`An 18-year-old Singaporean student committed suicide last month because he was convinced his penis was too small, a report said on Wednesday. [..]
The teenager, who was not named, jumped from a building on March 3. A suicide note explained why, an investigation to determine the cause of death said.
“He said it was not due to the stress of his examination, but it was more about his physical development… He still knew there was something wrong with his body parts,” said the report quoted by the newspaper.
It said the teenager had confided in his mother in October 2005 that he was worried about the size of his penis. She took him to a clinic where a doctor said it was normal for an Asian man and prescribed multi-vitamins.’
‘This is a my street-legal jet car on full afterburner. The car has two engines: the production gasoline engine in the front driving the front wheels and the jet engine in the back. The idea is that you drive around legally on the gasoline engine and when you want to have some fun, you spin up the jet and get on the burner (you can start the jet while driving along on the gasoline engine). The car was built because I wanted the wildest street-legal ride possible. With this project, I was able to use some stuff I learned while getting my fancy engineering degree (I have a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University) to design a street-legal jet car without the distraction of how other people have done it in the past – because no one has. I don’t know how fast the car will go and probably never will. The car was built to thrill me, not kill me. That doesn’t stop me from the occasional blast on the highway though.’
`An honors student at New Brighton Area High School has been expelled after a strange set of circumstances.
At an all-school assembly on Tuesday, a motivational speaker told Corey Johnson he looks like Osama Bin Laden.
Johnson says he was teased about it for two straight days, and finally snapped, saying if he were Osama he’d have pulled a “Columbine” – referring to a deadly school shooting at Columbine High School.
A teacher overheard the and the school expelled him.’
`When the government told a court Friday that it wanted a class-action lawsuit regarding the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping on Americans dismissed, its lawyers wielded one of the most powerful legal tools available to the executive branch — the state secrets privilege. [..]
In this case, the government will be asking a federal judge in California to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T for its alleged complicity in warrantless government surveillance of its customer’s internet and telephone communications. The EFF alleges that AT&T gave the government access to a massive phone billing database and helped the NSA spy on its customers’ internet use. [..]
Judges almost invariably agree to such requests, according to William Weaver, a law professor and senior adviser to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
“It’s like one of magic rings from The Lord of the Rings,” Weaver said. “You slip it on and you are invisible — you are now secret.
“Ostensibly judges could have flexibility, but they have not done that,” Weaver said. “There has never been an unsuccessful invocation of the state secrets privilege when national security is involved. The (EFF) suit is over.”‘
`Hugh Jackman can add one more title to his list of credentials — gullible.
And that’s coming from Hollywood’s dopiest dude, Ashton Kutcher.
The Punk’d creator has just staged what he reckons was his most ambitious TV prank — making Jackman think he had accidentally blown up director Brett Ratner’s Hollywood home.
Embarrassingly, Jackman took the bait hook, line and sinker.’
`Like scientists, philosophers use experiments to test their theories. Unlike scientists, their experiments do not require sophisticated laboratories, white-robed technicians or even rodents. They occur in the mind, and start with ‘What if…’.
These “thought experiments” help philosophers clarify their understanding of certain concepts and intuitions. In the field of ethics, thought experimenters typically present a dilemma, examine the most popular “intuitive” response and then show the implications for real-world issues.
But such experiments are rarely tested on large numbers of people. So to reach a larger group, here are four typical experiments. Readers are invited to vote on how they think they would act in each case.’
`The Norwegian coastguard Tuesday found the body of a 67-year-old adventurer roped to the keel of his overturned and wrecked boat two days after he had set off from the North Cape to row the length of Norway’s coastline.
Without protection a man can survive for only a few hours in the cold Arctic waters around the Cape, but before his departure Richard Horntvedt told a local newspaper he was not taking a life raft or a survival suit as he did not have enough space.
“We found his body at about 5.30 a.m. (0330 GMT) this morning drifting about 10 miles east of the Cape,” emergency services spokesman Erlang Herstad said.
“He was tied to the keel of the boat by a rope, but I don’t know if he had tied himself or became entangled.”‘
‘What just happened? I just got violated, right?’
