A 30-foot hole opened in the home and has taken the kitchen down 25 feet, according to the family.

Firefighters said they were not certain if the sinkhole will continue to grow and neighbors have been warned.

Russian police have detained a 45-year-old municipal worker for stealing a bridge.

The 5-metre span metal bridge disappeared from a river crossing in the Ryazan region, east of Moscow. Police said they tracked it down to the man, who had used his work truck to remove it and then chopped it up and sold it for scrap.

In a statement, Ryazan region police called it "the bulkiest theft of the year".

This is asinine:

The passengers on board the Vatican’s first flight to Lourdes may have been pilgrims in search of spiritual healing, but they still had to obey anti-terrorism rules, it has emerged, after several of them had their holy water confiscated.

The Vatican’s new service, a Boeing 737 painted in yellow-and-white papal livery, took off from Rome’s Fiumicino airport on Monday, serving swordfish canapes to 148 pilgrims reclining on headrests stamped with the message: “I search for your face, oh Lord”.

While the outward journey was smooth, turbulence struck on the return when anti-terror rules were strictly applied by the French police.

No bottles containing more than 100ml of liquid were allowed on board unless checked in, meaning passengers were forced give up the holy water they had just collected at Lourdes.

Many hoped to ferry the water back to sick relatives.

Instead, dozens of plastic containers in the shape of the Madonna were left at security, while one man decided to drink all of his.

Link 

From Rolling Stone Magazine: 

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good -- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.

Continue reading (links to video also)

A THAI woman is at large with her husband's penis today after discovering the man's unfaithfulness.

Pornbun Sinthusin, 35, came home in Bangkok yesterday and found her 34-year-old husband Ploeng Plaekratoke in bed with another woman, said police Lieutenant Colonel Kornwat Hunpradit.

She later gave him several beers before cutting off his penis with "a sharp object,'' Lt-Col Kornwat said.

The husband was now in intensive care.

"We suspect she took both her weapon and her husband's penis because we cannot find the penis in their apartment. We even checked a toilet but she did not dump it there,'' Lt-Col Kornwat said.

Found here 

This is a very strange story of a Corporation in Florida with its own currency:

Not content with printing its own "private dollars," a Kissimmee company under federal investigation for issuing fraudulent checks announced it is now going to print actual U.S. dollars.

Angel Cruz, chairman of The United Cities Corp., said Friday that he has given notice to several federal agencies about his new plan.

He is also calling for the Department of Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as well as the Federal Reserve System -- which he has called "Satan's banking system"-- "to prove or retract their false claims within 48 hours" about his company issuing "worthless" checks.

found photo: Tariq's Fantasy World

From article:

A former CIA operative and Cuban exile plans to auction what he says is a lock of Che Guevara's hair, snipped before the Argentinian revolutionary was buried in 1967.

Gustavo Villoldo, 71, was involved in Guevara's capture in the jungles of Bolivia.

He plans to auction the hair and other items kept in a scrapbook since the joint CIA-Bolivian army mission 40 years ago.

The scrapbook also holds a map used to track down Guevara in Bolivia, photos of Guevara's body, intercepted messages between Guevara and his rebels and a set of Guevara's fingerprints taken before his burial.

The collection will be put on the block Oct. 25-25.

Continue reading

Article:

THERE is nothing virginal about a new advertising campaign for Virgin Home Loans showing wild sex romps between elderly lovers.

Titled Everlasting Love, Virgin's print, internet and TV ads reveal octogenarian orgies in the bedroom, shower and even a back garden.

The elderly couples are real and the images - one of Aleme and Osman Gjolej in the shower using only the "hand bra" to cover themselves - are confronting.

Always the masters of shock, the Virgin campaign was created to promote a new loan rewards program. The TV ad, split into PG and M-rated versions, shows Bill and Glenys Henderson ripping off their clothes before doing the dirty behind a well-placed gum tree.

Launched at the Hilton Hotel yesterday, another elderly couple loved it up in a bubble bath as Virgin Home Loans CEO David Wakeley extolled the virtues of life-long relationships, which mortgages often are.

The mortgage gives customers a 0.1 per cent cut in their rate after three years and a second 0.1 per cent cut after five years - cutting Virgin's standard variable loan from 7.59 per cent to 7.39 per cent, provided the RBA's cash rate remains stable.

Found here

Make your own Bob Dylan “Subterranean Homesick Blues” signs.

Link via Neatorama 

Culprit caught orange handed!

found  photo: kamagurka

From Des Moines Register: 

The assault weapons listed on the Des Moines police report was a bag of Cheetos.

Patrick Hamman, 22, of 4904 S.W. 13th St., was arrested Sunday on a charge of domestic assault. Officers explained that the victim of the snack attack, Michael Hamman, lives with his adult son, Patrick and that they became involved in an argument Sunday night.

Patrick Hammon picked up a bag of Cheetos and threw it at his father, hitting him in the face, police said. It hit him in the glasses, causing a cut to the bridge of Michael Hamman's nose.

The police report said: "Michael's T-shirt was also covered in Cheeto dust."

Patrick admitted being high on methamphetamine, police said. He was taken to the Polk County Jail without further incident.

Why, for the love of Christ, do they have to have pink ones to appeal to women? 

Link to Taser

Clip from NYTimes: 

The new C2, as the weapon is called, looks more like a large disposable razor than a gun, comes in a variety of colors and is $350, all of which Taser executives believe will persuade women to add the weapon to their checklist for the evening: lipstick, wallet, keys, Taser.

Link 

Vandals’ cruel handiwork went unseen at Wood Green bus depot as it was not visible at street level.

From The Sun: 

A DOUBLE-decker is driven through London’s streets yesterday — carrying an obscene jibe about Mayor Ken Livingstone on its roof.

Office staff roared with laugher on reading “Livingstone is a c***!” in 3ft-high letters.

Matt Arney, 26, took the snap near the Thames Embankment.

He said: “Everyone dashed to the window. It was hilarious.”

Red Ken has been blamed for axing the famous Routemaster buses.

 CCTV film at the depot is being studied. 

From article:

AN image of a horse created with more than half a million toothpicks in homage to Antoni Gaudi has earned Albanian artist Saimir Strati a second entry in the Guinness Records.

I've measured it; it is a new Guinness World Record," Andrea Banfi, an adjudicator for Guinness World Records, told a cheering crowd after checking that the mosaic followed the guidelines agreed with Guinness.

Strati spent 13 hours a day for 40 days on the mosaic measuring 2m by 4m in a technique resembling digital camera pixels, using either sharpened or blunt ends of oak, poplar and bamboo toothpicks.

He said the idea to produce the mosaic came to him while he tried to explain to a friend what La Sagrada Familia, the unfinished Barcelona cathedral of Spanish architect and artist Antoni Gaudi, looked like.

"I took some toothpicks from the table and opened them to show him how it looked like," said Strati. "I named the horse 'Reinless Spirit' to honour Gaudi's flight of genius."

The mosaic was shown to the public in the round hall of Tirana's pyramid-shaped culture centre.

Strati's portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, the world's largest mosaic of nails, is shown nearby.

Link

If I was as cool as Miss Cellania (or was able to find the time as she can) I'd do a round-up  of links to accompany this post…

Article:

Hundreds of fans from across the world are set to descend on Doune Castle this weekend for the third Monty Python Day.

The 14th Century keep was made famous as Castle Anthrax in the 1973 classic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Tickets have been restricted to 500 for the event near Stirling, which sees fans taking to the castle's battlements to enact scenes from the famous film.

Aficionados will also have the chance to take part in the coconut conga or the Python Idle talent contest.

The first Monty Python Day was held at Doune Castle, six miles north-west of Stirling, in 2004 to mark the 30th anniversary of film.

Source (BBC)

UPDATE: From the fabulous Miss Cellania herself, the round-up I would have posted. 

Thank you Miss C

via spluch 

On Sep 9, 2007, at the World Horticultural Expo in Germany, a 10.73 meter long onion braid said to be the longest in the world is on display. It weighs 260kg and is made up of 1,024 onions.

more pictures 

Clip:

Badly injured stray dog Benben is being put back on his feet by doctors at A-Beil Pet Clinic in Nanjing, China, who have built him an artificial leg.

Benben is now undergoing training sessions to get use to walking with his new limb.

Article with more pictures 

This is cute but not quite puppies and flowers… 

Clip:

"There is always something going on outside our window," said Mr Davidson, 79, a former Royal Navy sailor and war veteran, in the couple's room beside the A1.

"Our room looks out to the car park and a busy slip road where lorries pass by throughout the night.

Link to article

About:

yöghund has been developed in response to a growing demand by discerning animal lovers, for a healthy treat alternative for their pets. Over the course of twenty years in the pet care business, the folks at The Barking Dog, Ltd. have stayed keenly aware of the evolving place of pets in our lives. As beloved members of our families, our dogs trust and depend on us to make wise choices for their care and health. 

Link via Arbroath

Grillo's campaign using a rude word to tell off politicians has won the support of more than 300,000 Italians who signed petitions to sweep away a generation of lawmakers they say are corrupt and ineffective.

Clip: 

An Italian comedian's campaign using a rude word to tell off politicians has won the support of more than 300,000 Italians who signed petitions to sweep away a generation of lawmakers they say are corrupt and ineffective.

