‘The mayor of an Arkansas town resigned on Wednesday, claiming he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshippers nearly three decades ago.
Centerton Mayor Ken Williams said he has been living under an assumed name for nearly 30 years. He had been mayor since 2001.
Williams told authorities he was born Don LaRose and that in the mid-1970s, he was a preacher in Indiana. He said he was abducted and brainwashed into forgetting all about his life as Don LaRose.
It was a double-life he had never acknowledged, Williams said, because he didn’t even realize it existed until he had recently taken a truth-serum injection.’
A grandmother’s reaction to 2 Girls, 1 Cup.
(3.5meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Carol, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of making herself or her land a target for vandals, called for help recently when she arrived at some vacant property she owns in east Austin and found her security chain gone.
She grabbed her new Casio G’zOne phone from Verizon Wireless, which to her horror made an audible alarm when she called 911.
Fearing vandals were still on the property, she hung up and hid, then put her hand over the earpiece and dialed again to muffle the sounds.
“I was afraid the criminals were down the driveway and they would hear and they would know somebody was doing something and they would come out to stop me,” she said.
The alarm is not ear-splitting, but it is loud enough to be heard at least several yards away.’
A friend of mine said she’d shave her head if she could get $1,000 in donations towards education for some kids in Kenya. Apparently people like to help children in Kenya, or they really want to see her with no hair. Either way, the money was raised and the hair came off.
Kenyans will be able to read, and muppet’s skull will be cold. It’s a win-win situation.
I think she should glue the hair she’s chopped off to her boyfriend’s face whilst he sleeps so he wakes up thinking he’s a wolfman. That would be a win-win-win situation. 🙂
Hopefully there’ll be a wolfman video in the near future, but for now the video of the hair removal will have to suffice. 🙂
Good stuff!
(9.3meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Gropecunt Lane was a name used in English-speaking towns and cities in the Middle Ages for streets where prostitutes conducted their business. In most cases, the name would appear to derive directly from the words grope (sexual touching), and cunt (female genitalia). At one point there were streets of this name in many cities in Britain and Ireland, though in most cases later sensibilities changed the name to some more polite variation.
In London, the street that was Gropecunt Lane was near the present-day site of the Barbican Centre in the City of London. The street was called Grub Street in the 18th century, but renamed Milton Street in 1830. It is possible that the street known as Gropecunte Lane is now known as Threadneedle Street, however.’
‘Astronomers have discovered white dwarf stars with pure carbon atmospheres. These stars possibly evolved in a sequence astronomers didn’t know before.
They may have evolved from stars that are not quite massive enough to explode as supernovae but are just on the borderline. All but the most massive two or three percent of stars eventually die as white dwarfs rather than explode as supernovae.
When a star burns helium, it leaves “ashes” of carbon and oxygen. When its nuclear fuel is exhausted, the star then dies as a white dwarf, which is an extremely dense object that packs the mass of our sun into an object about the size of Earth. Astronomers believe that most white dwarf stars have a core made of carbon and oxygen which is hidden from view by a surrounding atmosphere of hydrogen or helium.
They didn’t expect stars with carbon atmospheres.’
‘Put your butt to use: Cigarette butts are a perfect fit for gun barrels and can help keep out dirt, sand or water. And they shoot out easily when the weapon is fired. For non-smokers, there are other options: in Vietnam, soldiers rubber-banded condoms around the tops of their guns.’
‘A homeless contractor known as the “mole man” dug a multi-room 200-square foot home underground in Fresno that surprised police when they recently stumbled upon a hidden entrance. [..]
The home had a bed, a leak-proof roof, a kitchen and escape hatch, Local 6 reported.
Tracy said it took him about 2 months with a shovel and other tools to carve out the underground rooms.
The state said it is a danger to people living nearby and plan to demolish it.
Tracy said it is no big deal and he is already looking for a new location for his next underground home.’
<dude> this is belgium at its best
<dude> our minister of defense takes a chopper to fly 60 kms to go see Al Gore's movie about climate change
<dude> beat that
‘The capacity for free will is said to reside in the brain’s frontal lobes, which enable us to decide what actions we will take. Now researchers have discovered a spot in the frontal lobes that could be called the home of our “free won’t.”
