moonbuggy

`A disturbing case was discovered Tuesday about a Central Ohio man who allegedly told police he likes to drink the urine of adolescent boys. [..]

“Listening to his describe it, it’s like listening to a crack or cocaine addict. He’s addicted to children’s urine,” Fithen said.

According to police, Patton said he’s been drinking urine for years.

“He told us he’s been doing it over 40 years, since he was 7 years old,” Fithen said.

Police said Patton goes to family restaurants and movie theaters and waits for boys in a bathroom stall. Investigators said he shuts off the water to the child-level urinal and puts a cup in the bottom.’

`The MPAA filed lawsuits against Torrentspy, Isohunt, Torrentbox, Niteshadow and Bthub. This could have a huge impact on the Bittorrent community since Torrentspy and Isohunt are two of the most frequently visited torrent sites.

But on the other hand, Isohunt and Torrentspy are torrent search engines and DO NOT host any torrents so the MPAA may have a hard time to built a strong case.’

`Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have engineered a strain of pond scum that could, with further refinements, produce vast amounts of hydrogen through photosynthesis.

The work, led by plant physiologist Tasios Melis, is so far unpublished. But if it proves correct, it would mean a major breakthrough in using algae as an industrial factory, not only for hydrogen, but for a wide range of products, from biodiesel to cosmetics.

The new strain of algae, known as C. reinhardtii, has truncated chlorophyll antennae within the chloroplasts of the cells, which serves to increase the organism’s energy efficiency. In addition, it makes the algae a lighter shade of green, which in turn allows more sunlight deeper into an algal culture and therefore allows more cells to photosynthesize.’

`A woman who didn’t want the rain to ruin the sofa in the back of her truck caused 24 vehicles to wreck behind her Sunday on Interstate 20 as she swerved to get under an overpass, a police spokesman said. [..]

She changed lanes so rapidly that she cut off cars as she made her way to the shoulder of the road to get under the overpass, White said.

“She cut off two vehicles initially, right away, and that caused those two vehicles to collide with each other,” White said. “We had a total of 24 vehicles at the end of it.”

Eight separate accidents were reported as a direct result of the woman’s poor driving, he said.’

`Our government tells us the prisoners at Guantanamo are “the worst of the worst,” to use Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase. “They’re terrorists. They’re bomb-makers, they’re facilitators of terror. They’re members of al-Qaida and the Taliban” is the description from the ever-reliable lips of Vice President Dick Cheney.

“They were there to kill,” the President has asserted. [..]

What do the official findings of the U.S. military show?

More than half of the so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo were determined to have committed no hostile act against U.S. or coalition forces. This was so even though the definition of a “hostile act” was loose enough to include fleeing a camp that had been bombed, or being picked up in an area of Pakistan where others believed to be fighters had fled.’

`A population milestone is about to be set on this jam-packed planet.

On Saturday, Feb. 25, at 7:16 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the population here on this good Earth is projected to hit 6.5 billion people.

Along with this forecast, an analysis by the International Programs Center at the U.S.
Census Bureau points to another factoid, Robert Bernstein of the Bureau’s Public Information Center advised LiveScience. Mark this on your calendar: Some six years from now, on Oct. 18, 2012 at 4:36 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, the Earth will be home to 7 billion folks.’

`The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.

Black Box Voting successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election.

After investing over $7,000 and waiting nine months for the records, Black Box Voting discovered that the voting machine logs contained approximately 100,000 errors. According to voting machine assignment logs, Palm Beach County used 4,313 machines in the Nov. 2004 election. During election day, 1,475 voting system calibrations were performed while the polls were open, providing documentation to substantiate reports from citizens indicating the wrong candidate was selected when they tried to vote.

Another disturbing find was several dozen voting machines with votes for the Nov. 2, 2004 election cast on dates like Oct. 16, 15, 19, 13, 25, 28 2004 and one tape dated in 2010. These machines did not contain any votes date-stamped on Nov. 2, 2004.’

`A man who raped his unconscious teenage stepdaughter as she lay dying from a head injury has been jailed for nine years at the High Court in Glasgow.

Sentencing Judge Lord Philip told George McKee, 50, he had committed an “appalling crime” which filled members of the public with “horror”.

McKee admitted raping Kerry Muchan, 14, in her Paisley home on 23 July, 2005 while she was unconscious.

Kerry died soon after the rape from a head injury caused by a fall.’