Popular comic Beppe Grillo has sent shock waves through the political system with the level of support for his campaign which, if successful, would bar convicted felons from parliament and would limit politicians' careers to two terms in office.

An estimated 40,000 people attended Grillo's rally in Bologna on Saturday and many more went to hundreds of similar "Vaffanculo-day" protests around the country. The word is the Italian equivalent of the "f"-word in English.

Gaining grassroots support via his website, one of Italy's most popular blogs, the 57-year-old comic said Italy needed a radical break from what he said was the political mismanagement of Italy since the end of fascism and World War Two.

"Nothing has changed since 1943. Then the king fled a nation in disarray, today politicians barricade themselves in palaces immersed in 'cultural' issues," said Grillo who, by the end of the protest in the early hours of Sunday claimed at least 300,000 signatures to his petition.

Continue reading article 

di Frankie says:

Last sunday while hunting for some cool figures in Akiba I discovered a fetish shop devoted to almost any kind of fetish (I should go there again in next few days so I hope to take some photos). One among the most interesting DVDs is Crush by Venus produced by Gagon: a DVD series dedicated to model trains crush fetishists. Seems that the "crush fetish" started in USA. Women would crush insects or worms with their feet, or high heeled shoes, but Japanese switched to otaku products like Model Trains or Die Cast cars...

Link

Clip:

A St. Paul man on his way to anger management class demonstrated just how badly he needed to attend the class.

Justin Boudin is charged with fifth degree assault for using his anger management class papers to hit a man.

It was just before rush hour on August 29, that police say the 27-year-old Boudin was at a St. Paul bus stop when he began arguing with waiting passengers.

He was particularly upset with a 59-year-old woman and yelled at her, saying, "Why don't you show me some respect?"

When she took out her cell phone, Boudin hit the woman, causing her to fall and strike her head on a nearby brick building.

A witness tried to help her and Boudin hit that man too, with his anger management folder. 

Found here 

Clip:

Internet auction website eBay on Monday withdrew an unusual second-hand sale item, the country of Belgium, which had attracted an offer of 10 million euros (13.9 million dollars).

"Belgium, a kingdom in three parts" was posted on the Belgian ebay site as offering "plenty of choice" despite the caveat that it comes with "300 billion of National Debt."

Link to article

Article:

A bridge is to be built in a Chinese village where children are forced to cross a raging torrent on a steel cable to get to school. Nearly 500 children, from Maji village in Fugong town, Yunnan province, cross the most dangerous stretch of the Nujiang River each day.

They fasten themselves to the cable with a metal carabiner and a rope and slide across the 200 metre wide canyon.

The youngest student, A Qia, 4, has to go over by herself each day.

The villagers say that usually four-year-old children are taken by their parents, and begin to go by themselves from the age of five.

A Pu, five, who was stuck in the middle of the cable for nearly 20 minutes once, said: “I used to dream of having a bridge, but then I learned that my dream was too expensive.”

But officials finally agreed to spend £35,000 on a bridge after a TV programme was made about the children’s dangerous daily journey.

Source

Found photo

Clip:

Supermarket staff refused to sell alcohol to a white-haired 72-year-old man - because he would not confirm he was over 21.

Check-out staff at Morrisons in West Kirby, Wirral, demanded Tony Ralls prove he was old enough to buy his two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Mr Ralls asked to see the manager who put the wine back on the shelf.

The grandfather-of-three said he had refused to confirm he was over 21 as it was a "stupid question."

Link to article 

One stop shopping:

Another big cache of drugs off the streets...this time in a legitimate shipment of Chips Ahoy cookies!

634 pounds of marijuana were seized early Friday morning on Cleveland’s west-side. It represents the second $1,000,000 seizure of marijuana in as many weeks.

This latest bust resulted from a three-month joint Cleveland Division of Police, BCI&I and Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office investigation.

Cleveland Police Commander Gary Gingell says the pot was in the sleeper cab of a tractor trailer rig carrying Chips Ahoy cookies.

Gingell reports that the shipment originated in Mexico and was transported to Cleveland through McCallen, Texas.

Police are planning to take ownership of the big rig under drug laws. The driver and two others are in custody. The three Hispanic males have addresses in southern Texas.

Mayor Frank Jackson is praising the undercover work of his officers, and claims breaking the grip of organized crime is a top quality of life issue in Cleveland.

A few weeks ago, pot was nabbed in a shipment of frozen broccoli.

Arrested and facing aggravated drug trafficking charges are 34-year-old David Ponce and 33-year-old Abel Avalos, both of Edinburg, TX, and 40-year-old Ramon Luna of McCallen, TX.

Each is confined in Cleveland city jail awaiting formal charges.

Link
 

Found here 

From article:

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - September 24, 2007 - Codex Gigas, also known as the Devil's Bible - a medieval manuscript said to have been written 800 years ago with the devil's help - has returned to Prague after an absence of 359 years. 

And Czechs were eager to see it, officials said.

Found image
 

The priceless piece, considered the biggest medieval book, was taken from the Prague Castle by Swedish troops at the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648. It is in Prague on loan from Sweden's Royal Library in Stockholm. It was put on display last week under high security at the Czech National Library.

Its return to Prague for the exhibition, which runs through Jan. 6, was made possible after years of negotiations between Czech and Swedish diplomats, National Library spokeswoman Katerina Novakova said.

"We expected big interest from the public," Novakova said. "Now, we are 100 percent full."

Only 60 people an hour can enter an air-conditioned room in the library's medieval complex for a 10-minutes look at the manuscript, which is inside a specially designed, unbreakable case, she said.

According to myth, a Benedictine monk promised to write the book overnight to atone for his sins. When he realized the task was impossible, he asked the devil for help. The page with the illustration of the devil is the one visitors see.

The manuscript was likely written by one monk from the Benedictine monastery in Podlazice located some 65 miles east of Prague sometime at the beginning of the 13th century, said Zdenek Uhlir, a specialist on medieval manuscripts at the National Library.

It contains "a sum of the Benedictine order's knowledge" of the time, including the Old and New Testament, "The War of the Jews" by the first-century historian Josephus Flavius, a list of saints, or a guideline how to determine the date of Easter, Uhlir said.

"I would estimate it took him between 10 and 12 years to write," he said about the piece, which weighs 165 pounds. Originally, it had 640 pages, of which 624 survived in relatively good condition, he said.

The book was transported to the Czech Republic in a military plane. Authorities would not give any details about security measures adopted at the library. It has previously been displayed in New York and Berlin.

Link 

AN Croatian motorbike rider was knocked unconscious when lightning struck his penis during a roadside toilet break.

Metro.co.uk reported Ante Djindjic, 29, escaped relatively unscathed from the incident, suffering only light burns to his chest and arms.

He said: "I don't remember what happened. One minute I was taking a leak and the next thing I knew I was in hospital.

"Doctors said the lightning went through my body and because I was wearing rubber boots it earthed itself through my penis." 

"Thankfully, the doctors said that there would be no lasting effects, and my penis will function normally eventually."

That's just as long as lightning doesn't stike in the same place twice.

Found here 

uh-oh: 

OVIEDO, Fla. -- Seminole County officials are scrambling to fix a typo on a roadway after a motorist informed Local 6 that the word "school" was misspelled "scohol."

Found here 

A Thai chef in London, making his bi-annual spicy 'Nam prik pao', shut down several blocks of the city as people smelling the smokey peppers thought it was a chemical agent. 

Bonus: Recipe included 

Clip: 

When Daisy the dachshund bounds along the shoreline, she often picks up a stick or a dead fish to gnaw on.

 

But going walkies the other day, she briefly found herself in doggie heaven ... when she was confronted by a bone as big as herself.

However, this was no meaty treat - just a prehistoric prize. For Daisy had discovered a fossilised mammoth bone up to two million years old.

Unable to dig it up, she waited for owner Dennis Smith to arrive - and he was stunned to see the 13in, 8lb thigh section sticking out of the sand.

Link

Article:

SYDNEY — Customs officals in Australia said Thursday that they had discovered a large amount of ecstasy inside a Mr. Potato Head children's toy mailed to Sydney from Ireland.

Customs said the toy was intercepted in a parcel at Sydney's international mail centre after an alert official suspected there may be something sinister behind Mr. Potato Head's toothy grin.

"Upon opening the parcel, Customs officers were greeted with the smiling face of Mr. Potato Head," Customs said in a statement.

"When a panel from Mr. Potato Head's back was removed, a quantity of MDMA (ecstasy) tablets was found in a small taped bag concealed in the cavity space."

The tablets weighed an estimated 293 grams (10.3 ounces).

"Whilst this is one of the more unusual concealments that we have seen in recent times, people need to be aware that Customs officers are alert to unusual and often outlandish methods of concealment," Customs postal director Karen Williams said.

Police said no arrests had been made but the network responsible had been disrupted. 

Found here 

Clip:

A high school art teacher fired after officials learned he moonlighted by creating paintings using his bare buttocks and other body parts sued his former employers on Thursday.

Stephen Murmer was fired in January after Chesterfield County Public Schools officials saw a YouTube video of Murmer wearing a swim thong and a Groucho Marx mask, demonstrating how he applies paint to his backside, then presses it onto a canvas. read more

About Stephen Murmer the artist 

found image

Clip:

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - Security guards refused to allow a woman into a federal courthouse until she removed a bra that triggered a metal detector.

