‘A man has been arrested for pouring his urine on a neighboring house on 169 occasions, causing the victim 650,000 yen in losses, police said.
Hiroshi Nishizaki, 46, a part-time worker from Ikeda, stands accused of damaging a structure. He admitted to the allegations during questioning.
“The view from my apartment has been blocked by the neighboring house, which was recently built, and I was irritated,” he was quoted as telling investigators. [..]
Nishizaki urinated into bottles or pots and poured it on the outer wall of the neighboring house and over one of its outdoor air conditioning units from his apartment on at least 169 occasions between Feb. 17 this year and Monday this week, local police said. On one day, he stained the neighbor’s home nine times.’
‘According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water. [..]
A year and a half later, after extensive scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations and other testing, Barsoum and his research group finally began to draw some conclusions about the pyramids. They found that the tiniest structures within the inner and outer casing stones were indeed consistent with a reconstituted limestone. The cement binding the limestone aggregate was either silicon dioxide (the building block of quartz) or a calcium and magnesium-rich silicate mineral.
The stones also had a high water content-unusual for the normally dry, natural limestone found on the Giza plateau-and the cementing phases, in both the inner and outer casing stones, were amorphous, in other words, their atoms were not arranged in a regular and periodic array. Sedimentary rocks such as limestone are seldom, if ever, amorphous.
The sample chemistries the researchers found do not exist anywhere in nature. “Therefore,” says Barsoum, “it’s very improbable that the outer and inner casing stones that we examined were chiseled from a natural limestone block.”‘
‘That was evidenced by the 409 people who clicked on an ad that offers infection for those with virus-free PCs. The ad, run by a person who identifies himself as security professional Didier Stevens, reads like this:
Drive-By Download
Is your PC virus-free?
Get it infected here!
drive-by-download.info
Stevens, who says he works for Contraste Europe, a branch of the IT consultancy The Contraste Group, has been running his Google Adwords campaign for six months now and has received 409 hits. Stevens has done similar research in the past, such as finding out how easy it is to land on a drive-by download site when doing a Google search.’
It goes up, but it doesn’t seem to come back down.
(462kB Windows media)
see it here »
This is a little puzzle game. 36 levels, find the star in each one.
There’s a walkthrough if you get stuck.
‘A Central Florida woman who was cleaning out her parents’ home found a hidden box of photographs with images of her mother and father molesting her young daughter more than a decade ago, according to police.
Investigators said the 58-year-old grandfather, who was not identified to protect the victim, was recently moving out of his Orange County home with the help of his adult daughter.
Officers said that during the move she began sifting through some family photos.
She then found images of her daughter being sexually molested by the her parents, according to the report.’
‘A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like “Web site” in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet.
Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.
“The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a Web site is,” he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.
Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms “Web site” and “forum.” An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: “I haven’t quite grasped the concepts.”
Violent Islamist material posted on the Internet, including beheadings of Western hostages, is central to the case.’
‘The world is now on track to experience more catastrophic damages from climate change than in the worst-case scenario forecast by international experts, scientists have warned.
The research, published in a prestigious US science journal, shows that between 2000 and 2004 the rate of increase in global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels was three times greater than in the 1990s. [..]
The climbing emissions mean that average global temperatures are now on track to rise by more than four degrees this century – enough to thaw vast areas of arctic permafrost and leave about 3 billion people suffering from water shortages, including in Australia.’
It’s not a threat, it’s a fucken promise.
(5.4meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘In animal markets, some parts and products are not what they are labeled. One of the most difficult products to identify has been genuine dried tiger penises. The reason for this is the rarity of the real thing and a long tradition of the production of “lesser tiger” or tiger substitute, that is, any other large mammal that can be promoted as a replacement for tiger. When rehydrated and consumed in a soup of tea, this product is believed to serve as an aphrodisiac or restorative tisane. To date, no dried penis from an actual tiger has been seen in the Lab as evidence in a wildlife case.’
‘A woman blames the devil and not her husband for severely burning their infant daughter after the 2-month-old was put in a microwave, a Houston television station reported.
Eva Marie Mauldin said Satan compelled her 19-year-old husband, Joshua Royce Mauldin, to microwave their daughter May 10 because the devil disapproved of Joshua’s efforts to become a preacher. [..]
A Galveston County grand jury indicted Joshua Mauldin last week on child injury charges after hearing evidence that he placed his daughter in a motel microwave for 10 to 20 seconds. [..]
