moonbuggy

a.k.a. bongs.

`U.S. Marines forcibly detained a team of security guards working for an American engineering firm in Iraq after reportedly witnessing the contractors fire at U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians from an armed convoy, the military said Tuesday.

After three days of detention in jail cells at a U.S. military base in Iraq, 19 employees of North Carolina-based Zapata Engineering, including 16 Americans, were released last week. [..]

The employees have said that the incident in Fallouja last month was a case of mistaken identity. Several have accused the Marines of verbally and physically abusing them while they were in custody. [..]

The incident has also raised new questions about the treatment of captives by U.S. military forces. Several of the detained Zapata employees said that they were stripped and threatened by a snarling military dog while Marines jeered and took photos.

“I never in my career have treated anybody so inhumane,” one of the contractors, Rick Blanchard, a former Florida state trooper, wrote in an e-mail message. “They treated us like insurgents, roughed us up, took photos, hazed us, called us names.” [..]

Mark Schopper, a lawyer for two of the contractors, said that his clients, both former Marines, were subjected to “physical and psychological abuse.”

He said his clients told him that Marines had “slammed around” several contractors, stripped them to their underwear and placed a loaded weapon near their heads.

“How does it feel to be a big, rich contractor now?” the Marines shouted at the men, Schopper said, in an apparent reference to the large salaries security contractors can make in Iraq.

He also said that during their detention, the workers’ relatives in the United States received phone calls from people with American accents threatening to kill their loved ones if they talked about the incident.’

`A Kansas City abortionist is out of business after investigators discovered a grisly house of horrors at his clinic – with fetuses kept in Styrofoam cups in his refrigerator and one employee accusing him of microwaving one and stirring it into his lunch.’

Seriously, not safe for work. Not safe for home.

If you think the main link is bad, try this or this or this.

Better yet, don’t try any of them at all.

Do you like zombie films? The trailer for this one looks good.

Romero’s zombie trilogy, soon to be a quadrogy [I just made that word up I think], is zombie horror at it’s best. :)

`Be everything as it may, this transcontinental, international cyclotouriste is navigating to locate a good companion for an extended bicycling tour. Good is defined as—female, healthy, cyclist, with a sense of bold adventure, and the willingness to be compatable on an extended world tour with yours truly.’

This forum thread rapidly disintegrates in hilarious and alarming ways. Only 12 messages later it becomes:

`Fuck you you goddamn son of a whore. Just delete my membership. Oh and let me tell you something you goddamn cowards—You fucking well better KEEP hiding behind distance and anonymity you chickenshit poltroons. You people are blithering, no-good, chickenshit cowards. Not one of you yellow bellies would dare approach me in person and interfere with me in this way. I goddamn dare you to come to me face to face this way. I fucking well dare you.

FUCK YOU’

It’s great. :)

`I’ve been modding computers for a while now, with my first computer being the standard window, neon, and intake fan, back when modding was just becoming popular. The idea of this case came from looking at all those modded cases with multitudes of fans for added air flow, and thinking how about making the ultimate cooled case just out of fans. The board that was used was obviously a Mini-ITX board, the great VIA EPIA M which is a mere 170 x 170 mm. It was decided that 80 mm fans were the way to go since they would fit nicely around the board, with only a 10 mm gap to fill between the fans.’

`A third of the scientists in a nationwide survey admitted to violating some of the bedrock rules of scientific research, according to a report by a team of Minnesota researchers.

The survey, of more than 3,200 U.S. scientists, found that hardly anyone admitted to falsifying data outright.

But a surprising 33 percent confessed to other kinds of misconduct — such as claiming credit for someone else’s work, or changing results because of pressure from a study’s sponsor. [..]

Among the findings: only three-tenths of 1 percent admitted to “falsifying or cooking research data.” Slightly more, 1.4 percent, said they had potentially improper relationships with students or subjects. The survey did not define improper, but researchers said it could include such things as hiring relatives or having an affair.