Lori Plato said she and her husband, Owen Plato, were stunned when U.S. Marshals Service employees asked her to remove her bra after the underwire supports set off the alarm.

"I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn't have a privacy screen and no women security officers were available," Plato said Wednesday. "They said, 'No.'   read more

NASA Airbrushed UFOs - Lunar Base Towers

Link to YouTube 

Think I neeed to create an 'ironic' category... 

The coach carrying the Diana inquest jury has reportedly crashed as it traced the Princess's last movements around Paris.

 

In an eerie parallel with the catastrophic accident which killed the Princess, the bus driver was apparently trying to out-manoeuvre paparazzi outside the Ritz

 

The jury, coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker, and teams of lawyers made British legal history by making a site inspection of the places where the Princess and her lover Dodi Fayed spent their final hours. 

Article 

A Cambridge team says the creature owes its existence to a genetic quirk that offers some recompense for its prolonged celibacy.

Many asexual organisms have died out because they cannot adapt to changes in the natural world.

But an evolutionary trick allows this pond-dweller to survive when conditions change, researchers report in Science.

   
The animal is a tiny invertebrate known as a bdelloid rotifer. It lives in freshwater pools. If deprived of water, it survives in a desiccated state until water becomes available again.  continue reading

via newshelton 

Clip:

The disc-shaped device can take off vertically from any surface, land practically anywhere, and if it accidentally contacts a building or cliff, it won't explode into a fireball, like those rascally helicopters.

These features could make the aircraft uniquely suited to flying in urban war zones, aiding with search and rescue in disaster areas, inspecting crops and pipelines, and taking aerial photographs (read: surveillance).

Read more

Ananova reports:

A new water sport in which contestants row a boat made of a single bamboo cane has been invented in China.

Villagers from Chishui, near Zuiyi city, came up with the idea, reports News Express.

They make the boats out of locally grown bamboo and hold races on the Pinzhou River.

"Participants can sit or stand on the piece of bamboo, and with a thin bamboo oar, they race and compete at other tasks," explained one villager.

Villagers say the races have become a popular local attraction and hope the sport will spread across the region.

Link

Clip:

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The Frankfurt Book Fair has an indicator to help publishers gauge public interest in the new offerings presented at the annual exhibition -- the unofficial "most stolen book" index.

Bild am Sonntag and Germany's ZDF television have come up with lists of titles most stolen from 15 leading German publishers' stands set up in the Frankfurt trade fair grounds.

"The most-stolen books are usually the most-sold later on," Claudia Hanssen of the Goldmann Verlag publishing house told Bild am Sonntag newspaper, which published a list of the 10 most stolen German-language books this year.

Continue reading

Clip from ABC News:

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.

Link to article 

China. Tsingtao in a bag.

Thanks Mike L 

From article:

A BARMAID has been fined for crushing beer cans between her bare breasts while an off-duty colleague has been fined for hanging spoons from her friend's nipples, Westrern Australia police said today.

Police said the 31-year old barmaid pleaded guilty in the local magistrate's court to twice exposing her breasts to patrons at the Premier Hotel in Pinjarra, south of Perth.

The woman "is alleged to have also crushed beer cans between her breasts during one of the offences", in breach of hotel licensing laws, police from the Peel district of Western Australia said.

The barmaid and the hotel manager were both fined $1000, while an off-duty barmaid was fined $500 for helping to hang spoons from the woman's nipples, police said.

"It sends a clear message to all licensees in Peel that we will not tolerate this type of behaviour in our licensed premises," local police superintendent David Parkinson said.

Will the *real* Sam Adams please stand up: 

PORTLAND, Ore. - The Boston brewers of Sam Adams beer objected when they learned that a mayoral campaign here included Web sites invoking the name of their product.

What they didn't realize is that Sam Adams is also the name of the candidate — and has been since before the beer hit the market.

The Portland Sam Adams, a mild-mannered bicycle rider, is a far cry from the Boston Sam Adams, a patriot, brewer, rabble-rouser and business flop of Revolutionary War times. The second cousin to former president John Adams inherited the brewery, and it failed several years later.

When Mayor Tom Potter said he wouldn't seek re-election last month, City Commissioner Sam Adams jumped into the nonpartisan race. So far he's the only candidate.

Enterprising KEX radio hosts Mark Mason and Dave Anderson registered the Web addresses http://www.samadamsformayor.com and http://www.mayorsamadams.com, promising to give them to Adams if he discussed his political future on their show. Adams did.

The letter from Boston Beer Co. came to Anderson last week.

"Boston Beer has used the trademarks SAM ADAMS and SAMUEL ADAMS since 1984," said the letter, which asked Anderson to surrender the Web sites.

The radio hosts have responded by broadcasting the sound of a listener pouring Sam Adams beer in the toilet.

Article found here 

The elaborate corn maze in Dixon, 40 acres in size, has been certified as the largest in the world by Guinness World Records. It's easy to get lost in the tall stalks that make up the maze.

Link with more pictures

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This is a wild story:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A Belgian inmate made a dramatic escape from jail for the fourth time Sunday evening after his armed accomplices landed in the prison grounds in a hijacked helicopter, prosecutors said Monday. 

Nordin Benallal, self-styled "escape king" with several convictions for armed robbery and carjacking, has previously run from a prison van, walked out of jail wearing a wig and sunglasses and scaled a prison wall with a rope ladder.

Sunday, Benallal's accomplices hijacked a helicopter near the prison in Ittre, some 30 km (19 miles) south of Brussels.

On landing, the helicopter was crowded by other prisoners, making takeoff impossible and causing it to crash. The pilot and a prisoner were slightly injured.

Benallal and his cohorts then briefly seized two prison warders as hostages and fled in a car parked nearby.

It marked the second time this year that a prisoner has escaped from a Belgian jail using a helicopter. In April, two men posing as tourists hijacked a helicopter and flew into the yard of a prison near Liege, in the east of the country, to pick up an inmate.

Found here

From Neatorama:

Some people that work here had a going away party the other day for a woman that is leaving.

One of the supervisors called a Walmart and ordered the cake. he told them to write: “best wishes Suzanne” and underneath that write “we will miss you”. here’s the cake that was delivered.

Link

Clip: 

A group of German grannies have turned their knitting circle into a company selling kinky knitwear.

Their range includes lingerie, face masks and willy warmers, as well as conventional woollen clothing.

Manuela Buesch-Dankewitz, 45, who manages the group of lady knitters said: "The women love to knit, and it's great to earn something from it.

"Our oldest team member is 86. She makes willy warmers and other gear just like the rest."

Ms Buesch-Dankewitz came up with the idea after a US customer asked for a woollen bondage suit and since then has expanded her team to cater for ever more exotic tastes.

She added: "Since we put the items on-line we have been flooded with requests from all around the world.

"We make our wool products to order and there is a big demand out there."

The firm's products can be seen on their new web site at http://wolltraum.de

Link

From Annanova:

The organisers of the Basel Shift Festival have decided not to report the theft to the police yet, and hope the thief will return the book.

The book with the words "Steal this Book" emblazoned across its cover had been placed in an incubator by artists from the Viennese artist's group Ubermorgen.

A spokesman for the artists said: "The central part of the work was a book with the title 'Steal this Book' as a way of representing in art an internet hacking operation that made entire books readable on amazon.com, instead of just single pages.

"It was an attempt to praise those that fought for the right for literary freedom, and not an invitation to steal the book."

The book was written by Abbie Hoffman in 1970 and published in 1971, and includes advice on growing marijuana, starting a pirate radio station, living in a commune, stealing food, shoplifting, stealing credit cards, making pipe bombs, and obtaining a free buffalo from the US Department of the Interior.

Many bookstores refused to carry the book, because so many patrons followed the advice of the book's title and stole it.

From article:

A model who killed three people while trying to commit suicide has been told she faces up to ten years in jail.

Stunning Jeanette Sliwinski deliberately rammed her car into another vehicle that had stopped at a red light.

The three occupants of the car were killed instantly in the horror smash - while Sliwinski only suffered a broken ankle in the accident, which happened two years ago.

Link 

Physicists at UC Berkeley say they have produced the world's smallest radio out of a single carbon nanotube that is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Professor Alex Zettl led a team that developed the minuscule filament, which can be tuned to receive AM or FM transmissions.

The first song it played? "Layla" by Derek & the Dominos. Eric Clapton's unmistakable guitar riff can be heard on a scratchy recording of the nanoradio's output posted by Zettl online.

Listen to the 'Layla' recording Courtesy Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley

Clip: 

A lorry driver who was led off course by his sat nav got his HGV so tightly wedged in a narrow country lane he had to spend three nights sleeping in his cab before being rescued.

Residents living near the scene in Ivybridge, near Plymouth, Devon, were astonished when the LGV became wedged in the wooded lane last Friday evening.

Link 

found image

Clip: 

SPRINGFIELD, Ore. -- A number of gnomes have taken sanctuary at the Springfield police station.

Somebody apparently collected 75 lawn ornaments from around town and then, on the night of Oct. 17, placed them meticulously on and around the lawn of one house.

Among the plastic and porcelain geese, deer and frogs are gnomes, such as a weather gnome outfitted with a rain gauge.