The dorsal fronto-median cortex (dFMC), located in the center of the brain behind the forehead, becomes active when we inhibit an action, according to the authors of a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers Marcel Brass and Patrick Haggard think this may explain why some people are less adept at restraining their impulses.
“The capacity to withhold an action that we have prepared but reconsidered is an important distinction between intelligent and impulsive behavior,” said Brass, of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences and of Ghent University. This could have significant neuroethical implications, the authors state in their paper, since the inability to restrain impulses has been linked to antisocial and criminal behavior.’
‘A man is caught, by a forest ranger, sitting at a makeshift campfire, and to the ranger’s horror, eating a bald eagle. The man is consequently put in jail for the crime. On the day of his trail, the conversation went something like this:
JUDGE: “Do you know that eating a bald eagle is a federal offense?”
MAN: “Yes I do. But if you let me argue my case, I’ll explain what happened.”
JUDGE: “Proceed.”
see it here »
‘New research is pointing to a different possibility: There may be no adaptive advantage provided by schizophrenia in and of itself, but rather from some genes that contribute to the disease. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, there is evidence that some of the gene variants associated with schizophrenia—especially a mutation in a gene called disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (DISC1)—have been selected for by evolution. This supports the idea that the disease may be a maladaptive combination of mutations that individually have the potential to enhance fitness. It could be a more complicated version of the familiar case of sickle cell anemia: having two mutant copies of a certain gene causes the disease, whereas having only one mutant copy provides protection against malaria.’
‘This time I went for chip wood board to get it straight and stable. I also used a 4 layer glass. Two outer layers of 3mm float glass and two inner layers of 3mm plexi glass where the image were engraved. I had to use plexiglass as it conducts light way better than normal glass.’
If I had one tho, it would probably being a glowing goatse door. Because goatse is always funny. 🙂
This is the wiki entry for Syphilis. Why, you ask? Because this small part of it amuses me greatly:
‘Until that time, as Fracastoro notes, syphilis had been called the “French disease” in Italy and Germany, and the “Italian disease” in France. In addition, the Dutch called it the “Spanish disease”, the Russians called it the “Polish disease”, the Turks called it the “Christian disease” or “Frank disease” (frengi) and the Tahitians called it the “British disease”.’
Also, the spiral shape of the organism is cool. That’s all. 🙂
‘The immense fossilised claw of a 2.5m-long (8ft) sea scorpion has been described by European researchers.
The 390-million-year-old specimen was found in a Germany quarry, the journal Biology Letters reports.
The creature, which has been named Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, would have paddled in a river or swamp.
The size of the beast suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought, the team says.
The claw itself measures 46cm – indicating its owner would have been longer even than the average-sized human.’
‘Attacks against British and Iraqi forces have plunged by 90 percent in southern Iraq since London withdrew its troops from the main city of Basra, the commander of British forces there said Thursday.
The presence of British forces in downtown Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, was the single largest instigator of violence, Maj. Gen. Graham Binns told reporters Thursday on a visit to Baghdad’s Green Zone.
“We thought, ‘If 90 percent of the violence is directed at us, what would happen if we stepped back?'” Binns said.
Britain’s 5,000 troops moved out of a former Saddam Hussein palace at Basra’s heart in early September, setting up a garrison at an airport on the city’s edge. Since that pullback, there’s been a “remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks,” Binns said.
“The motivation for attacking us was gone, because we’re no longer patrolling the streets,” he said.’
So the server move didn’t go quite as planned. Image site was basically fucked in the arse all weekend.
I still declare myself victorious in the cunning department tho. Ha! .. The migration itself went okay, just a few unforseen problems with server load and actually letting people view the site once it was migrated. 🙂
The whole thing is suddenly rather interesting, and may take a bit of my time this week.
For now, once some DNS changes sort themselves out, the image site should be running properly again. 🙂
I’ve just spent the day moving the image site to a new server. You crazy hippies seem to quite like the pictures, and bandwidth is an ever growing problem.
