`A man walking home after his 55th birthday party because friends and family believed he was too drunk to drive was struck and killed by another vehicle, police said.
Benjamin A. Wright’s keys were taken at the party, and he was told he should stay at his son’s place.
He said he was going outside to smoke, but apparently began walking home instead. He was fatally struck by a car about 10 p.m. Sunday in the eastbound lane of U.S. 2 in this town about 40 miles northeast of Seattle, Police Chief Fred Walser said.’
This is a page of with a bunch of optical illusions. I’ve blogged a bunch of optical illusions before, including many of the ones on this page. However, I couldn’t resist posting this when I saw, down towards the bottom of the page, a button with the text “Warning: Do not click on this button if you are subject to seizures”.
I clicked the button and haven’t had a seizure yet, but maybe you’ll be lucky and it will trigger a fit for you. 🙂
`A man accused of a shooting spree at a crowded shopping mall told authorities to “just follow the screams” when he called them shortly before opening fire with a pair of assault weapons, according to court documents released Monday. [..]
According to the court documents, Maldonado told detectives he had been humiliated during a troubled childhood and that recent problems made him want to be “heard.” A text message to his ex-girlfriend minutes before the rampage said he was about to show the world his anger, the woman said.
Six people were injured, one critically, in Sunday’s attack. Maldonado surrendered about four hours after he ducked into a music store and took four hostages, all of whom were released unharmed, authorities said.’
A long list of proxies. I haven’t tried any of them, so I don’t know if they work, but I use proxies from time to time, so it’s good to have a list of them about the place.
`President Bush announced today that he will sign a bill providing an additional $2.8 billion for private organizations that emphasize the importance of hoping for change.
“This bill acknowledges the immeasurable role of hope in envisioning a better world for everyone,” Bush said during a press conference. “Starting today, I ask all Americans to hope together as one nation that the difficult problems that grip our nation will go away someday.”
The president’s move will help direct federal funds to such groups as the National Hope Foundation, which has been hoping for a cure for cancer for nearly two decades.’
`Villagers who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again.
Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, estimates that the small colony of fairies believed to live beneath a rock in St Fillans, Perthshire, has cost him £15,000. [..]
He said: “A neighbour came over shouting, ‘Don’t move that rock. You’ll kill the fairies’.” [..]
“Then we got a series of phone calls, saying we were disturbing the fairies. I thought they were joking. It didn’t go down very well,” Mr Salter said.’
`The first hint Dale Airsman got that his morning’s chores might end badly was the unusual growl from Charlie, a 4-year old llama.
The noise graduated to a high-pitched squeal, whereupon Charlie spit, flattened his ears back and bared his teeth, including the three sets of razor-sharp “fighting teeth,” which llamas use to rip the scrotum from male competitors in the wild.
Fortunately for Mr. Airsman, an electronics technician from Jenner Township in Somerset County, Charlie went for his upper arm.’
`Physicists suspect they have created the first molecules from atoms that meld matter with antimatter.
Allen Mills of the University of California, Riverside, and his colleagues say they have seen telltale signs of positronium molecules, made from two positronium atoms1.
Positronium is an other-worldly mimic of hydrogen. In a hydrogen atom, a negatively charged electron moves around a proton, which has a positive charge. The electrical force of attraction between the two subatomic particles holds them together.’
`When a young man masturbates, exactly how distracted does he get? An experiment performed on students at the University of California, Berkeley aimed to find out. [..]
Having established that the topic is of value, Ariely and Loewenstein get right to the action. They explain how they recruited 35 students, offering to pay each a small fee for the effort of masturbating while answering a survey. Each student was given a laptop computer with a keypad “designed to be operated easily using only the non-dominant hand.”
Some of the volunteers had instructions to answer the questions “while in their natural, presumably not highly aroused, state”. Others “were first asked to self-stimulate themselves, and were presented with the same questions only after they had achieved a high but sub-orgasmic level of arousal.”‘
`It’s only been on sale since midnight and the Yanks are already going crazy for the Xbox 360, with many queuing for hours to get their hands on a console and some shops reporting that they’ve already sold out.
Some gamers have gone to even greater extremes – like the man who robbed an Electronics Boutique store in Stafford, Virginia in the early hours of this morning. According to US website GameSpot, he held the store manager up at gunpoint and ordered him to hand over two Xbox 360s. Presumably ones with hard drives.
Luckily no one was hurt in the incident, and police managed to apprehend the man shortly after he left the store.’
Presumably ones with hard drives. 🙂
`Water supplies in Harbin , home to more than 3 million people, were cut off last night and will not resume “until further notice”. Schools have been closed whilst many residents are trying to leave the cities because city authorities have warned that pollution is threatening the water supply, which comes from the Songhua River.
