moonbuggy

Do you have an opinion on bilingualism in Canada? This woman does.

(1.7meg Windows media)

`New Zealand is not for sale, despite somebody in neighboring Australia trying to offload the nation of 4 million to the highest online bidder.

With a starting offer of just one cent, brisk bidding for the prime chunk of South Pacific real estate quickly boosted the price to 3,000 Australian dollars (US$2,330) before eBay pulled the plug on the auction this week.

“Clearly New Zealand is not for sale,” eBay Australia spokesman Daniel Feiler told the New Zealand Press Association, adding that 22 bids had been made before the company acted.’

`Ageing and unreliable office computers are making workers unhappy and more likely to claim sick leave, a new survey shows.

A poll conducted by Tickbox.net of more 2,700 European office workers from Britain, France and Germany found that workplace dissatisfaction increased significantly with the age of computer equipment.

British and French respondents said working on outdated computers was the most irritating aspect of office life.’

`Chesterton Police say a 17-year-old boy suffered a broken leg after he asked a friend to hit him with his car “for fun.”

Michael Morris of Chesterton is hospitalized in fair condition Tuesday, three days after the incident Saturday night. His friend, 18-year-old Stephen dDomonkos, told police Morris asked him to hit him with his car and that they had done it on previous occasions.

He told police Morris was “an adrenaline junkie.”‘

`A small company in Madison, WI has developed a novel way to generate hydrogen cheaply and cleanly from biomass.

In the next couple of weeks, the technology, developed by Virent Energy Systems, will be used for the first time to continuously produce electricity from a small 10-kilowatt generator at the company’s facility in Madison. The unit is fueled by corn syrup, similar to the kind used by soft drinks manufacturers, says CEO Eric Apfelbach.

The company is also about to begin work on a $1 million U.S. Navy project to build portable fuel-cell generators. The goal is to make self-contained units capable of producing their own hydrogen from a biomass-derived glycerol solution or even antifreeze.’

`Chloe who plays one of the wifes in HBO’s new show ‘Big Love’ appeared in this nude photoshoot.’

`A supermodel fell out of a coach travelling at 50mph after mistaking an exit door for a toilet door.

It happened as Tatyana Simanava was returning to her seat from the WC.

Instead of opening the door to the passenger area she pulled open the emergency exit.

The 21-year-old blonde was pitched out onto a busy road in the middle of New York.

The driver reportedly spotted her falling out and pulled over.’

‘A Philippine judge who claimed he could see into the future and admitted consulting imaginary mystic dwarfs has asked for his job back after being fired by the country’s Supreme Court.

“They should not have dismissed me for what I believed,” Florentino Floro, a trial judge in the capital’s Malabon northern suburb, told reporters after filing his appeal.

Floro was sacked last month and fined 40,000 pesos ($780) after a three-year investigation found he was incompetent, had shown bias in a case he was trying and had criticized court procedure, a ruling showed.’

follow-up to Judge’s psychic leanings too over the top.

aka How To Explode Bathtubs

(24.2meg avi)

see it here »

`The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the most powerful and most efficient prime-mover in the world today. The Aioi Works of Japan’s Diesel United, Ltd built the first engines and is where some of these pictures were taken.

It is available in 6 through 14 cylinder versions, all are inline engines. These engines were designed primarily for very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them.

The cylinder bore is just under 38″ and the stroke is just over 98″. Each cylinder displaces 111,143 cubic inches (1820 liters) and produces 7780 horsepower. Total displacement comes out to 1,556,002 cubic inches (25,480 liters) for the fourteen cylinder version.’

`Dance Dance Revolution. With Flamethrowers. Pointed at you.’

`A German man who unsuccessfully tried to kill himself by jumping in front of a train must pay compensation for the damage he caused, a court in the southern city of Munich ruled on Tuesday.

A spokesman for the court said the 47-year-old man leapt too late to land under the train and instead crashed through the side window of the driver’s cabin. He suffered head wounds but no other lasting physical injuries, the court said.

The driver of the metro train suffered shock and was unable to work for several weeks.’

Not in a language I can read, but the pictures speak for themselves, I suppose.