(6.3meg Flash video)
see it here »
`A high school teacher in Belleville, Ill., was arrested and charged with breaking the neck of a 17-year-old student and then leaving her to die in some woods, according to police.
Investigators said Samson Shelton, 26, who is a teacher at Columbia High School, tried to strangle Ashley Reeves and then left her to die.
Shelton was with St. Clair County detectives when they found Reeves in a park in Belleville. She survived in the woods for 30 hours before she was found.’
`We met at Union Square North at 3:30 PM. Around 80 agents showed up, most them looking like wonderful Best Buy employees. More than a few came dressed in navy or teal, but with the belt and the khakis they still looked employee-like. After everyone arrived I explained the mission. The first step was for everyone to throw their newspapers away. The instruction to bring a newspaper was a red herring meant to throw people off the scent of the mission’s true nature. I then revealed the plan, “We’re heading up to the Best Buy on 23rd Street. We’ll enter the store one by one. Once inside, spread out and stand near the end of an aisle, facing away from the merchandise. Don’t shop, but don’t work either. If a customer comes up to you and asks you a question, be polite and help them if you know the answer. If anyone asks you if you work there, say no. If an employee asks you what you’re doing, respond ‘I’m waiting for my girlfriend/boyfriend who is shopping elsewhere in the store.’ If they question you about your clothing, just explain that it’s what you put on when you woke up this morning and you don’t know any of the other people dressed like you.”‘
`Bemused Toronto commuters were repeatedly informed that “Stephen Harper eats babies” after a hacker tampered with advertising signs on city trains.
The scrolling electronic signs that usually carry transit updates and advertisements on Toronto’s westbound Lakeshore GO Transit trains carried the messages Thursday, Friday and Monday after the hacker used a remote-control device to re-program the wording and mock the prime minister.
The ingenious hacker made sure that suburban commuters in at least five different cars continued to get his or her subliminal message.’
So, if you’re reading this and you’ve been here before you may or may not notice that some parts of the page look a bit different. I’ve just switched over to the WordPress powered site I’ve been playing with over the past few days. Most everything is going nicely now, all the old posts seems to have successfully made their way into the new database and the comments have followed along too.
There might still bit a bit of ugliness on some of the pages, I’m still putting the last few tweaks in at the moment. There will probably be a few minor changes to the look of the page aswell, as I stuff about with some of the new features I’ve got now.
If everything goes to plan though, the new site should look and feel a lot like the old one. The biggest changes are behind the scenes.
Fun fun. 🙂
If you notice anything majorly screwed up and could be bothered, send me an email via the contact page so I know to fix it.
Oh, and also, you can now register an account on the site. I don’t know that it does anything at the moment, but I may in the future add some features to the site that make use of it. Personalisation of the page layout or some AJAXy shit or something. [shrug] Who knows.
This person speeds through a red light and manages to miss every other car in the intersection. Very lucky and very, very stupid.
(300kB Flash video)
see it here »
`At the height of the Cold War in the late 1950s, all international communications were either sent through undersea cables or bounced off of the natural ionosphere. The United States military was concerned that the Soviets (or other “Hostile Actors”) might cut those cables, forcing the unpredictable ionosphere to be the only means of communication with overseas forces. The Space Age had just begun, and the communications satellites we rely on today existed only in the sketches of futurists.
Nevertheless, the US Military looked to space to help solve their communications weakness. Their solution was to create an artificial ionosphere. In May 1963, the US Air Force launched 480 million tiny copper needles that briefly created a ring encircling the entire globe. They called it Project West Ford. The engineers behind the project hoped that it would serve as a prototype for two more permanent rings that would forever guarantee their ability to communicate across the globe.’
`After more than three years of combat and nearly 2,400 U.S. military deaths in Iraq, nearly two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 still cannot find Iraq on a map, a study released Tuesday showed.
The study found that less than six months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, 33 percent could not point out Louisiana on a U.S. map.
The National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs 2006 Geographic Literacy Study paints a dismal picture of the geographic knowledge of the most recent graduates of the U.S. education system.’
