Archive for May, 2007

research

Monday, May 28, 2007

 

Smile, Though Your Heart Is Breaking

‘As seen in the photos on the following 25 pages, not everyone looks glum when they pose for a mug shot. In fact, some arrestees are actually beaming when the sheriff’s deputy says “cheese.” The men and women pictured here were photographed over the past few weeks in police stations nationwide.’


Woman tells of grotesque behaviour by barred ex

‘A man was warned yesterday that he faced 10 months in jail if he again breached a barring order to stay away from his former partner.

Tina Doohan told a court how her ex had entered her home and defecated on her spaghetti bolognese dinner before rubbing it on her face. After this grotesque incident, the mother of one had her hand cut as she held up her plate.

Ms Doohan told the court her former partner Patrick McLaughlin had breached a barring order when he entered her home. McLaughlin claimed that she had soiled her own food and cut her own hand.’


suggest

Amnesty in hot water on abortion

‘Amnesty International is facing upheaval and mass resignations after it decided last month to advocate that abortion be decriminalised worldwide.

Many Christians, especially Catholics, are expected to resign and may establish an alternative human rights organisation.

The Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference is considering its response, but a senior Catholic said yesterday he thought “a parting of the ways” was inevitable. Amnesty estimates that 500 Catholic schools in Australia have member groups, as do other Christian schools.

Amnesty’s international executive adopted the policy last month as part of its campaign to curb violence against women. Widney Brown, Amnesty’s international director of policy, said yesterday the policy called for decriminalisation of abortion and access to secure abortions for pregnancies resulting from sexual violence, or that risk the mother’s life or health.’


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Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes car crash

‘Lopes had already started work on both her second solo album and on songs for the fourth TLC album, 3D, when she was killed in a car accident in Honduras on April 25, 2002. She was the sole victim of seven people in the vehicle (a Mitsubishi Pajero). The vehicle rolled several times, throwing Lisa out the window. She died from severe head injuries. Lisa’s mother Wanda later tried to sue Mitsubishi Motors, as the Pajero was prone to rollovers.’

(2.0meg Windows media)

see it here »


Did Pakistani gang steal captives’ kidneys?

‘Pakistani police have arrested nine people, four of them doctors, for abducting people, drugging them and stealing their kidneys for transplant operations, police said today.

Selling kidneys from living donors is not illegal in Pakistan, which medical experts say has a reputation as the world’s “kidney bazaar”.

But police said those arrested in the eastern city of Lahore tricked people then drugged them before removing their kidneys.

“These poor people were given tranquillisers and were deprived of their kidneys without their consent,” Lahore police chief Malik Mohammad Iqbal told Reuters.’


terms

Applying for a job at IKEA

Applying for a job at IKEA


‘Nazi raccoons’ tormenting Germans

‘In 1934, top Nazi party official Hermann Goering received a seemingly mundane request from the Reich Forestry Service. A fur farm was seeking permission to release a batch of exotic bushy-tailed critters into the wild to “enrich the local fauna” and give bored hunters something new to shoot at.

Goering approved the request and unwittingly uncorked an ecological disaster that is still spreading across Europe. The imported North American species, Procyon lotor, or the common raccoon, quickly took a liking to the forests of central Germany. Encountering no natural predators — and with hunters increasingly called away by World War II — the woodland creatures multiplied and have stymied all attempts to prevent them from overtaking the continent.

Today, as many as 1 million raccoons are estimated to live in Germany, and their numbers are steadily increasing. In 2005, hunters and speeding cars killed 10 times as many raccoons as a decade earlier, according to official statistics.’


handbook

Annoying 15 year old wants baby

This girl seems to be an idiot.

(3.4meg Windows media)

see it here »


Landlord forced to live in own building

‘A Lakewood, Ohio, landlord has been ordered by a judge to house arrest in one of his derelict buildings until he makes the proper repairs.

Lakewood Municipal Judge Patrick Carroll ordered Richard Naumann to live in his Lake Avenue apartment building — which has no heat, hot water, operable stoves or ovens — until proper repairs are made to the two buildings he owns, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Tuesday.

Naumann, who will only be allowed to leave the building between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. for work, will also be outfitted with an electronic monitoring device on his ankle to ensure he abides by the judge’s command, the newspaper said.’


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One in three porn viewers are women

‘Record numbers of Australians are visiting pornographic websites, including sexually explicit dating sites – and one in three of them is a woman.

Surprising new figures show more than one-third of internet users visited an adult website at least once in the first three months of this year.

Almost one in five was under 18, and 5 per cent were 65 or over.’


mail

Gay bar wins right to ban heterosexuals

‘A Melbourne gay bar has been granted an exemption from the Equal Opportunity Act in a landmark ruling which will allow security to refuse entry to heterosexuals.

