`It had been years since Jeremy (not his real name) had touched a basketball.
Living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Jeremy feared contamination from dirt and germs which prevented any part of his body from touching the ground, save for the soles of his shoes.
But whilst taking part in a small clinical study to investigate the effects of psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in ‘magic’ mushrooms, on people with OCD, Jeremy’s bare feet lay on the floor and he expressed a willingness to engage in an activity, playing with a ball, that just hours before he would have been considered abhorrent.’
Hooray for psilocybin. 🙂
`A massive manhunt is under way for the serial killer thought to be responsible for the “unprecedented” murders of five prostitutes.
Suffolk police was calling in help from other forces as it deals with the biggest inquiry in its history – the hunt for the so-called Ipswich Ripper.
Two more bodies were discovered on Tuesday, which police say are likely to be those of Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls. Both women had been reported missing. The bodies were discovered near Levington, a village to the south of Ipswich and just a few miles from Suffolk police headquarters.’
Seems to be killing a prostitute every other day, which seems to be much more frequently than serial killers usually kill people.
A talking deer on the hood of a car.
see it here »
`Chris Campo had to fight a wild beast for his puppy’s life on Friday when a red tailed hawk tried to turn the youngster’s Dachshund into dinner.
But, a well-placed kick by Campo to the hawk’s head freed 5-month-old Dimi, who quickly high-tailed it to safety. [..]
“I go outside and there was this enormous red tailed hawk and it had attacked the dog on its leash,” said Charles Campo. “It was trying to carry the dog off, and my son wouldn’t let go and he fought off the hawk. My son was literally fighting a hawk – I was stunned.”’
`That was what worried her co-workers at Accelerated Solutions in Franklin. It was the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and the 35-year-old health-care claims adjuster hadn’t showed up for work in two days.
It wasn’t like Tracy to miss work, and on those rare occasions that she took a sick day, she always called in to explain.
After repeated calls to her apartment went unanswered, her co-workers called her family. They were the ones who found her dead in her home, apparently of natural causes.
It took them another week to find the other three bodies.’
`It’s the generation that came of age in the permissive 1960s and ’70s, part of the counterculture revolution that embraced the mantra “turn on, tune in, drop out.”
Now they are graying — but some are still having a hard time breaking away from or resisting marijuana, cocaine and other illegal drugs.
A national drug survey by the federal government, for example, has found that between 2002 and 2005, use of illegal drugs fell 15 percent among teenagers, but increased 63 percent among people in their 50s.’
`A daft bill by technology wizard Senator Ted Stevens, which would have meant telecom companies could charge sites for access for the use of their ‘pipes’, has died a death.
The US Congress ran out of time to discuss the bill in the current session and, when a new Democratic Congress comes back from its holidays, the bill is unlikely to get a sympathetic hearing.
The presentation of the bill did manage to amuse most of the technological community as Stevens presented the Internet as a series of tubes and pipes which would get blocked if the bill never went ahead.’
Honda’s little humanoid robot doesn’t like the stairs so much. 🙂
see it here »
`Fearless, ferocious and mightier than the world has ever seen, this is the new breed of super-lion.
Only one species of prey holds its attention: the buffalo — and in order to bring its powerful foe to the ground, it will take to deep water, use sophisticated hunting techniques and then silence the gigantic beast with a single swipe of a savage paw.
In a remote corner of Africa, an extraordinary evolutionary tale is unfolding, uncovered by the actor Jeremy Irons and an award-winning documentary team. A new film, Relentless Enemies, will tell the story of the emergence of a distinct subspecies of big cat on a tiny and isolated island in the Duba Plains of Botswana’s Okavango Delta.’
`The humble but lethal sea snail may hold the key to a better life for thousands of chronic pain sufferers.
Researchers from the University of Queensland believe conotoxins contained in potentially deadly sea snail venom could be used to create a treatment to replace conventional pain relief drugs such as morphine.
Dr Jenny Ekberg said her research had shown the conotoxin could produce pain relief without side effects in animals. [..]
“Unlike other anaesthetics, it’s very specific against the pain and doesn’t cause any side effects – it’s the first time anyone has discovered anything like this,” she said.’
`A jury found a former lab assistant guilty Thursday of murdering his boss’s estranged husband by stuffing the man’s body in a barrel of acid.
James Fagone, 24, and biochemist Larissa Schuster, 46, were arrested after authorities found the decomposed body of Timothy Schuster in a storage unit that his estranged wife had rented in July 2003.
The body was stuffed into a 55-gallon container.
Fagone testified last week that the two had knocked Timothy Schuster out with chloroform and a stun gun, and that Larissa Schuster had poured gallons of hydrochloric acid over her husband.’
`Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests.
Disturbing video footage of post-mortem examinations on dismembered tiny bodies raises serious questions about what happened to them. [..]
A senior British forensic pathologist says he is very concerned to see bodies in pieces – as that is not standard post-mortem practice.
It could possibly be a result of harvesting stem cells from bone marrow.’
`Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.’
This cat is apparently useless. 🙂
`What’s it for? Good luck answering that question. There is scientific research to be done on the moon, but this could be accomplished by automatic probes or occasional astronaut visits at a minute fraction of the cost of a permanent, crewed facility. Astronauts at a moon base will spend almost all their time keeping themselves alive and monitoring automated equipment, the latter task doable from an office building in Houston. In deadpan style, the New York Times story on the NASA announcement declared, “The lunar base is part of a larger effort to develop an international exploration strategy, one that explains why and how humans are returning to the moon and what they plan to do when they get there.” Oh–so we’ll build the moon base first, and then try to figure out why we built it.’
`Need a hug? Well scientists have developed a Hug Shirt that can cuddle and hug. The shirt employs new technology that lets the wearer remotely hug another user via use of Bluetooth.
Nominated as one of the best Inventions of 2006 by Time Magazine! the device is activated when a friend sends you a virtual hug. The wearers cell phone notifies the shirt wirelessly, via Bluetooth technology and then re-creates that person’s distinctive hug, replicating his or her warmth, pressure, duration and even heartbeat.’
`A lawmaker in this firearm-friendly state wants to help more people get the chance to shoot live animals – even if those people can’t see.
A bill filed for the 2007 legislative session would permit legally blind hunters to use laser sights, or lighted pointing instruments.
“This opens up the fun of hunting to additional people, and I think that’s great,” said Republican Rep. Edmund Kuempel, the bill’s sponsor.’
`Supermodel Naomi Campbell was acclaimed for nonsense overnight after winning the Plain English Campaign’s annual Foot in Mouth prize.
The London-born catwalk star scooped this year’s award for her patriotic observation on British cuisine: “I love England, especially the food. There’s nothing I like more than a lovely bowl of pasta.” [..]
Campbell beat Wales’s First Minister Rhodri Morgan to the dubious honour of the year’s best example of mixed metaphor, mangled syntax or plain stupidity, robbing him of a hat-trick of wins.
The Labour Party politician said in a Welsh Assembly debate: “But obviously the issue is that if you had another £450 million ($1.12 billion) from somewhere else, you have got another £450 million, but what does that tell you?
“That is like saying, if my auntie was a bloke, she would be my uncle.”‘
A few people are stuck in a house in the snow and they’re playing a game to pass the time. Each person takes turns telling another person something horrible they’ve secretly done to them in the past.
`A Malaysian man was left perched atop a seven-meter (23-foot) billboard for nearly seven hours after an accomplice who was helping him steal its spotlight fled the scene, reports said.
His partner in crime ran off — carrying both the light and the ladder — when police spotted the pair in a southern Kuala Lumpur suburb early Sunday, the Star daily reported.
But he refused to come down, swinging at would-be rescuers with a steel rod during nearly seven hours of negotiations with authorities.’
`There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days?
These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula — a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.’
`A range of extra-large condoms has been launched in South Africa, to cater for “well-endowed” men.
“A large number of South African men are bigger and complain about condoms being uncomfortable and too small,” said Durex manager Stuart Roberts.
Aids activists say the new condom could encourage men to practise safe sex in South Africa, where some 6m are HIV positive – more than any other country.’
`Growing numbers of Japanese women are afflicted with an illness that gives them orgasms virtually 24 hours a day. And with suggestions that it could be deadly, the women hardly know whether they’re coming or going, according to Shukan Post (11/24).
“If a guy simply taps me on the shoulder, I just swoon. Even when I go to the toilet, my body reacts. I’m a little bit scared of myself,” one woman sufferer tells Shukan Post.
Another adds: “When I got on the train one day, I could feel blood gushing toward a certain part of my body and it felt so good I almost let out a moan. It was sheer murder when everybody got pushed into the carriage.”‘
`The gunman who fatally shot three people in a law firm’s high-rise office before he was killed by police felt cheated over an invention, authorities said Saturday. [..]
Jackson, 59, told witnesses before he was shot that he had been cheated over a toilet he had invented for use in trucks, Police Superintendent Phil Cline said Saturday.
He was holding a hostage at gunpoint Friday when SWAT officers shot him from about 45 yards away, Cline said earlier. There were no negotiations and the hostage was unharmed, police said.’
`Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.
In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.’
