‘The immense fossilised claw of a 2.5m-long (8ft) sea scorpion has been described by European researchers.
The 390-million-year-old specimen was found in a Germany quarry, the journal Biology Letters reports.
The creature, which has been named Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, would have paddled in a river or swamp.
The size of the beast suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought, the team says.
The claw itself measures 46cm – indicating its owner would have been longer even than the average-sized human.’
‘Attacks against British and Iraqi forces have plunged by 90 percent in southern Iraq since London withdrew its troops from the main city of Basra, the commander of British forces there said Thursday.
The presence of British forces in downtown Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, was the single largest instigator of violence, Maj. Gen. Graham Binns told reporters Thursday on a visit to Baghdad’s Green Zone.
“We thought, ‘If 90 percent of the violence is directed at us, what would happen if we stepped back?'” Binns said.
Britain’s 5,000 troops moved out of a former Saddam Hussein palace at Basra’s heart in early September, setting up a garrison at an airport on the city’s edge. Since that pullback, there’s been a “remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks,” Binns said.
“The motivation for attacking us was gone, because we’re no longer patrolling the streets,” he said.’
So the server move didn’t go quite as planned. Image site was basically fucked in the arse all weekend.
I still declare myself victorious in the cunning department tho. Ha! .. The migration itself went okay, just a few unforseen problems with server load and actually letting people view the site once it was migrated. :)
The whole thing is suddenly rather interesting, and may take a bit of my time this week.
For now, once some DNS changes sort themselves out, the image site should be running properly again. :)
I’ve just spent the day moving the image site to a new server. You crazy hippies seem to quite like the pictures, and bandwidth is an ever growing problem.
But, I think I have it sorted now. :)
If I am as cunning as I think I am, the transition to the new server should be seamless and no one will notice anything [except the ratings stars disappearing until I figure out how I broke them :) ].
If I’m as cunning as reality actually suggests I am, there may be a bit of downtime on the image site over the next day or two.
Time will decide. :)
If anyone notices any problems/improvements with speed or reliability or anything like that over the next little while, it’d be nice if you would leave a comment or send me a message to let me know.
‘Customer: I had an appointment today (Sunday) between 10-12 & nobody came.
Me: OK, tomorrow is the appointment.
Customer: But it was set for the 10th.
Me: Tomorrow is the 10th.
Customer: Somebody is messing with my brain. I have a hand-drawn calendar behind me. So the appointment is for Tuesday, the 10th.
Me: MONDAY, the 10th.
Customer: Whoa, you’re blowin’ my mind here.’
‘When I was 17 i was at school doing a veterinary studies course, and as part of that course, we had to complete 2 full weeks of work experience at a vet clinic of our choice. Okay, no worries, I can handle that…right?
Um NO. [..]
The second week, a puppy was brought in to the clinic. It had scruffy black fur, and even though it was pretty dopey looking, I thought it was cute.
They placed it down on one of the tables and I stood by and watched what I assumed would be a routine check-up or something.’
‘Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).
In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. “Being poor sucks,” Lisi says. “It’s hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you’re trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month.”
Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.’
‘Spain’s King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to “shut up” as the Ibero-American summit drew to a close in Santiago, Chile.
The outburst came after Mr Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a “fascist”.
Mr Chavez then interrupted Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s calls for him to be more diplomatic, prompting the king’s outburst. [..]
Mr Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, despite his microphone being turned off. The king leaned forward and said: “Why don’t you shut up?”
According to reports, the king used a familiar term normally used only for close acquaintances – or children.’
‘A Perth man has been charged with attempted murder after a 25-year-old man was shot in the buttocks and stomach during an argument over loud music.
Police alleged the younger man was at his Boddington home with friends when a 56-year-old man visiting neighbours began arguing with him about the loud music.
The older man allegedly threatened the residents with a piece of timber before he left and returned with a rifle.’
‘back in the 1920s george bennie designed and built the railplane, a propeller-driven monorail initially intended to travel between glasgow and edinburgh.
the design was way ahead of its time, the railplane capsule home to a 4-blade propeller at each end, each of these powered by its own electric motor – the result a cruising speed of 120mph.’