`File this under: “Strange Lego Creations” A Lego builder decided to create this fully functional “semi-automatic pump-action Lego crossbow that took four blocks in the handle and one in the chamber” — along with 300 hours of work put in. It’s capable of firing a standard Lego brick 20 yards. One potential negative, the crossbow isn’t very accurate.’
‘Two kids think it would be funny to dress up like a Lama and walk around other Lamas. The fun starts to end when a male Lama is turned on by the impresonators.’
(1.8meg Windows media)
see it here »
Kinda frustrating, but not too bad. I got through about four, but then got a bit bored with it.
`Three years after a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, only one major U.S. building project in Iraq is on schedule and within budget: the massive new American embassy compound.
The $592 million facility is being built inside the heavily fortified Green Zone by 900 non-Iraqi foreign workers who are housed nearby and under the supervision of a Kuwaiti contractor, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report. Construction materials have been stockpiled to avoid the dangers and delays on Iraq’s roads.
“We are confident the embassy will be completed according to schedule (by June 2007) and on budget,” said Justin Higgins, a State Department spokesman.
The same cannot be said for major projects serving Iraqis outside the Green Zone, the Senate report said. Many — including health clinics, water-treatment facilities and electrical plants — have had to be scaled back or in some cases eliminated because of the rising costs of securing worksites and workers.’
Apparently the banana is an atheists worst nightmare.
I know worrying about them keeps me up at night.
(2.3meg Windows media)
see it here »
`Don’t believe the hype—The debate among scientists over the reality of global warming has come to an agreement: It’s happening right now. Given that fact, it’s time to meditate on what will happen if the status quo remains unchanged. [..]
Let’s start off with the summer months—June, July and August. Think about the drought that Europe had a couple of years ago, which resulted in tens of thousands of fatalities and major crop loss. According to analyses of the world’s climate, a European summer drought that would [currently] occur once every 20 years, can be expected to occur once every three years toward the end of the century, when carbon dioxide emissions will be roughly twice what it was in pre-Industrial Revolution times. That’s a seven-fold increase.
The same calculations go for El Niño-like weather patterns in the Pacific and monsoons in Southeast Asia. Extreme flooding could make countries like Bangladesh uninhabitable and would displace thousands of environmental refugees.’
`Four bus loads of students from O’Brien Middle School made the four-hour trip to Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo, Calif., only to find the amusement park’s gates locked Monday. The school-sponsored trip was supposed to reward top students.
“It was pretty much a fiasco,” said Washoe County School District spokesman Steve Mulvenon. “They ended up wasting a day that those kids could have better spent in class or doing what they were going to do at the park.”
School officials said the $50 fee will be refunded, and the tour company that arranged the trip has agreed to pay for the next one. “The tour company neglected to check the schedule,” Mulvenon said.’
`A man underwent an intensive parachute course so that he could throw himself out of a plane in the UK and commit suicide.
The 27-year-old, who has not been named, died on Saturday afternoon after cutting through the lines of his parachute on his first jump and plunging to the ground.
He died two weeks after doing seven hours of training and seemed ready and able to take his first jump over Old Buckenham airfield, near Attleborough, Norfolk.
But, after jumping at 3,500ft and after his fixed-line parachute was seen to open normally, he threw away the helmet, which had a built-in radio to speak to his instructor on the ground, then used a pair of scissors or gardening secateurs to cut the cords of his parachute.’
`A newspaper promotion for Tom Cruise’s upcoming “Mission: Impossible III” got off to an explosive start when a county arson squad blew up a news rack, thinking it contained a bomb.
The confusion: the Los Angeles Times rack was fitted with a digital musical device designed to play the “Mission: Impossible” theme song when the door was opened. But in some cases, the red plastic boxes with protruding wires were jarred loose and dropped onto the stack of newspapers inside, alarming customers.
Sheriff’s officials said they rendered the news rack in this suburb 35 miles north of downtown Los Angeles “safe” after being called to the scene Friday by a concerned individual who thought he’d seen a bomb.’
