`A violent gang rapist should have been given a lesser sentence partly because he was a “cultural time bomb” whose attacks were inevitable, as he had emigrated from a country with traditional views of women, his barrister has argued.
MSK, who, with his three Pakistani brothers, raped several girls at their Ashfield family home over six months in 2002, was affected by “cultural conditioning … in the context of intoxification”, Stephen Odgers, SC, told the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday. [..]
Mr Odgers said the new evidence showed that he had a disease, which, combined with alcohol and the cultural conditioning of “a society with very traditional views of women”, was “clearly a factor in the commissioning of these offences”.
“The applicant was a cultural time bomb,” Mr Odgers said. “It was almost inevitable that something like this would happen. His culpability is lessened because of that combination.”‘
`A man has been sentenced to three months in jail after pleading guilty to charges of bestiality.
The camel involved in the case is to be put down in accordance with Islamic law.’
`In a stroke of irony, Microsoft’s Halo movie will be produced in Wellington by servers running the open-source Linux operating system. [..]
Bungie, the Microsoft-owned development firm which created the game, confirmed that Peter Jackson’s post-production firm Weta Digital would be involved in the movie.
Weta Digital uses more than 1000 dual-processor IBM blade servers running the Fedora version of the Red Hat distribution of the Linux to produce special effects for movies that have so far included Lord of the Rings and King Kong.’
`The US must stop giving young offenders life sentences without the chance of parole, human rights groups have said.
A report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said such prisoners – numbering at least 2,225 in the US – must have access to parole processes.
The report says no more than 12 young offenders are serving life without parole in the rest of the world, where the punishment is largely outlawed. [..]
The practice is outlawed in many countries and by international law, under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The US and Somalia are the only two countries that have not ratified the treaty, the rights groups said.’
Did you ever wonder what 2000 looks like?
With a cool Pink Floyd remix for a soundtrack.
(7.7meg Shockwave)
`I watched the warden sniff down the email addresses of people I was communicating with on MSN, the URL of several websites that I had open at the time, and the names of all my running programs, including those that were minimized or in the toolbar. These strings can easily contain social security numbers or credit card numbers, for example, if I have Microsoft Excel or Quickbooks open w/ my personal finances at the time. [..]
Next, warden opens every process running on your computer. When each program is opened, warden then calls ReadProcessMemory and reads a series of addresses – usually in the 0x0040xxxx or 0x0041xxxx range – this is the range that most executable programs on windows will place their code. Warden reads about 10-20 bytes for each test, and again hashes this and compares against a list of banning hashes. These tests are clearly designed to detect known 3rd party programs, such as wowglider and friends. Every process is read from in this way. I watched warden open my email program, and even my PGP key manager. Again, I feel this is a fairly severe violation of privacy, but what can you do?’
‘A revolutionary automated boar collection system developed by Genes Diffusion to reduce labor and increase technician safety in the workplace. This automated system allows a single technician to collect up to 4 boars simultaneously.’
And when they say “boar”, of course, they mean “boar semen”. Pigs have strange penises.
see it here »
`An F1 car doing “full” speed on small streets by the mountain or something, its Unbelievable how they can and dare to drive this fast. Must See!’
`Posters for the new Wallace and Gromit film in a south coast town will not feature the word “rabbit” because of a local superstition.
Because burrowing can cause landslips in quarries, residents of Portland, Dorset, instead call the creatures underground mutton or furry things.
Posters for the new film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, on Portland do not use the word, to respect local folklore.
Instead they simply say “Something bunny is going on”.’
`It’s one of the cutest of those cute IBM Corp. TV commercials, the ones that feature the ever-present help desk. This time, the desk appears smack in the middle of a highway, blocking the path of a big rig.
”Why are you blocking the road?” the driver asks. ”Because you’re going the wrong way,” replies the cheerful Help Desk lady. ”Your cargo told me so.” It seems the cartons inside the truck contained IBM technology that alerted the company when the driver made a wrong turn.
It’s clever, all right — and creepy. Because the technology needn’t be applied only to cases of beer. The trackers could be attached to every can of beer in the case, and allow marketers to track the boozing habits of the purchasers. Or if the cargo is clothing, those little trackers could have been stitched inside every last sweater. Then some high-tech busybody could keep those wearing them under surveillance.
If this sounds paranoid, take it up with IBM. The company filed a patent application in 2001 which contemplates using this wireless snooping technology to track people as they roam through ”shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, rest rooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc.” An IBM spokeswoman insisted the company isn’t really prepared to go this far. Patent applications are routinely written to include every possible use of a technology, even some the company doesn’t intend to pursue. Still, it’s clear somebody at IBM has a pretty creepy imagination.’