“That was not my husband; my husband is a wonderful father,” she said. “Satan was working through his weaknesses.”
Eva Maudlin described those weaknesses as an undisclosed mental disability, and that her efforts to get help for him have failed.’
‘You’ve come to know and love him as Jared Fogle, the guy who lost over 200 pounds by eating nothing but Subway sandwiches alone. As a result, he went from being just plain ol’ “Jared” to the much more exciting “Jared Fogle, the Subway Guy.”
Well, it turns out in college, the All-American Jared was known for something entirely different. According to our source, while studying at Indiana University, Fogle ran a very successful pornography rental company out of his bedroom. His porn collection was vast and extensive, and Fogle took his business pretty seriously. A video would run a patron a dollar a day (cheap!), and people would come from all over to take advantage of the deal. Needless to say, Jared had enough porn to keep his customers happy.’
‘The first part of this Foundry Note describes a technique for using a domestic microwave oven to melt and cast, to accurate shape, small quantities (up to a quarter of a kilo) of bronze, silver, white metal or iron. The technique has been used to cast pieces from ceramic shell moulds up to about 18cm high, and is an accessible alternative to other small-scale melting set-ups, for example the flask casting of jewellery.
The second part of the note describes thoughts and tests which led to the procedure. It offers guidance and some warnings, to anyone making investigations into metal heating by microwave.’
‘It wasn’t until the six-year-old boy shouted, “Geronimo!” that I realized what he meant when he said he wanted to play Superman.’
‘Welcome to our side of the fence. The life of your average Tech Support person is one that is complex, fulfilling, and yet strangely sadomasichistic. Those that have escaped wonder why we ever turn up to work in the morning. Those that are still there know exactly what I’m talking about.
Here, you’ll find largely fictional, fake and phoney stories that just need to be told about the Tech Support business. Sure, it’s not as much of a downer as this intro makes it out to be, but that’s not the point. Sometimes, it’s just entertaining to think that it is this bad.’
‘When police spotted a gun-wielding suspect lurking in the shadows of a suburban front room, their response was swift.
Armed officers burst into the house, shouted at the owner to lie on the floor, and ordered him to surrender his weapon.
But efficiency turned to embarrassment when the “gunman” turned out to be a life-sized model of the video game character Lara Croft, complete with trademark outsized pistols.’
‘A 9-year-old boy was placed in juvenile detention after he was charged with four counts of third-degree assault for allegedly poisoning his 30-year-old stepmother and his three siblings in separate incidents.
Mobile County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Kate Johnson said the youngster admitted pouring an aquarium water conditioner in his step mom’s drink on Saturday at a residence in Irvington. The unnamed woman fell ill and remained hospitalized in the intensive care unit at a Mobile hospital. She was treated for abdominal pains and is expected to make a full recovery.
Johnson said investigators also are looking into an April 15 incident in which the boy confessed to poisoning his siblings with an industrial strength cleaner and degreaser. The three siblings, a 15-and-two 11-year-olds, were treated and released.
Investigators described the youngster as a “troubled child” in need of professional counseling.’
‘Treasurer Peter Costello’s regular morning jog up the roof of Parliament House is a breach of parliamentary security, a Senate estimates committee has heard.
Mr Costello took up jogging late last year and ends his Canberra outings by running up the grassy slope to the flagpole at the top of Parliament House.
He told reporters that he liked to jog a lap of the parliament and finish by racing to the grassy roof, where he would “clasp my hands together like Rocky Balboa”. [..]
Department of Parliamentary Services head Hilary Penfold told the Senate finance and public administration committee that pedestrians were not supposed to access the roof. [..]
“And if you see him popping over the fence to go up to the top of the hill to clasp his hands together like Rocky Balboa, can I ask that he be arrested,” Senator Faulkner said.’
‘Hundreds of Indian rail passengers got more than they had bargained for when the driver of their train asked them to get out and push.
It took more than half an hour to move the stalled electric train 12 feet so that it touched live overhead wires and was able to resume its journey, officials said on Wednesday.
The incident occurred in the eastern state of Bihar on Tuesday after a passenger pulled the train’s emergency chain and it halted in a “neutral zone,” a short length of track where there is no power in the overhead wires.’
Can you name an animal with three letters in its name? :)
(16.4meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘An 18-year-old man suffered serious burns Wednesday after suffering a severe electric shock while spray painting graffiti inside an electrical substation in northwest Santa Fe, according to police. [..]
