Archive for January, 2006

Monday, January 30, 2006

 

Lawyer Dons Dominatrix Mask in Trial

`A prosecutor put on a black leather mask and re-enacted a bondage session Friday at a dominatrix’s manslaughter trial, telling the jury the woman did nothing to help her client when he suffered a heart attack. [..]

“After a gasp, his head went forward and she did nothing, nothing for five minutes,” Nelson said, his voice muffled as he spoke through the zippered mouth opening.

Lord’s attorney objected, and Judge Charles Grabau agreed.

“That’s enough, Mr. Nelson,” the judge said. “Thank you for your demonstration.”‘


terms

Sunday, January 29, 2006

 

Hole Lotta Love

This is fucking dirty.

And by dirty I mean not safe for work.


Porn activity detected at DHS (maybe)

`The Homeland Security Department’s internal computer network generated 65 million security alerts during a three-month period and 6.5 million of those may be linked to employees accessing pornographic words or materials, according to a report today from DHS inspector general Richard Skinner.

Nearly three-quarters of the automated “security event messages” and “detect.misuse.porn” alerts originated from 16 devices on the department’s wide area network, according to the report. However, DHS could not identify the specific workstations that had generated the messages, the inspector general found. [..]

In addition, the DHS network did not have its security accreditations and certifications, the report added.’

That’s 406,250 porn hits per device. Presumably a “device” is a router or somesuch, because that’s a fucking lot of porn for a single person.


support

Woman With Tattoo From Homemade Gun Got Sick

`Some women in Springfield are regretting their decision last week to get a tattoo from a door-to-door tattoo salesman. At least one person had to be hospitalized and the others face serious health risks.

Friday night, a man knocked on doors holding a tattoo gun and offering his services. Tamra Eason described the tool as homemade, but still agreed to pay for a tattoo. So did two other women in her apartment complex.

“It was wrapped with black tape, had a pin underneath it, had fishing wire going through it, you could tell it was a homemade gun,” Eason said.

The next day, Linda Falls passed out and had to be hospitalized.’


guidelines

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him

`The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. “They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public,” he said.’


Porn-viewing parole agent regains job

`A Shawano probation and parole agent who was fired in 2004 for accessing Internet pornography and other inappropriate sites for hours a day over at least five months has his job back – with a raise.

He also will receive a year of back pay. [..]

The department must also pay any medical expenses for DeLeon that would have been covered by the state’s insurance plan during his yearlong absence, the arbitrator ruled. The order prohibits DeLeon from using the Internet.’


international

“Chinese Columbus” Map Likely Fake, Experts Say

`The map depicts all of the continents, including Australia, North America, and Antarctica, in rough outline.

An inscription identifies the map as a copy made in 1763 of an original drawn in 1418. [..]

But experts have dismissed the map as a fake.

They say the map resembles a French 17th-century world map with its depiction of California as an island.’

followup to China map lays claim to Americas.


store

Deputy Uses Taser to Stop Bullying Goat

`A normally pleasant billy goat turned gruff and, for his troubles, was zapped three times with a Taser gun. Dodge the billy goat snapped a leash and charged at Dawn Pinette, knocking her to the ground Wednesday about 35 miles west of Charleston.

“All I could do was grab his horns and scream bloody murder,” Pinette, 38, said.

Her daughter called police and Colleton County Deputy Jeff Scott arrived to try to help Pinette up. But the goat bullied his way in and the deputy used his Taser.

At first, Pinette thought the goat was dead.

“Within a few seconds he was back up and going after him again,” she said.’


content

Green Party demands non-stick inquiry

`A US Environmental Protection Agency has found possible links between non-stick cookware, cancer and birth defects and is now asking manufacturers to start winding down production. [..]

Non-stick pots and pans are supposed to be good for you, as they need less fat to cook with.

But the coating contains a compound that the US environmental protection agency has warned may harm our health. [..]

Vet Naya Brangenberg says vets have long known that the fumes from cooking with non-stick pans can be deadly to household birds.

“They’ll have a sudden accumulation of fluid and blood in their lungs, and this fluid will cause them to have a similar effect to drowning, where they can’t absorb oxygen from the air and they will drown to death.”‘


podcast

Benford’s Law

`Dr. Benford derived a formula to explain this. If absolute certainty is defined as 1 and absolute impossibility as 0, then the probability of any number “d” from 1 through 9 being the first digit is log to the base 10 of (1 + 1/d). This formula predicts the frequencies of numbers found in many categories of statistics. [..]