Police want to find the rightful owners.

"We need to get them out of here," Capt. Richard Harrison said. "Every time I leave my office they're sitting in my chair, working on my computer. I can't seem to get rid of the darn things."

THE NSW Government has been accused of sitting on its hands over law reforms surrounding sperm donorship.

DUBLIN - A thief made off with 180 kegs of Guinness beer after smoothly driving into the Dublin brewery which makes the black stout and snatching a trailer load of drink, police said on Thursday.

The incident took place on Wednesday at the Guinness brewery on the banks of Dublin's River Liffey where Ireland's trademark tipple has been brewed for almost 250 years.

The lone raider's haul also contained 180 kegs of Budweiser and 90 barrels of Carlsberg lager, police said.

"A man drove into the yard in a truck and took a trailer containing the drink which has an estimated value of 64,000 euros (46.000 pounds)," a police spokesman said.

Link

From article: 

Judge Sunil Kumar Singh in the eastern state of Jharkhand has issued adverts in newspapers asking the gods to "appear before the court personally".

The gods have been asked to appear before the court on Tuesday, after the judge said that letters addressed to them had gone unanswered.

Ram and Hanuman are among the most popular Indian Hindu gods.

Link to BBC article

From Daily News:

The N train may need to be changed to the NC-17 and the L could be dubbed the lap dance express.

That's because commuters on the lines got their two bucks worth - and then some - when four leggy New Yorkers set out to turn the subway cars into strip-club Champagne lounges.

On a dare from a Web site promising $10,000 for the best pole dancing in public, the quartet took a ride on the wild side and their winning video has become a rage on the Internet.

"It was literally get on the train and go," said Laura Lee Anderson, 24, of Queens, one of the vivacious vixens videotaped performing Scores-type moves on a Manhattan-bound N train.

Link to article

ELMWOOD PARK -- The maker of Bubble Wrap -- the famously addictive packaging that people love to pop, crackle and stomp on – says the popping of gunshots from a nearby police shooting range is giving its employees a headache.

Sealed Air Corp., maker of the cushioned plastic since 1957, says the noise from gunfire at the police department's firing range is "disruptive and unsettling" to its employees, according to a letter sent to borough officials.

Link to article

Pop some virtual bubble wrap 

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) -- Members of a Czech art group who hacked into television broadcasting with images of a hoax nuclear explosion were charged and will have to stand trial, a state prosecutor said Thursday.
art.nukeblast.jpg

The six members of the Prague-based Ztohoven group were charged last month with spreading false information and face up to three years in jail if convicted, said Dusan Ondracek, the state prosecutor in the northern town of Trutnov, who is in charge of the case.

On June 17, viewers of a Czech television channel watching a Web cam program monitoring weather in various Czech mountain resorts could see a nuclear explosion taking place in the Krkonose or Giant Mountains in the northern Czech Republic.

Link to article

Link to YouTube clip 

The sighting of a rare penguin has excited researchers newar Mawson Huts in Antarctica.

An adult, unpigmented Adelie penguin was photographed near Granholm Hut on Sunday.

Penguins lacking pigmentation are referred to as "leucistic" and don't usually survive until adulthood because they attract predators and don't breed.

Australian Antarctic Division biologist, Rhonda Pike, says only one penguin with the genetic defect has been detected over a number of breeding seasons in a population of 4,000 Adelies.

"We have a population of tagged birds out there and we've never tagged any of the leucistic birds," said Ms Pike.

"So we don't know if it's the same one coming back year after year, but yeah, one out of 4,000."

Link to source

Found image
Disclaimer: image represents a Raelian craft and not one of the Xists. see below

CLEVELAND, Ohio, January 4, 2008: The Church of the SubGenius has announced that the end of the world will take place on Saturday, July 5, 2008. In preparation for the fulfillment of this doomsday prophecy, the Church is requesting that all of its members participate in a bizarre religious ceremony taking place in upstate New York, during the final weekend before the arrival of the apocalypse.

Since its inception in 1953, Church founder J.R. "Bob" Dobbs has predicted that a fleet of flying saucers will arrive at the beginning of July to destroy the worldwide Conspiracy against the Church of the SubGenius, while all ordained SubGenius ministers will be rescued by escape vessels piloted by the Alien Sex Goddesses, also known as the Xists.

The Church is inviting all of its members worldwide to gather together for the final hours in Sherman, New York from Wednesday, July 2 to Sunday, July 6, at a clothing-optional outdoor campground called Brushwood Folklore Center. The first gathering at this compound took place in 1996, and the event has increased in size and participants each following year. 1998 was designated the first true "X-Day," and each successive year has added one to the total. This year's celebration in 2008 is X-Day 11, or X-Day XI. 

Continue reading… 

This is wrong on so many levels… 

Link with four more pictures. 

The 18-year-old contortionist, who dresses in a snakeskin costume, is amazing audiences with her incredible poses and eye-watering gyrations. 

Nokulunga Buthelezi is so naturally flexible that her mother found her asleep one day when she was three - with her legs tucked behind her neck.

Six years later, the young girl from South Africa joined a touring circus in the United States and is now a major star of Afrika! Afrika!, a £4.2million extravaganza opening at the O2 arena in London on January 17.

Read more

Jaysus, gotta get me one of these. iTase? 

LAS VEGAS - A handy new holster from Taser International Inc. holds not only your stun gun but a music player too.

Link to article 

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From The Register:

A Polish teenager allegedly turned the tram system in the city of Lodz into his own personal train set, triggering chaos and derailing four vehicles in the process. Twelve people were injured in one of the incidents.

The 14-year-old modified a TV remote control so that it could be used to change track points, The Telegraph reports. Local police said the youngster trespassed in tram depots to gather information needed to build the device. The teenager told police that he modified track setting for a prank.

"He studied the trams and the tracks for a long time and then built a device that looked like a TV remote control and used it to manoeuvre the trams and the tracks," said Miroslaw Micor, a spokesman for Lodz police.

"He had converted the television control into a device capable of controlling all the junctions on the line and wrote in the pages of a school exercise book where the best junctions were to move trams around and what signals to change.

"He treated it like any other schoolboy might a giant train set, but it was lucky nobody was killed. Four trams were derailed, and others had to make emergency stops that left passengers hurt. He clearly did not think about the consequences of his actions," Micor added.

Transport command and control systems are commonly designed by engineers with little exposure or knowledge about security using commodity electronics and a little native wit. The apparent ease with which Lodz's tram network was hacked, even by these low standards, is still a bit of an eye opener.

Problems with the signalling system on Lodz's tram network became apparent on Tuesday when a driver attempting to steer his vehicle to the right was involuntarily taken to the left. As a result the rear wagon of the train jumped the rails and collided with another passing tram. Transport staff immediately suspected outside interference.

The youth, described by his teachers as an electronics buff and exemplary student, faces charges at a special juvenile court of endangering public safety.

Link

Louis the octopus clearly thinks two heads are better than one when it comes to toys.

The 1.8m-wide (6ft) creature is so attached to Mr Potato Head that he turns aggressive when aquarium staff try to remove it from his tank.

The giant Pacific octopus was given the toy for Christmas and has even learned to dig out food hidden in a secret box at the back of it.

'He's fascinated by it,' said Matt Slater, of the Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay, Cornwall. 'He attacks the net we use to fish the toy out every time we try to take it away.'

Mr Slater added: 'Octopuses are very intelligent and they like to be stimulated and busy.'

Found here 

Guess they'll eat feed in the shape of anything.

Link 

More pictures 

Shortest runway in the world requires special license to land there. Not sure this pilot deserves it.

Clearing the vehicles below by the narrowest of margins, a plane swoops in to land at one of the world's most dramatic airstrips. 

Although the clearance is supposed to be 20ft, the scooter riders and car driver take no chances and duck for their own safety.

Pilots need a special licence to land at the strip on the island of Saint-Barthélemy, or St Barts, in the French West Indies. 

Link 

Complete article: 

Could this be the reason Amy Winehouse seemed to have sprouted such a heaving chest when she left rehab yesterday?

For those occasions when booze just isn't allowed a wine-holding bra has been created for the ladettes of this world.

Be it a rock concert of simply a trip to the women simply need to fill up the sports bra device with their favourite tipple and then once inside suck the liquid out of the special teat.

The bra serves the double purpose of also making the wearer's (wine) rack look more full – until the alcohol is all drunk down that is and the woman goes from a big chested beauty to a big bellied Betty.

The £20 polyurethane bladder can contain 750ml of liquid (a normal wine bottle) and boosts a woman's chest by two cups.

It is not the first time Metro has reported on illicit booze drinking devices. In 2006 we brought you the polyurethane beer belly for men.

For more information go to www.firebox.com/product/2061?src_t=cat&src_id=party

Found here

Article: 

Brooksville, Florida – A 19-year-old was taken to jail Sunday evening for singing the profane words of a rap song when children were around.

The children's mother, Amy Churchill, called Hernando County sheriff's deputies and complained that Christopher Holder was yelling profanities as he walked with two juveniles on Gordon Loop in Brooksville. Churchill said that her two children did not need to hear such language, according to an offense report.

Holder told deputies he did nothing wrong and was actually singing the words to a song by rapper Lil' Boosie.