`Fish can’t speak to each other underwater, but some of them seem to be keeping in touch by farting.
Dr Bob Batty spotted a group of herring swallowing air then releasing it from a small hole near their tail, although the air is nothing to do with food.’
`Canny Arthur Boyt gets his meat free — by tucking into dead animals he finds on the road.
The retired civil servant, 66, loves nothing better than a tasty stew or sandwich made of badgers, weasels or rats.
He has spent FIFTY years scraping up roadkill with a shovel — then skinning and cooking the carcasses. The sprightly pensioner even dines on cats and dogs.
Arthur, of Davistow, Cornwall, said yesterday: “I would rather eat a country rat than some of the meat served up in restaurants.
“People are happy to eat an apple which has fallen out of the tree and is lying on the floor — so what’s the difference?”’
`The Spanish flu virus that killed up to 50 million people in 1918-19 was probably a strain that originated in birds, research has shown.
US scientists have found the 1918 virus shares genetic mutations with the bird flu virus now circulating in Asia.
Writing in Nature, they say their work underlines the threat the current strain poses to humans worldwide.’
`Police in southern Idaho are looking for someone trying to pass phony $1 million bills.
Officers in Twin Falls said the counterfeits are high quality except for one big problem. The U.S. Treasury never issued a 1 million bill.’
`The genesis of two category-five hurricanes (Katrina and Rita) in a row over the Gulf of Mexico is an unprecedented and troubling occurrence. But for most tropical meteorologists the truly astonishing “storm of the decade” took place in March 2004. Hurricane Catarina — so named because it made landfall in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina — was the first recorded south Atlantic hurricane in history.
Textbook orthodoxy had long excluded the possibility of such an event; sea temperatures, experts claimed, were too low and wind shear too powerful to allow tropical depressions to evolve into cyclones south of the Atlantic Equator. Indeed, forecasters rubbed their eyes in disbelief as weather satellites down-linked the first images of a classical whirling disc with a well-formed eye in these forbidden latitudes.
In a series of recent meetings and publications, researchers have debated the origin and significance of Catarina. A crucial question is this: Was Catarina simply a rare event at the outlying edge of the normal bell curve of South Atlantic weather — just as, for example, Joe DiMaggio’s incredible 56-game hitting streak in 1941 represented an extreme probability in baseball (an analogy made famous by Stephen Jay Gould) — or was Catarina a “threshold” event, signaling some fundamental and abrupt change of state in the planet’s climate system?’
Proof once and for all that Christians are insane. Fearfully and wonderfully fucken crazy.
The song is annoyingly stupid, but listen to it for atleast the first few minutes and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
(12meg Quicktime)
‘Researchers have created the world’s smallest fountain pen with a tip so tiny it can draw lines a hundred times thinner than a red blood cell.
Called the “nanonfountain probe,” it can paint lines as thin as 40 nanometers and has its own reservoir to hold various types of inks, including pigments for painting patterns and organic materials for designing sensors. [..]
The new pen can be attached to the atomic-force microscope, which allows scientists to see nanoscale environments as well as draw on them. Possible uses for such a tiny pen, or an array of several of them, include crafting miniscule protein arrays and complex semiconductors.’
`A Chinese man who raised bears to tap them for their bile, prized as a traditional medicine in Asia, has been killed and eaten by his animals, Xinhua news agency said Tuesday.
Six black bears attacked keeper Han Shigen as he was cleaning their pen in the northeastern province of Jilin on Monday, Xinhua said.
“The ill-fated man died on the spot and was eaten up by the ferocious bears,” it said, citing a report in the Beijing News.
In practices decried by animal rights groups, bile is extracted through surgically implanted catheters in the bear’s gall bladders, or by a “free-dripping” technique by which bile drips out through holes opened in the animals’ abdomens.’
`Israeli rhetoric towards Iran has considerably heated in the last few weeks as the world hurtles towards an inevitable confrontation over Iran’s nuclear programs.
Last week three senior Israeli lawmakers went public to warn that Israel would act unilaterally to eliminate any perceived Iranian threat. Yosef Lapid, head of the centrist opposition Shinui Party in the Knesset stated, “Threats of sanctions and isolation alone will not do it, we feel we are obliged to warn our friends that Israel should not be pushed into a situation where we see no other solution but to act unilaterally.” [..]
Despite reports of increasingly strained relations between Russian and Iran, Vladimir Putin has publicly stated that Russia will defend Iran both diplomatically and militarily. The implications of this are obviously deeply concerning. If the situation was to spiral out of control, China, which has recently conducted several wargames with Russia, would step in on the side of Russian and Iran. The US would be obligated to defend Israel and in turn Europe would be obligated to defend the US.’
`Everybody knows if the police have to come and get you, they’re gonna bring an ass-kicking with them.’