Given a string of at least four numbers sampled from one or more of these sets of data, the chance that the first digit will be 1 is not one in nine, as many people would imagine; according to Benford’s Law, it is 30.1 percent, or nearly one in three. The chance that the first number in the string will be 2 is only 17.6 percent, and the probabilities that successive numbers will be the first digit decline smoothly up to 9, which has only a 4.6 percent chance.’


College Girls Put In Jail For Mocking Judge

`A judge who sentenced three teenagers to probation threw them in jail after he saw them ridiculing him and drinking alcohol on a Web site.

The girls appeared before Troy District Court Judge Michael Martone last spring for drinking at their high school prom.

He gave them probation and ordered them not to drink alcohol again. [..]

But several months later he searched for his name on the Internet and came across a Web site posted by one of the students. [..]’


Plane found, pilot charged

`A pilot who claimed to have lost his plane when he had to ditch it in the sea has been charged with insurance fraud after it was found hidden in a shipping container.

Howard Jamison, 46, claimed to have surfed ashore on a piece of the plane’s floor after the engine on his Cessna failed six kilometres off New Zealand’s South Island coast in 2004.’


My strange life with someone else’s face

‘Barely two months ago, the 38-year-old French divorcee received the world’s first face transplant and this exclusive photograph reveals the full extent of her remarkable transformation.

Last May, she had a wide, tilted nose, a prominent chin and thin lips. Today, the donated face of suicide Maryline Saint-Aubert has given her a straight and narrow nose, a neater chin and a fuller mouth.

Despite the prominent surgical scars, Miss Dinoire and her doctors say they are delighted by the results.’

followup to Face Transplant Patient Smokes Again.


terms

Bird 1 Boy 0


Friday, January 27, 2006

 

Trembicky: Bad Landlords We Have Known

‘Trembicky.com is a site where tenants can share horror stories about lousy landlords they’ve had.’


support

Future American lawyers to be proud of

`Alberto Gonzales spoke before law students at Georgetown today, justifying illegal, unauthorized surveilance of US citizens, but during the course of his speech the students in class did something pretty ballsy and brave. They got up from their seats and turned their backs to him.

To make matters worse for Gonzales, additional students came into the room, wearing black cowls and carrying a simple banner, written on a sheet.

Fortunately for him, it was a brief speech… followed by a panel discussion that basically ripped his argument a new asshole.’


guidelines

STOLEN THEFT Apple Powerbook 17 Inch

An interesting use of eBay.

Some poor cunts are no doubt shitting themselves at the moment, waiting for the police to arrive.

Update: The auction is no longer listed on eBay, but Google has a cached version.


Physicists Discover an Atomic Oddity

`Sam Tabor, a professor of experimental nuclear physics at FSU and director of the university’s Superconducting Accelerator Laboratory, recently performed the experiment at the GSI laboratory in Darmstadt, Germany, in collaboration with the international team. In the experiment, a cigar-shaped atom was created using a particle collider. To the scientists’ surprise, this atom demonstrated a novel kind of radioactive decay by spitting out two free protons at the same time.

Radioactive decay normally involves the emission of one of three types of particle: a helium nucleus consisting of two protons and two neutrons, an electron or a photon. Exotic atoms engineered to contain fewer neutrons than in the atom’s natural state were expected to break down by emitting protons one at a time. But the correlated two-proton decay hadn’t been seen before and represents a new form of radioactivity.’


international

Rabid Squirrel Report Just A Case Of ‘Sex And The City’

`An officer was sent to a home on 10th Avenue shortly after 8:30 a.m. A man there told police a sick squirrel was in his backyard ”shaking, crying and [with] saliva coming from its mouth,” police said.

The officer instead found two squirrels mating.’


store

Suspected Robber Leaves His Name, Address

`A man who held up banks by claiming he had a bomb in a bag was arrested after police found the bag actually contained books, including a phone book that had a mailing label with the man’s full name and address.

“It was clearly not his best move,” Lawrence Police Chief John J. Romero said.’


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Nazi Twins

Interview with and story about those NAZI twin folk singers from the US.

(23meg Flash video)


podcast

Saddam to sue Bush and Blair

`Defence lawyers for Saddam Hussein Wednesday distributed copies of a lawsuit against President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair for destroying Iraq.

