moonbuggy

A song for Matthew Newton.

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‘Police in the US have issued a bizarre warning to parents about a ‘paedophile’ cartoon bear that was created by a website as in internet joke. [..]

Now police in San Luis Obispo in California appear to have misunderstood the internet trend – or meme – and have warned parents that the Pedobear is being used by real paedophiles as a ‘mascot’.

In a po-faced newsletter that has made them the laughing stock of the internet, the Sheriff’s department has warned parents that some paedophiles are even dressing as the bear to signal their intentions.

The handout describes the bear’s ‘licentious love of little girls’ and warns that the character may be ‘lurking’ at family-friendly events. [..]

After being contacted by website Gawker, the San Luis Obispo police department has claimed that it has always known that Pedobear is just a joke but wanted to warn parents anyway.’

‘There’s a leak, there’s a leak in the boiler room..’

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‘Two paedophiles went looking for victims on the internet – and ended up trying to prey on each other.

One of the perverts, school support worker Brian Syme, posed as a teenage girl called “Nikki D” to lure young boys.

And the other, student monster Andrew Byrne, mistook the tubby 32-year-old for a child he could abuse.

But Byrne, who groomed 250 children and molested a string of youngsters, was stunned when his “victim” became “sexually aggressive” and demanded explicit pictures of him.

He was so surprised that he asked his target: “Are you sure you’re a girl?”

Both perverts are now in jail and Byrne is considered such a threat to children that he will be supervised for the rest of his life.’

‘A Salt Lake City mortgage company employee allegedly got drunk, opened fired on his firm’s computer server with a .45-caliber automatic, and then told police someone had stolen his gun and caused the damage. [..]

However, investigators allege that Campbell had been drinking that night at the Twilight Concert in Pioneer Park with a co-worker and had returned to his office afterward and shot the server.

A probable cause statement alleges that Campbell told police he had been “mugged, assaulted with his own firearm and drugged” by a mystery assailant.

However, acquaintances of Campbell reportedly told police he had earlier been drunk, was armed and had threatened to shoot the computer and maybe himself.’

‘Standing on a sea cliff howling at the moon.’

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‘Olympic bronze medalist Walter Dix edged out Tyson Gay in the former world champion’s hotly-anticipated return to the 200 meters at the Prefontaine Classic Diamond League meeting on Saturday. [..]

Gay, who has been battling a nagging hamstring problem for seven weeks, ran his first 200 of the year in 19.76 seconds to finish just shy of Dix, who took control coming off the bend and stayed in front to win in 19.72.

“It wasn’t bad, but I was a little fatigued toward the end,” Gay said. “I tried to stay relaxed and bring it home, but it wasn’t enough.”‘

‘More people are using the cannabis plant as modern basic and clinical science reaffirms and extends its medicinal uses. Concomitantly, concern and opposition to smoked medicine has occurred, in part due to the known carcinogenic consequences of smoking tobacco. Are these reactions justified? While chemically very similar, there are fundamental differences in the pharmacological properties between cannabis and tobacco smoke. Cannabis smoke contains cannabinoids whereas tobacco smoke contains nicotine. Available scientific data, that examines the carcinogenic properties of inhaling smoke and its biological consequences, suggests reasons why tobacco smoke, but not cannabis smoke, may result in lung cancer.’

‘A man who died near downtown when he jumped from the cab of his moving 18-wheeler was apparently trying to stage a wreck early Tuesday morning to collect from his insurance company, Houston police said. [..]

The victim, whose name has not been released, had head injuries. No other injuries were reported.

Police said the man’s business partner told investigators the trucker was staging an accident to file a fraudulent claim with his insurance company. [..]

The truck was traveling at about 50 mph, police said. The driver was alone in the cab and was not pulling a trailer.’

‘An American construction worker who was arrested with a 40-inch sword, a pistol and night-vision goggles in northwestern Pakistan told investigators Tuesday that he wanted to kill Osama bin Laden to avenge the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

Gary Brooks Faulkner, 50 years old, of Greeley, Colo., was caught by Pakistani police Monday in the remote Bumburat Valley near the border of Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, where he apparently hoped to find Mr. bin Laden.

Police quoted Mr. Faulkner as saying he wanted to avenge the victims of the attacks on New York and Washington. He was carrying Christian religious books, according to Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, a senior police officer in the northwestern town of Chitral. [..]

Dr. Faulkner said his brother also brought wire ties to use as handcuffs on Mr. bin Laden. He said that if Mr. Faulkner, who must undergo dialysis three times a week, killed or captured Mr. bin Laden, he planned to use his reward money to retire to Nicaragua, where he would help locals build houses.’

‘An 18-year-old Indonesian man says he was seduced by a cow, and that’s why he was having sex with it.

A neighbour caught Gusti Ngurah Alit allegedly wooing the farm animal on Sunday, the village chief on the resort island of Bali said, the Times newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa reported Friday.

“He was caught by one of the residents standing naked while holding the back of the cow,” village chief Embang Ida Bagus Legawa said in the newspaper.

Alit said he didn’t see an animal, he saw a beautiful young woman.

