‘Here’s an interesting conundrum involving nuclear decay rates.
We think that the decay rates of elements are constant regardless of the ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields).
So that makes it hard to explain the curious periodic variations in the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226 observed by groups at the Brookhaven National Labs in the US and at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesandstalt in Germany in the 1980s.
Today, the story gets even more puzzling. Jere Jenkins and pals at Purdue University in Indiana have re-analysed the raw data from these experiments and say that the modulations are synchronised with each other and with Earth’s distance from the sun. (Both groups, in acts of selfless dedication, measured the decay rates of siliocn-32 and radium-226 over a period of many years.)
In other words, there appears to be an annual variation in the decay rates of these elements.’
‘Two “modern day Ninjas” calling themselves Shinobi Warriors on a quest to rid the area of drug users and drug dealers have been put out of business by police.
On Wednesday at 2:35 a.m. police officers approached a car parked in the left lane of Route 46 east and found two Clifton men dressed in black claiming to be Ninjas. The men were wearing tactical vests and armed with knives in sheaths at their waists along with Ninja throwing knives, Chinese throwing stars, four-pointed tacks, swords, bows and arrows and nunchucks, said detective Capt. Robert Rowan.
The two men, Jesse Trojaniak, 19, and Tadieusz Tertkiewicz, 20, told police they were “modern day Ninjas” also called Shinobi Warriors on their way to deliver warning letters to known drug dealers and drug users to stop their “impure” activities. They told police they planned to leave the letters on the front doors of these individuals they had singled out.
Their weapons, Rowan said, were to be a precaution in case they were confronted by the drug dealers.
The officers located five envelopes decorated with red Chinese designs containing the letters to be delivered. Reports show the two men had already delivered one such letter to Tertkiewicz’ 16-year-old ex-girlfriend in Clifton. Police contacted the teen and her mother and alerted them to the situation. Tertkiewicz was charged with harassment, both were charged with weapons possession.’
‘On the 22nd May 1975 (1974) I was convicted, at the Old bailey, of attempting to kidnap Her Royal Highness Princess Anne.
From the accompanying document entitled ‘Hoax Explanation’ you can see that I did not attempt to kidnap Princess Anne – the whole incident was just an elaborate hoax.
You can also see, from the document, that it is easy to prove the incident was a hoax – all you have to do is prove that the incident took place on the 20th March 1975 and not the 20th March 1974 as the authorities are asserting. This will prove that is was a hoax because it means that, when I was outside, I was living one year behind everybody else and the amount of contact Frank and his associates would have had to have with me to maintain the time deception proves that it would have been impossible for me to plan and execute a real kidnap attempt.
£1MILLION REWARD
As I am desperate to get out of Broadmoor, I am offering a £1Million reward to the first person who proves the incident was a hoax.’
‘A cat taking a nap on the roof of an ambulance woke to find itself going along on an emergency callout at speeds of up to 100km/h.
Chloe’s snooze ended in a hair-raising 13km trip from Port Douglas to Oak Beach in north Queensland with lights flashing and siren blaring all the way, The Cairns Post reported today.
Chloe’s owner and paramedic Myles White got a huge shock when an extremely distressed meow alerted him to a “goggle-eyed” cat sitting on the roof. [..]
“When I took her down, she was all fluffed up and her eyes were a bit blown out and she did a big ‘Help, get me off’ meow.”‘
‘Me: caucasian, white yoga capris and tan tank top
you: Latino, 5’8, in your twenties, sports jersey, short hair, mole on your face.
You might have been following me for a while, Mr. Perv, I don’t know – I was on the phone with my mother, venting about my roommate situation (we had to find a new one) and my job search (like, I need a job), when you snuck up behind me, and gently squeezed my ass. Not just the top of my ass, but kinda low, kinda close to my you-know-what, if you know what I mean.
You know, even my boyfriend needs permission to get that close, so having a perfect stranger attempt access so suddenly, so completely out of the blue, triggered my fight-or-flight response. And I *fight*. [..]’
‘The bedridden woman, who weighs nearly half a ton – 1,000 pounds or over 71 stone – is accused of killing her two-year-old nephew.
A grand jury indicted Mayra Lizbeth Rosales, 27, on a charge of first degree murder on Thursday and ordered her bail be set at $150,000.
