`Do you believe in Iraqi “WMD”? Did Saddam Hussein’s government have weapons of mass destruction in 2003?
Half of America apparently still thinks so, a new poll finds, and experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a partisan flag, and a growing need for people, in their own minds, to justify the war in Iraq.
People tend to become “independent of reality” in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.’
A flight simulator using maps from Google. I just blew up some cars in London. Fun. 🙂
‘When NASA announced its “Galileo into Jupiter” option, among those to publish immediate, serious objections (and later to repeat them on “Coast to Coast AM”) was an engineer named Jacco van der Worp. Van der Worp claimed that, plunging into Jupiter’s deep and increasingly dense atmosphere, the on-board Galileo electrical power supply — a set of 144 plutonium-238 fuel pellets, arrayed in two large canister devices called “RTGs” (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators — see image and schematic, below) — would ultimately “implode”; that the plutonium Galileo carried would ultimately collapse in upon itself under the enormous pressures of Jupiter’s overwhelming atmosphere —
Triggering a runaway nuclear explosion!’
`A six-metre snake and its 3m mate have turned the roof of a north Queensland residence into their own home. [..]
Mr Kinniburgh said he was told by wildlife officers there was little they could do to remove the snakes due to the small ceiling space and no manhole in the roof.
“That night I heard it on the roof, then on the back verandah, then I saw it trying to poke its head through a hole in the flyscreen,” Mr Kinniburgh told the Cairns Post.
“I sat there shitting myself. [..]’
`Authorities in Orlando, Fla., continued a search Friday for several men who threatened to kill some restaurant employees unless they dropped their pants during a robbery, according to a Local 6 News report.
Orlando police said the unidentified men forced employees into a room with a safe at the Wing House restaurant located on Kirkman Road Wednesday and forced them take off their pants.
The culprits escaped with nearly $3,000 in cash, police said.’
`Serb Ratko Dankovic, 23, had been drinking Rakia with mates while watching a magician perform a sword swallowing trick on the television.
They then started arguing over how the trick was done, and when Dankovic told mates that sword swallowing was easy and anyone could do it – they challenged him to prove it.
But he had to be rushed to the local hospital after swallowing a knife with an eight inch blade, eight nails, two spoons and a couple of clothes pegs to win the ten pound bet.’
`Britain’s biggest theme park has called off the country’s first National Muslim Fun Day because of lack of interest, the park said.
Alton Towers in central England was to open on September 17 for Muslims – with halal food, a strict dress code and prayer areas.
Music, gambling and alcohol were to be banned for the day and theme park rides such as Ripsaw, Corkscrew and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory all segregated by gender.
But the park said the event’s organisers, Islamic Leisure, who rented the park for the day and were marketing the event, had called it off due to “insufficient ticket sales”.’
`A court in Bangladesh trying suspected Islamic militants was thrown into panic when five live bombs were produced as exhibits during the hearing of a case.
The discovery prompted the presiding judge to order a hasty adjournment as the court was evacuated. [..]
Officials blame police for not defusing the devices before coming to court. The police say they were not asked to. [..]
“It was fortunate we were not all blown to smithereens,” one officer was reported as saying.’
`Canadians who spend more than an hour a day on the Internet devote less time to socializing with their spouses and children and less time doing household chores, according to a study released by Statistics Canada on Wednesday.
The report, which relied on data from a 2005 general social survey on time use, found that, on average, heavy Internet users (those who spend more than an hour a day in their personal time on-line) each spend five weeks a year surfing the web.
The study also found that these frequent users spend nearly 30 minutes less each day with their partner and kids than non-users (those who spend less than five minutes on-line a day).
“Heavy Internet users lead a very different lifestyle than non-Internet users in terms of their work and domestic lives,” said Ben Veenhof, who authored the study.’
`”Catch me if you can.”
Those were the parting words of a taunting missive containing a white power sent to a police station earlier this week.
Police had no trouble finding their suspect: He signed the letter and included his return address on the envelope.
Abdullah Date, 18, was charged with sending the threatening letter to the 73rd Precinct in Brooklyn’s East New York section, and ordered held without bail, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday in Brooklyn federal court. The white powder turned out to be harmless.’
`A woman trying to conquer her fear of heights by skydiving has died after the plane she was to jump from crashed.
Victoria Delacroix, 22, from Beckenham, London, was killed with five others on Saturday in Dittmer, Missouri, US.
The twin-engine light aircraft carrying the skydiving group nose dived and crashed soon after take-off.’
`A woman with a fake bomb strapped to her stomach forced the evacuation of two city blocks in Daytona Beach on Wednesday morning. The woman claimed she was forced to strap a bomb to herself by a man with a knife.
It turns out it was all a ploy for the woman to get her hands on some prescription drugs. [..]
With a suspicious bulge she called a bomb strapped to her stomach, 23-year-old Maria Gonzalez brought Mason Avenue to a halt. She had gone into Steve’s Pharmacy earlier, demanding prescription drugs or she’d blow up.’
`For two months, from mid-November 2004 to mid-January 2005, Odd languished in the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, trying to figure out why he was there, and desperately trying to convince somebody – anybody – to set him free.
Odd, 42, was jailed at the request of a Philadelphia assistant district attorney – not as punishment for a crime, but to ensure his testimony as a witness in a murder case.
