`A man smuggled half a tonne of $2 coins out of the Royal Australian Mint in his boots and lunch box and kept notes of when he exchanged the money, a court has been told.
The theft has forced a major security upgrade at the Mint, which produces 10 million coins every week.
William Grzeskowiac, 48, of Monash, today pleaded guilty in the ACT Magistrates Court to dishonestly appropriating the money between April 2005 and February this year.
The court heard Grzeskowiac carried more than 77,000 coins worth $155,000 out of the Mint over 10 months, avoiding detection by the facility’s inadequate security system.’
You saw the shots from the front here: Britney Spears gets birthing monument
And now, heres the bits you really want to see.
It’s art, so it has to be safe for work. Maybe. 🙂
see it here »
`Scientists think they have solved the mystery of how planets form around a star born in a violent supernova explosion, saying they have detected for the first time a swirling disk of debris from which planets can rise.
The discovery is surprising because the dusty disk orbiting the pulsar, or dead star, resembles the cloud of gas and dust from which Earth emerged. Scientists say the latest finding should shed light on how planetary systems form.
“It shows that planet formation is really ubiquitous in the universe. It’s a very robust process and can happen in all sorts of unexpected environments,” said lead researcher Deepto Chakrabarty, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.’
`Federal investigators said Friday they are preparing to file charges against a Santa Cruz couple suspected of taking a two-day-old harbor seal pup from the beach back to their home.
The pup was found by a volunteer rescuer in the pair’s backyard late last month. The pup died hours later after an unsuccessful attempt to reunite it with its mother, said Doug Ross, a volunteer with the Marine Mammal Center.
Ross believes the pair carried the pup to their Seabright home after spotting it beside the San Lorenzo River mouth. Ross said he found the pup in a dog crate after receiving an early-morning emergency call the couple made to a 24-hour seal rescue hot line.’
`A chiropractor who claims he can treat anyone by reaching back in time to when an injury occurred has attracted the attention of state regulators.
The Ohio State Chiropractic Board, in a notice of hearing, has accused James Burda of Athens of being “unable to practice chiropractic according to acceptable and prevailing standards of care due to mental illness, specifically, Delusional Disorder, Grandiose Type.”
Burda denied that he is mentally ill. He said he possesses a skill he discovered by accident while driving six years ago.’
Fucken cool eclipse image.
`ONE OF A KIND ITEM. FOR THE MAN WHO THOUGHT HE HAD ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. GUARANTEED TO BE THE ONLY ONE IN EXISTENCE. WILL KEEP YOU WARM & TOASTY. WITH 1 DAY TILL THE OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW SO MANY OF YOU CAN LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL PIECE OF CRAFTSMANSHIP & INGENUITY TO PROTECT SOMETHING SO VITAL…’
`Satellite tracking, helicopter surveillance and dart gun attempts failed it was a boiled ham dinner that brought Sam, a golden retriever, in from the cold after two years on the lam.
Nicknamed the “Golden Ghost,” Sam survived two New Hampshire winters, deer hunting season and being hit by a car and still no one could catch him. [..]
In January, experts from Boston arrived with infrared cameras and a remote-controlled net but had no luck. A friend provided the use of his helicopter to search. Steve Sprowl’s efforts to get the dog with a tranquilizing gun failed repeatedly.
“Sam, he was winning 200 to 1,” Sprowl said.’
`A Philippines judge who allegedly claimed to have psychic powers and said he had made a covenant with “dwarf friends” has been removed from his post.
Judge Florentino Floro, who presided in a suburban Manila court, allegedly said he was empowered with supernatural abilities, could read the future and conducted “healing sessions” in his chambers.
“His mental problems for now appear to render him unfit with the delicate task of dispensing justice,” the Supreme Court said in a ruling, stressing that Floro had not been found guilty of misconduct or corruption.’
‘This one is actually pretty funny. Check out these two head bangers. One of them bangs his head so hard he faints. Try and pick which one. I had my money on the wrong dude.’
(2.5meg Windows media)
see it here »
`Pakistani children ride a ferris wheel over a heap of garbage in a slum area of Karachi, Pakistan, reads the official WaPo caption on this one.’
`Staff at a Japanese convenience store got a shock when they asked an elderly gentleman to stop reading magazines without buying them, media reports say.
The man, 70, left the 7-Eleven store in the Ibaraki prefecture north-east of Tokyo – and returned with a chainsaw, police told AFP news agency.
After threatening to cut staff to pieces he left the chainsaw outside the shop and carried on reading.