Hidalgo County District Attorney Rene Guerra Rosales told local television news he hoped to take the woman into custody as early as Friday but did not go into detail as to how this would be done.
Lupe Trevino, Hidalgo County Sheriff, said holding Rosales at the county jail for the duration of her trial would be impossible because she needs extensive medical care.
“She would die,” said Mr Trevino.’
‘James Robinson is a retired Air National Guard brigadier general and a commercial pilot for a major airline who flies passenger planes around the country.
Eight-year-old James Robinson isn’t sure what “terrorist” means, but he’s on the government list, too.
He has even been certified by the Transportation Security Administration to carry a weapon into the cockpit as part of the government’s defense program should a terrorist try to commandeer a plane.
But there’s one problem: James Robinson, the pilot, has difficulty even getting to his plane because his name is on the government’s terrorist “watch list.”
That means he can’t use an airport kiosk to check in; he can’t do it online; he can’t do it curbside. Instead, like thousands of Americans whose names match a name or alias used by a suspected terrorist on the list, he must go to the ticket counter and have an agent verify that he is James Robinson, the pilot, and not James Robinson, the terrorist.
“Shocking’s a good word; frustrating,” Robinson — the pilot — said. “I’m carrying a weapon, flying a multimillion-dollar jet with passengers, but I’m still screened as, you know, on the terrorist watch list.”‘
‘German police have confiscated what may be the world’s fastest office chair. Police say officers happened on the contraption – the work of two inventive 17-year-olds – in the western town of Gross-Zimmern on Saturday.
The pair had added a lawnmower engine, bicycle brakes and a metal frame to the revolving chair – making into a go-kart-like vehicle.
Police said in a statement Monday the inventors insisted they had only tested it over a few meters, but witnesses reported seeing it on several streets.
They are being investigated over a variety of possible offenses, including defying insurance regulations, driving without a license and violating registration requirements.
Police did not say what top speed the chair could reach.’
‘Organisers of the Beijing Olympics have taken the fight against ambush marketing to a new level, covering up the tiny brand stamps on fixtures at all venues including those found on bathroom fittings such as urinals and toilet roll holders.
In the Main Press Centre on the Olympic Green that is home to 5600 accredited news and photographic journalists, tiny, shiny stickers have been applied to every basin, urinal, toilet, soap and paper towel dispenser, toilet roll holder and automatic hand drier.
The same goes for fixtures used in the official media villages and all of the off site Olympic venues, including those which were not purpose-built for the Games.
In some cases, the cover-up extends to the brand signage found inside the rim of the toilet.’
‘ A group of people claiming to be the heirs of the legendary Knights Templar are suing Pope Benedict XVI, seeking more than $150 billion for assets seized by the Catholic Church seven centuries ago.
They also want to restore the order’s good name. Founded in 1119, the Knights Templar was a secretive order of Christian warriors who protected pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem during the Crusades. They fell out of favor years later, and members were accused of denying Christ, worshipping the devil and practicing sodomy. Many Templars were tortured and burned at the stake.
In 1307, Pope Clement V accused the order of heresy and officially dissolved it. [..]
Last fall, the Vatican published secret documents about the trial of the Templars in a book called Processus Contra Templarios, Latin for “Trial Against the Templars.” The volume included a parchment apparently showing that, contrary to historic belief, Clement had absolved the order of heresy.
Now, a group called the Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ has filed suit in a Spanish court, asking for an apology from the pope and recognition that land and property worth about $150 billion today was seized from the Templars.’
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‘A man was arrested Monday night after he allegedly threatened to kill his brother during an argument over a ladder.
Benjamin Brunson, 71, told police he was upset with his 60-year-old brother, Jesse, because Jesse used a ladder. Benjamin Brunson admitted he told his brother, “I will kill you,” to “get him scared of me, make him cool off,” a police report states.
When police arrived at the brothers’ home in the 800 block of North 10th Street shortly after 6:30 p.m., Jesse Brunson confirmed that the disagreement was about a ladder, according to the report. Jesse Brunson told police he feared that his older brother was capable of carrying out the threat.
While police were there, the two men kept arguing and officers felt that a fight was imminent, the report states.’
‘A Russian advertising executive who sued her boss for sexual harassment lost her case after a judge ruled that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race.