‘Donald Kerr, a top intelligence official with the US government, says that citizens need to change their definition of privacy to match the government’s definition, the AP reports. Appointed Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in 2005, Kerr is now the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Kerr is one of many in the intelligence community who finds Americans’ views on privacy to be antiquated and unreasonable. [..]
Americans need to shift their definition of privacy to center instead on the proper maintenance and protection of personal data by government and business entities. Kerr said that “privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured. And it is that framework that we need to grow and nourish and adjust as our cultures change.”‘
N dSJhhbYT EvJa‘British supermarkets are selling beer at prices cheaper than water and soft drinks, with cans sold for as little as 50 cents.
Supermarkets were stocking shelves with beer priced so low they were actually losing money, the Mail on Sunday reported.
Experts estimated that the supermarkets were losing up to 18c per can through excise and production costs, the newspaper said.
Many of the major supermarkets were now selling beer for just 50 pence ($1.15) a litre. The same supermarkets sell mineral water for 56p-92p a litre.
Own-brand cola sells for 56p-65p.
The British health department has commissioned an independent review of alcohol pricing and promotion and has not ruled out changing regulations.’
‘Car hoons will be penalised and humiliated under a NSW government initiative to wreck the vehicles of offenders and publish video footage of the destruction.
Premier Morris Iemma says the plan proposes to destroy hoons’ cars in demonstration tests under controlled conditions.
“Car hoons engage in potentially lethal, property destroying, anti-social behaviour,” Mr Iemma said in a statement today.
“We’re turning the tables. We’ll destroy their property – but do it for the right reasons.”‘
‘A new antenna made of plasma (a gas heated to the point that the electrons are ripped free of atoms and molecules) works just like conventional metal antennas, except that it vanishes when you turn it off.
That’s important on the battlefield and in other applications where antennas need to be kept out of sight. In addition, unlike metal antennas, the electrical characteristics of a plasma antenna can be rapidly adjusted to counteract signal jamming attempts.
Plasma antennas behave much like solid metal antennas because electrons flow freely in the hot gas, just as they do in metal conductors. But plasmas only exist when the gasses they’re made of are very hot. The moment the energy source heating a plasma antenna is shut off, the plasma turns back into a plain old (non conductive) gas. As far as radio signals and antenna detectors go, the antenna effectively disappears when the plasma cools down.’
‘A brazen attack by four gunmen on the Pelindaba nuclear facility has left a senior emergency officer seriously injured.
Anton Gerber, Necsa emergency services operational officer spoke to the Pretoria News from his hospital bed hours after the attack.
He was shot in the chest when the gunmen stormed the facility’s emergency response control room in the early hours of Thursday morning. [..]
Necsa spokesperson Chantal Janneker confirmed the attack.
She declined to say how the gunmen had gained access to the facility or whether they had stolen anything.
Janneker said Necsa was conducting an internal investigation into the attack.
Once the police investigation was complete Necsa would divulge what happened, she said.’
You won’t like this video. You may vomit from watching it. :) It’s not as bad as the least safe for work video ever, but it’s getting there.
This is very definitely NSFW.
Also, there’s some reaction videos of other people not liking it aswell. :)
see it here »
‘Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.
The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.
The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.
A check of federal court records in California did not reveal any prosecutions developed from falafel trails.’
‘Authorities in Orange County are working to recover the remains of a 24-year-old Anaheim man who was killed Wednesday in a wood chipper accident in Tustin.
The tree service worker “was standing at the back end of the chipper, throwing branches into it with his co-workers nearby,” said Sgt. Pat Welch of the Tustin Police Department.
“One of them looked over, and he was gone.”
Authorities took the wood chipper and the truck attached to it to a parking structure at the coroner’s office, where they plan to dismantle it.’
This fellow apparently won a competition to let him audition in a recording studio. He does a good job. :)
(7.0meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘Someone made off with 15 kilometres of copper wire during the power outage caused by post tropical storm Noel, RCMP said Wednesday.
The theft was discovered Tuesday afternoon when power was restored to Pratt and Whitney Drive near the Halifax airport but the lights were still not on.
RCMP said it appears the culprits removed access panels to streetlights, cut the connections and then pulled out the underground copper wires that connect the lights.
The thieves made off with five separate strands of wire, each one three kilometres long.’
‘When Shawn Hicks returned to his North Braddock home on Stokes Avenue after a Saturday night out on the town with friends, he didn’t bother turning on the lights.
