`The federal government argued that Boy Scouts playing with fire caused a 14,200-acre wildfire and wants a judge to hold them responsible, allowing officials to seek damages.
In court documents, the government said it would decide whether to seek damages after a ruling is made. It says the June 2002 wildfire in northeastern Utah cost more than $12 million to control. [..]
At the time of the blaze, a fire ban was in effect because of dry conditions. In court documents, the Scouts maintain they were not aware of a formal fire ban and thought small pit fires were allowed.
In depositions, Scouts testified they were playing with fire, even offering a teenage counselor candy in return for setting one, Overby said.’
These are parts of some videos made back in 1996 by a guy who was apparently stalking Björk. He went crazier and crazier before sending Björk a parcel bomb and killing himself.
see it here »
`A post office in upstate New York was evacuated as Secret Service agents and the local bomb squad responded to a suspicious package addressed to former U.S. president Bill Clinton. [..]
After the post office was evacuated, a member of the bomb squad, dressed in protective gear, approached the package and checked it with a portable X-ray device. When no bomb parts were seen, the package was opened, revealing the cookies.
The cookies were then turned over to the Secret Service and the post office reopened.’
`It started over a dress code violation, hardly reason enough to throw away an academic career and certainly no reason to be charged with a felony.
“I have goals I want to achieve and this is stopping that,” says 17-year old Sabrina Herndon.
Herndon was wearing a jacket and strapless top and was changing in the girl’s locker room at Palm Beach Gardens High School.
A teacher noticed the strapless top which is a dress code violation. Herndon says with the jacket though, the top is within dress code.
A male assistant principal then entered the girl’s locker room, and within minutes Herndon was in a choke hold.’
American Congressman David Wu gets up and gives a speech about how the Whitehouse is full of Klingons, and how people shouldn’t let Klingons send real Americans to war. It’s wrong!
see it here »
`A taxi driver has been given a speeding ticket for allegedly driving at 420mph (676km/h) on a city street.
Tom Matthews was photographed while carrying a fare in his 12-year-old diesel Vauxhall Cavalier in Newport.
When a notice of the £60 fine and three penalty points arrived, it said he was clocked at 420mph in a 30mph zone. [..]
Mr Matthews, 38, of Newport, said: “I could not believe it. I was a bit shocked because there was no way I was going that fast.’
`A drunk driver is facing criminal charges after taking a fire engine for a joyride, with the lights and sirens blaring.
Canyon County sheriff’s deputies first spotted the fire truck driving north on highway 45 just after midnight.
They didn’t know of any fires in the area and called area dispatch centers to investigate.’
`A reader in New Zealand wrote to ask about the Playmate photos unwittingly taken to the moon in 1969 by Apollo 12 astronauts Al Bean and Pete Conrad. We described in the December 1994 issue how pranksters on the ground crew had reprinted Playmate photos on fireproof plastic paper and inserted them with captions into each of the astronauts’ cuff checklists. [..]
Conrad told us in 1994: “I had no idea they were with us. It wasn’t until we actually got out on the lunar surface and were well into our first moon walk that I found them.” Bean recalled: “It was about two and a half hours into the extravehicular activity. I flipped the page over and there she was. I hopped over to where Pete was and showed him mine, and he showed me his.”
Conrad: “We giggled and laughed so much that people accused us of being drunk or having ‘space rapture.'”‘
How do you dispose of 20,000 pounds of war surplus sodium metal?
Looks like a fun job. :)
(10.3meg Google video)
see it here »
`For the most part Soviet architecture and design is remembered for its heavy block buildings and functionally Spartan designs. Its overpowering desire for conformity left little room for individual creative freedom. A notable exceptions to this is in the transportation sector. One can admire this creativity in the Metro stations of cities like Moscow and Tashkent where the coldness and sterility of typical soviet urban architecture is abandoned and costs are not spared as creative freedom is unleashed. While many of us are aware of the elaborate splendor of the Moscow underground, it is easy to overlook the phenomenon of the common roadside bus stop as an example of soviet art and design letting loose and becoming a little weird and crazy.’
This gas is denser than air, so you can do some interesting things with it. It will make your voice deeper if you inhale it, and you can float little boats on it. Fun. :)
The wiki has more information about sulphur hexafluoride.
see it here »
`A World War II veteran has been found decapitated in the backyard of the northern NSW home where he lived alone for two decades, in a sickening and seemingly motiveless murder.
The severed head of 82-year-old Mark Hutchinson was found lying next to his body, said an ambulance spokesman in Armidale.
Relatives made the grisly find in the yard that backs onto a bike path and parkland when they called to see Mr Hutchinson yesterday, police said.’
‘Strange, 28, was found dead inside her Astral Drive home in Rancho Cordova Friday afternoon. Her death came just hours after Strange participated in a radio station KDND 107.9 The End contest, testing contestants to drank as much water as they could without going to the bathroom.
The winner of the “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest would take home a new Nintendo Wii video game system.’
see it here »
`It all started when Karl Szmolinsky won a prize for breeding Germany’s largest rabbit, a friendly-looking 10.5 kilogram “German Gray Giant” called Robert, in February 2006.
Images of the chubby monster went around the world and reached the reclusive communist state of North Korea, a country of 23 million which according to the United Nations Food Programme suffers widespread food shortages and where many people “struggle to feed themselves on a diet critically deficient in protein, fats and micronutrients.”
`A mother found her 4-year-old daughter decapitated in her home, and the child’s father was arrested early Saturday in Washington, D.C.