“He was still reading when I called the police,” the manager told AFP.’
`A yank on a child’s underwear has a teacher in big trouble.
Albany police have charged 41-year-old Mark Holley of Scotia with endangering the welfare of a child for giving a student a wedgie. Holley’s a teacher at New Covenant Charter School in
Albany.
Police say that during summer school, while a 10-year-old New Covenant student was in the bathroom, Holley grabbed the child’s underwear and pulled it up.’
That sounds like a wedgie to me.
`Protesters demanding a return to democracy postponed a rally that had been expected to draw thousands on Saturday, after the king imposed an all-day curfew and ordered violators shot on sight.
Khadga Prasad Oli, deputy leader of the Communist Party of Nepal, called the curfew “unnecessary, illegal and illogical” and said the protesters would try to hold the rally on Sunday.
Seven main political parties organized the rally as the high point of a four-day general strike that has shut down the capital Katmandu, where King Gyanendra’s refusal to give up absolute rule has led to growing unrest.’
`An argument at a baby shower escalated into a brawl in which one man was shot and the pregnant guest of honor was beaten with a stick, police said.
Three people were arrested after the fight, described by police as a “baby shower gone bad.”‘
Authorities said the shooting victim, Aristotle Garcia, got into a fight with a man who is dating his ex-girlfriend. The argument, over whether the woman let their 5-year-old daughter drink beer, escalated and drew in two other people — Jazz Rivas and Juan Velazquez, said Police Lt. Cheryl C. Claprood.
When the baby shower’s hostess tried to intervene, Rivas began hitting some of the guests, including the 22-year-old mother-to-be, with a large stick, she said.’
`The administration of President George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.
The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.
“That’s the name they’re using,” the report quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying.
A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying that “this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war.”‘
`Springtime light may lift the spirits, but in Rattenberg, residents have a long memory for shadows. From late fall to midwinter, this tiny Austrian town, famous for its glassblowing, gets no sun at all. And it has been that way for centuries. Next time, though, the villagers may finally see the light–thanks to giant rotating mirrors known as heliostats.
Bartenbach Light Laboratory in the Austrian Tyrol plans to begin construction of the heliostats this August. “The idea is not just to light the village,” says Silvia Pezzana, an engineer at the firm. “The idea is to give them the impression they have sun.”‘
`A Marion County Jail corrections officer was fired after an internal affairs investigation determined he struck his wife in an argument over his buying Dungeons and Dragons fantasy toys.
Investigators say Edward Bonthron and wife Lori Jo Bonthron were arguing at their home last month over whether he was paying too much for the toys.
Lori Jo Bonthron told investigators she was hit, pushed and choked’
`In their quest to seize the ill-gotten gains of suspected drug dealers, federal prosecutors have targeted cash, jewelry, cars and even homes.
You can now add gold-capped teeth to the list.
A defense expert and the attorneys for two men facing federal drug charges in Tacoma are crying foul over efforts by federal prosecutors and officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to have the gold-capped teeth — commonly called “grills” or “grillz” — removed from their clients’ mouths.
“I’ve been doing this for over 30 years and I have never heard of anything like this,” said Richard Troberman, past president of the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and an expert on forfeiture law. “It sounds like Nazi Germany when they were removing the gold teeth from the bodies, but at least then they waited until they were dead.”‘
`A 5-year-old boy called 911 to report that his mother had collapsed in their apartment, but an operator told him he should not be playing on the phone, and she died before help arrived. [..]
Turner’s son, Robert, placed two calls to 911 after his mother collapsed Feb. 20 on the kitchen floor. During one of the calls, an operator said: “You shouldn’t be playing on the phone.”
In a tape of the call, parts of which were broadcast by Detroit-area television stations, the operator said: “Now put her on the phone before I send the police out there to knock on the door and you gonna be in trouble.”‘
`AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers’ phone calls, and shunted its customers’ internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against the company.
Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF’s lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants. [..]
According to a statement released by Klein’s attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T’s #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.’
A funky remix of the Leprechaun in Alabama video from the other week. Good stuff. 🙂
(6.3meg Windows media)
see it here »
`A textbook used at schools in the Indian state of Rajasthan compares housewives to donkeys, and suggests the animals make better companions as they complain less and are more loyal to their “masters,” The Times of India reported Tuesday.
“A donkey is like a housewife … In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents’ home, you’ll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master,” the newspaper reported, quoting a Hindi-language primer meant for 14-year-olds.’