He even told deputies that “he did not believe children needed to hear [that kind of] language,” the report says.

Still, Holder was arrested for disorderly conduct and taken to the Hernando County Jail.

Found here 

Quotes from article: 

Gardening author Bob Flowerdew admitted he had "only ever seen one close up - and not that colour".

Horticulturalist Anne Swithinbank added: "I've never seen one in my life. They don't really like the cold, as you can imagine. They shrivel up and look very unhappy."

Link to article 

Just in time for Valentine's Day… Link

Similar to the Chihuahua puppy born with love-heart pattern in fur

Link to YouTube clip via Neatorama

Amid a discussion of trade in 1973, Chairman Mao Zedong made what Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger called a novel proposition: sending tens of thousands, even 10 million, Chinese women to the United States.

"You know, China is a very poor country," Mao said, according to a document released by the State Department's historian office. "We don't have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands."

A few minutes later, Mao circled back to the offer. "Do you want our Chinese women?" he asked. "We can give you 10 million."

After Kissinger noted Mao was "improving his offer," the chairman said, "We have too many women ... They give birth to children and our children are too many."

"It is such a novel proposition," Kissinger replied in his discussion with Mao in Beijing. "We will have to study it."

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From article:

It sounds like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster.

 

But staff at a sewage works have called in a ghostbuster because they are being stalked by a zombie-like figure who roams the underground tunnels.

Workers at Southern Water's treatment plant in Eastbourne, East Sussex, said they have been scared to enter tunnels after being followed about by a "humanoid figure" as they went about their jobs.

Mark Wey, a sewage treatment worker, got permission from his bosses to hire a paranormal investigator to launch an investigation into the sewage spirits.

Mr Wey hired parapsychologist Michael Kingscote who paid the tunnels a visit.

…

"It's not funny going to work and worrying that a zombie might be around the corner."

Link to Daily Mail

From BBC:

A restaurant owner has apologised after diners had their very own F word experience - without Gordon Ramsay.

Ten friends found the abusive and sexually-explicit message on their bill at Joe Delucci's Italian restaurant in Bird Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire.

Link

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From article:

Husband Gets DUI For Running Over Wife With SUV After Argument

MERRITT ISLAND, Fla. -- Authorities say a man accidentally ran over his wife after a drunken argument over who should drive near Cape Canaveral.

Florida state troopers say Richard Zubowicz thought his wife Becky was too drunk to drive. So they pulled into a grocery store parking lot to argue Thursday.

Richard Zubowicz allegedly pushed his wife to the ground, circled the parking lot in his sport utility vehicle and ran her over when he returned to the spot where they had been fighting.

Authorities found Becky Zubowicz still pinned beneath the SUV in Merritt Island. She remained in critical condition Friday.

Titusville resident Richard Zubowicz remains jailed on charges of drunken driving and causing a serious injury and domestic violence. Jail records did not indicate if he has an attorney.

Link 

This is pretty ridiculous, but below is the transcript:

“Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees: There’s no longer any question whether transit companies should hire women for jobs formerly held by men. The draft and manpower shortage has settled that point. The important things now are to select the most efficient women available and how to use them to the best advantage.

Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:

1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they’re less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn’t be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.

2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It’s always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.

3. General experience indicates that “husky” girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

5. Stress at the outset the importance of time the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.

6. Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they’ll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.

7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can’t shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.

10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl’s husband or father may swear vociferously, she’ll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.

11. Get enough size variety in operator’s uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can’t be stressed too much in keeping women happy.”

Found here

found photo

From Seattle Times: 

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — "It's just like judging a beautiful girl," said Fowzan al-Madr, a camel breeder from the Kharj region southeast of Riyadh. "You look for big eyes, long lashes and a long neck — maybe 39 or 40 inches."

As he spoke, Madr was surveying the offerings at Saudi Arabia's largest camel market, on the outskirts of Riyadh.

The days are long past when camels were crucial to life, a chapter lost in increasing urbanization and technology. But there is still pleasure in raising them, sometimes for milk and meat, for racing and, yes, for their beauty.

Camel beauty pageants, in which camels are judged on their looks and dressage, are held all over Saudi Arabia. They have become so popular in recent years that a respected Saudi cleric recently issued a decree against them, saying that they encouraged pride.

Continue reading

Thousands of starfish wash up on the shores of southern England, the Environment Agency now believes that dredgers - the kind used to scrape the sea floor for mussels - were almost certainly to blame. Read more

From the BBC:

Residents living in a graffiti-plagued village on Merseyside are being asked to consider changing its name to tackle vandals who alter signs in the village.

Lunt, which dates back to Medieval times, has been repeatedly targeted by vandals who change the "L" to a "C".

However, the proposal to change the name has split the village with some residents insisting the vandals should not be allowed to ruin their heritage.

One suggestion is to change it to Launt which would be pronounced the same.

However, despite the dismay that the vandalism causes, some villagers are defiant at the thought of giving in to the vandals.

Read more

Thanks Brady! 

Oh the humanity! From the BBC: 

Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.

The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.

But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper.

Coca-Cola has oversized robot vending machines lumbering around Tokyo pinching the heads of people who prefer a different brand. These robots have been made to the likeness of the 11inch tall desktop toys which feauture the regular as well as the black Coke Zero available in Japan. The toys feature bendy arms and have a little coin slot for saving up your yen and buying more coke.

Via livegrids 

One Briton was so determined to beat his terminal cancer prognosis, he put money on it - and collected £5000.

Jon Matthews, 58, had the bet of his lifetime - literally - when he asked bookmakers William Hill to take the wager.

After being diagnosed with lung cancer in April 2006 he beat doctors' predictions he would not live until Christmas.

So he decided to take his situation to the bookies and defied the odds to claim his winnings - 25 months after his diagnosis.

He explained: "I lasted six months more than they said I would, so I thought why not?

"My mind was telling me I got this far, I can get further."

Doctors told Mr Matthews if he lived until June 1 - he would beat the longest survival time for killer cancer Mesothelioma.

The Bedfordshire punter put down £100 at 50/1 that he would live until June 1.

William Hill's spokesperson Graham Sharpe said: "We had never been asked to accept a bet of this nature before.

"But as Jon approached us directly and was adamant that it would give him an additional incentive to battle his illness, we decided to offer him the bet he wanted.

"Never, in thirty years in the business, have I been so pleased to pay a winning client £5000."

Not only did he win, Mr Matthews has already placed a bet he will still be around this time next year.

He plans on giving half to cancer charity Macmillan.

"The other half I'm going to spend on myself - booze and fags probably - I don't have anything to lose!" he said.

Found here

From article:

COLLEGE HILL - Dr. Fredric J. Baur was so proud of having designed the container for Pringles potato crisps that he asked his family to bury him in one.

His children honored his request. Part of his remains was buried in a Pringles can - along with a regular urn containing the rest - in his grave at Arlington Memorial Gardens in Springfield Township.

Link 

Thanks Arlene!

From gizmodo:

While yesterday the world was ogling over the iPhone 3G black body, some people were just awing over black balls. 400,000 of them. Black balls everywhere, bouncing, swinging, cavorting, happily hopping down the side of the Ivanhoe Reservoir with two objectives. First, to fight bromate by stopping sunlight, which forms this carcinogenic component mixing the chlorine and bromide in the water. …

Continue reading with Photo gallery after the jump.

From The Sun:

RAF Top Guns have blown up the world’s biggest drug haul – in desert trenches in Afghanistan.

Harrier jets dropped three 1,000lb bombs on almost 237 tons of cannabis unearthed by Britain’s Special Boat Service and local commandos.

The haul – weighing more than 30 double-decker buses and spread over a site the size of two football fields – had a street value of at least £225million.

Last night a delighted Whitehall source said: “It was unbelievable – truly staggering.”

Link to full story with more pictures. 

Gabriele Paolini calls himself the 'Prophylactic prophet' and pops up behind on-air reporters promoting condom use. But now Italy's Supreme Court has upheld a three-month suspended sentence on him for interrupting a report on the state broadcaster RAI in June 2001.

From BBC:

Mr Paolini has made a career of popping up uninvited behind unwitting on-air TV reporters promoting condom use.

Guinness World Records says Mr Paolini is the world's most successful TV hijacker, interrupting 20,000 link-ups.