`A star in a galaxy not so far way, at least in cosmic terms, is exploding, astronomers say.

Already the star outshines its entire galaxy, a smudge of light about 440 million light-years away in the constellation Aries. But that, astronomers believe, is still only the beginning, and telescopes around the world are being turned toward Aries in anticipation of documenting one of the rarest and most violent events in nature, a supernova explosion.

The conflagration was detected on Saturday as a long burst of gamma rays by NASA’s Swift satellite. Such bursts have been linked to supernova explosions in which a massive star collapses into a black hole.’

‘A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal.

The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders.

They ordered the man, Mr Tombe, to pay a dowry of 15,000 Sudanese dinars ($50) to Mr Alifi.

“We have given him the goat, and as far as we know they are still together,” Mr Alifi said.’

`The idea emerged after Jonathan “Yoni” Shimshoni and a team of aspiring inventors in Israel watched a television documentary about victims trapped on the upper floors of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Shimshoni recalled seeing the towers ablaze and thinking, “This is nuts. This shouldn’t have to happen.”

The team came up with a $1 million escape device with expandable cabins that could be lowered like lifeboats outside a high-rise in distress.’

`Dennis Crouch had already slashed himself. And when he refused to drop his knife, Daytona Beach police Officer Betsy Cassidy decided she had no choice.

“Taser! Taser!” Cassidy shouted as she sent a two-pronged wire, packing 50,000 volts, at Crouch’s chest. What happened next stunned everyone.

A Taser probe pierced the pocket of his khaki shirt — and ignited the butane lighter inside. Crouch’s pocket exploded in flames.

“The subject,” recounted Sgt. Al Tolley in a subsequent report, “immediately dropped the knife.”‘

`Coinciding with the recent 50th anniversary of Silicon Valley, today IBM announced a chip-making advance that will allow it to create semiconductors with wires less than 30 nanometers wide — one-third the width in today’s industry-standard chips — which should keep Moore’s Law (the density of chips doubles every two years) in effect for several more years, according to experts.’

`Broadband customers of Australia’s largest ISPs can use peer-to-peer file-sharing services such as BitTorrent and Kazaa without being throttled by their ISP, at least for now.

Australia’s largest internet providers say they are not limiting peer-to-peer file sharing traffic on their networks and have no immediate plans to impose restrictions on the activity.

However, some say they have the means to apply limits if that is required in the future.’

`The pastor of a charismatic Christian church attended by the Plano mother on trial, accused of fatally cutting off the arms of her 10-month-old daughter, told jurors Wednesday that mental illness is really demon possession that cannot be cured with psychiatry or medicine.

“I do not believe that any mental illness exists other than demons, and no medication can straighten it out, other than the power of God,” said Doyle Davidson, the 73-year-old minister of the Water of Life Church that Dena and John Schlosser attended several times a week.

Dena Schlosser, 37, is on trial for capital murder in the slaying of her daughter Margaret in November 2004.’

`Police say the driver charged with the smash that killed six teenagers and left one fighting for his life has appeared in court at least eight times since 1992 for driving while disqualified.

And it alleged his four-year-old son was sitting on his lap at the time of the crash. [..]

Towle, 34, who was released from jail three months ago after serving 18 months for a firearms-related offence, held his head in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair yesterday as he faced up to the full horror of the charges against him: six counts of culpable driving causing death, four counts of negligently causing serious injury, one count of failing to stop and one of failing to render assistance.’

Fun little puzzle game.

`Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday warned U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice not to “mess with” him days after Rice described Venezuela as a menace to regional democracy.

“Don’t mess with me, Condoleezza. Don’t mess with me, girl,” Chavez said during his weekly Sunday broadcast, sarcastically offering her a kiss and jokingly referring to her as “Condolence.”

The warning comes days after Rice described Venezuela as one of the “biggest problems” for the Western Hemisphere and promised to develop regional alliances as part of an “inoculation” strategy to expose what the State Department calls anti-democratic behavior in Venezuela.’

‘Downed racer avoids other bikes by doing the skatman. If racing doesn’t work as a career, dancing might. Skibby yibby yibby dome da da da I’m a skatman!’

(3.1meg Windows Media)

see it here »

`A 23-year-old woman has been given a landmark payment of £20,000 for being bullied as a pupil at her south Wales primary school more than 12 years ago.

Sophie Amor won the settlement after taking action against Torfaen Council for seven years of bullying which she said destroyed her life.

