`Not long ago, a scene like this would have been incomprehensible. No single slot could pay out $4 million. Not physically, and not practically. Even in constant use, it would be impossible for any single machine to collect sufficient incoming wagers to make such mammoth paydays happen.
What made Budz rich, and what has made casinos even richer in recent years, are new digital networks that connect virtually every slot machine in every casino in the country. Wheel of Fortune, for instance, is part of the MegaJackpots system, a network within 18 states and one Native American reservation that encompasses more than 8,000 machines, about half of them in Nevada.’
`A jury acquitted a man who had been charged with assault after authorities said an assistant prosecutor, police officer and courtroom bailiff got sick after shaking hands with him.
John Curtis Ridgeway, 42, was seen pulling out a vial of liquid and rubbing his hands with the contents after a December jury trial in which he was found guilty of driving without insurance, authorities said. [..]
Ridgeway told The Associated Press after he was charged that the substance was olive oil. He testified that he used oil to anoint “corrupt buildings” and that it was meant to rid the buildings of demons.’
followup to Toxic handshake lands man in jail.
`A NSW Police trainee has been arrested and stood down after he paraded his personal collection of illegal replica firearms at the Goulburn Police Academy. [..]
The Sun-Herald can reveal the man brought a replica MP5 submachine-gun and other weaponry into the grounds of the academy, then provided a demonstration to classmates. When stunned onlookers reported his actions to academy hierarchy a raid was conducted at the man’s private residence, where a stockpile of other military-style equipment was uncovered.’
`At first, Bushra Khayyat tried to ignore the incessant ringing of the phone at her house in Lebanon’s southern port city of Sidon. It was 4 a.m., but she finally got out of bed.
“I said hello and got a recorded message from Israel,” she told Reuters.
In clear Arabic, the strong voice on the phone said: “Oh Lebanese people, we tell you not to follow Hizbollah. We will continue to strike and no one will bring your prisoners back from Israel except the Lebanese government.”‘
Some crazy woman calling up a telemarketer to tell him she’ll have his taxes audited every year and that he’s a rapist. Apparently she’s upset because she has had so many telemarketers calling her it caused her appendix to burst.
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`If someone looks like he could use a meal, be warned: Giving him a sandwich in a Las Vegas park could land you in jail.
The Las Vegas City Council passed an ordinance Wednesday that bans providing food or meals to the indigent for free or a nominal fee in parks.
The measure is an attempt to stop so-called “mobile soup kitchens” from operating in parks, where residents say they attract the homeless and render the city facilities unusable by families.’
`An Illinois woman is suing her Wisconsin parents for negligence, claiming a surprise birthday visit to her mother in January 2005 left the woman with a broken ankle after a fall on her parents’ icy driveway. [..]
She filed suit earlier this year, arguing that her parents should be held liable for damages for maintaining “an unnatural accumulation of ice” on their driveway. She alleges her parents’ gutter was defective and they should pay her more than $75,000 in damages.
Her parents responded that she can’t prove their driveway was icy at the time or that their drainage system was faulty.’
`Scientists and science fiction fans alike have big plans for carbon nanotubes; it has been hoped that a cable made of carbon nanotubes would be strong enough to serve as a space elevator. However, recent calculations by Nicola Pugno of the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, suggest that carbon nanotube cables will not work.
[..] Laboratory tests have demonstrated that flawless individual nanotubes can withstand about 100 gigapascals of tension; however, if a nanotube is missing just one carbon atom, it can reduce its strength by as much as thirty percent. Bulk materials made of many connected nanotubes are even weaker, averaging less than 1 gigapascal in strength.
In order to function, a space elevator ribbon would need to withstand at least 62 gigapascals of tension.’
`I have no fear of losing my life – if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it.’
`Sharks, I’ve been self-trained as well, and crocodiles, naturally. I’ve been catching them since I was nine. No problem.’