`A “cowardly” Edmonton man who “scalped” his sleeping girlfriend while using a power drill to style her hair avoided being sent to the slammer yesterday.

Shee Theng, 30, was handed a nine-month conditional sentence to be served in the community and eight months of probation on his assault with a weapon conviction.

“You’re like a shadow on the wall,” said provincial court Judge Shelagh Creagh, referring to his detailed evasiveness in a pre-sentence report and psychiatric assessment. [..]

Court heard the attachment caught in Rose’s hair and pulled out a clump, leaving her bleeding, screaming and terrified while Theng took off. Court also heard Theng knew it was a dangerous idea because he had earlier scalped himself the same way.’

`The cave had it all, everything Fred Strunk and his work crews needed to grow 100 pounds of marijuana every two months.

Row after row of white-bright grow lights were powered by “free” electricity via an illegal splice into utility lines. An indoor irrigation system was nearly an engineering marvel. A ventilation system controlled humidity, while a security system featured a bank-vault-like entrance, with security cameras placed everywhere.

And there was the cave itself, a rock fortress shielding the illegal activity.

Strunk’s pot harvests, without a doubt, replaced tobacco and vegetables as Trousdale County’s biggest cash crop, investigators said.’

follow up to Men Grew Pot Inside Cave.

`The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again – even though electricity to the village was cut off.

An endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled “ghostbusters” have descended on the town, searching for clues to the recent spontaneous combustion of everything from fuse boxes to microwave ovens to a car.

The blazes, originally blamed on the devil, have not hurt anyone.’

`Seven RMIT staff working just metres underneath two mobile phone towers in a Melbourne CBD building have been diagnosed with brain tumours.

The cases have forced the university to evacuate the two top floors of the Tivoli building and begin immediate health and safety testing.

The seven business faculty staff work on the top two floors of the Bourke St building and have developed tumours in the past seven years.

Two of the cases are cancerous. The remaining five are benign, or non-cancerous, brain tumours.’

`Two maniacs waited in a car on a level crossing until a train smashed into it — just for the thrill.

The Vauxhall Vectra was hurled to the side of the track but miraculously the two idiots climbed out of the mangled wreckage unharmed.

They then jumped into a waiting BMW and sped off as the train driver and his passengers looked on in amazement. No one on the train was hurt.

Cops fear the mindless stunt may have been filmed to be shown off like the clips on the cult MTV show Jackass.’

`Japanese police are trying to identify cremated human remains that were mailed to the headquarters of a TV station by a viewer who was incensed at missing a cartoon.

A plastic bag containing ashes and shards of bone was delivered to TV Tokyo along with a note protesting TV Tokyo’s decision to extend live coverage of the world table-tennis championships.

The viewer wrote that he had set his video to record the popular “Inu Kami” cartoon.’

`The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.’

I’m continually updating the code and layout of the site at the moment, so new posts are still a bit sparse. It will probably be another few weeks before I get back to more regular postings. In the meantime, there’s now a page of random posts to keep you entertained, and I’m going through tagging posts to make navigation by category a lot easier.

So, lots of cool things happening behind the scenes. I’m sure no one but me cares, but oh well. 🙂

The tagging of posts will take weeks or months, because I’m slowly working through the archives when I can be bothered. All the other major changes and new functionality should be done in the next few weeks. Fun. 🙂

`Speaking in Atlanta today, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was sharply questioned about his pre-war claims about WMD in Iraq. An audience member confronted Rumsfeld with his 2003 claim about WMD, “We know where they are.” Rumsfeld falsely claimed he never said it. The audience member then read Rumsfeld’s quote back to him, leaving the defense secretary speechless.’

(5.7meg Quicktime)

`Yeast, because it has been used for millennia, carries a great amount of symbolic weight. As a key ingredient to basic sustenance like bread and beer, yeast is an age-old, familiar and very powerful medium to work with. Food, and our complex relationship with it, is mythical; when we eat and drink, human happiness and sorrow, love and hate, heaven and hell are simultaneously displayed and represented. If beer is food, and food is life itself, then beer too is life itself.