“She called my name and seduced me, so I had sex with her,” the man told the newspaper.

Alit underwent a cleansing ritual. The village chief gave the owner of the cow the equivalent of $562.

The cow was reportedly drowned in the sea to rid the village of bad luck.’

‘Police in England said a group of officers caught on camera using a riot shield as a sled on a snow slope were reprimanded by a superior.

Superintendent Andrew Murray, Oxford City commander with Thames Valley Police, said a bystander captured video of a group of officers arriving at the slope and encouraging a colleague to sled down the hill while clinging to the straps for steering, the Daily mail reported Thursday.

The video was later uploaded to YouTube.

“The snow has a habit of bringing out the child in all of us,” Murray said. “I have spoken to the officers concerned and reminded them in no uncertain terms that tobogganing on duty, on police equipment and at taxpayers’ expense is a very bad idea should they wish to progress under my command.”‘

‘A floor collapsed beneath a group of about 20 members of Weight Watchers as they gathered to compare how many pounds they had shed over Christmas.

Members of the weight-loss club were lining up to compare readings on the scales when they heard a bang as the floor came away from the walls of their meeting room in Växjö in southern Sweden.

“We suddenly heard a huge thud – we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air. The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls,” one of the those present told the Smålandsposten newspaper.

They abandoned the room as the floor started to give way in other areas.’

‘A 52-year-old man complained only about the cold weather before walking into a diner with a five-inch knife sticking out of his chest. The unnamed man called a Warren 911 operator on Sunday night to ask that an ambulance be sent to Bray’s, an eatery in neighboring Hazel Park. He said he had been stabbed during a robbery attempt half a mile away, then walked to the restaurant and called 911 from a pay phone.

On a recording of the call, the man gives a vague description of his attacker before saying, “I’m gonna sit down at Bray’s ’cause they got a chair and it’s cold out here.”

Restaurant employee George Mirdita told The Detroit News the man calmly ordered coffee.’

‘Three boys were booked on suspicion of bullying or kicking red-haired students at a middle school when a ”Kick a Ginger Day” prank inspired by a ”South Park” episode got out of hand, authorities said Monday.

A 13-year-old boy was detained last week for investigation of threatening to inflict injury by means of electronic communication — essentially, cyberbullying. Two 12-year-olds were booked for battery on school property, Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said. [..]

Four girls and three boys reported that schoolmates shoved or kicked them on Nov. 20 at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas, an affluent suburb of Los Angeles.

No serious injuries were reported. Most incidents involved a single person kicking a student’s shoe or leg, but one youngster was bruised when three or four boys confronted him at once, said Donald Zimring, superintendent of the Las Virgenes Unified School District.

He may have been kicked in the groin or head while on the ground, although accounts differ, Zimring said.’

‘An Italian doctor has been getting dramatic results with a new type of treatment for Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, which affects up to 2.5 million people worldwide. In an initial study, Dr. Paolo Zamboni took 65 patients with relapsing-remitting MS, performed a simple operation to unblock restricted bloodflow out of the brain – and two years after the surgery, 73% of the patients had no symptoms. Dr. Zamboni’s thinking could turn the current understanding of MS on its head, and offer many sufferers a complete cure. [..]

It’s generally accepted that there’s no cure for MS, only treatments that mitigate the symptoms – but a new way of looking at the disease has opened the door to a simple treatment that is causing radical improvements in a small sample of sufferers.

Italian Dr. Paolo Zamboni has put forward the idea that many types of MS are actually caused by a blockage of the pathways that remove excess iron from the brain – and by simply clearing out a couple of major veins to reopen the blood flow, the root cause of the disease can be eliminated.’

Mmm, sweet lemonade.

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‘Fifteen students were left with permanent scars after branding themselves with heated coat hangers at a house party, it emerged today.

The ‘group challenge’ saw each student brand themselves with the initial of the hall they lived in last year.

Participants held a reshaped metal coat hanger to heat on a hot stove for 30 seconds. [..]

After visiting hospital, at least three of the students were given antibiotics to fight infection.

A burns specialist also warned they will have permanent scarring, following the incident on September 20 at a private house party for students at Exeter University. [..]

Onlookers said large amounts of alcohol were consumed at the party, but another unnamed student added there was no coercion involved.

He said: ‘No one was pinned down. It was all optional, everyone just stood there and did it.”

‘Iowa City police are investigating an early morning assault in which a man accused another of being a zombie, then punched him twice.

Police say the assault occurred at 1:17 a.m. Sunday at an Iowa City restaurant south of the University of Iowa campus.

A man was ordering food when he was approached by another man who called him a zombie, then hit him in the eye. When the victim tried to call police on his cell phone, the man punched him again, breaking his nose.

The man then ran out a back door.

The victim was taken by ambulance to a hospital.’

‘Eric Williamson, from Springfield, Virginia, was brewing coffee in his kitchen when a woman and a seven-year-old boy walked past the window and saw him.

The woman complained to police who arrested Williamson shortly after the incident on Monday morning.

Williamson, 29, insisted he did nothing wrong and that any exposure of his private parts were accidental.