Link to article

1: Horace De Vere Cole

Horace De Vere Cole was a man devoted to, one might almost say obsessed by, practical jokes. His most memorable prank was probably giving carefully selected free theatre tickets to bald men so that when their gleaming pates were seen from the Upper Circle a rather rude word could clearly be seen. Whether impersonating foreign dignitaries to the consternation of senior naval officals or shocking Edwardian society by performing astoundingly vulgar tricks with a cow's udder in public thoroughfares his was a life devoted to, and ultimately squandered on, the pursuit of japery. Click here for more

2: Henry de la Poer Beresford

The wildly unpredictable third marquess of Waterford was never conclusively linked with the mystery of Spring-Heeled Jack, the demonic apparition who terrorised the women of South London in the 1830s, but 'the Mad Marquis' certainly had the athleticism and the temperament to be at the root of Battersea's own Urban Legend. Click here for more

3: Charles Dawson

Although he could conceivably been the hapless victim of the Piltdown man hoax, it's perhaps kinder to think of Charles Dawson as the perpetrator of that celebrated piece of archaeological fakery. Hailed at the time as ‘by far the most important ever made in England, and of equal, if not of greater consequence than any other discovery yet made, either at home or abroad’, the Piltdown Man skull later proved to be the combination of two quite disparate hominids. From its 'discovery' in 1912 to the exposure of the fraud in the 1950s, Eoanthropus dawsoni was considered as the 'missing link' between ape and man. Click here for more

4: Elizabeth Parsons

Perhaps the most successful fake haunting in history is the Cock Lane Ghost.. The site of the haunting, in Cock Lane in the City of London, attracted many curious observers. The Duke of York and Samuel Johnson were just two dignitaries who were drawn to witness the celebrated phenomena. They were, of course, entirely fraudulent – the work of an eleven-year-old girl called Elizabeth Parsons who convinced witnesses by means of assorted scratchings, feats of ventriloquism and bumps in the night that the house was inhabited by the shade of girl murdered by a former lodger. Her father ended up standing trial for the imposture, and was sentenced to the pillory, but remained comparatively untouched by a sympathetic London mob. Click here for more

5: Mary Willcocks

On Good Friday 1817, a young woman wearing a black turban and speaking an unknown language was found wandering in Almondsbury, north-east of Bristol. Convincing the locals that she was the exotic Princess Caraboo, she was the centre of much excitement, involving dancing, swimming, and the cooking of chicken curries. It was only in the June of that year that the princess was exposed as Mary Willcocks, a former nursemaid from Witheridge. She continued to trade on the Princess Caraboo name even after exposure, finally dying in a houseful of cats at the turn of the last Century. Click here for more

6: Frances Griffiths

Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright were the teenage cousins behind the still-famous Cottingley Fairies photographs. Although the pictures did not initially fool the family members to which the girls showed them, in 1920 they came to the attention of celebrated author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had become obsessed with the supernatural after the loss of his son in the Great War. He made a cause célèbre of the photos, which made it almost impossible for the girls to admit their deception. They maintained the veracity of the images for over sixty-five years, only confessing that the 'fairies' were in fact paper cut-outs in 1983. Click here for more

7: Theodore Hook

Theodore Hook anticipated and eclipsed the modern 'unrequited takeaway pizza prank' by orchestrating in 1809 a day-long series of deliveries and official visits to the home of one Mrs.Tottenham, who had previously slighted the mercurial writer. Click here for more

8: Elizabeth Crofts

In 1554, during the reign of Queen Mary I, a crowd of as many as 17,000 was attracted to Aldersgate steet in London to hear the anti-Catholic pronouncements uttered apparently by an invisible spirit who became known as 'The Bird in the Wall'. After several days, the wall from which the voice appeared to emanate was torn down to reveal a serving maid, Elizabeth Crofts, who had apparently been persuaded by one or more Protestant nobles to perpetrate the fraud. Despite the harsh penalties for treason and religious non-conformism prevalent at that time, Crofts seemed to suffer little punishment for her actions and was never heard of again after the incident. Click here for more

9: Archibald Belaney

Hastings-born Archibald Belaney had a lifelong interest in American tribes of the Old West and it was no surprise when he emigrated to Canada in 1906 to live as a trapper. It was rather surprising though that, after achieving success as an author under the name Grey Owl he gave his biography to Canadian Who's Who as: ‘Born encampment, State of Sonora, Mexico, son of George, a native of Scotland, and Kathrine (Cochise) Belaney; a half-breed Apache Indian … adopted as blood-brother by Ojibway tribe, 1920 … speaks Ojibway but has forgotten Apache.’ On 10 December 1937, on his second British lecture tour, Grey Owl, the modern Hiawatha, gave a command performance at Buckingham Palace attended by Queen Mary, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and the two princesses. It wasn't until after his death that his true identity was exposed, with Archie having deceived readers across the English-speaking world. Click here for more

10: Mary Toft

Mary Toft, born in 1703, and described as illiterate, was of small stature, with a healthy, strong constitution, and a sullen temper. Despite her humble origins she was able to fool several eminent London physicians including King George I's doctor, Sir Richard Manningham, into believing that she had given birth to a large litter of rabbits. Only when threatened with dissection by a group of Royal physicians was she persuaded to recant her story. Toft's case echoed that of Agnes Bowker from Market Harborough, Leicestershire, who was said to have given birth to a cat. Unlike Toft, Bowker never confessed to a hoax, and although deceit was suspected by the then bishop of London, she may, indeed, have been the cat's mother. Click here for more

Taken from The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

From BBC:

A fast-food restaurant in Beirut's war-torn southern suburb has hit upon an explosive way to attract customers.

Buns and Guns is made out to look like a military post and diners eat to the sound of gunfire instead of muzak.

Owner Yousef Ibrahim presents rebranded Lebanese favourites like the "rocket-propelled grenade" (chicken on a skewer) and "terrorist bread".

"They accuse us of terrorism, so let's serve terrorist bread, why not?" Mr Ibrahim told Hezbollah's al-Manar TV.

Other dishes include the Kalashnikov, Dragunov, Viper, B52, while realistic-looking weapons and ammunition decorate the counters, and camouflage netting hangs from the ceiling.

Beirut has recently passed through another round of civil strife when pro-government partisans and those of the Hezbollah-led opposition fought street battles in west Beirut.

But that does not necessarily mean that the customers think the restaurant is in bad taste.

Buns and Guns (motto: A sandwich can kill you) is located in a strongly Hezbollah-supporting area, where the group's militia is lionised by many.

"My goal was to make people laugh before they ask me why weapons. The important thing is that they laugh," Mr Ibrahim said.

He insists the only way his sandwiches could kill the customers is by their generous proportions.

"It attracts customers in an unconventional way. You noticed the moment I opened the restaurant, there was a lot of business," he told the al-Manar correspondent, who later tucked into an RPG sandwich.

Link to article

Saatchi & Saatchi New York ambient for Glide Dental Floss involves a pig. I have no idea what a pig has to do with dental floss. Are they saying that I have a bit of pork rind jammed between my teeth just like this pig is jammed between buildings? Are buildings the teeth of the city? Wow. Far fetched but eyecatching then I guess.

Found here.

YouTube has been ordered by a New York Federal Judge to hand over viewing data that includes how often users watch videos, how much time they spend doing it, their Username and their Internet Protocol addresses.

Viacom demanded to review all of YouTube's logging information to prove that copyrighted clips are more popular than amateur videos on the site.

His dis-Honorable sagaciousness declared:

For every video on YouTube, [he] required Google to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who had watched it, and the address of their computer, known as an I.P. or Internet protocol address.

When Google argued that:

"We see no reason why Viacom and the other plaintiffs seek or require such information," Google said in a letter filed with the court. "Given plaintiffs' stated reason for seeking information from the logging database ... potentially personal identifiable information should be irrelevant." 

The right dis-Honorable Judge Stanton said in his ruling:

“A markedly higher proportion of infringing-video watching may bear on plaintiff’s vicarious liability claim, and defendants’ substantial noninfringing use defense”

Consider this:

The amount of data covered by the order is staggering, as it includes every video watched on YouTube since its founding in 2005. In April alone, 82 million people in the United States watched 4.1 billion clips there, according to comScore. Some experts say virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube. 

Why? you ask yourself, would Viacom need such detailed information on viewers, just to make their case?

Viacom wants the viewing data in part to help it determine the extent to which YouTube’s success was built on the popularity of copyrighted clips that were illegally posted to the site.

"oh, I get it" and yet Google continues to reason with Viacom's lawyers:

In a letter sent Thursday, Google’s lawyers pressed their counterparts at Viacom to accept a more limited set of data. “We request that plaintiffs agree that YouTube may redact user names and I.P. addresses from the viewing data in the interests of protecting user privacy,” wrote David H. Kramer, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

“Users should have the right to challenge and contest the production of this deeply private information,” said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group.

That right is protected by the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, Mr. Opsahl added. Congress passed that law in 1988 to protect video rental records, after a newspaper disclosed the rental habits of Robert H. Bork, then a Supreme Court nominee.

Here's where the Judge becomes a stand-up guy:

While the judge said Viacom has a legitimate need for the users' information, he rejected Viacom's requests for Google to disclose its search engine source code.

I'm just sayin', WTF? Slippery slope.

Sources:  sfgate   NYT

In the heart of the Karakum desert of Turkmenistan the Darvaza Gas Crater or The Burning Gates give off a glow that can be seen from miles away during the dark night. The large crater is a result of a Soviet gas exploration accident in the 1950’s. It was created when a Soviet drilling rig was drilling for natural gas fell into an underground cavern resulting in a crater which today measures roughly 60 meters in diameter and 20 meters deep. The huge crater was set alight shortly after being discovered and has been burning ever sense. The recognizable smell of burning natural gas can be detected from a distance and becomes quite strong as you near the hot edge of the crater.

Link to pictures

A WWF installation to illustrate the small reamaining number of Pandas left in the world.

This is the first location, in a rotation of the installation of the papier mache Pandas, around famous monuments in Paris.

View image

Found here.

Is it true? From The Daily Mail:

He is perhaps the most famous, or infamous, artist alive. To some a genius, to others a vandal. Always controversial, he inspires admiration and provokes outrage in equal measure.