A significant number –15 percent — said they had changed the design, methods or results of a study in response to pressure from a financial sponsor.

In addition, 7 percent admitted ignoring “minor” rules for protecting human subjects. And 6 percent said that they failed to report data that contradicted their previous work.’

`There was another dangerous call on the water Tuesday night, this time in Boston’s Dorchester Bay, where a pregnant woman who was riding a jet ski was saved after a mishap. The rescue followed several recent drownings. [..]

Newscenter 5s Mary Saladna reported that Ingrid Valles, 29, was in over her head when she and a friend fell off their jet ski in 3 feet of water. Valles can’t swim and she is four months pregnant.’

4000 gallons of styrene in a burning truck. Goes boom. :)

(8.7meg Google video)

see it here »

`After a lot of red tape, Briana Lane has her skull back in one piece.

The 22-year-old woman was injured in an auto crash in January, and doctors temporarily removed nearly half her skull to save her life. But for nearly four months afterward, the piece of bone lay in a hospital freezer across town –and Lane had to wear a plastic street hockey helmet –because of a standoff with Medicaid and the hospital over who would cover the surgery to make her whole again.

The surgery finally came through after an excruciating wait, during which she suffered extreme pain just bending down and would wake up in the morning to find that her brain had shifted to one side during the night.’

`What our customers say about the SelfWipe:

“Greatly exceeded my expectations and I would recommend the SelfWipe to others.”
“The ease of use and reach ability is better than other products I’ve used.”‘

[shrug]

`Stare at the cross in the middle.’

This is pretty cool. Just stare for a little while. You’ll know it when you see it. :)

I was trying to offend people by making statements about Jesus and transvestites. However, people have taken to it and are not scrolling things like “Jesus likes teh man sex” across the screen. :)

Amusing for a while.

An online museum with lots of info about various nerdy science stuff.

Radium and dosimeters. What more do you need? :)

`A man who reportedly was spray-painting a pickup truck near the Polk County courthouse was shot by a law enforcement officer today.

Police say the man was spraying something on a white pickup when he was confronted by a Polk County sheriff’s deputy. Other officers rushed to the scene and as the man reached behind him, he was shot at least once, apparently by the deputy. [..]

The words “Police Academy Seven” were spray-painted on one side of the truck.’

`A rape victim once wished for teeth “where it mattered”. Now a device has been designed to “bite” a rapist’s penis. The patented device looks and is worn like a tampon, but it is hollow and attaches itself with tiny hooks to a man’s penis during penetration. [..]

As it is impossible to remove the device from a penis without medical help, hospitals and clinics will be able to alert police when assistance is sought.

“This will rule out any possibility of the rapist’s escaping arrest and speed up conviction.”

If the rapist tries to remove the device, it will only embed itself further.’

`A Sicilian court condemned road authorities Monday for suspending the driving license of a man after finding out he was gay.

The court on the Mediterranean island said being gay was merely “a personality disturbance” which had no bearing on a person’s ability to drive, Ansa news agency reported.

The 23-year-old man, who was identified as Danilo G., got into trouble with the road license authorities in the city of Catania after they discovered he had been exempted from military service because he was gay.

The authorities suspended his driving license ahead of further checks on his “suitability” to take the wheel.’

`A 14-year-old Culpeper Middle School student has been charged with assault and battery and indecent exposure after a student complained that he fondled himself during class and rubbed something on her face afterward.

The incident allegedly occurred on June 2 while the teacher was showing a movie, according to Culpeper Sheriff’s Sgt. Vern Fox.

Three girl students later complained to school authorities that the boy had grabbed their hands and tried to force them to touch his genitals during the act, Fox said.

School deputy Jesse McClannahan interviewed the three girls, and one said the boy had ‘wiped a white, wet substance across her face,’ Fox said.’