Instead of heading to his bedroom, Mr. Hicks, a 29-year-old business major at Point Park University, plopped himself face down and fully dressed on his cream-colored leather sofa in his living room. He also neglected to deactivate his home security system, which has a silent alarm.
Surrounded by the darkness and familiar comforts of his home, Mr. Hicks was asleep within five minutes. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was not destined to have sweet dreams that night.
“I felt a lot of voltage going through my body,” Mr. Hicks said recalling the events of that late July weekend. “That’s what woke me up.”‘
‘A German flasher stunned lawyers during his appeal hearing on a flashing conviction by stripping off in court, authorities said.
“The court withdrew for deliberations and during the adjournment the man removed his clothes again,” said a spokesman for the court in the western city of Duisburg. “It appears he sees it as art, and views himself as a living work of art.”
The 60-year-old was in court to appeal against his conviction for running onto the pitch naked during a girl’s soccer match and striking a range of “body builder poses”, the spokesman said.
State prosecutors filed fresh charges of indecent behaviour against the man after the court incident.’
SQ pElm BGeb wdKc RjF‘The Brazilian government says huge new oil reserves discovered off its coast could turn the country into one of the biggest oil producers in the world.
Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, says it believes the offshore Tupi field has between 5bn and 8bn barrels of recoverable light oil. [..]
A senior minister said Brazilian oil production had the potential to match that of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. [..]
The state-controlled company says the results show high productivity for gas and light oil – the best quality oil – which is more valuable and cheaper to refine.’
‘Got some leftover drugs — the kind that someone else might want to use, such as painkillers or stimulants? Wrap them up in used kitty litter or other pet droppings, the government advises.
A pilot program at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is looking at ways people can safely dispose of unused prescription drugs that are liable to be abused. [..]
Of course some people do not drink coffee. But maybe they have a pet ferret.
“Ferret waste, like nearly any other form of pet waste, can be effectively used to help prevent the abuse of unused prescription drugs,” SAMHSA spokesman Mark Weber said.
This news delighted the American Ferret Association.’
‘5/13/90
To Sybil,
Lamentably, I killed your cat while trying just to sting it. It was crouched, as usual, under one of our bird feeders & I fired from some distance with bird shot. It may ease your grief somewhat to know that the cat was buried properly with a prayer & that I’ll be glad to get you another of your choice.
I called & came by your house several times. We will be in the Dominican Republic until Thursday. I’ll see you then.
Love, Jimmy’
‘A priest from the Boston Archdiocese has been placed on leave after he was arrested for allegedly stalking late night talk show host Conan O’Brien. [..]
Ajemian, 46, remains in the custody of New York City police after he allegedly tried to contact O’Brien repeatedly over a 14 month period. Ajemian was told to stop the communications but did not, according to police, and a warrant for his arrest was issued by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Ajemian was arrested at 30 Rockefeller Plaza while trying to enter a taping of NBC’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” Ajemian was a priest at St. Patrick’s Parish in Stoneham from 2005 to May 2007. He has not been reassigned to another parish since May.
Ajemian is accused of sending O’Brien threatening notes on parish letterhead and contacting his parents.’
‘A woman was knocked out during a shopping centre appearance by Prime Minister John Howard in west Sydney today.
Mr Howard was walking through the food court of the Penrith Plaza shopping centre when the woman was knocked to the ground and hit her head in the crush of people.
A member of Mr Howard’s security team and local police stayed with the woman until she regained consciousness a few seconds later.
She was led, crying and rubbing her head, to a nearby store.
Earlier, a 29-year-old man was spoken to by police after he declined to shake the Prime Minister’s hand.
The man, identified only as Alex, put his hand out as Mr Howard approached him but then whipped his hand away.
“I’m not a fan,” he said later.’
yb d uIk q I‘Our brains can turn down our ability to see to help them listen even harder to music and complex sounds, say experts.
A US study of 20 non-musicians and 20 musical conductors found both groups diverted brain activity away from visual areas during listening tasks.
Scans showed activity fell in these areas as it rose in auditory ones.
But during harder tasks the changes were less marked for conductors than for non-musicians, researchers told a Society for Neuroscience conference.’
I have been trying to explain to people how noises can make it hard to see for a few weeks now. :) Hooray for science.
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