`Retired Russian colonel Stanislav Petrov received a special World Citizen Award at a UN meeting in New York on Thursday. Petrov was honored as the “Man Who Averted Nuclear War”. [..]
Petrov was highly aware that Cold War tensions were acute, as USSR fighters had shot down a Korean airliner on Sept. 1. But he was completely shocked when the warning siren began to wail and two lights on his desk console began flashing MISSILE ATTACK and START. “Start” was the instruction to launch, irreversibly, all 5,000 or so Soviet missiles and obliterate America.
A new, unproven Soviet satellite system had picked up a flash in Montana near a Minuteman II silo. Then another — five, all told.
Petrov recalls his legs were “like cotton,” as they say in Russian. He stared at the huge electronic wall map of the United States in terror and disbelief. As his staff gawked upward at him from the floor, he had the thought, “Who would order an attack with only five missiles? That big an idiot has not been born yet, not even in the U.S.”’
`Dutch police have arrested a thief they dubbed the “salamander man” who talked his way into the homes of dozens of unsuspecting people by saying he was looking for his lost salamander, hamster or iguana.
Police said on Monday they had been hunting the 33-year-old homeless man for months and that he had admitted to about 60 thefts in towns across the country.
Once inside a house, the man stole wallets and loose cash. Police arrested him on Friday after a tip off and found nine empty wallets in his car, which had been stolen the day before.’
`This is just a simple experiment: Post a phone number on the web, and allow people to leave voice messages, which in turn can be downloaded off the website. Who will call,why will they call and what will they say? For anyone hesitant on calling, your phone number will always remain private.’
`Five-year-old giant panda Chuang Chuang (R) and his four-year-old partner Lin Hui mate for the first time at the Chiang Mai zoo in northern Thailand January 17, 2006. The pair were donated to Thailand by the Chinese government. Picture taken January 17, 2006.’
`We hope you enjoy J-Track 3-D. It should appear in its own window and begin loading a database of over 500 satellites.
What you will see (assuming your system supports this JAVA applet) is a plot in 3-dimensions showing the position of these satellites. Be sure to try the “Satellite” pull-down menu to choose which satellite you wish to view.’
`Proud father lets slip past indiscretions’
(600kB Quicktime)
A Devo cover band with a difference. Kinda cool.. I bet their parents put them up to it. 🙂
`Instructions: use UP and DOWN buttons and watch.
Be careful, very old bridge. Mind the boats. Yutaka!’
A couple of amusing pictures.
`This is a list of films arranged in order in which the word fuck is used.’
`A Sanford mother says she will never be able to hold her newborn because an Orlando hospital performed a life-altering surgery and, she claims, the hospital refuses to explain why they left her as a multiple amputee.
The woman filed a complaint against Orlando Regional Healthcare Systems, she said, because they won’t tell her exactly what happened. The hospital maintains the woman wants to know information that would violate other patients’ rights. [..]
“I want to know what happened. I went to deliver my baby and I came out like this,” Mejia said.’
‘It’s a bad sign when a Polar Bear gets excited over a girl’s furry hat. I think this zoo needs to get him a Polar Bear girlfriend.’
I’ve always wanted a pet polar bear. I could ride it about town.
(1.3meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘This cop forgets to use his parking brake after making a routine traffic stop. I can’t believe he still gives the guy a ticket. Those dashboard cameras are really good at two things: identifying criminals and immortalizing stupid cops.’
(5meg Windows media)
see it here »
`A woman who had been blind for 25 years awoke in hospital after suffering a heart attack and found that she could see again.
Since 1979, Joyce Urch had lived in a world of shadows and near-darkness, but was astonished to find her sight restored when she came round after being resuscitated. [..]
She said: “When I first came round I just opened my eyes and shouted, ‘I can see, I can see.’ When I looked in the mirror I said, ‘Oh.’ I said to [her husband] Eric, ‘You’ve got older haven’t you?’ But I thought, ‘I’m old myself, my husband must be too.”
Lots of photos of a computer built out of relays.
`The Vatican has been accused of trying to cash in on the Pope’s words after it decided to impose strict copyright on all papal pronouncements.
For the first time all papal documents, including encyclicals, will be governed by copyright invested in the official Vatican publishing house, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. [..]
The decision was denounced yesterday for treating the Pope’s words as “saleable merchandise” and endangering the Church’s mission to “spread the Christian message”.