Amber Violette, called 911 on Friday evening, saying she had found her daughter, Katlin, with her head severed from her body, Clayton Police Chief Glen Allen said.
“It’s the most horrific thing I’ve seen in 13 years of police work,” Clayton Sgt. S. P. Lapsley said.’
`An afternoon picnic on a southern Sydney beach turned violent yesterday when a dispute between two families resulted in a saucepan versus knife duel in the fading light.
The two extended families – more than 180 people – had been picnicking separately at Dolls Point when a child from one of the families was struck by a soccer ball being used in a match by the other family, police say.
The incident caused an argument between the two families and two men allegedly attacked each other, one with a saucepan, the other with a knife, police said.’
‘An Afghan army soldier is trying to demonstrate a very very old Russian RPG.’
see it here »
`Some persons believe a mud pack is the answer to the search for a beautiful complexion, others think massage will do the trick, but Mrs. D. M. Ackerman, of Hollywood, Calif., has decided that reduced air pressure is a good treatment. So she has devised a “glamour bonnet” like a diver’s helmet with which the atmospheric pressure around the beauty seeker’s head can be lowered.’
`Nine salvaged bikes were reassembled into a carousel formation. The bike is modular and can be dismantled and reassembled. It is normally left in public places where it can attract a variety of riders.’
`The birth of a rhino is to be captured on a BBC-run webcam in what zookeepers believe will be a world first.
Sita, a one-tonne black rhino, is due to give birth this month at Paignton Zoo, in Devon, where cameras are being trained on her paddock 24 hours a day.
The zoo said there was no existing footage of a black rhino being born in a zoo anywhere in the world.’
`Auckland University scientists have revealed that eruptions of supervolcanoes powerful enough to change the climate and cause mass-extinction can be worse than previously thought. [..]
Such large eruptions of greater than 100 cubic kilometres of magma are generally rare and random events worldwide.
But geologist Darren Gravley of Auckland University and his colleagues have shown that one of the largest supervolcano eruptions on record, at Taupo 250,000 years ago, was twice as big as previously thought.’
Maybe I’m a bit stupid, but I don’t see how much worse than mass-extinction it could get. [shrug] It’s not like we’re going to be thinking “Oh, I’m glad it wasn’t any worse” once we’re already dead. :)
`Darren Sawyer was given a choice at the beginning of school yesterday: Change out of his brown clothes or go home.
Brown clothing was recently banned at the Molloy Alternative High School, where Sawyer is a sophomore. The ban came about from the emergence of the Brown Mafia, a new teenage gang in Lowell whose members wear the color brown, school officials said.
When Sawyer refused to change into a school-issued T-shirt or call home to have other clothes brought to the school, he was sent home, said Molloy Principal Kathy Akashian.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Sawyer’s mother, Lisa Motard. “I’ve heard of banning red and black. Now brown? What other colors are they going to come up with?”‘
`Memory Infinite has a USB male connector at one end and a female connector at the other, providing an “add up” concept for USB finger discs. By connecting one Memory Infinite with another to add up the storage capacity, the user won’t waste the old storage capacity when getting a larger one. The user can choose to combine or separate Memory Infinite, making the usage of USB finger discs more convenient. And when Memory Infinite connects to a computer using its male end, other USB devices still can connect to its female end without having to occupy another USB port on the computer.’
`Thank you for your letter rejecting my application for employment with your firm.
I have received rejections from an unusually large number of well qualified organizations. With such a varied and promising spectrum of rejections from which to select, it is impossible for me to consider them all. After careful deliberation, then, and because a number of firms have found me more unsuitable, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your rejection.’
These people are selling a monowheel for ~$4000US.
Unfortunately, it looks remarkably like the monowheel Mr Garrison invented in South Park. I think South Park has ruined monowheels forever, because now they just look like buggery machines.
`The House lawmaker in charge of defense spending said Friday that he intends to force the closure of the Guantánamo Bay military prison and curb U.S. engagement in Iraq, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “absolutely” supports his efforts. [..]
He said the best way to control what course the war takes is for Congress to attach conditions to war-spending bills, because Bush is unlikely to veto a bill that provides money to keep fighting.
The Guant�namo military prison, where prisoners have been held without charges and abused, need to be closed to restore U.S. credibility, Murtha said.’
`Ball lightning could soon lose its status as a mystery, now that a team in Brazil has cooked up a simple recipe for making similar eerie orbs of light in the lab, even getting them to bounce around for several seconds. [..]
A more down-to-earth theory, proposed by John Abrahamson and James Dinniss at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, is that ball lightning forms when lightning strikes soil, turning any silica in the soil into pure silicon vapour. As the vapour cools, the silicon condenses into a floating aerosol bound into a ball by charges that gather on its surface, and it glows with the heat of silicon recombining with oxygen.’
There’s also a ball lightning video.
They didn’t even seem to be going particularly fast.
see it here »
`Doctors want state governments to stop contracting the operation of public hospitals to the Catholic Church unless it agrees to provide all services including IVF, abortions, sterilisations and rape counselling.
Australian Medical Association national president Mukesh Haikerwal yesterday said taxpayers had a right to expect public hospitals would provide a full range of medical services.
If church-linked organisations wanted to exclude some services in accordance with church teaching, they should not tender for contracts to operate public hospitals, Dr Haikerwal said.
But the church’s health arm rejected the criticism and accused Dr Haikerwal of being anti-Catholic.’
Fuck the Pope up the arse with a tractor, I say.
