‘A new antenna made of plasma (a gas heated to the point that the electrons are ripped free of atoms and molecules) works just like conventional metal antennas, except that it vanishes when you turn it off.
That’s important on the battlefield and in other applications where antennas need to be kept out of sight. In addition, unlike metal antennas, the electrical characteristics of a plasma antenna can be rapidly adjusted to counteract signal jamming attempts.
Plasma antennas behave much like solid metal antennas because electrons flow freely in the hot gas, just as they do in metal conductors. But plasmas only exist when the gasses they’re made of are very hot. The moment the energy source heating a plasma antenna is shut off, the plasma turns back into a plain old (non conductive) gas. As far as radio signals and antenna detectors go, the antenna effectively disappears when the plasma cools down.’
‘A brazen attack by four gunmen on the Pelindaba nuclear facility has left a senior emergency officer seriously injured.
Anton Gerber, Necsa emergency services operational officer spoke to the Pretoria News from his hospital bed hours after the attack.
He was shot in the chest when the gunmen stormed the facility’s emergency response control room in the early hours of Thursday morning. [..]
Necsa spokesperson Chantal Janneker confirmed the attack.
She declined to say how the gunmen had gained access to the facility or whether they had stolen anything.
Janneker said Necsa was conducting an internal investigation into the attack.
Once the police investigation was complete Necsa would divulge what happened, she said.’
You won’t like this video. You may vomit from watching it. 🙂 It’s not as bad as the least safe for work video ever, but it’s getting there.
This is very definitely NSFW.
Also, there’s some reaction videos of other people not liking it aswell. 🙂
see it here »
‘Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.
The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.
The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.
A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails.’
‘Authorities in Orange County are working to recover the remains of a 24-year-old Anaheim man who was killed Wednesday in a wood chipper accident in Tustin.
The tree service worker “was standing at the back end of the chipper, throwing branches into it with his co-workers nearby,” said Sgt. Pat Welch of the Tustin Police Department.
“One of them looked over, and he was gone.”
Authorities took the wood chipper and the truck attached to it to a parking structure at the coroner’s office, where they plan to dismantle it.’
This fellow apparently won a competition to let him audition in a recording studio. He does a good job. 🙂
(7.0meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Someone made off with 15 kilometres of copper wire during the power outage caused by post tropical storm Noel, RCMP said Wednesday.
The theft was discovered Tuesday afternoon when power was restored to Pratt and Whitney Drive near the Halifax airport but the lights were still not on.
RCMP said it appears the culprits removed access panels to streetlights, cut the connections and then pulled out the underground copper wires that connect the lights.
The thieves made off with five separate strands of wire, each one three kilometres long.’
‘When Shawn Hicks returned to his North Braddock home on Stokes Avenue after a Saturday night out on the town with friends, he didn’t bother turning on the lights.
Instead of heading to his bedroom, Mr. Hicks, a 29-year-old business major at Point Park University, plopped himself face down and fully dressed on his cream-colored leather sofa in his living room. He also neglected to deactivate his home security system, which has a silent alarm.
Surrounded by the darkness and familiar comforts of his home, Mr. Hicks was asleep within five minutes. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was not destined to have sweet dreams that night.
“I felt a lot of voltage going through my body,” Mr. Hicks said recalling the events of that late July weekend. “That’s what woke me up.”‘
‘A German flasher stunned lawyers during his appeal hearing on a flashing conviction by stripping off in court, authorities said.
“The court withdrew for deliberations and during the adjournment the man removed his clothes again,” said a spokesman for the court in the western city of Duisburg. “It appears he sees it as art, and views himself as a living work of art.”
The 60-year-old was in court to appeal against his conviction for running onto the pitch naked during a girl’s soccer match and striking a range of “body builder poses”, the spokesman said.
State prosecutors filed fresh charges of indecent behaviour against the man after the court incident.’
‘The Brazilian government says huge new oil reserves discovered off its coast could turn the country into one of the biggest oil producers in the world.
Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, says it believes the offshore Tupi field has between 5bn and 8bn barrels of recoverable light oil. [..]
A senior minister said Brazilian oil production had the potential to match that of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. [..]
The state-controlled company says the results show high productivity for gas and light oil – the best quality oil – which is more valuable and cheaper to refine.’
‘Got some leftover drugs — the kind that someone else might want to use, such as painkillers or stimulants? Wrap them up in used kitty litter or other pet droppings, the government advises.
A pilot program at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is looking at ways people can safely dispose of unused prescription drugs that are liable to be abused. [..]
Of course some people do not drink coffee. But maybe they have a pet ferret.