The substation near Buckman Road supplies electricity to 5,800 households in the area, said Jeff Buell, spokesman for the Public Service Company of New Mexico. About 115,000 volts of electricity flow into the substation through high-voltage wires. Inside, the current is redistributed and sent out to customers through underground wires. [..]
There is so much electricity running through the substation that the current does not need a strong conductor — such as a metal wire or stream of water — to escape and electrocute someone, Buell said. A stream of spray paint would be more than sufficient to conduct electricity inside the substation, he said.’
‘A 400-pound gorilla escaped from his enclosure and ran amok in a Rotterdam zoo Friday, biting one woman, dragging her around, and causing panic among dozens of visitors before he was finally subdued, officials and a witness said.
The Diergaarde Blijdorp zoo was evacuated and the 11-year-old gorilla, named Bokito, was eventually contained in a restaurant within the park, police spokeswoman Yvette de Rave said.
Four people were injured, including the woman who was bitten, zoo director Ton Dorrestijn said.’
‘A Japanese drop box for unwanted babies triggered a wave of nationwide soul searching Wednesday, a day after it was discovered a preschooler — and not an infant — had been dumped there by his father on its first day of operation.
Nationally circulated newspapers warned that the anonymous drop-off, known as “Stork’s Cradle,” is open for abuse and could traumatize youngsters. They also condemned the father, saying his action could spur copycats.
The drop-off was opened last Thursday by the Catholic-run Jikei Hospital in the southern city of Kumamoto to discourage abortions and the abandonment of children in unsafe public places. The same day, a boy believed to be 3 was found inside.’
‘French workers are the world’s biggest whiners, according to a study published Monday which said the Irish complain least about their lot.
Britons come second to their Gallic cousins in the moaning stakes, followed by Sweden, the United States and Australia. Japanese workers have the lowest morale, but don’t complain so much.
The lowest levels of whining were found in the Netherlands, Thailand and Ireland, according to the study by the FDS research group.
“It is interesting to note that after France, Britain and Sweden, the world’s biggest workplace whingers are Americans, despite their having by far the highest levels of income,” said FDS chief Charlotte Cornish.’
‘A group of soldiers practice a military training exercise. Everything runs as planned until they back up and try to drive away.’
(2.0meg Windows media)
see it here »
‘Cannes is smacking its lips in anticipation of filmmaker and provocateur Michael Moore’s latest jeremiad against the US administration, which receives its premiere at the film festival today. Sicko, a documentary tackling the state of American healthcare, focuses on the pharmaceutical giants, and particularly on health insurers.
[..] Now, according to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose Weinstein Company is behind the film, the US government is attempting to impound the negative.
According to Weinstein, the US Treasury’s moves meant “we had to fly the movie to another country”- he would not say to where. “Let the secret service find that out – though this is the same country that thought there were weapons of mass destruction, so they’ll never find it.” He added that he feared that if the film were impounded, there might be attempts to cut some footage, in particular the last 20 minutes, which related to a trip to Cuba. This, said Weinstein, “would not be good.”‘
‘In College Writing 101, a girl in the back of the class said about the situation in Iraq:
“Why should we listen to what the Iraq people have to say? They are the ones who blew up the World Trade Center!” [..]
World History class, talking about the French Revolution, completely out of the blue:
“Had people invented how to swim by this time?” [..]
Some chick behind me announced “HEY TURN OFF THE BUNSEN BURNER YOU ARE WASTING ELECTRICITY”. Thankfully my chemistry teacher heard this and booted her from the class. We overheard him outside having a shouting match with the department head asking why he had to teach the mentally disabled.’
Followup to Dumb Things Heard In Class.
‘”Bubba” Ludwig can’t walk, talk or open the refrigerator door — but he does have his very own Illinois gun permit.
The 10-month-old, whose given name is Howard David Ludwig, was issued a firearm owner’s identification card after his father, Howard Ludwig, paid the $5 fee and filled out the application, not expecting to actually get one.
The card lists the baby’s height (2 feet, 3 inches), weight (20 pounds) and has a scribble where the signature should be. [..]
Illinois State Police oversee the application process. Their purpose, said Lt. Scott Compton, is to keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons, those under an order of protection and those convicted of domestic violence.
“Does a 10-month-old need a FOID card? No, but there are no restrictions under the act regarding age of applicants,” he said.’