Since Banksy made his name with his trademark stencil-style 'guerrilla' art in public spaces - on walls in London, Brighton, Bristol and even on the West Bank barrier separating Israelis and Palestinians - his works have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

He has dozens of celebrity collectors including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera.

…

He is also known for his headline-making stunts, such as leaving an inflatable doll dressed as a Guantanamo prisoner in Disneyland, California, and hanging a version of the Mona Lisa - but with a smiley face - in the Louvre, Paris.

But perhaps his most provocative statement, and the one that generates the most publicity, is the fact that Banksy's true identity has always been a jealously guarded secret, known to only a handful of trusted friends.

Continue reading article

Previously related:

Time lapse video of Banky's 'Cans Festival'

Photos from Banksy’s Cans Festival — 05.07.08

Graffiti artist Banksy pulls off most audacious stunt to date - despite being watched by CCTV

Banksy returns to Bethlehem

Banksy's debt to Warhol revealed in London show

BARBIE’S new S&M look has whipped up a storm – with protesters dubbing it “filth”.

The doll’s image is transformed with kinky fishnets, motorcycle jacket, black gloves and boots.

Makers Mattel say Black Canary Barbie, out in September, is based on a DC comic superhero of the same name.

But religious group Christian Voice said: “Barbie has always been on the tarty side and this is taking it too far.

A children’s doll in sexually suggestive clothing is irresponsible – it’s filth.” 

The Sun is there.

Shown here: Moronic Acid

Other names include:

Arsole

Yes, believe it or not, there is actually a molecule called Arsole... and it's a ring! It is the arsenic equivalent of pyrrole, and although it is rarely found in its pure form, it is occasionally seen as a sidegroup in the form of organic arsolyls. …

Bastardane

Buckminster Fullerene

This is the famous soccerball-shaped molecule that won its discoverers the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1996. It is named after the architect Buckminster Fuller who designed the geodesic dome exhibited at Expo '67 in Montreal, from which Sir Harry Kroto got the idea how 60 Carbon atoms could be arranged in a perfectly symmetrical fashion. …

Fukalite

This wonderfully named mineral gets its name from the Fuka mine in the Fuka region of southern Japan. It is very rare, and is a form of calcium silico-carbonate, with formula Ca₄Si₂O₆(CO₃)(OH,F) ₂. …

Found here.

A second Florida man has been arrested on charges of making false 911 calls in as many days. An arrest report says 47-year-old Carlos Gutierrez was at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino early Monday and called 911 to say the slot machine stole his money. The report says Gutierrez left the casino to place a second 911 call to say the same thing.

He was arrested and charged with making a false 911 call. He's being held with no bail set.

On Sunday another man was arrested after calling 911 five times during an argument with his brother. He demanded that dispatchers send deputies to help sort things out.

And in northern Florida last week, a Jacksonville man called 911 to complain that a Subway left the sauce off a spicy Italian sandwich.

Source

"Farto"... in Sao Paulo, Brazil



"Lick-a-chick"... sadly they mean a chicken



"Tits"... in Montevideo, Uruguay






"Hung Far Low"... something got lost in translation



"Analtech"



"Niggaz"... in Turkey



"Herpi"... in Spain



"The DICK Liquour"



"The Pussy Cleaners"

Found at Oddee.com

Previously on P&F:

Bizarre collection of bathroom signs

More funny bathroom signs

These are pictures of an international airport runway in the Maderia Islands of Portugal. The runway is about 1 3/4 miles long and over 1/2 mile of that is the "bridge" part of the runway. There are 180 pillars in the bridge and each pillar is as high as a 23 floor building. Check out the cars parked below the runway! More on the Madeira Airport at Wikipedia.

Thanks Liam. 

In case you need a laugh:
Remember, it takes a college degree to fly a plane but only a high school diploma to fix one.
 
After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form, called a 'Gripe Sheet' which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft..
The mechanics correct the problems; document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the Gripe Sheets before the next flight.  
 
Never let it be said that Aussie ground crews lack a sense of humour.
Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by Qantas' pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions
recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.
 
By the way, Qantas is the only major airline that has never, ever, had an accident.
 
 
P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.
 
P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.
 
P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.
 
P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.
 
P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.
 
P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.
 
P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.
 
P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what friction locks are for.
 
P: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.
 
P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.
 
P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.
 
P: Aircraft handles funny............ (I love this one!)
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.
 
P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.
 
P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.
 
And the best one for last..................
P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget.

Thanks Donna!

Thanks Noah

See also: 

Bizarre collection of bathroom signs

More funny bathroom signs

10 Most Unfortunate Store Names

Real name, Paul Curtis, Moose is the grand-daddy of reverse graffiti. He’s been cleaning the streets of the UK and beyond for around ten years.

Using detergent and a wire brush, the tools of many a cleaner, he works with advertisers to create innovative clean messages and slogans that inevitably turn into works of art. One of his more recent works, the Reverse Graffiti Project, was on San Francisco’s Broadway tunnel in conjunction with Green Works, to promote a plant-based cleaner.

Photo: autan

Well France and Germany believe the cause is a Bayer CropScience pesticide. 

A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning, Bayer's chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer, the head of Bayer CropScience, after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment.

The investigation was triggered by an Aug. 13 complaint filed by German beekeepers and consumer protection advocates, a Coalition against Bayer Dangers spokesman, Philipp Mimkes, said Monday.

The complaint is part of efforts by groups on both sides of the Atlantic to determine how much Bayer CropScience knows about the part that clothianidin may have played in the death of millions of honeybees.

…

"We're suspecting that Bayer submitted flawed studies to play down the risks of pesticide residues in treated plants," said Harro Schultze, the coalition's attorney.

"Bayer's ... management has to be called to account, since the risks ... have now been known for more than 10 years."

And the EPA you ask? 

The ban in Germany, and Cummins’ call for a U.S. ban, should be no surprise to the EPA. The agency’s own fact sheet on clothianidin shows that it has known of the dangers to bees since it conditionally approved the chemical in 2003.

…

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Natural Resources Defense Council is pressing for research information on clothianidin.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the pesticide in 2003 under the condition that Bayer submit additional data. A lawsuit, which the environmental group filed Aug. 19 in federal court in Washington, accuses the EPA of hiding the honeybee data.

Source 1 Source 2 

As reported by the Wooster Collective:

After leaving New Orleans, it appears that Banksy is now heading through the Deep South.

The piece below was spotted on an old abandoned Chevron Station near Birmingham Alabama. (We're told it's somewhere between where the 59 Freeway meets the 65 going South near a large Home Depot on the 59)

Link

Previously about Banksy on P&F:

Banksy in New Orleans

Graffiti artist Banksy pulls off most audacious stunt to date - despite being watched by CCTV

Banksy returns to Bethlehem

Banksy's debt to Warhol revealed in London show

Photos from Banksy’s Cans Festival — 05.07.08

Time lapse video of Banky's 'Cans Festival'

Who hasn't felt like doing this:

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Furious rail commuters in Argentina set fire to a train on Thursday in anger over delays during the morning rush hour.

Television images showed black smoke and flames engulfing the train at the station of Merlo, in the western suburbs of the capital, Buenos Aires. At nearby Castelar, passengers hurled stones at the ticket office and blocked the rails.

"We understand that people get angry when the service is delayed or canceled, but they absolutely can't attack a public service in this way," Gustavo Gago, a spokesman for rail company TBA, told local television.

Many passengers said the delays, caused by a broken down train, had cost them a day's work.

Argentina's dilapidated rail services are plagued by delays and travelers' anger sometimes erupts into violence.

Last year, commuters torched a carriage at a station south of the capital and rioting broke out at a main railway station when passengers clashed with police, causing dozens of injuries and arrests.

Link

The bonus challenge: make the soap look like bacon.

Of course if you don't have the time, you can buy some ready-made bacon soap here. 

Other Israeli towns have taken a less high-tech approach to the problem

Officials in an Israeli city have come up with an innovative way of tracking dog owners who allow their pets to foul the streets - DNA analysis.

Authorities in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, are setting up a special DNA database of local dogs.

They will use the data to match dogs' droppings to owners - and punish those who do not clean up after their pets.

While those who keep the streets clear will be rewarded, owners who fail to scoop the poop could face fines.

"My goal is to get the residents involved and tell them that together, we can make our environment clean," Tika Bar-On, the city's chief veterinarian, told Reuters news agency.

Owners were reacting positively to the six-month trial programme, she told the agency, because they wanted their streets to be clean.

At the moment providing a DNA sample was up to individual dog owners, but the city was considering making it compulsory, she added.

Failure to clear up dog mess is not confined to Petah Tikva. In the UK, some councils have resorted to using CCTV and undercover patrols to identify offenders in particular trouble spots.

Other have given away free bags to encourage owners to pick up after their dogs.

Source

LONDON—A repentant robber in England sent his elderly victim a bouquet of flowers to apologize for frightening her, police said Friday. A 91-year-old woman received the flowers and a note after confronting a burglar in her home around 4 a.m. on Oct. 9, police said.

The card explained that the burglar thought the property in Halifax, about 200 miles north of London, was empty and apologized for breaking in.

Police said the woman was "very shaken" by the confrontation.

"Whoever did this has a conscience, and feels guilty for what he has done," West Yorkshire Police Det. Insp. Tony Nicholson said in a statement.