Ms Amor attended St Peter’s Church in Wales School in Blaenavon and said she was bullied from the age of four to 11.

Torfaen Council agreed to an out-of -court settlement but denied liability.’

‘This kid can’t wait a few minutes for his computer to warm up. He’s totally freaking out. Calm down kid, internet porn isnt going anywhere.’

Crazy Germans. This kid is gonna choke on his own tongue from screaming so much if he’s not careful.

(7.3meg Windows Media)

see it here »

`Global supercomputer leader Cray has announced that the “Red Storm” supercomputer installed at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico is the first computer to surpass the 1 terabyte-per-second (1 TB/sec) performance mark on a widely used test that measures communications among processors in high-performance computing (HPC) systems and provides a key indication of the total communication capacity of the network.

Red Storm posted 1.8 TB/sec (1.8 trillion bytes per second) on the PTRANS interconnect bandwidth test that is part of the High Performance Computing Challenge (HPCC) test suite. By comparison, this figure represents 40 times more communications power per teraflop (trillion floating point operations per second) than the PTRANS result posted by an IBM Blue Gene system that has more than 10 times as many processors.’

`A mathematical proof is irrefutably true, a manifestation of pure logic. But an increasing number of mathematical proofs are now impossible to verify with absolute certainty, according to experts in the field.

“I think that we’re now inescapably in an age where the large statements of mathematics are so complex that we may never know for sure whether they’re true or false,” says Keith Devlin of Stanford University in California, US. “That puts us in the same boat as all the other scientists.”

As an example, he points to the Classification of Finite Simple Groups, a claimed proof announced in 1980 that resulted from a collaboration in which members of a group each contributed different pieces. “Twenty-five years later we’re still not sure if it’s correct or not. We sort of think it is, but no one’s ever written down the complete proof,” Devlin says.’

‘Sexually abusing a teenager is less serious a crime if the girl is not a virgin, Italy’s higher court said on Friday in a controversial ruling that immediately drew a barrage of criticism.

The court ruled in favor of a man in his forties, identified only as Marco T., who forced his 14-year old stepdaughter to have oral sex with him after she refused intercourse.

The man, who has been sentenced to three years and four months in jail, lodged an appeal arguing that the fact that his stepdaughter had had sex with men before should have been taken into consideration during his trial as a mitigating factor.’

`A heavyweight couple caused a pub ceiling to collapse by frolicking together in a shower.

The pair checked in to the The Black Horse Inn in Taunton, Somerset, and spent an afternoon drinking in the bar.

They then went upstairs and got in to the shower together.

Their amorous behaviour caused some damage and water started to pour down into the bar below.

The couple left early the next morning, but not long afterwards the ceiling collapsed, leaving landlord Steve Ball with a £5,000 repair bill.’

`Stress, obesity and a lonely couch-potato existence make for miserable lives. And that’s just the start of the tale of woe for the nation’s dogs and cats.

“What happens to our pets mirrors what’s happening in human lives,” says Jon Sellors of insurer More Than. “Obesity in pets is getting to be a really big issue. When we spoke to vets recently, 80 per cent of them reported seeing increasing numbers of obese pets. Yet 90 per cent of owners believe their pets are not overweight.”‘

`An American pay TV boss accused of defrauding the Pentagon will be extradited from Australia to the United States to face fraud and money-laundering charges. [..]

Hermanowski allegedly siphoned more than million (.8 million) in an elaborate cable-TV racket during his time as chairman of US company Americable, court documents state.

He allegedly billed the US Department of Defence for TV systems on military bases that he never built, and is accused of laundering million (.1 million) in 1995 and 1996 by endorsing fake invoices and depositing cheques into his personal bank accounts.’

Pictures of a bunch of strange looking buildings.

Some a pretty cool, others are pretty ugly.

`Radiation detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.

Government officials, however, say the sharp rise in uranium detected by radiation monitors in Berkshire was a coincidence and probably came from local sources.’

`A student being asked to remove a T-shirt with a lesbian slogan has sparked a protest at a school in Melbourne’s northwest.

About 30 students at Strathmore Secondary College last week rallied behind Year 12 classmate Stephanie, 17, after she was told by teachers to change out of the T-shirt for school photos.

Stephanie, who did not want her surname published, said she had worn a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Nobody knows I’m a lesbian” to school on several occasions without concerns being raised by staff or fellow students.’