The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia’s history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.
She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.
“He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word,” she earlier told the court. “I didn’t realise at first that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.”
The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.
“If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled.’
‘A British man has been banned from visiting his girlfriend’s home after neighbours complained about noisy sex, a local official said today.
A court barred Adam Hinton, 32, from being within 100 metres of his 29-year-old girlfriend Kerry Norris’ apartment, Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman Mike Taggart said.
Residents of Norris’s home had been complaining since 2006 about thumping music, banging headboards and screamed obscenities, Taggart said.
Neighbours also complained about Norris sunbathing naked in her yard, and were upset that a six-year-old child in the building had been “subjected to the sort of obscenities you wouldn’t want a six-year-old to hear,” the spokesman said.’
‘Meet Gordon, probably the world’s first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue.
Created from cultured rat neurons, Gordon’s primitive grey matter was designed at the UK’s University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine yesterday.
Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the basic building blocks of memory and learning, a lead researcher said.
“The purpose is to figure out how memories are stored in a biological brain,” said Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading and one of the robot’s principle architects.’
‘A Cambodian father and mechanic learned the hard way not to inflate children when he inserted an air hose designed to fill car tyres into his five-year-old son’s anus and blew him up, local media reported on Thursday.
The Khmer-language Rasmei Kampuchea daily reported Try Sienghym was “playing” with his son Sok Sambo when the incident took place.
The paper said the child’s stomach became distended and his concerned mother rushed him to hospital, where he remains in a stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery.
“The father very much regrets playing like this now,” the paper quoted a family member as saying.’
This week, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—the world’s most powerful particle accelerator—began test runs, sending a stream of protons around a quarter of its 27-kilometer circumference. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (known as CERN), in Geneva, Switzerland, where the LHC is housed, says the tests are part of the preparations for the machine’s projected 10 September start-up date.
The experiment will hurtle two hair-thin beams of hundreds of trillions of protons around a ring-shaped accelerator at 99.99 percent the speed of light, knocking the beams together 11 000 times each second. According to CERN LHC accelerator physicist Rüdiger Schmidt, who is in charge of machine protection systems, each unimpeded beam is capable of melting a 500-kilogram block of copper.
Even the slightest malfunction could lead to a catastrophic accident, so CERN has spent nearly two decades devising an interlocking system of fail-safes. One of these is a method of safely purging a proton beam, which has a higher chance of becoming unstable the longer it is whipped around the circular accelerator. Every 10 hours the accelerator gets fresh beams. But first the old ones are dumped into specially designed absorbers called beam dump blocks.’
We never thought we’d find a place where we belong.
Don’t have to stand alone, we’ll never let you fall..
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‘First off, I must say that I admire your courage. It must be hard living in the world today as a lady-beast. Society judges, oh lord do they ever.
With that said, let’s get down to business. Over the past year, we’ve had a funny sort of relationship, you and I. When I first moved into the place, it was rather peaceful. It was an exciting time in my life, as it was the first time I would be living by myself. Then came the day that I first heard it. What did I hear you ask? It was sound of your hooves galloping across the hardwood floors of your living room. At the time I thought, “No big deal, surely it can’t always be like this.” Oh was I wrong. It turned out that every time I was at home, you would be up there, stomping around, like the wild lady-beast that you are.
After a few weeks, I determined through a process of elimination, that you are in fact, a Minotaur. It only makes sense.’
Hooray for automatic profanity filters. 🙂
‘A woman who made news around the world when she had five pups cloned from her beloved pit bull Booger looked very familiar to some who saw her picture: She’s the same woman who 31 years earlier was accused of abducting a Mormon missionary in England, handcuffing him to a bed and making him her sex slave.
Dog lover Bernann McKinney acknowledged in a telephone call to The Associated Press on Saturday that she is indeed Joyce McKinney, who in 1977 became a British tabloid sensation when she faced charges of unlawful imprisonment in the missionary case. She jumped bail and was never brought to justice.
Through tears, she explained that she went public with her efforts to replicate Booger, who died two years ago, hoping people would be able to focus on that story rather than the ”garbage” of the past.
”I thought people would be honest enough to see me as a person who was trying to do something good and not as a celebrity,” McKinney told the AP. ”My mother always taught me, ‘Say something good or say nothing at all.”’