`The only animals I’m not comfortable with are parrots, but I’m learning as I go. I’m getting better and better at ’em. I really am.’
`An Auckland police officer has been allowed to keep her job, despite moonlighting as a prostitute. [..]
It was understood the officer had sought secondary employment due to financial difficulties. [..]
An Auckland spokeswoman for the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective said that depending on the parlour in which they worked, the police officer could earn $500 on a Friday night.’
`Two inmates assigned to mow grass at a sheriff’s firing range escaped on a John Deere tractor. [..]
They left the jail on the tractor at noon Tuesday to mow the firing range across the street. About two hours later, they were reported missing. Authorities said the two left the tractor in the woods behind the firing range and took a 2002 Kia about a half-mile away.’
`A man who is legally blind accidentally shot and killed his wife while trying to balance a plate of fried chicken and a pistol, authorities said.
Kelly Honeycutt, of Morganton, was moving into a new home with his wife, Norita, on Monday night.
Honeycutt, who found the .38-caliber pistol in a box, shot his wife in the head after she handed him the food, Burke County Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert Beall said.’
`A kangaroo is roaming the green hills of Ireland after escaping a circus near the picturesque port of Kinsale.
“This kangaroo broke loose just before the show while they were bringing him from the cages to the arena. He decided to take a walk,” said local farmer John Walsh on whose land the 2-year-old male, named Sydney, made his break for freedom.’
`Australian wine is being sold off cheaper than water, as a glut of grapes pushes the cost of a bottle to below two dollars.
Bumper harvests for three straight years have led to a massive oversupply, with up to a billion litres of unsold wine in storage tanks across the country.
Leading winemakers have seen their shares tumble and many grape growers could be forced out of business.
But for the consumer, it means quality wines are available at a fraction of the normal price as producers move their excess stock in unlabelled bottles known as cleanskins.’
`A student at the University of Central Florida is accused of setting a fire on campus as a way to meet women, according to a Local 6 News report.
Police said Matthew Damsky admitted to lighting a couch on fire at the Academic Village Dorms last week.
Damsky told officers he hoped he would be able to meet women as the building was being evacuated.
He was arrested for arson and booked in to the Orange County Jail.’
`A 46-year-old man is accused of assaulting his wife with a carrot, causing her to lose sight in one eye. Roderick Vecsey is charged with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct.
Pamela Vecsey, 46, underwent six hours of surgery after being hit in the left eye with the vegetable Saturday night, but doctors were not able to restore her vision, prosecutor Stephanie Damiani said.’
`The computer servers that fill huge data centers are producing more heat with every new generation of processors. It’s a problem that’s sending engineers on a search for cooling fans that are both small enough to fit inside ever-smaller server chassis and powerful enough to dispel increasing amounts of heat. At Hewlett-Packard, they’ve found one answer in an unexpected place: model jet airplanes. [..]
The prototype HP fans are built from sturdier, more reliable parts than today’s computer fans, according to Vinson, and they deliver air with enough force to cool the smaller, denser, and hotter servers on HP’s drawing boards. “They literally blow you away,” he says; “it’s like picking up a leaf blower.”‘
`A customer at a city grocery tackled an armed robber and beat him with a can of applesauce when he refused to drop his gun, police said.
The suspect shot himself in the head during the struggle, and passed out after the 66-year-old customer administered four blows to the head with the Mott’s applesauce.’
`To play the record the handle needs to be turned in a clockwise direction at a steady 33.3 rpm. The paper cone then acts as a pick up and amplifies the sound enough to make it audible.’
`I was riding an overnight ferry in Greece a couple summers ago with a large group, mostly made up of flaky girls. Since we were stuck on the ferry till morning with nothing to do most of the group decided to get tomorrow’s showering out of the way tonight. A particular clique of the dumb girl posse convinced the tour guide to allow them to use her room to shower as it was one of few with a functioning shower. Apparently, the girls had decided they were only going to shit once on the trip because all of them went into the tour guide’s bathroom and laid monstrous loads. The only problem with that was that they had not realized that you can NOT flush toilet paper in the toilets on these ferrys. [..]’