`In a modest victory for broadband providers, a highly anticipated bill in the U.S. Congress does not include specific rules saying that some Internet sites must not be favored over others. [..]
Under Network neutrality, the companies that own the broadband pipes do not configure their networks in a way that plays favorites. They may not be allowed to transmit their own services at faster speeds, for example, or to charge Net content and application companies a fee for similar fast delivery.
chart
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon.com, Skype and some advocacy groups have been pressing Congress for strict laws requiring Net neutrality, and had been hoping that Barton’s bill–called the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act–would mandate it.’
`Three Singaporeans were found safe on Thursday after getting lost on what they said was a mission to find a legendary karate expert on a snowy mountainside in Japan.
One of the three men told police in Hirosaki, near the northern tip of Japan’s main island, that they had come to Japan after his dying father, a martial arts expert, had ordered them to seek out the karate teacher, TV Asahi said on its Web site.
“Japan looked so small on the world map that we thought we would be able to find him straight away,” one of the group, aged between 25 and 50, was quoted as saying.’
`Karl is a double amputee, but not by accident, birth or disease. He is an amputee by choice.
Six years ago, Karl (who asked that his real name not be used) sat alone in a parked car with 100 pounds of dry ice and an obsession to destroy his legs.
“The first thing I did was I used a wooden flour scoop to scoop some granulated dry ice into the bucket. … It filled the wastebasket with carbon dioxide gas, which was 79 degrees below zero,” he said.
Over the next 45 minutes, Karl put his legs in the wastebasket and then kept adding dry ice until it got to the top. “I spent the next six hours well-packed in the dry ice, and then I’d add more dry ice to keep it topped off,” he said. A chemistry major in college, Karl had done his research well.
“I’d done all the thermodynamic calculations, the mass of tissue, how much heat you had to subtract from that tissue to achieve freezing temperatures,” he said. “And I knew that after six hours I had certainly achieved more than enough to freeze the full thickness.”‘
`News flash! Scientists prove that swallowing magnets is bad for you. Stop the presses! Smoking hurts wealth as well as health. Eureka! Faraway objects can be hard to see.
Every year, serious scientists undertake detailed, rigorous studies to prove things that seem—well, painfully obvious. Why bother? We reviewed scores of unshocking discoveries and asked the researchers who conducted the work to explain their motivations. Two main themes emerged. First, scientists don’t assume how the world works; they test it. Common knowledge once held that meat spontaneously generated maggots. Then, in 1668, Italian physician Francesco Redi devised a set of investigative steps—what we now call an experiment—to prove wrong what everybody thought they knew.
Aside from testing untested observations, the other good reason to undertake no-duh studies, investigators told us, is that hard numbers often inspire social change. Simply put, scientists must quantify to justify.’
`Maybe Bush had rising gas prices on his mind when he said he was pleased that Republicans and Democrats were working together to get a bipartisan, comprehensive “energy” bill.
Realizing his mistake, he stopped and called for a Take 2.
“Let me start over,” Bush said, standing next to Air Force One.
Bush, often the first to admit that he’s not a great orator, got it right the second time.
“I’m pleased that Republicans and Democrats in the United States Senate are working together to get a comprehensive `immigration’ bill,” Bush said. “I want to thank the efforts of those involved in the process. …”‘
`The Bush administration Wednesday unveiled a blueprint for rebuilding the nation’s decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity.
The plan calls for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation’s massive system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War.
Until now, the nation has depended on carefully maintaining aging bombs produced during the Cold War arms race, some several decades old. The administration, however, wants the capability to turn out 125 new nuclear bombs per year by 2022, as the Pentagon retires older bombs that it says will no longer be reliable or safe.
Under the plan, all of the nation’s plutonium would be consolidated into a single facility that could be more effectively and cheaply defended against possible terrorist attacks. The plan would remove the plutonium kept at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by 2014, though transfers of the material could start sooner. In recent years, concern has grown that Livermore, surrounded by residential neighborhoods in the Bay Area, could not repel a terrorist attack.’
Yet at the same time they’re gonna chuck a hissy fit if Iran or North Korea do the same thing. Fuckwits.
`Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago.
Palaeontologists have said that the find, a crocodile-like animal called the Tiktaalik roseae and described today in the journal Nature, could become an icon of evolution in action – like Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds.
As such, it will be a blow to proponents of intelligent design, who claim that the many gaps in the fossil record show evidence of some higher power.
Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, said: “Our emergence on to the land is one of the more significant rites of passage in our evolutionary history, and Tiktaalik is an important link in the story.”‘