But, I think I have it sorted now. 🙂
If I am as cunning as I think I am, the transition to the new server should be seamless and no one will notice anything [except the ratings stars disappearing until I figure out how I broke them 🙂 ].
If I’m as cunning as reality actually suggests I am, there may be a bit of downtime on the image site over the next day or two.
Time will decide. 🙂
If anyone notices any problems/improvements with speed or reliability or anything like that over the next little while, it’d be nice if you would leave a comment or send me a message to let me know.
‘Customer: I had an appointment today (Sunday) between 10-12 & nobody came.
Me: OK, tomorrow is the appointment.
Customer: But it was set for the 10th.
Me: Tomorrow is the 10th.
Customer: Somebody is messing with my brain. I have a hand-drawn calendar behind me. So the appointment is for Tuesday, the 10th.
Me: MONDAY, the 10th.
Customer: Whoa, you’re blowin’ my mind here.’
‘When I was 17 i was at school doing a veterinary studies course, and as part of that course, we had to complete 2 full weeks of work experience at a vet clinic of our choice. Okay, no worries, I can handle that…right?
Um NO. [..]
The second week, a puppy was brought in to the clinic. It had scruffy black fur, and even though it was pretty dopey looking, I thought it was cute.
They placed it down on one of the tables and I stood by and watched what I assumed would be a routine check-up or something.’
‘Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).
In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. “Being poor sucks,” Lisi says. “It’s hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you’re trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month.”
Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.’
‘Spain’s King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to “shut up” as the Ibero-American summit drew to a close in Santiago, Chile.
The outburst came after Mr Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a “fascist”.
Mr Chavez then interrupted Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s calls for him to be more diplomatic, prompting the king’s outburst. [..]
Mr Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, despite his microphone being turned off. The king leaned forward and said: “Why don’t you shut up?”
According to reports, the king used a familiar term normally used only for close acquaintances – or children.’
‘A Perth man has been charged with attempted murder after a 25-year-old man was shot in the buttocks and stomach during an argument over loud music.
Police alleged the younger man was at his Boddington home with friends when a 56-year-old man visiting neighbours began arguing with him about the loud music.
The older man allegedly threatened the residents with a piece of timber before he left and returned with a rifle.’
‘back in the 1920s george bennie designed and built the railplane, a propeller-driven monorail initially intended to travel between glasgow and edinburgh.
the design was way ahead of its time, the railplane capsule home to a 4-blade propeller at each end, each of these powered by its own electric motor – the result a cruising speed of 120mph.’
‘Donald Kerr, a top intelligence official with the US government, says that citizens need to change their definition of privacy to match the government’s definition, the AP reports. Appointed Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in 2005, Kerr is now the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Kerr is one of many in the intelligence community who finds Americans’ views on privacy to be antiquated and unreasonable. [..]
Americans need to shift their definition of privacy to center instead on the proper maintenance and protection of personal data by government and business entities. Kerr said that “privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured. And it is that framework that we need to grow and nourish and adjust as our cultures change.”‘
‘British supermarkets are selling beer at prices cheaper than water and soft drinks, with cans sold for as little as 50 cents.
Supermarkets were stocking shelves with beer priced so low they were actually losing money, the Mail on Sunday reported.
Experts estimated that the supermarkets were losing up to 18c per can through excise and production costs, the newspaper said.
Many of the major supermarkets were now selling beer for just 50 pence ($1.15) a litre. The same supermarkets sell mineral water for 56p-92p a litre.
Own-brand cola sells for 56p-65p.
The British health department has commissioned an independent review of alcohol pricing and promotion and has not ruled out changing regulations.’
‘Car hoons will be penalised and humiliated under a NSW government initiative to wreck the vehicles of offenders and publish video footage of the destruction.
Premier Morris Iemma says the plan proposes to destroy hoons’ cars in demonstration tests under controlled conditions.
“Car hoons engage in potentially lethal, property destroying, anti-social behaviour,” Mr Iemma said in a statement today.
“We’re turning the tables. We’ll destroy their property – but do it for the right reasons.”‘