An assessment by the Heilongjiang Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau found the river had been contaminated by chemicals released by a massive explosion at the Jilin Petroleum and Chemical Company plant in the city of Jilin on November 13. [..]
The November 13 explosion in the Jilin chemical plant released highly toxic substances, killing at least five people and forcing the evacuation of more than 10,000 nearby residents. It also contaminated the partially frozen Songhua River with benzene and phenyl, which can lead to hepatitis, urinary tract diseases and possibly cancer.’
`Pulsar Advanced Technologies has announced will next week launch its lead product, the Vulcanus MK4, a water heater USING microwave technology to heat water on demand. This technology with super-heating capabilities will drastically cut energy costs and totally eliminate the need to store hot water. [..]
Powered by electricity and unaffected by the volatile gas markets, the Vulcanus MK4 can heat water from 35 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees Fahrenheit in seconds and can source multiple applications at once: showers, dishwasher, sink usages and more. The Vulcanus MK4 is the size of a stereo speaker with a sleek modern look, making it ideal for condos and apartments, while powerful enough to serve the needs of any size family.’
`VIA’s long-awaited Nano-ITX boards have been spotted in the wild in Japan, by the good folks at Akiba PC Hotline.
The boards on display (and possibly even on sale in small numbers) are a fanless EPIA N8000E running at 800MHz, and an fan-cooled EPIA N10000E running at 1GHz. Pricing looks to be around $350. [..]
The main thinking behind the board however is unchanged: Low power consumption board, 12 x 12cm Nano-ITX form factor. [..]’
`What you’ll see while visiting Koenig, at 545 West 23rd Street, is a sealed, space-hogging wooden box, the size of a small house or a pre-1970’s mainframe computer. It has two extensions; one like a cabinet, the other like a top-loading chest. You are invited to place an object, any object, into the chestlike extension. Close the hatch. A yellow light goes on. You hear a sliding sound and a clunk. Your item has temporarily disappeared into the big box, just as dozens of others have, including wallets, photographs, specially made items (artists have brought their own work) and, memorably, a 2-year-old child. (The daughter of another Koenig artist, Erik Parker, spent a few hours in the box, emerging delighted but respectfully mum about her experiences – the Gelitin team had sworn her to secrecy.)
Take a seat. Eventually – the wait can be from a few minutes to more than an hour – a light on the other extension goes on. Open the door, and you’ll find your object joined by a brand-new, handmade “duplicate,” or at least something that more or less resembles the original. [..]’
`With today marking the 42nd anniversary of the murder of John F. Kennedy, [The Smoking Gun] has gathered an assortment of documents and photos detailing aspects of the killing, material released by the federal Assassination Records Review Board.
The following selection of documents touches on everything from JFK’s autopsy and a cop’s notes of his post-arrest interviews with Lee Harvey Oswald to the bill for the late president’s casket and a photo of Abraham Zapruder’s camera.’
A while ago I posted a story about someone filming a commercial by throwing thousands of superballs down a steep road. Well, here’s the finished thing.
`Sending 250,000 multi-coloured ‘superballs’ bouncing down the streets of San Francisco may seem the strangest way to do this, but that’s exactly what Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig did for the BRAVIA commercial in July this year. San Franciscans have seen some unusual things in their time, but even this gave them something to talk about. And we’ve got the feeling that this commercial is going to do exactly the same thing.’
I don’t even know what they’re trying to sell. I don’t even think it matter. That’s a lot of superballs. I better buy it, whatever it is. 🙂
(various formats)
`My friend DVDTracker, sent me an IM on AR15.com and asked, “OP, I wonder how difficult it is to shoot a lock off? I’ve seen it done on TV and in movies, but wonder if it is as easy as they show it to be. How about if I send you some funds to buy some locks. Will you shoot them and report back?”
The only answer was, “Sure! Why not?”‘
With pictures of padlocks suffering a varying degree of damage.
`Astounding comments from Amanda Vanstone ridiculing federal airline security measures and questioning increased spending on national security warranted an apology and the Immigration Minister’s resignation, Labor frontbenchers said last night.
In a wide-ranging speech to Adelaide Rotarians, Senator Vanstone dismissed many commonwealth security measures as essentially ineffective. “To be tactful about these things, a lot of what we do is to make people feel better as opposed to actually achieve an outcome,” Senator Vanstone said. [..]
The Immigration Minister also told of a grisly conversation with Mr Howard during a discussion on increased spending on national security.