The owners of Collingwood’s Peel Hotel, which came under fire in April for promoting a gay Anzac Day party, successfully argued to the state planning tribunal that banning heterosexuals from the club would prevent “sexually based insults and violence”. [..]

VCAT deputy president Cate McKenzie claimed that allowing straight men and women into the club would defeat the purpose of the venue.

“This would undermine or destroy the atmosphere which the company wishes to create,” McKenzie said.’


The Flying Belt

‘Tim Fofonoff, a 31-year-old grad student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stands at the base of a 50-foot-tall, graffiti-covered rock wall just south of Boston. He’s clipped into the Atlas Powered Rope Ascender, a toaster-size battery-driven device that he and his three co-inventors built themselves. With it, he’s about to do something no one outside of a Hollywood script has done before: rappel up a wall at an astonishing 10 feet per second. He stares hesitantly for a moment at the craggy rock face, presses a small button, and darts off the ground as if he were wearing a cape. Halfway up, he lets go of the button and stops, dangling, a little out of breath–it’s been awhile since his last test, and he’s forgotten what it’s like to fly.’

(4.4meg Flash video)

see it here »


research

Oregon man uses pigs to trash own house after foreclosure

‘Police in Clackamas County are looking for a man they say locked three live pigs in his house in the hopes that they would trash the place. All because he was upset the home went into foreclosure. [..]

Lovett bought a home on SE Wildcat Mountain Drive in Eagle Creek a few years ago. In January the house went into foreclosure. Neighbors told police that Lovett was extremely distraught over the the situation.

Neighbor Pat Bradshaw was shocked when he returned home from a California trip to find the house in ruins.

“All the windows are broken, he obviously dumped some gravel on top of the roofline, he took his excavator and smashed it into the wall,” said Bradshaw.’


Crying Over Spilled Semen

‘The finding that women who do not use condoms during sex are less depressed and less likely to attempt suicide than are women who have sex with condoms and women who are not sexually active, leads one researcher to conclude that semen contains powerful-and potentially addictive-mood-altering chemicals.

Study author Gordon G. Gallup, Ph.D., a psychologist at the State University of New York in Albany, also found that women who routinely had intercourse without condoms became increasingly depressed as more time elapsed since their last sexual encounter. There was no such correlation for women whose partners regularly used condoms.’


suggest

I need an unstable woman for a drama filled relationship…

‘I’m seeking a like-minded woman to share a disastrous 3-9 month relationship with, ending in acrimony, emotional chaos, and possibly legal proceedings.

My name is Lloyd, I live in Chicago , I’m 27 years old, fairly well educated, I hold down a good job and am pretty stable. I’m told I’m fairly good looking, but I’ll let you be the judge of that – I’m generally caring and very honest.

I am looking for an attractive female who will at first give me obsessive love, praise and devotion – but whose paranoia, self-loathing and fear of rejection and abandonment will eventually lead her to alternately push me away and pull me closer in a love/hate cycle that will lead to infidelity, consensual sexual violence, and the eventual emotional breakdown of one or other party – or if we’re lucky – both!’


home

Nancy Grace Gets Some Back From Her Crew

This TV presenter starts to complain about her production staff on air. They very quickly get their own back.

see it here »


The World’s Messiest Cars

‘You know that feeling you get after a long road trip? You pull into the driveway, finally home, and look around your car to see that every consumable product you’ve touched over the course of the trip is strewn about your car — empty soda cans, bags of half-eaten chips, fast food sacks filled with trash. The owners of the cars in this photo collection have been on a perpetual road trip, where they never really make it home to clean out the car.’


terms

Tourists taken on Sydney joy-ride

‘A man has allegedly taken a tourist bus and its 13 passengers on a joy-ride around inner Sydney.

Police say the 33-year-old Abbotsford man was walking past the casino on Pirrama Road in Pyrmont about 8:50am AEST, when he boarded the bus with the motor running.

They say the man, who was allegedly drunk, drove off when the driver was standing nearby awaiting the arrival of other passengers for a sightseeing tour.

He allegedly drove along several local streets before returning to the point of departure.

Police say he then ran from the vehicle and was chased by the driver and a number of other people. Police on patrol joined the chase.’


Driver dies in welding van blast

‘A driver was killed when a van carrying welding equipment exploded in a County Durham market town.

Windows in shops and homes were left shattered and wreckage was strewn across the centre of Wolsingham, near Bishop Auckland.

The 33-year-old local man, who worked as a welder near Durham, was in the van when the oxy-acetylene cylinders exploded.

Homes near the scene were evacuated after the incident on Saturday.