A Milanese publishing house that had issued an anthology containing 30 lines from Pope Benedict’s speech to the conclave that elected him and an extract from his enthronement speech is reported to have been sent a bill for €15,000 (Ł10,000). This was made up of 15 per cent of the cover price of each copy sold plus “legal expenses” of €3,500.’
Next thing you know the Bible will come with DRM.
`A typical morning in the year 2001: You wake up, scan the custom newspaper that’s spilling from your fax, walk into the living room. There you speak to a giant screen on the wall, part of which instantly becomes a high-quality TV monitor. When you leave for work, you carry a smart wallet, a computer the size of a credit card. When you come home, you slip on special eyeglasses and stroll through a completely artificial world.
Incredible, but all very possible. “In the next 11 years, you’ll see incredible breakthroughs in the home,” says Robert Simon, director of Lotus West, the West Coast R & D center of Lotus Development, maker of 1-2-3.’
`In this tutorial you will create a website payment gateway for content. In this example we will assume that you are selling access to a portion of a website. We will create a database to hold our login information and the payment data that Paypal returns. We will cover activation of an account within a very small system, which is a trimmed down example. To keep this tutorial brief we will not cover Paypal subscriptions or auction payments.’
One day I might start charging for access to those biphallic pictures that everyone seems to love so much. Heh. 🙂
`A court has spared a Thai transsexual drug dealer from caning because Singaporean law does not allow women to be sentenced to that punishment, a newspaper reported Friday.
Thai prostitute Mongkon Pusuwan, who underwent a sex change from male to female a decade ago, was instead sentenced on Wednesday to six years in jail after a medical report concluded that she was a woman, the Straits Times reported.’
Caning undoubtably hurts like a motherfucker. But is it worth exchanging for six years in jail?
‘In a recent episode of Family Feud, a family was asked to name a country other than the U.S. that they admire. What would you say?’
Geography clearly isn’t their strong suit. 🙂
see it here »
`The adage that sex sells may have been proved this week with reports that the adult-only domain name sex.com has changed hands for the record sum of million ($18.71m).
The domain name, previously owned by entrepreneur Gary Kremen, has been snapped up by US company called Escom LLC.’
`A full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in Hefei, capital city of east China’s Anhui Province.
Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments prove successful, China will become the first country in the world to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed “artificial sun”, experts here said.’
`Television cricket and tennis coverage is making a lasting impression on plasma screens.
The logos used by Channel 7 and Channel 9 during long days of sporting action are burning themselves into the delicate digital monitors.
With the hi-tech TVs costing thousands of dollars, some owners have threatened legal action saying their screens have been ruined.’
`French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it.
Speaking at a nuclear submarine base in north-western France, Mr Chirac said a French response “could be conventional. It could also be of another nature.”
He said France’s nuclear forces had been configured for such an event.’
Who ever thought knitting could be so gory?
It’s a bit like that dodgem game I used to play on the Microbees at primary school. It’s not too bad.. 🙂
aka 7 Pound Dildo + Human Face.
Should be safe enough for work.. 🙂
see it here »
`An Indian man is being refused entry to his house – because his family say he is a spirit come back to haunt them.
Raju Raghuvanshi was greeted with cries of “ghost” and neighbours locking doors when he returned from a short spell in jail to his village in Madhya Pradesh.
He had fallen ill in prison and was taken to hospital. Relatives heard he had died and performed his last rites.
Now, unable to convince them he is alive and well, he is staying nearby and has asked the police for help.’
`I decided this weekend to try and quiten my PC by following some other members lead and going down the water cooling road. The fans on my PC were really starting to drive me mad
The first thing that I did was to remove all the fans. The one on the processor and graphics card were no problem but the one in the power unit was a bugger to get out.
The most difficult part was sealing all the ventilitation openings in the PC case with silicon. I also put silicon all around the joints on the PC case. The smell of silicon was dreadful but when my wife complained I told her to be patent as it will be worth it when we have a completely silent PC.
Because I had completely sealed the PC case the only opening near top was the DVD drive. So I opened that and put the small hose I had purchased specially for the job into the DVD drive as far as it would go. With what I can only describe as great excitement and anticipation, I turned on the water. [..]’
Hilarious. 🙂
`Ever wonder what would happen if one of our favorite Food Network chefs created something they actually didn’t like? Well, we were lucky enough to witness such an event when Giada De Laurentiis of Everyday Italian attempted to make some sort of sorbet. She claimed on the air that her facial expressions of disgust and malaise were merely a reaction to the icy treat, but we know better. Behold the Great Giada Disaster of 2006.’