”I think I gave people too much credit,” she said.’
Follow up to US dog lover clones pet five times.
‘We’ve all done it. Someone asks for your phone number and you gladly give it, only to later realize you gave them one number out of order or something and they’re calling some random stranger now.
A UK police department did much the same thing, except instead of a phone number it was a website and instead of reaching some random guy they saw several random guys do some very adult oriented things to each other.
The police department in Sussex, a county in the South of England, was attempting to promote Operation Beat Sweep, a massive program aimed at helping end crime by tackling anti-social behaviour in the community.
To help promote the initiative they passed out leaflets on Operation Beat Sweep. The leaflets encouraged anybody who had further questions to visit the police website at www.sussexpolice.co.uk. There’s just one problem, the actual URL for Sussex Police is www.sussex.police.uk. The first URL, and the one the leaflet encouraged citizens to visit, is actually a hardcore gay porn site.’
‘the bathroom door was half-open, so i thought no one was using it, and i catch my gf standing legs spread on either side of the toilet — DROPPING TURDS! wtf!? right as she’s squeezing off a real long and heavy one, she says: “INCOMING!” and makes bomb-dropping noises. “captain! we’re under attack! we’ve been hit! fire in the hole!”
then she looks up at me, sort of sheepish and blushes and quickly assumes the “normal” position. “just a little game i sometimes play when i’m bored,” she says as she starts to wipe herself.
my jaw is still on the floor and i’m speechless. “whatever…..” i mumble as i head for the door. [..]’
Take off your shoes and suck me sexy..
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‘A lawsuit filed Monday in California seeks class action status alleging that Apple denied technical staffers required overtime pay and meal compensation in violation of state law.
Filed in the US District Court for Southern California, the complaint claims that many Apple employees are routinely subjected to working conditions resembling indentured servitude.
Lead plaintiff David Walsh was employed by Apple as a network engineer from 1995 until 2007. His complaint says he was often required to work more than 40 hours per week, miss meals, and spend his evenings and even entire weekends on call without any overtime pay or meal compensation. He fielded technical support calls that often came after 11 pm.’
‘A twisted oddball with an insatiable animal fetish was arrested after allegedly having sex with 400 cows.
The 53-year-old cleaner told police he did not fancy women and only cows and horses got him randy.
Getulino Ferreira Paraizo said he chose the more tranquil animals before engaging in sex acts with them.
But police say it is even more bizarre.
They accuse him of torturing the animals, sometimes ripping out their eyes before having sex with them and then killing them.
Among the clues he left behind at every scene were empty packages of the same cookies.
Police found another packet on him when they arrested him.’
I assume they’re trying to raise money for retarded aeroplane pilots or something. 🙂
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‘This is something I put together myself..’
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‘A scriptwriter in Hollywood has become the first person to order a commercial firm to clone a pet. Bernann McKinney paid a Korean company US $50,000 for five copies of Booger – her beloved pit bull terrier who died recently.
The lab used ear tissue from the diseased dog to re-create Booger. The five puppies were born from two surrogate mothers in late June, according to Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper. [..]
McKinney became deeply attached to Booger after it allegedly saved her life by chasing off a ferocious mastiff. [..]
Ra Jeong-Chang is the CEO of RNL Bio – the company that did the cloning for McKinney. He said his next project will be cloning camels for Middle East sheikhs.’
‘An evil mother driven by rage and jealousy killed her five-year-old son to spite his father, a horrified coroner heard yesterday.
Emma Hart, 27, force-fed Lewis Dangerfield a lethal cocktail of painkillers and antidepressants at their home, then fled to her mother’s flat nearby and ended her own life by slashing her wrists.
In a note to Lewis’s father, Shaun Dangerfield, which she left by the boy’s body, she wrote: ‘I told you I would make you pay, enjoy your life now, nothing is stopping you, ha ha ha. Just remember it’s all your fault.’
Coroner Robin Balmain described the case as the most distressing he had ever dealt with in 25 years of inquests. ‘I can’t imagine something quite so evil as a mother who is prepared to do that.
‘Her actions were simply spite – she was prepared to kill her son to spite Mr Dangerfield. I find it difficult to believe how anybody could do that.”