`Last June 11 Tim Samaras and two colleagues did the near impossible—they chased down a tornado and placed a probe with video cameras directly in its path. Beginning at precisely 2:23 p.m. the team caught images that have—in a breakthrough—made it possible to calculate wind speeds close to the ground, where tornadoes rip through human lives. Even after his team found the tornado and drove along a dirt road in Iowa to a place they were fairly certain lay in its path, Samaras remained unsure of where exactly he should leave the probe. He stood watching the tornado boil toward him, then, at the last second, he jogged over, hefted the 80-pound (40-kilogram) probe, and shifted it 40 feet (10 meters) to the north. Samaras guessed right: The eye passed just 10 feet (three meters) from the probe, giving the cameras the closest ever view of the fierce winds turning just off the ground around a tornado’s center.’

with some cool videos and pictures.

`The Sunday Times of London recently reported on new evidence showing that ‘The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war.’ The paper cites newly released statistics from the British Defense Ministry showing that ‘the Allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001’ and that ‘a full air offensive’ was under way months before the invasion had officially begun.

The implications of this information for US lawmakers are profound. It was already well known in Washington and international diplomatic circles that the real aim of the US attacks in the no-fly zones was not to protect Shiites and Kurds. But the new disclosures prove that while Congress debated whether to grant Bush the authority to go to war, while Hans Blix had his UN weapons-inspection teams scrutinizing Iraq and while international diplomats scurried to broker an eleventh-hour peace deal, the Bush Administration was already in full combat mode–not just building the dossier of manipulated intelligence, as the Downing Street memo demonstrated, but acting on it by beginning the war itself. And according to the Sunday Times article, the Administration even hoped the attacks would push Saddam into a response that could be used to justify a war the Administration was struggling to sell.’

`A new type of battery based on the radioactive decay of nuclear material is 10 times more powerful than similar prototypes and should last a decade or more without a charge, scientists announced this week. [..]

The technology is called betavoltaics. It uses a silicon wafer to capture electrons emitted by a radioactive gas, such as tritium. It is similar to the mechanics of converting sunlight into electricity in a solar panel.’

‘Some guy straps a bunch of jets filled with what appears to be compressed air to the back of his backpack. He then releases the air sending him hundreds of feet into the air.’

(3meg .wmv)

see it here »

Tom Cruise is an idiot. Oprah is an idiot. Basically, they both need to be shot. Luckily, living in America, they probably will be shot sooner or later. :)

Katie Holmes is kinda cute tho. Tho, hanging out with Tom and Oprah makes her an idiot as well.

(9meg .wmv)

‘Anti-pornography film produced by financier Charles Keating, linking pornography to the Communist conspiracy and the decline of Western civilization.’

Also, Perversion for Profit (Part II).

Various sized downloads.

see it here »

`For some serious entertainment use the X-rated ring toss. The small 2 inch long .75 inch diameter silicone butt plug goes in their rear while others throw the the yellow rings at the anal stick. The one with the most ringers wins! Comes with 3 rings and anal plug with stick. Sounds like fun for the whole party.’

Labelling it “not safe for work” is probably redundant, given the title and description. :)

`A Sydney man stabbed his flatmate to death because she would not turn down the television or stereo while he was trying to sleep, a court has been told.

Jeffrey Dunn today pleaded not guilty in the NSW Supreme Court to murdering his flatmate Jacqueline Dowd at Cartwright, in western Sydney, on March 12, 2004.

However, the 60-year-old pleaded guilty to manslaughter due to provocation. [..]

“I tried to sleep and she turned the television on, then she turned the stereo on,” Mr Conlon said Dunn told police.

“I said, ‘look Jacqui if you don’t shut up I’m going to kill you’.”‘

`Computer Associates has warned of a co-ordinated malware attack (CMA) described as among the most sophisticated yet unleashed on the net. The attack involves three different Trojans – Glieder, Fantibag and Mitglieder – in a co-ordinated assault designed to establish a huge botnet under the control of hackers. CA reckons that access to the compromised PCs is for sale on a black market, at prices as low as five cents per PC.

CA security researchers reckon the three items of malware have been combined to maximise the potency of the overall assault. [..]’