`An Israeli court sentenced a man to two years in prison on Sunday for operating a fake clinic that offered penis enhancements and so-called medical treatments to make people taller, which failed to work.
Simon Sofer told dozens of clients he was a doctor and said he could add up to 3.9 inches to their height or 2.4 inches to their genitals, the Tel Aviv court said.
His clinic, in operation since 1999, was not medically supervised, a government prosecutor had told the court.’
`A macabre scandal in which corpses were plundered for body parts could be even bigger than previously disclosed, with one company alone saying it has distributed thousands of pieces of human tissue that authorities fear could be tainted with disease.
In addition, three other companies have reported quarantining or destroying more than $5 million in tissue from Biomedical Tissue Services — the now-defunct New Jersey supply house at the center of the scandal.
While the exact number of pieces distributed and used in operations has not been revealed, hospitals in recent weeks have spoken of contacting hundreds of patients who may have received tainted tissue.’
`With power cleaner than coal and cheaper than natural gas, the nuclear industry, 20 years past its last meltdown, thinks it is ready for its second act: its first new reactor orders since the 1970’s.
But there is a catch. The public’s acceptance of new reactors depends in part on the performance of the old ones, and lately several of those have been discovered to be leaking radioactive water into the ground.
Near Braceville, Ill., the Braidwood Generating Station, owned by the Exelon Corporation, has leaked tritium into underground water that has shown up in the well of a family nearby. The company, which has bought out one property owner and is negotiating with others, has offered to help pay for a municipal water system for houses near the plant that have private wells.’
A bit of tritium never hurt anyone, I say. :)
`Iraq is in the middle of civil war, the country’s former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi has told the BBC. [..]
The UK and US have repeatedly denied Iraq is facing a civil war, but Mr Allawi suggested there was no other way to describe the sectarian violence. [..]
“If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.”‘
`Strange though it seems, a typical microwave oven consumes more electricity powering its digital clock than it does heating food. For while heating food requires more than 100 times as much power as running the clock, most microwave ovens stand idle—in “standby” mode—more than 99% of the time. And they are not alone: many other devices, such as televisions, DVD players, stereos and computers also spend much of their lives in standby mode, collectively consuming a huge amount of energy. Moves are being made around the world to reduce this unnecessary power consumption, called “standby power”.
[..] In 1998 they released an initial study which estimated that standby power accounted for approximately 5% of total residential electricity consumption in America, “adding up to more than $3 billion in annual energy costs”. According to America’s Department of Energy, national residential electricity consumption in 2004 was 1.29 billion megawatt hours (MWh)—5% of which is 64m MWh. The wasted energy, in other words, is equivalent to the output of 18 typical power stations.’
‘A 75-year-old grandfather has become the newest star of Russia’s growing porn industry, after wandering on to a film set by mistake, thinking it was a muscle man show.
David Bozdoganov has since starred in the films The Old Neighbour and Handyman at Work.
Director Alexander Plahov said: “We were auditioning for a new film and had a number of couples on stage simulating sex when I saw an old guy standing at the back.
“I wandered over to ask him to leave when I saw this massive package straining against his trousers. [..]”‘
Also, lemons.
‘It’s not just that America is being ruled by small and venal men, or that its reputation has been demolished, its army overstretched, its finances a mess. All of that, after all, was true toward the end of Vietnam as well. Now, though, there are all kinds of other lurking catastrophes, a whole armory of swords of Damocles dangling over a bloated, dispirited and anxious country. Peak oil — the point at which oil production maxes out — seems to be approaching, with disastrous consequences for America’s economy and infrastructure. Global warming is accelerating and could bring us many more storms even worse than Katrina, among other meteorological nightmares. The spread of Avian Flu has Michael Leavitt, secretary of health and human services, warning Americans to stockpile canned tuna and powdered milk. It looks like Iran is going to get a nuclear weapon, and the United States can’t do anything to stop it. Meanwhile, America’s growing religious fanaticism has brought about a generalized retreat from rationality, so that the country is becoming unwilling and perhaps unable to formulate policies based on fact rather than faith.’
`Scientists have developed artificial, super-strength muscles powered by alcohol and hydrogen, which could eventually be used to make much better prosthetic limbs. The artificial muscles are 100 times more powerful than the body’s own, and researchers believe they could be modified one day to use in ‘exoskeletons’, to give superhuman strength to certain professions such as firefighters, soldiers and astronauts.’