Senator Vanstone said: “I asked him if I was able to get on a plane with an HB pencil, which you are able to, and I further asked him if I went down and came and grabbed him by the front of the head and stabbed the HB pencil into your eyeball and wiggled it around down to your brain area, do you think you’d be focusing? He’s thinking, she’s gone mad again.”‘
`The end of World War II saw an intense scramble for Nazi Germany’s many technological secrets. The Allies vied to plunder as much equipment and expertise as possible from the rubble of the Thousand Year Reich for themselves, while preventing others from doing the same.
The range of Germany’s technical achievement astounded Allied scientific intelligence experts accompanying the invading forces in 1945.
Supersonic rockets, nerve gas, jet aircraft, guided missiles, stealth technology and hardened armour were just some of the groundbreaking technologies developed in Nazi laboratories, workshops and factories, even as Germany was losing the war.’
`For the first time, researchers say, they’ve found an electric fish sabotaging another fish’s electric signals.
The brown ghost knifefish (Apteronotus leptorhynchus) generates a weak electric field that it uses to detect obstacles and to communicate with other knifefish. When confronting a rival knifefish, both males and females can raise the frequency of their own electric signals close enough to the other fish’s to distort its electric field, reports Sara Tallarovic of the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. In previous experiments, such jamming blinded fish-guidance systems.’
Strange fish, strange university name.
`A trip to the restroom resulted in a trip to the hospital for a Bloomington man who accidentally shot himself in the hand over the weekend at a gun show.
Faribault Police Sgt. Richard Larson said the 59-year-old man shot himself while removing his gun from a hook in a bathroom stall while attending the 31st annual Faribault Rifle and Pistol Club gun show on Sunday morning.’
`Because diarrhea affects over 30 million Americans every day, and because I am one of them.
Because just like AIDS and breast cancer, diarrhea can only be conquered by self-righteous fashion accessories.
Because I thought “outside the bun” for lunch yesterday and had to make two separate stops on my way back to the office.
Because diarrhea doesn’t care whether you’re black, white, young, old, male, female, gay or totally gay.’
`A team of young scientists has created what they believe to be the perfect paper plane.
It can fly more than 100ft (30m) and remain aloft for about 20 seconds. Most importantly, it is easy to make. The plane, named Avenger, has been judged by academics to contain the ideal balance between complex aerodynamic principles and simplicity of design. Its looks may also have helped: the delta wing is reminiscent of Concorde.’
Very little detail on this specific plane, but some general tips if you want to make some paper planes of your own.
A 70-something year old women who’s apparently good at computer games.
She swears a lot while she’s playing, as all good gamers should. 🙂
(5.5meg Quicktime)
`A fortysomething man in overalls sings about proper terminilogy for your anatomy. You don’t often see a song played on a miniature guitar that contains the word “vulva”.
This clip originally appeared in the 1984 video Strong Kids, Safe Kids, starring Henry Winkler.’
[sings] Our anus is a useful thing indeed, the anus gives relief in times of need..
This is two posts for the price of one. 🙂
This fellow has built a robotic fish and has links to some articles and photos about the fish:
`The world’s first autonomous robotic fish are the latest attraction at the London Aquarium.
Biologically inspired by the common carp, the new designs can avoid objects and swim around a specially designed tank entirely of their own accord.’
As well as the fish, he’s also built a web page that is state-of-the-art for the year 1994. Including small, pixellated graphics and horribly annoying flashing text. Takes me back a few years, it does, yet it’s dated August 2005.
Maybe he let his robot fish code his page for him? That’s about the only explaination I have. 🙂
(2.7meg Flash video)
see it here »
Inlcuding `How To Masturbate in your Grandmother’s House’, `How To Masturbate at the Office’, `How To Masturbate in the Line of Gunfire’ and more.
In all cases it seems step one is `Don’t Panic’. A good tip that one.
A list of 55 statements made by George Bush and 55 reasons why they’re misleading.
You can search for misleading quotes from other Republicans aswell.
`Bakery products made by Wichai Singwong look horrible. His little bread-baking factory looks like a dissecting room. However, if you overcome your natural aversion and bite off a piece of a freshly baked head, an arm or a finger, you will immediately realize that this is rather delicious bread indeed.
The idea to bake bread in the form of various human body parts occurred to once unsuccessful sculptor, Wichai Singwong, after he saw the movie Hannibal starring Anthony Hopkins. Singwong apparently thought that people would be willing to buy crispy and tasty loaves and buns that looks like severed hands, arms, heads and fingers.’
With a relatively small picture. They do look pretty realistic.
`Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.
A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies.”
“The KU faculty has had enough,” said Paul Mirecki, department chairman. “Creationism is mythology. Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.”’