`Once a building no longer serves its purpose, and all of its functionality ceases to exist, it becomes truly fascinating. Each room is transforming into something new at its own rate, yielding to the forces of nature as it reclaims man’s creation. The corrosion and decay paint vibrant colors across otherwise dull surfaces, lit only by natural sunlight spilling into the spaces at unaccustomed angles. Each object left behind becomes more significant than it has ever been, hinting at the life prior to its disuse. Floors collapse and walls cave in without care; if you get hurt, no one is here to help you. This is a lonesome alien world whose dark corners and peeling walls have gotten a hold of me and many others; this affinity for derelict structures and often dangerous excitement is the core essence of urban exploring, in my opinion.’
A bunch of mp3s of varying degrees of amusion.
`A disabled Danish man is fighting for the state to pay for him to have a prostitute visit him at home.
Torben Hansen, who has cerebral palsy, which severely affects his speech and mobility, believes his local authority should pay the extra charge he incurs when he hires a sex worker – because his disability means he cannot go to see them. His case is currently being considered.
In Denmark, local authorities compensate disabled people for extra costs incurred because of their disability.
“I want them to cover the extra expenses for the prostitutes to get here, because it’s a lot more expensive getting them to come to my home rather than me going to a brothel,” Mr Hansen told BBC World Service’s Outlook programme.
“It’s a necessity for me. I can’t move very well, and it’s impossible for me to go there.”‘
`A Palestinian official who said the US president had claimed God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan says he did not take George Bush’s words literally.
Nabil Shaath said he and other world leaders at a Jordan summit two years ago did not believe Mr Bush thought God had given him a personal message.
Mr Bush’s spokesman said the original allegation, which will appear in a BBC documentary next week, was absurd.
Scott McClellan said the comments had never been made.’
`An 88-year-old senile woman at a care facility in Saitama Prefecture lost all her right-foot toes after an intruding cat bit them off, facility workers admitted Saturday and offered an apology to the woman’s family. The incident occurred between Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
The woman’s roommate heard her moaning and reported to caregivers at around 5 a.m. Thursday. She was taken to a hospital and received treatment for the toe injuries, but all of her right-foot toes were gone up to the first joints. The workers found bloody paw signs at the woman’s bed and on the floor, and caught the cat on Thursday morning, they said.’
A strange song about pi. At first I thought it was an educational video for kids, but then some guy starts rapping.
`Yeah, I know this pi shit backwards and fowards, check it out..
I did three chicks then I pointed at the door
A girl entered in so that made it four
I snapped one, in came another five
Add ’em all up and that makes nine’
Then some wizards start killing the children. [shrug] Not sure why.
(25meg Quicktime, other formats available)
`Lynnwood police concede they engaged in “rarely used” tactics during an undercover investigation into a suspected prostitution ring.
Those tactics, which included officers allowing prostitutes to masturbate them in exchange for cash, have raised questions among law-enforcement officials, legal experts and the Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office. [..]
On April 27, an officer entered the shop and paid $60 for and received a full “body shampoo,” which included genital and anal touching. The officer returned two other times for massages that also included masturbation — one session with two prostitutes — and again paid for the service.
A second officer also received a massage and was masturbated, according to charging papers.’
`A registered sex offender who fashioned a loin cloth from a rope and piece of lawn furniture was arrested near a high school, where he asked four girls for a ride to the mall or a motel, police said.
Kelly James Bailey, 33, of Greenwater, Wash., was wearing only the rope when he shocked a Medford woman by appearing in her back yard Thursday morning.
Before he left, Bailey, who appeared to be covered in feces, ran away with a strip of leopard-print vinyl peeled from the seat of lawn chair, said Medford police Lt. Mike Moran.’
`A substitute teacher in Lake County, Fla., was terminated and banned from teaching in the county after he ripped out a student’s insulin pump during class apparently thinking it was a ringing cell phone, according to a Local 6 News report.
Officials said a ninth-grade student at East Ridge High School, who is a Type I diabetic, was in class Monday when his insulin pump began to beep, indicating he was low on insulin. [..]
School officials said Maline then grabbed the device, thinking it was a cell phone beeping and detached the tube that connects the insulin pump to the student’s leg.
The student went to the school’s clinic and had the tube reinserted.’
`When I first came to your planet and demanded your homes, property and very lives, I didn’t know you were already doing so, willingly, with your own government. I can win no tribute from a bankrupted nation populated by feeble flag-waving plebians. In 2008 I shall restore your dignity and make you servants worthy of my rule. This new government shall become a tool of my oppression. Instead of hidden agendas and waffling policies, I offer you direct candor and brutal certainty. I only ask for your tribute, your lives, and your vote.’