The suit accuses Bush and Blair of committing war crimes by using weapons of mass destruction and internationally-banned weapons including enriched uranium and phosphoric and cluster bombs against unarmed Iraqi civilians, notably in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, al-Kaem and Anbar. [..]

The suit also accuses the U.S. president and British prime minister of torturing Iraqi prisoners, destroying Iraq’s cultural heritage with the aim of eliminating an ancient civilization, and inciting internal strife.

Bush and Blair were also accused of polluting Iraq’s air, waters and environment.’


Client needed op after prostitute bit penis

`A prostitute who bit her client’s penis so hard he required an operation has denied grievous bodily harm with intent.

Prosecutor Matthew McNiff told the jury Louise Jowett carried out the attack because Brett O’Leary, from Clare, near Haverhill, told her he had no more money to give her after already paying her for sex.

Outlining the case Mr McNiff said 22-year-old Jowett, who denies the charge, had bitten and continued to bite Mr O’Leary for up to 45 seconds during the assault. The force and determination of Jowett’s attack was said to have led to Mr O’Leary requiring an operation.’


New EMT convicted in fatal prank

`Joshua Philip Martin was in his fourth day on the job as a rescue-squad worker in Russell County when, in a playful mood, he decided to reach into the front seat of the ambulance and zap one of his co-workers with the defibrillator paddles. The rookie’s mistake was fatal.

Yesterday, in Russell Circuit Court, a judge convicted Martin, 25, of involuntary manslaughter, warning the burly but pink-faced young man that when he returns to court in March, he likely will be sent to prison. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The target of Martin’s prank was Courtney Hilton Rhoton, a 23-year-old mother of two small children who had worked her way through school to become an emergency medical technician. She went into cardiac arrest seconds after Martin placed the paddles on her chest and shoulder. Three days later, on June 4, she died.’


Papparazi

Take photos of celebrities. Not so easy..


terms

A Czech Toke on Freedom

`The Czechs do like their weed. A 2005 report by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction found that 22% of Czechs between 16 and 34 had smoked marijuana at least once during the previous year, the highest percentage in the European Union. The nation’s cannabis culture is imbued with the whimsical ethos of the hippie movement: guys growing dope in fields, on balconies and in bathrooms, and sharing with friends. [..]

“I’ve never paid for pot and I never would,” said Filip Hubacek, a university student majoring in social sciences. “I don’t mind paying for my gym, but not for my pot.”‘


New Year’s Eve 11999

`The Clock, as its designer Danny Hillis calls it, will stand over 60 feet tall and keep track of every second, minute, day, century, and millennium for at least 10,000 years. Over that time, it will function with near perfect accuracy by occasionally resetting itself automatically using the warming heat of the desert sun. Its pendulum will be powered by the Earth itself – by temperature and pressure changes during the desert night. But its many faces will require winding. Thus if forgotten it will enter a long silence but continue to mark the years as they pass.’


support

Teen beats up his grandmother – because she won’t buy him beer

`Deputies say a 16-year-old has been arrested for beating his grandmother with a two-by-four for refusing to give him $100 for beer. [..]

Investigators say Cass went into his 60-year-old grandmother’s bedroom Thursday and asked her for $100 for beer. When she refused, he allegedly placed a razor blade on her throat and demanded she take him to the bank to get the money, deputies said.

“When the victim arrived back home she locked all of the doors,” deputies reported. “The defendant arrived back home and kicked the front door in. [..]’


guidelines

Smugglers in military dress fuel border concerns

`U.S. and Mexican officials on Tuesday were investigating a bizarre encounter between Texas lawmen and heavily armed intruders who were wearing Mexican military uniforms while evidently escorting a caravan of sport utility vehicles that was smuggling marijuana into the United States. [..]

Although no shots were fired and no one was hurt, the episode — along with an incident in November — heightened fears that Mexican traffickers and U.S. border agents are headed for a potentially deadly confrontation. American officers, who have long complained about being outgunned along the border, point out that the armed men seen Monday were riding in a military-style Humvee equipped with what looked like .50-caliber machine guns.’


A brief history of hard drives

`What high-tech product advances the fastest? It’s probably the hard drive. The capacity doubles easily every two years and sometimes every year, faster even than the chip progress described by Moore’s Law. The first drives took up storage closets. Now, a 5GB drive can fit in a phone. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, which has made drives for years and also now owns IBM’s drive division, recently collected pictures from hard drive history and made a calendar. Here are some highlights.’


international