Yet, even after the murder charges were dismissed, no one bothered to release Odd from prison.’
`According to the Health Department, lab tests have confirmed both viral and bacterial infections in about a dozen camp-goers, including nine cases of norovirus, six cases of Campylobacter jejuni, a bacterial infection; three people were found to have both.
That may be just the tip of the iceberg. More than 100 people have reported some sort of gastrointestinal illness related to the camp, including 88 people who attended the camp, and another 20 who had a family member at the camp.
`Pilgrims who queued to drink from a miracle fountain flowing from a statue of the late pope John Paul II were disappointed to hear it is just a council-installed water pipe.
Locals in the pope’s birthplace of Wadowice, near Krakow, thought a miracle had happened when water started to run from the base of his statue.
Word spread throughout Poland and pilgrims from around the country visited to fill bottles with the “holy” water.
However, Mayor Eva Filipiak dashed their illusions by admitting a water pipe had been installed under the statue.
“We didn’t mean anything by it, it was just supposed to make the statue look prettier,” she said.’
`A 73-year-old man was looking at his .25 caliber handgun Tuesday night when it went off, shooting him in the forehead, Pasco County Sheriff’s Deputies said.
Investigating officers said the injuries were not life-threatening.’
`They say it takes a thief to catch a thief, but India’s Delhi Metro has hired a monkey to frighten off other monkeys from boarding trains and upsetting passengers.
The langur monkey, trained since the age of three months, has been patrolling monkey-prone stations on a leash.
In June, a monkey boarded a train at the underground Chawri Bazaar station and reportedly scared passengers by scowling at them for three stops. It then alighted at Civil Lines station.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation says it hopes the new hire will avert a repeat of that episode.’
`A guard dog has ripped apart a collection of rare teddy bears, including one once owned by Elvis Presley, during a rampage at a children’s museum.
“He just went berserk,” said Daniel Medley, general manager of the Wookey Hole Caves near Wells, England, where hundreds of bears were chewed up Tuesday night by the 6-year-old Doberman pinscher named Barney.’
`A police officer in Maryland heard a surprising story when he found a 15-year-old girl and an adult male engaged in a sex act at 3 a.m. in a car in Takoma Park: She was a prostitute, the girl said, and her pimp was a coach at a high school in Prince George’s County.
Arron J. Burroughs, a junior varsity assistant football coach at Bowie High School, appeared yesterday in Superior Court in the District, where he was ordered held without bail on a charge of first-degree child sexual abuse, said Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.’
This will disguise web pages so they look like office documents, so you can browse whatever you want at work and make it look like you’re actually, you know .. working. 🙂
`A pilot faced reckless flying and other charges for landing a helicopter on a public street to pick up Tommy Lee and take him to a concert, prosecutors said.
David Keith Martz, 49, allegedly landed the helicopter July 7 outside a home in the Hollywood Hills.
He was summoned to give the 43-year-old rocker a 50-mile flight to a Nine Inch Nails concert in Irvine, said Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the City Attorney’s Office.’
`A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such “commissions” to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.
The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court’s jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.’
‘This is a clip from that Japanese prank show. Some new guy on the job is told to grab a cab and deliver some paperwork. The cab driver is a stunt driver and scares the crap out of the guy.’
(17.9meg Windows media)
see it here »
`The Mediterranean is threatened by its worst ever environmental disaster after Israel’s bombing of a power plant in Lebanon sent thousands of tonnes of fuel gushing into the sea, the environment minister charged.
“Up until now 10,000-15,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil have spilled out into the sea,” after Israel’s bombing of the power station in Jiyeh two weeks ago, Lebanese Environment Minister Yacub Sarraf told AFP Saturday.
“It’s without doubt the biggest environmental catastrophe that the Mediterranean has known and it risks having terrible consequences not only for our country but for all the countries of the eastern Mediterranean.”‘
`No matter how played flying cars, kayaks, and other strange contraptions are, the allure of a jet pack strapped onto your back just doesn’t seem to lose its luster. Rick Herron, creator of Skywalker Jets, has devised a rocket pack that weighs about 90 pounds and can propel a 200 pound pilot around the air for what is likely the most invigorating 5 minutes of their life. The crazy part is this thing actually works, and it doesn’t get your backside all crispy in the process. Rick plans on producing a finalized model that has a range of about 4 miles and includes a GPS unit integrated into a HUD showing flight time and engine information among other things.’
`Victims of the disastrous “Elephant Man” drugs trial have been told they face contracting cancer and other fatal diseases as a result of being poisoned in the bungled tests.
One of the six victims was told last week he is already showing “definite early signs” of lymphatic cancer.
He and three others have also been warned that they are “highly likely” to develop incurable auto-immune diseases.’
followup to Two drug trial men critically ill.
‘For some very strange reason these guys get a buzz out of being rammed by a shopping cart at speeds of up to 70 mph.’
see it here »
`A man was arrested on charges of practicing medicine without a license after a woman died during a liposuction procedure performed in the basement of a home, authorities said Monday.
Luis Carlos Rebeiro, a native of Brazil, was to be arraigned in district court on Monday following the death of a 23-year-old woman Sunday. [..]
Police also charged Rebeiro with drug possession. A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office said she did not know what type of drugs.’
A simple way to get system level privileges on an XP machine.