Police said the burglar fled the house empty-handed and appealed for him to come forward.

Source

found image

From Science Daily: 

College students often spend their free time thinking about beer, but a group of Rice University students are taking it to the next level. They're using genetic engineering to create beer that contains resveratrol, a chemical in wine that's been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease in lab animals.

Rice's "BioBeer" will be entered in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition Nov. 8-9 in Cambridge, Mass. It's the world's largest synthetic biology competition, a contest where teams use a standard toolkit of DNA building blocks -- think genetic LEGO blocks -- to create living organisms that do odd things.

Notable past iGEM creations include sheets of bacteria that behave like photographic film and bacteria that smell like mint while they're growing but like bananas when they stop growing. Rice's student-led iGEM team -- the Rice BiOWLogists -- are returning for a third year. Their entry last year, a bacterial virus that fought antibiotic resistance, was well-received but finished out of the prize running.

"After last year's contest, we were sitting around talking about what we'd do this year," said junior Taylor Stevenson. "(Graduate student) Peter Nguyen made a joke about putting resveratrol into beer, but none of us took it seriously."

But when the team began looking in earnest for a new project this spring, they discovered a good bit of published literature about modifying yeast with resveratrol-related genes. When they looked further, they found two detailed accounts by teams that had attacked both halves of the metabolic problem independently.

"That was when we said, 'You know, we could actually do this,'" said junior Thomas Segall-Shapiro.

Ironically, most of the team's undergraduate members aren't old enough to legally drink beer. But the reality is that with less than a month to go until the competition, the team has yet to brew a drop. All their work to date has gone into creating a genetically modified strain of yeast that will ferment beer and produce resveratrol at the same time. While the team does plan to brew a few test batches in coming weeks, these will contain some unappetizing chemical "markers" that will be needed for the experiments.

"There's no way anyone's drinking any of this until we get rid of that, not to mention that there's only one genetically modified strain of yeast that's ever been approved for use in beer, period," said Segall-Shapiro. "In short, it will be a long time before anybody consumes any of this."

Continue reading

From The Baltimore Sun:

Funeral home decides to celebrate 80th anniversary with replica Elvis casket, impersonator

BARTONVILLE, Ill. (AP) _ The owners of Endsley Funeral Home in Bartonville wanted to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the business by putting a little "fun" into "funeral." So, for their open house Saturday, they put a replica of Elvis Presley's 650-pound casket on display and hired Elvis impersonator Dave Stovall to dance around it and sing a few of the King's most famous songs.

Stovall said he was so impressed by the casket he wanted to lie down in it for a while.

Embalmer Stephanie Van Oppen explained the apparent irreverence by saying the staff wanted people to have fun at the funeral home for once, and get to know that its employees aren't creepy and weird.

Nearly 300 people from Peoria and Tazewell counties attended the bash.

I like that Ted Kennedy is 'Sunburn'!

Secret Service codenames are a throwback to the period before electronic transmissions were encrypted. Although they serve no practical security function today, the US Army Signal Corps still assigns codenames (mostly out of tradition).

Source

Video after the link. From Gizmodo:

This video shows how FEMA no only deals with credible threats as hurricanes and terrorist attacks, but also with credible threats like alien attacks and UFO crashes: They have an entire chapter dedicated to this topic in their firefighters manual. Great. As if it wasn't enough with the UK government revealing airplane encounters with UFOs and Hubble discovering unidentified objects in Space to fuel my absolutely cuckoo, sculpt-giant-mountains-out-of-mash-potatoes, I-hope aliens-are-two-meter-tall-buxom-blue-amazons, I-want-to-ride-a-warp-capable-spaceship fantasies.

A Swiss researcher said Thursday he had hit on an unlikely way of recreating the unique sound of a Stradivarius violin -- by treating the wood of a replica instrument with mushrooms. 

Francis Schwarze of the Zurich-based Federal Materials, Science and Technology Institute (EMPA), made a replica of a violin by the Italian master Antonio Stradivari from the year 1698, which was presented this week at the "Swiss Innovation Forum" in Basel.

Schwarze found that treating the maple wood used for the violin with "Xylaria longipes" mushrooms -- which grow on the bark of trees -- meant the sound quality was akin to an original Strad.

This mushroom lightly "nibbles" away at the wood's surface, thus reducing its density and improving the sound of the violin as a result.

"It has a very good sound and also carries well," violin maker Michael Rhonheimer said of the replica.

"I am convinced that the wood treatment at the EMPA has made an audible improvement."

Source

From holavalencia:

El Gordo, the “big one”, is the most important prize in the Spanish Christmas Lottery — the largest lottery in the world. This year, there’s €2.3 billion in prizes (about 3 billion dollars). There’s a word for that: CRAZY.

Also: EXCITING. Roughly 18% of participants stand a chance at winning something, which ain’t bad odds. There are a limited amount of tickets; in 2006 there were 85,000 numbers. At €200, tickets are expensive, so they’re also sold in décimos at €20 apiece. If you hold a décimo of a winning number, you get 10%.

more  [via neatorama]

Police seek blow-up doll sex bandit

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man broke into three adult shops, had sex with blow up dolls named "Jungle Jane" and then dumped his plastic conquests in a nearby alley, local media reported Wednesday.

"It's totally bizarre. It's a real concern that someone like that is out on the street," said one of the owners of the adult sex shops in Cairns in northern Queensland state.

"He has been taking the dolls out the back and blowing them up and using the dolls and leaving them in the alley," the owner, who gave the name of Vogue, told the Cairns Post newspaper.

Police told the Cairns Post that scientific officers had taken DNA samples, fingerprints and pictures of the crime scene. Link

400 Russian men and women use inflatable sex dolls as flotation devices on river run

From article: The unusual sporting event was dreamed up by mastermind and organiser Dmitry Bulawinov. He said the idea of floating down the river in the embraces of a rubber woman was conceived as a joke at a party where...

Chinese confuse Russian kids with gender bending dolls

 From englishrussia: Lately some Russian newspapers post photos of these strange Chinese dolls. You can see the scanned piece of article from one Russian regional newspaper. The reason for the panic is that in Russian children toy stores have appeared strange...

An artist’s complicated relationship with her look-alike sex doll

Real Dolls and the men who love them…

Over the last few weeks I've been running into articles on this topic including an excellent documentary by Channel 4. Link to documentary 'Guys and Dolls'. This phenomenom is not to restricted to Japan, if you've watched the video above...

Poupées gonflées! (Mildly NSFW)

From Scott Beale over at Laughing Squid:

Timed with today’s Inauguration, Bush Street signs in San Francisco were changed to Obama down the entire length of Bush Street from Presidio to Battery.

Link to "obamastreetsign" flickr set

For 30 Euros, a group of enterprising Palestinian graffiti artists are offering to tag the West Bank wall with your message.

Clip:

It could turn out to be the world's longest graffiti space - the massive concrete barrier separating Israel from the Palestinians.

Over the Internet, a group of Palestinian graffiti artists is offering to spray-paint your personal message on Israel's towering security wall in the occupied West Bank.

It costs 30 euros (NZ$75) per message and they can be as solemn or wacky as you want. Everything goes, except for obscene, offensive or extremist hate speech. Clients get three digital pictures of the finished product.

The 8-metre high barrier of massive concrete slabs is part of a 620-km fence Israel says is intended to keep suicide bombers out, and which can be dismantled at some point in the future when peace reigns. Source

 

dustinkeirstead

kari_cass

filippo minelli

JJ San

amerune

yobosayo

These images were found randomly, if you are looking for more of Banksy's West Bank wall project try this link.

Believe it or not, this little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

And $1 BILLION dollars

What one Trillion looks like…

These pallets are DOUBLE stacked.

Georgia Max Coffee chose to redesign the toilets of a number of key ski resorts in Japan. The cubicles were fully wrapped on all sides, so that the person caught short would have a ski jumper’s view when they were sitting on the loo. The person could look down at their skis (simply printed on the floor of the cubicle) and see the steep ski jump slope ahead of them. The toilet paper holder carried the only brand messaging in the cubicle, reading: “Seriously kick-ass intensely sweet for the real coffee super zinging unstoppable Max! Taste-explosion!” The message also featured the URL www.maxcoffee.jp, where visitors could view videos of extreme sports as well as sign up to the MAX community.

Client: Coca-Cola 

VIA

Previously:

• Loo with a view — The world's toilets with the best vistas
• Bizarre collection of bathroom signs

cortesy of Laughing Squid

cortesy of Laughing Squid

cortesy of Laughing Squid

cortesy of Michael Bolger

image by TeeRish

From The Guardian:

Referee books Chorlton Villa player for distracting rival with 'ungentlemanly conduct' at key moment in match...

The drive to bring good manners back to football has reached new heights after a referee issued a yellow card to a player for "breaking wind" as a penalty was being taken.

The official deemed the act "ungentlemanly conduct" and booked the player responsible. However Chorlton Villa, who conceded a goal on the second take, went on to win the match 6-4 against local rivals International Manchester FC at Turn Moss in Stretford, Manchester, last Sunday.

The article goes on to say:

"This has come at a bad time in the season as we don't have sponsor and we are looking for a new sponsor for next season."

Heinz Beans perhaps? I'll stop there—oh wait pull my finger.