`So were the seeds he used to keep in a case in the store, with exotic names like Afghan Dream and Chemo Grizzly. So was the booming business he ran, complete with glossy seed catalogues describing the subtle and sublime nuances of his varieties. (“Nebula: Fruity flavor and scent. Transcendental buzz. Harvest outdoor.”) So, for that matter, are the other marijuana businesses that have sprouted up in the block around his Vancouver bookstore. The street is nicknamed “Vansterdam,” with pot-hazy cafes, headshops filled with pipes and bongs, and neon signs advertising illegal seed sales.
Until recently, nobody much cared, it seemed. The police hadn’t bothered to come around for eight years. Before that, they busted Emery for seed sales and raided him four times. But he just got fined — once with “a nice speech from the judge saying what a nice person I was and how marijuana probably shouldn’t be illegal,” Emery says — and the police stopped trying. [..]
Then came the DEA.’
`This is not a game.
You can’t win and you can’t lose.
This is a simulation.
It has no ending. It has already begun.
The rules are deadly simple. You can shoot. Or not.’
`Silvestre, who posed as a general surgeon, performed operations on the women who went to see him for breast augmentations, but were grossly disfigured and instead had to see licensed doctors to try and repair the damage.
Champion bodybuilder and former Mr. Mexico Alexander Baez also went to Silvestre’s Ocean Health Center in Miami Beach to have his pectoral muscles enhanced. But he woke up to find he had been given female breast implants.
Baez’s attorney said veterinary anesthesia was used on his client, who woke up three times during the procedure.’
`The Wapato Facility, in the city’s northern outskirts, took $59 million and two years to construct. But in the nearly two years since its completion — as Portland has struggled with a crime surge — not a single inmate has set foot in the building.
Multnomah County, in charge of Portland jails, can’t afford to open it.
“We held a ceremony, cut the ribbon — then locked the doors,” says Sheriff Bernie Giusto, who attended the dedication in the summer of 2004. “We have a brand-new jail sitting here empty, and I don’t have a good answer when the public asks me, ‘Why was it built if there was no plan to operate it?’
“Even I get tired of telling people how dumb we are.”‘
`The press, flown in from Baghdad to this agricultural gridiron northeast of Samarra, huddled around the Iraqi officials and U.S. Army commanders who explained that the “largest air assault since 2003” in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and U.S. troops on the ground had netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra, the city north of Baghdad where the bombing of a sacred shrine recently sparked a wave of sectarian violence.
But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. (“Air Assault” is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What’s more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the U.S. and Iraqi commanders.’
`We invite you to take a virtual tour of our shop. Below, You’ll have a chance to take a peek at what happens behind the scenes. Our state-of-the-art facility is well equiped to bring just about any idea into reality. We pride ourselves in bringing to reality the difficult challenges brought to us by our clients.’
I’ve been watching a lot of Mythbusters lately. It’s good. :)
`Police allowed 7kg of cocaine, worth more than $1 million, to be sold on Sydney streets in an undercover operation, but failed to recover nearly all of it.
The Sunday Telegraph says it was revealed in evidence to a Sydney court earlier this month that police had given the cocaine to a dealer to sell, but 6kg of the drug was never recovered.
It says undercover officers watched as the dealer sold the drug to contacts, but it was not until some time later that they made a number of arrests.’
`Researchers at Oregon State University have created the world’s first completely transparent integrated circuit from inorganic compounds, another major step forward for the rapidly evolving field of transparent electronics.
The circuit is a five-stage “ring oscillator,” commonly used in electronics for testing and new technology demonstration. It marks a significant milestone on the path toward functioning transparent electronics applications, which many believe could be a large future industry.’
`Turkeys are going wild on Chestnut Hill residents, forcing walkers to arm themselves with sticks and parents to guard their children at bus stops.
The turkeys have lived in the area behind the Cleveland Circle Cinema and near a Brookline school for years, but recently they have become unmanageable.
“As I was walking faster, they’d walk faster. I heard a sound behind me and then I felt the turkey’s claw on my back. I was lucky that there was a branch right there and I swung it at the turkey,” said neighborhood resident Marianne Lee.’
`The government of Dubai thought it would be a good idea to put a speed bump on a street where locals tended to speed. Problem is they didn’t tell anybody. This Gallardo hit it at over 60 MPH.
There’s actually a video of the accident. The back end of the Gallardo goes about 5 feet off the ground.’
`A runaway train killed seven people and injured at least 11, severing some of their limbs, during the filming of a TV show in Uruguay, police said. [..]
Participants in the programme, called A Challenge to the Heart, raise funds for local charities by completing difficult tasks set by the network – in this case manoeuvring a train a certain distance down railway tracks.
The Associated Press news agency quoted Ana Portela as telling local radio station El Espectador that the train was moving when “somebody slipped and fell under the locomotive, and others were falling alongside it.
“There were shouts and somebody said ‘my arm!'” Ms Portela said.’