`Channel 4 is to bring mass public masturbation to the small screen.
The broadcaster – once led by Michael Grade, dubbed “pornographer in chief” by the Daily Mail – has commissioned a documentary about the UK’s first “masturbate-a-thon” as part of a series of programmes dubbed “Wank week”, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal.
In what must surely be one of the summer’s more bizarre events, hundreds of people are expected to gather in a hall in central London on August 5 to pleasure themselves in aid of charity.’
Also, the home page: The First International Masturbate-A-Thon.
`When Metallica’s 2003 Summer Sanitarium tour arrived in Chicago, few of the 40,000 headbangers gathered at Hawthorne Racecourse were keen to see openers limpbizkit. Possibly incited by a feud between bizkit frontman Fred Durst and local shock-jock Erich “Mancow” Muller, the crowd held up signs reading “Fred Sucks” and pelted him with garbage and coins. Dodging the barrage of detritus, Durst suggested that the audience’s lousy aim explained why the local baseball teams were so bad — ironically, he was then struck squarely in the balls by a lemon. Calling the set to an early end, Durst berated the crowd from the wings, boasting that limpbizkit was the greatest band in the world, until his microphone was taken from him.’
`An anonymous Merseyside man who had an implant to “help with erection problems” has found he becomes uncontrollably aroused every time his neighbour pulls up in his 4X4, the Scottish Daily Record reports.
The spontaneous hardening is due not to a Liverpudlian all-terrain fetish, but rather to the car owner’s garage door remote which, well, here’s a transcript of the conversation the poor chap had with BBC Radio Merseyside host Roger Phillips when he rather splendidly chose to share his woes with the world: [..]’
`It took surgery to save a 12-foot Burmese python after it swallowed an entire queen-size electric blanket — with the electrical cord and control box.
The blanket must have gotten tangled up in the snake’s rabbit dinner, owner Karl Beznoska said. He kept the blanket in cage to keep the 60-pound reptile, named Houdini, warm. [..]
X-rays showed the tangle of the blanket’s wiring extending through about 8 feet of the python’s digestive tract. The surgery to remove it took an 18-inch incision.’
He sure knew how to dance.
(750kB Shockwave)
`America’s Mattress co-owner Jim Sather is left puzzled after a rustler stole Serta Mattresses’ inflatable 14-foot sheep from their store here.
“I can’t figure out what someone would do with a 14-foot sheep,” Sather said. “It can’t go in your basement and if it’s in your back yard, your neighbor will notice. If it’s target practice, it only lasts once.”
All the thief or thieves left was a handwritten note at the scene of the crime that read: “For the sheep, bring peace to the earth.”‘
`A doctor and two nurses who worked through the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina were arrested overnight Monday on suspicion of murder, accused of giving four patients stranded at their flooded hospital lethal doses of morphine and a sedative.
“This is not euthanasia. This is homicide,” Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti said. [..]
The arrest warrants said Pou and the two nurses intentionally killed four patients “by administering or causing to be administered lethal doses of morphine sulphate (morphine) and midazolam (Versed).”‘
`Two Irish men who stole a fishing trawler after missing their ferry had to be rescued off the British coast where they were going in circles because they did not know how to sail.
After hours at sea, the men called what they thought was the Irish coastguard for help.
“They thought they were just off the coast of Ireland,” said Ray Steadman, press officer of the Holyhead lifeboat in north Wales, about 66 miles east of Ireland.
In fact, the two were just 12 miles north of where they started in Holyhead and had called the British coastguard, Steadman told Irish broadcaster RTE Monday.’
‘A summer tradition, driving your minivan into your above ground pool. I think this guy is trying to find the carpool lane.’
(3.0meg Windows media)
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