It is not yet known what caused the blast but Durham Police said there did not appear to be any suspicious circumstances.’

With photos of the scene./a>


handbook

Sunday, May 27, 2007

 

Nitric Acid and a Copper Penny

People find themselves attracted to studying chemistry for different reasons.

Sometimes, it starts with nitric acid. 🙂

(2.9meg Shockwave)

see it here »


Saturday, May 26, 2007

 

The Last Day of Pripyat

Here’s some footage shot after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the nearby town of Pripyat, very shortly before everyone was evacuated.

The radiation levels are so high that in some parts of the film you can actually see radiation hitting the film and leaving a mark. [I assume this would be alpha or beta particles from airborne radionuclides, because I don’t think gamma photons would have enough energy to upset the film like that.]

(13.2meg MPEG)

see it here »


e-mail

Hen turns into a cock

‘A chicken has gone through a rare, spontaneous sex change in eastern India, a veterinarian said Thursday.

The bird laid eggs six months ago – and some hatched – but it later began to grow a rooster’s comb, said Partha Sarathi Ghose, a veterinarian at West Bengal state’s Animal Husbandry Department, quoting the bird’s owner.

Earlier this week Ghose and a team of experts visited the village of Kamat-Chengrabanda where the incident occurred.

Ghose said the bird had undergone a process of natural sex change.

“Sure, it’s rare,” the veterinarian said, adding that owner Haziruddin Mohammad has called the incident a miracle and refused to hand over the bird to the Animal Husbandry Department.’

The penis and vagina tags are not technically accurate, but i’m not adding a cloaca tag just for this story. 🙂


mail

Killer banana rumour grips China

‘A rumour spread by text message has badly hit the price of bananas from China’s Hainan island, state media say.

The messages claim the fruit contains viruses similar to Sars, the severe respiratory illness which has killed hundreds of people worldwide.

Producers in Hainan say the resulting price slump is costing them up to 20 million yuan ($US2.6m) a day.

China’s Agriculture Ministry has dismissed the Sars claim as baseless. Police are investigating its source.

“It is utterly a rumour,” a Chinese Health Ministry official was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.

“There has not been a case in the world in which humans have contracted a plant virus, and there is not any scientific evidence.”‘


Jesus Will Survive

(2.4meg Windows media)

see it here »


research

Caught In The Act

This might be a repost, but getting caught wanking in the 70’s is hilarious.

(1.2meg Flash video)

see it here »


Man Gets 5 Years for Blowing Up Toilet

‘A man once called one of the Internet’s most notorious pirates of music and movies was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for blowing up a portable toilet, prosecutors said.

Bruce Forest, 50, was charged last year with a series of toilet explosions in 2005 and 2006. But under a plea agreement, Forest admitted only to blowing up one toilet in Weston in February 2006. No one was injured in any of the blasts.

His defense attorney and his wife said the incident was completely out of character for Forest. They said he had been addicted to painkillers initially taken for migraine headaches caused by a severe fall about 10 years ago. A prescribed drug intended to wean him off the painkillers caused psychotic episodes, they said.’


suggest

‘Sex addict’ sues over firing

‘A man in the US is suing IBM for $5m (£2.5m) in a wrongful dismissal case after he was fired for visiting adult internet chat rooms while at work.

James Pacenza, 58, says he was addicted to online chat rooms and that IBM should have offered him sympathy and treatment instead of firing him.

The Vietnam War veteran says he has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since 1969.

He argues that he used the internet to control his psychological problems.’


home

Aaron Ackerson – Not the End

Not the end of sad desperation, it seems.

(6.5meg Flash video)

see it here »


Girls leap from windows in ‘death pact’

‘Two French teenage girls were seriously injured when they jumped out of windows of different buildings in what appeared to be a coordinated suicide attempt, police have said.

A 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, who attended the same school on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, threw themselves out of a third floor and second floor window at their respective homes minutes after each other yesterday.

One witness told investigators he had overheard one of the girls telling the other on the phone: “Come on, we’ll do it: You jump. I jump!”

One of the girls had previously been in psychiatric care, a medical source said.

Hospital staff said the two girls were in a serious condition.’


terms

Pickpocket Steals Police Chief’s Wallet

‘A police campaign to crack down on pickpockets has come too late to help the capital’s top crime fighter.

Police Chief Anstein Gjengedal’s wallet was snatched by a pickpocket as the campaign was set to begin, the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet reported Friday.

The police chief was on the Oslo airport train Monday when a group of people jostled him. When he checked a few minutes later, his wallet was gone.

“I didn’t have much money with me,” he was quoted as saying. “But it still wasn’t very nice.”

Gjengedal said he had followed police advice by having the wallet in the inner pocket of his jacket, but the thieves got it anyway.’