`A former employee of Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine told The Epoch Times during a recent interview that the Sujiatun Concentration Camp in China was actually a part of a hospital. The concentration camp has engaged in taking organs from Falun Gong practitioners when they were still alive and selling the organs. Since 2001, the concentration camp has secretly detained approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners, none of whom have been able to leave the camp alive. The hospital removed many kidneys, livers, and corneas from the practitioners. After the organ removal, the practitioners were thrown into an incinerator, which was converted from a boiler. Their ashes were dumped together with burned charcoal.’
`A German hotel has started calculating fees according to the weight of the guest.
The three-star Ostfriesland hotel in the north German town of Norden charges the equivalent of 34p per kilogram.
So a thin man weighing 60 kilos pays just over £20 a night, but a man weighing 100 kilos would be forced to shell out nearly £35.
Owner Juergen Heckroth said: “Slim guests live longer and can therefore come more often and that is why we reward them.”‘
`Hollywood bully Tom Cruise got Comedy Central to cancel Wednesday night’s cablecast of a controversial “South Park” episode about Scientology by warning that he’d refuse to promote “Mission Impossible 3,” insiders say.
Since Paramount is banking on “MI3” to rake in blockbuster profits this summer, and Paramount is owned by Viacom, which also owns Comedy Central, the tactic worked.
The “South Park” episode, “Trapped in the Closet,” pokes fun at Scientology and shows Cruise, John Travolta and R. Kelly (who is not a Scientologist, but has a song called “Trapped in the Closet”) literally in a closet.
The episode, which first aired last November, was set to rerun Wednesday night, but was mysteriously pulled at the last minute.’
‘If you’re going to start out a fight with a flying jump kick, it’s best not to immediately hit the ground and get kicked in the head. Weak karate for the loss!’
(1meg Flash video)
see it here »
`Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.
The discovery — which involves an analysis of variations in the brightness of microwave radiation — is the first direct evidence to support the two-decade-old theory that the universe went through what is called inflation.
It also helps explain how matter eventually clumped together into planets, stars and galaxies in a universe that began as a remarkably smooth, super-hot soup.’
`Bali police have burned the stash of marijuana that sent Schapelle Corby to an Indonesian jail for 20 years.
The drugs were piled up on top of a metal drum in a backyard beside the Denpasar District Court where a distraught Corby was convicted on May 17 last year.
There was little fuss apart from some dizziness among some of the spectators after chief prosecutor I Ketut Arthana, who led the case against the Gold Coast woman, poured petrol on the pile and set it alight.
Watching on were Denpasar Mayor Anak Agung Puspa Yoga and local police chief Hari Dono Sukmanto, as well as a small crowd of journalists, who said they became giddy as pungent smoke wafted over the yard.’
`Medical experts have been baffled by what causes asthma. Most of them favor the idea that it stems from “helper” cells that have gone awry. But researchers at Harvard Medical School (HMS) have come up with convincing evidence that the answer lies in a special type of natural “killer” cell.
“We were very, very surprised,” admits Dale Umetsu, a professor of pediatrics at the Medical School and at Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital in Boston. “People have been confused about which cells in the lungs are responsible for all these years. Now, we have to rethink the results of so many studies. Our new findings were totally unexpected.”‘
A young girl terrified by her own shadow. She’s gonna have to get over it, or live the rest of her life in a dark room. :)
see it here »
`Last week, the press reported that Merrill Keiser, a Democratic candidate United States Senate from Ohio, believes that homosexuality should be punishable by death. Kaiser’s opposition for the Democratic nomination is US Rep. Sherrod Brown.
PageOneQ has obtained a portion of an audio interview in which Keiser says that singer/performer Elton John should be put to death and insinuates that the same should happen to Mary Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Richard B. Cheney.’
`Stretching out to the corners of the gymnasium, the indoor roller coaster at Royal Oak Intermediate School appears gargantuan compared to its creators.
Twenty-four feet tall at its highest point and occupying 10,000 square feet, the fully-functional ride towers over the 135 eighth-graders who are its designers, builders and decorators. Students and four teachers have spent thousands of hours measuring, sawing, constructing, painting and decorating the wooden structure over the last three weeks.
They will launch a small, unmanned car on the track at 7 p.m. today.’
`Before cops threw the book at him, Jakub Fik threw something unusual at them — his penis.
Fik, 33, cut off his own penis during a Northwest Side rampage Wednesday morning. When confronted by police, Fik hurled several knives and his severed organ at the officers, police said. Officers stunned him with a Taser and took him into custody.
“We took him out without any serious injury, with the exception of his own,” said Chicago Police Sgt. Edward Dolan of the 16th District.’