“Ferret waste, like nearly any other form of pet waste, can be effectively used to help prevent the abuse of unused prescription drugs,” SAMHSA spokesman Mark Weber said.
This news delighted the American Ferret Association.’
‘5/13/90
To Sybil,
Lamentably, I killed your cat while trying just to sting it. It was crouched, as usual, under one of our bird feeders & I fired from some distance with bird shot. It may ease your grief somewhat to know that the cat was buried properly with a prayer & that I’ll be glad to get you another of your choice.
I called & came by your house several times. We will be in the Dominican Republic until Thursday. I’ll see you then.
Love, Jimmy’
‘A priest from the Boston Archdiocese has been placed on leave after he was arrested for allegedly stalking late night talk show host Conan O’Brien. [..]
Ajemian, 46, remains in the custody of New York City police after he allegedly tried to contact O’Brien repeatedly over a 14 month period. Ajemian was told to stop the communications but did not, according to police, and a warrant for his arrest was issued by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Ajemian was arrested at 30 Rockefeller Plaza while trying to enter a taping of NBC’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” Ajemian was a priest at St. Patrick’s Parish in Stoneham from 2005 to May 2007. He has not been reassigned to another parish since May.
Ajemian is accused of sending O’Brien threatening notes on parish letterhead and contacting his parents.’
‘A woman was knocked out during a shopping centre appearance by Prime Minister John Howard in west Sydney today.
Mr Howard was walking through the food court of the Penrith Plaza shopping centre when the woman was knocked to the ground and hit her head in the crush of people.
A member of Mr Howard’s security team and local police stayed with the woman until she regained consciousness a few seconds later.
She was led, crying and rubbing her head, to a nearby store.
Earlier, a 29-year-old man was spoken to by police after he declined to shake the Prime Minister’s hand.
The man, identified only as Alex, put his hand out as Mr Howard approached him but then whipped his hand away.
“I’m not a fan,” he said later.’
‘Our brains can turn down our ability to see to help them listen even harder to music and complex sounds, say experts.
A US study of 20 non-musicians and 20 musical conductors found both groups diverted brain activity away from visual areas during listening tasks.
Scans showed activity fell in these areas as it rose in auditory ones.
But during harder tasks the changes were less marked for conductors than for non-musicians, researchers told a Society for Neuroscience conference.’
I have been trying to explain to people how noises can make it hard to see for a few weeks now. 🙂 Hooray for science.
‘Most parents like to pull out all the stops to make a child’s 16th birthday as memorable as possible.
But having a female stripper surprise your son in front of his teacher in class would not feature on many wish-lists.
Yet that’s what happened when one woman booked a special performer for her son’s big day.
She stipulated that the surprise take place in drama class – and even asked the teacher to film it so the family could see the boy’s reaction.
But – thanks to what has been put down as a booking error – a female stripper turned up in place of the gorilla-suited man the unnamed mother had apparently asked for.
The stripper, who arrived on cue halfway through the lesson, first walked the birthday boy around the classroom on all fours.
Then, gyrating to the sounds of Britney Spears, she spanked him before stripping down to her bra and knickers and insisting the “naughty” schoolboy rub cream all over her body. [..]
“To be fair to the teacher, you could tell she was just stunned – and when the cream came out she told the stripper: ‘That’s it. That’s enough’.”‘
This is just a bizarre situation. Seizures? WTF?
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see it here »
‘Mark O’Dwyer owes his life to a 14-year-old punk rocker and an edgy television science program.
The 54-year-old was waiting at Lisarow train station on the Central Coast at 2.45pm on October 19 when he fainted and toppled two metres from the platform onto the tracks below, as a freight train bore down on the station.
Julian Shaw, who is 180 centimetres tall and weighs 70 kilograms, was travelling home from school with classmates when he saw Mr O’Dwyer, who is 187 centimetres tall and weighs 110 kilograms, fall. Julian leapt into action. [..]
“[As the train roared past] the noise pierced your ears and there was a suction that pulled us in,” Julian said.
“I’d seen that on MythBusters, so I stayed right back and pulled Mark back towards me.”‘
‘A definite integral walks [in] and orders 10 shots of whiskey. “You sure about that, buddy?” “Yeah, I know my limits.” [..]
sin(x) walks into a bar and asks for drink. The barman declines: “We don’t cater for functions.” [..]
A neutron walks into a bar. “How much for a beer?” “For you? No charge.”‘
‘Construction on a cooling system for the world’s biggest science experiment that produces temperatures colder than outer space was completed today.