Experimentation with these historic staple foods, in combination with my own body, helps to build a new artistic dimension: understanding through taste. To experience an art piece through taste is a two-pronged experience. The viewer has to make a simple decision – to ingest it or not. From this primal question new questions quickly arise: Is it socially acceptable to drink beer that includes even a trace amount of vaginal yeast? Is it natural? Is it kinky? Can a man drinking this beer still be macho? Why does it make such a difference when it comes to the human body?’

`This movie, built with data collected during the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe on Jan. 14, 2005, shows the operation of the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer camera during its descent and after touchdown. The camera was funded by NASA.

The almost four-hour-long operation of the camera is shown in less than five minutes. That’s 40 times the actual speed up to landing and 100 times the actual speed thereafter.

The first part of the movie shows how Titan looked to the camera as it acquired more and more images during the probe’s descent. Each image has a small field of view, and dozens of images were made into mosaics of the whole scene.’

(11meg Quicktime)

`The advent of high-definition TV has forced technicians and set designers back to the drawing board as the sharper detail in the new technology reveals all flaws.

BBC designers have been forced to rethink how to simulate fake blood and wounds for medical shows such as Casualty, while many TV stars are reported to be fearful of how their imperfections might show up under the unforgiving glare of the HD camera.

A BBC spokeswoman said: “HD-TV picks up red especially vividly and we can no longer get away with the traditional stage blood, using ketchup and the like.”

A Sky TV spokeswoman said: “It is giving rise to all kinds of little things that the industry never really thought about. Even things like cheap cutlery in a supposedly upper class-scene now get picked out.”‘

`Located about 1 1/2 hrs from Spokane, 4 hrs. from Seattle, 5 hrs. from Portland.

360 Degree Views. Private water system. High Power lines on sight.

Hardened buildings built to withstand One megaton nuclear blast within three thousand feet!!

Wall thicknesses up to fourteen feet.

Three 155′ tall missile silos.

A dozen other large to huge buildings underground.

Thousands of feet of connecting tunnels.’

`Japanese and US aerospace agencies and companies plan to develop a low-noise, fuel-efficient supersonic jet to take off where the Anglo-French Concorde ended, a press report said. [..]

The research and development cost of the Japan-US project is estimated to reach “several hundred” billion yen, the daily added. Currently, one hundred billion yen is worth some 880 million dollars. [..]

The Japanese side reportedly aims to develop a plane that would travel at the same speed as the Concorde but would produce just one percent of the noise.

Japan hopes to put on the market in about 2020 a supersonic jetliner with a capacity of 200-300 seats that could travel between Tokyo and Los Angeles in five hours — about half the current flight time.’

`Queensland painter Tim Patch says his father was less than impressed when he learned his son was gaining notoriety for a “penile art” portrait of Prime Minister John Howard.

“My dad is not too impressed. He shook his head and said, `Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear’,” Mr Patch said.

The Gold Coast father of four today unveiled two portraits that he has painted using his penis as a brush, at the opening of Sexpo in Perth.

The first painting was of Prime Minister John Howard and the other of Opposition Leader Kim Beazley.

The former buildepenir was drawing quick portraits in a market until recently.

“Then I told a friend I could paint with my dick and she was really enthusiastic.”‘

`Two men who had driven around several towns for hours after meeting in a bar ended up fighting after one of the men couldn’t communicate directions clearly to the driver.

Kent Hisey, 52, became frustrated by the difficulty of James Mills, who is deaf, in communicating directions, Valparaiso police said. They had driven from the Playboy Lounge in New Chicago to Portage, then Hobart where the 46-year-old Mills lives and finally to Valparaiso communities spread across two northwest Indiana counties about 30 miles southeast of Chicago.

Hisey, who has two prosthetic legs, stopped his car at the Porter County Airport, got out and used his walker to go around to the passenger side, where he grabbed Mills to pull him from the car, police said.’

Cripple fight!

`Matt Feshbach believes he has super powers. He senses danger faster than most people. He appreciates beauty more deeply than he used to. He says he outperforms his peers in the money management industry.

He heightened his powers of perception in 1995 when he went to Los Angeles and became the first and so far only “public” Scientologist to take a highly classified Scientology program called Super Power.

Where in L.A. did he do this?

“Just in Los Angeles,” is all Feshbach will say. Super Power is that secret.’