“Yes I wasn’t wearing any clothes but I was alone, in my own home and just got out of bed. It was dark and I had no idea anyone was outside looking in at me,” he said. [..]

A spokesman for Fairfax county police, Mary Ann Jennings, said Williamson was arrested because officers believed he wanted to be seen naked by the public.

The 29-year-old faces up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine if he is convicted. He is fighting the charge and seeking damages from police.’

‘In the darkness of this sleepy island town, the beam of a deputy’s flashlight caught the back of a lanky teenager wanted in a notorious 18-month burglary spree.

The teen glanced over his shoulder – and vanished into the woods. “He virtually vaporized in front of me,” deputy Jeff Patterson recalled.

Such encounters have become all too common on the bucolic islands north of Seattle as police hunt for an elusive thief whose crime spree is quickly becoming a local legend. Colton Harris-Moore is suspected in about 50 burglary cases since he slipped away from a halfway house in April 2008.

Now, authorities say, he may have moved on to a more dangerous hobby: stealing airplanes. [..]

“I hope to h*** he stole those airplanes – I would be so proud,” Pam Kohler told a reporter, noting her son’s lack of training. “But put in there that I want him to wear a parachute next time.”‘

‘A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 80 feet of silk filament from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today. [..]

Peers came up with the idea of weaving spider silk after learning about the French missionary Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar during the 1880s and 1890s. Camboué built a small, hand-driven machine to extract silk from up to 24 spiders at once, without harming them. [..]

But to make a textile of any significant size, the silk experts had to drastically scale up their project. “Fourteen thousand spiders yields about an ounce of silk,” Godley said, “and the textile weighs about 2.6 pounds. The numbers are crazy.”’

‘A death row inmate in Texas tore out his eyeball with his fingers and ate it, leaving him blind after he gouged out his other eye several years ago, the state’s department of criminal justice said on Friday.

“We don’t know how it happened,” said Jason Clark, a spokesman for the department. “There are no indications that he used anything other than his hands.”

Andre Thomas, 25, was now in a secure psychiatric facility after he pulled out his left eye last month at the death row unit in Livingston in eastern Texas, Clark said.

Thomas was condemned for killing his wife, son and infant stepdaughter in 2004, according to the department’s brief account of the case. Local media reports said he had ripped out the hearts of his victims.’

‘Michigan police say a 35-year-old mother used the Internet to track down the son she gave up for adoption a decade ago, seducing and raping the teenage boy when she found him after an online search.

Aimee Louise Sword of Waterford Township, near Detroit, was arraigned this week on three charges of criminal sexual conduct for the alleged rape of her biological son, whom she put up for adoption more than 10 years ago, MyFOXDetroit reported.

Prosecutors say the boy is still a minor, but won’t disclose whether he knew the woman was his mother — a situation that has horrified mental health experts who are calling the case “an abomination.” [..]

Sword’s attorney Kenneth Burch told the Press that his client “maintains her presumption of innocence” and said the accusations of incest have been very difficult for her.’

‘A Coatesville mother made her 6-year-old daughter drive a car because “[mom] was sleepy” after smoking “that stinky stuff,” according to police. [..]

Officer Robert Keetch said he had to do a double take after seeing the little girl driving. “There were two white knuckles and a little head popping over the stearing wheel,” he said.

The woman, Lakisha Hogue, was sitting in the passenger seat, laughing, when a patrol officer pulled her over, said police. Hogue told the Officer Keetch that she was teaching her daughter how to drive.

“Mom made me drive because she was sleepy,” the girl told police.

Then police say the aunt asked her niece, “Was your mom smoking that stinky stuff again?” The girl replied “yes,” say police.’

‘Using an atomic-force microscope, scientists at IBM Research in Zurich have for the first time made an atomic-scale resolution image of a single molecule, the hydrocarbon pentacene.

Atomic-force microscopy works by scanning a surface with a tiny cantilever whose tip comes to a sharp nanoscale point. As it scans, the cantilever bounces up and down, and data from these movements is compiled to generate a picture of that surface. These microscopes can be used to “see” features much smaller than those visible under light microscopes, whose resolution is limited by the properties of light itself. Atomic-force microscopy literally has atom-scale resolution.

Still, until now, it hasn’t been possible to use it to look with atomic resolution at single molecules. On such a scale, the electrical properties of the molecule under investigation normally interfere with the activity of the scanning tip. Researchers at IBM Research in Zurich overcame this problem by first using the microscope tip to pick up a single molecule of carbon monoxide. This drastically improved the resolution of the microscope, which the IBM scientists used to make an image of pentacene. They arrived at carbon monoxide as a contrast-enhancing addition after trying many chemicals.’

I don’t know why this exists or what it’s for.

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‘Stephen Conroy’s mandatory internet filtering plans have earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year at the 11th annual Internet Industry Awards.

The Internet Villain category recognises individuals or organisations that have upset the Internet industry and hampered its development – those whom the industry loves to hate.

As Australia’s communications minister, and supporter of one of the world’s most ambitious internet censorship plans, Senator Conroy beat out tough competition from the likes of the European Parliament and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.’