The mammoth chill factory can generate temperatures as low as 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (-456 degrees Fahrenheit) for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a circular particle smasher 17 miles (27 kilometers) wide that is being built at the CERN physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.
The cooling system uses more than 10,000 tons of liquid nitrogen and 130 tons of liquid helium.’
‘The San Rossore train station on the edge of Pisa, Italy, is a lonely stop. Tourists who visit this city to see its famous leaning tower generally use the central station across town. But San Rossore is about to be recognized as one of the country’s most significant archeological digs. For nearly a decade archeologists have been working near and under the tracks to unearth what is nothing short of a maritime Pompeii.
So far the excavation has turned up 39 ancient shipwrecks buried under nine centuries of silt, which preserved extraordinary artifacts. The copper nails and ancient wood are still intact, and in many cases cargo is still sealed in the original terra cotta amphorae, the jars used for shipment in the ancient world. They have also found a cask of the ancient Roman fish condiment known as garum and many mariners’ skeletons—one crushed under the weight of a capsized ship. One ship carried scores of pork shoulder hams; another carried a live lion, likely en route from Africa to the gladiator fights in Rome.’
Tigers are funny animals. 🙂
(2.6meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Residents in a Blackwood street are kicking up a stink about litres of raw sewage flowing past their homes.
People living in Edward Street are furious that effluent is being forced out of storm drains on a daily basis and running along the length of their street.
They say waste including faeces, toilet paper, used condoms and sanitary towels is being washed up just yards from their front doors, causing a terrible stench and stopping children playing in the street. [..]
Caerphilly council environmental health officers have been monitoring the situation and keeping in touch with Welsh Water.’
‘Organizers for the 2008 Olympics in China have released their list of items banned from the Olympic village where the athletes will stay.
Among the “prohibited objects” — Bibles.
The Catholic News Agency reports that the committee behind the Beijing games cited “security reasons” for the ban.
Athletes are also prohibited from bearing any kind of religious symbol at Olympic facilities.’
‘A tourism student who twice had to walk barefoot in a Sri Lankan rainforest is suing a college, claiming his health was damaged by leeches.
James Sheridan, 50, said people on the field trip were made to remove their footwear because villagers considered the Unesco world heritage sites sacred. [..]
The court heard claims that Mr Sheridan, of Townhill, Swansea, was so weak after returning home that he could “only eat corned beef and lettuce for months”.
Mr Sheridan claimed he had suffered from malaria-like feverishness, sleeplessness, excessive sweating and lethargy in the six years since the trip, paid for with European funding as part of a tourism and leisure management MSc degree course.’
‘Duct tape thin fishing line at around head height and watch your unsuspecting roommates make fools of themselves.’
(1.4meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘It was supposed to be 14 feet high and topped with razor wire. It was also supposed to send a message to Washington that if the government wouldn’t seal off the southern border, volunteers could.
Almost two years later, the reality is a five-strand barbed-wire barrier that ranchers dismiss as a mere cattle fence. [..]
On the Minuteman Web site and in e-mails to members, Simcox asked for donations while making big promises, including a vow to build a fence along the border. It was not just any fence; it was to be 2,000 miles of state-of-the-art fencing at a cost of $55 million.
Simcox described it as “our high-tech, double-layered gauntlet of deterrent.”
The fence was described on the Minuteman Web site as 14 feet high, with security cameras and sensors, topped with razor wire and flanked by ditches to stop vehicles. Simcox referred to it as an “Israeli-style” fence, similar to the barrier Israel has erected to keep Palestinians from crossing from the West Bank.’
‘A man is facing drug charges after he allegedly walked into the Danbury police station puffing on a marijuana-filled cigar.
Capt. Robert Myles says Scott Snow walked into the station early Saturday and blew smoke from his cigar into a small opening in the bullet-resistant glass separating desk officers from the public.
Myles says the 24-year-old man was told there’s no smoking inside the building and he allegedly stubbed out the cigar on the counter.
Officers came out and smelled the distinctive odor of marijuana and arrested Snow.’
‘A teenage gunman who killed eight people in a high school rampage before turning the weapon on himself has died in hospital.
Seven students and the school principal died when 18-year-old student Pekka-Eric Auvinen opened fire at a school in southern Finland yesterday, hours after he posted a video on YouTube foreshadowing the massacre.
Witnesses said Auvinen walked through the corridors of Jokela High School firing into classroom after classroom with a .22-caliber handgun.
Police said Auvinen came from “a very normal family”. [..]
The YouTube video, set to a hard-driving song called Stray Bullet by the industrial rock band KMFDM, shows a still photo of a low building that appears to be Jokela High School.’
(2.6meg Flash video)
see it here »
