moonbuggy

‘This guy is friggin awesome! For a moment he breaks out of the surfer stereotype and gives a well worded response to a news reporter regarding the recent weather in LA.’

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‘A crocodile survived a fall from the 12th floor of a Russian apartment block after making an escape bid through a window, emergency services said on Wednesday.

Diving out of the window has become a habit for the crocodile, called Khenar, with concerned neighbours saying it was the third time he had used that method to flee, Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported. [..]

Emergency services put the crocodile in a local aquarium to recover from his fall. Within a few hours his concerned owner came to pick him up and the crocodile was last seen lying on the back seat of his owner’s car.’

‘The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US Treasury

Two Chinese officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning, for the first time, that Beijing may use its $1,330bn (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress. Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China’s “nuclear option” in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is breaking down through historic support levels.’

If you want to learn maths, I’d recommend a school other than the Castle Hills First Baptist School. An except from their curriculum:

‘CALCULUS
Students will examine the nature of God as they progress in their understanding of mathematics. Students will understand the absolute consistency of mathematical principles and know that God was the inventor of that consistency. Mathematical study will result in a greater appreciation of God and His works in creation. The students will understand the basic ideas of both differential and integral calculus and its importance and historical applications. The students will recognize that God created our minds to be able to see that the universe can be calculated by mental methods.’

‘The thought screen helmet blocks telepathic communication between aliens and humans. An abductee who took voltage readings from a second helmet while wearing another one demonstrates that this communication is a form of electromagnetic energy.

Aliens cannot immobilize people wearing thought screens nor can they control their minds or communicate with them using their telepathy. When aliens can’t communicate or control humans, they do not take them.’

One of the abductees is kinda hot. I’d certainly probe her if I was an alien.

‘You’ve reached the Badass of the Week, your one-stop shop for all things badassery-related. Scroll down for this week’s badass, or just go ahead and search through the complete list of all badasses that have been featured on the site. I update the page every Friday, so if you give a crap feel free to check back in next week to satisfy your insatiable desire to read about grown people punching each other in the mouth or beating each other about the head and neck in a most furious manner.’

‘This is a show where two contests go head to head trying to steal different things without getting caught.’

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‘A 42-year-old man who died after a head-on collision near New Plymouth last night was travelling on the bonnet of a car before the fatal crash, police said today.

Darin Paul Maxwell, 42, of New Plymouth, died when the black Mazda Lantis he was travelling on collided with another vehicle on State Highway 3, several kilometres southeast of the city, about 10pm.

The drivers of both vehicles remain in hospital in critical and serious condition, police said.

Witness accounts put Mr Maxwell on the bonnet of the Mazda at the time of the accident.

Detective Sergeant Greg Gray said police would not comment further on why he was on the bonnet of the car at this stage, but confirmed Mr Maxwell and the driver of the Mazda knew each other.’

‘A teenager with a history of sleepwalking plunged to his death from a balcony on the first night of a holiday abroad.

Troy Heather, 18, was staying with his girlfriend and her parents in their second-floor apartment on Minorca.

Hairdresser Danielle Ward, also 18, was woken at 3am on Sunday by the sound of her boyfriend hitting the ground 25ft below their flat.

She ran downstairs and raised the alarm but Mr Heather, who had suffered severe head injuries, died in hospital four hours later.’

‘A St. Paul man, complaining of chronic pain, wanted to have his testicles removed. When conventional medical staff refused to do the job, he hired other “professionals” to take off his testicles, according to a search warrant affidavit filed Monday in Ramsey County District Court.

Two or three people operated on the man, Russell Daniel Angus, 62, a couple weeks ago at his home in St. Paul. He was unconscious during the surgery, and when he woke up, his testicles had been removed.

And the “professionals” were gone.

His groin area was bleeding heavily, so he called his daughter. She called for help. When police arrived, they found a makeshift operating room set up in the upper level of the house. There were bright lights, an apparent operating table, medical supplies and equipment, and a camera. Angus was still bleeding, and there was blood in the living room, hall and bathroom, the affidavit said. He was taken to Regions Hospital.’

‘The pilot of a Qantas Boeing 767 from Sydney carrying 185 passengers to Darwin was targeted by a powerful laser beam, prompting an investigation by federal police and aviation authorities.

The incident, just before midnight on August 3, resulted in the pilot having to fly the next day’s return leg from Darwin to Sydney as a passenger.

A Qantas spokesman, Lloyd Quartermain, said last night that the pilot, who has not been named, had been referred to Qantas’s doctor for assessment. Mr Quartermain declined to comment on whether the pilot was injured. He said the decision to replace him as pilot for the return flight was “a precautionary measure”.’

‘President Bush is worried about a new threat to America and is asking congress to approve a $50 billion defense supplemental. They are after your children!’

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‘A 60-year-old Stuart man was arrested and charged with domestic battery after he allegedly urinated on his sleeping girlfriend and her son early Saturday morning.

Wilfred Hart, of the 2100 block of Northwest 20th Avenue, allegedly woke the woman and her 13-year-old son at about 5:45 a.m., called her “dirty trailer trash,” and then forced her out of bed and into the shower because she smelled bad, according to a Martin County Sheriff’s Office report.’

‘A 59-year-old German woman has had most of a pencil removed from inside her head after suffering nearly her whole life with the headaches and nosebleeds it caused, Bild newspaper reported on Monday.

Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil in her hand when she was four.

“The pencil went right through my skin — and disappeared into my head,’ Wegner told the newspaper.’

‘Police chiefs in the Thai capital, Bangkok, have come up with a new way of punishing officers who break the rules – an eye-catching Hello Kitty armband.

The armband is large, bright pink and has a Hello Kitty motif with two hearts embroidered on it.

From today, officers who are late, park in the wrong place or commit other minor transgressions will have to wear it for several days.

The armband is designed to shame the wearer, police officials said.’

‘A giant, smiling Lego man was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort on Tuesday.

Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5-metre (8-foot) tall model with a yellow head and blue torso.

“We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water,” said a stall worker. “It was a life-sized Lego toy.”

A woman nearby added: “I saw the Lego toy floating towards the beach from the direction of England.”

The toy was later placed in front of the drinks stall.’

‘Jim Cramer from CNBCs Mad Money has a total meltdown last week after the stock market took a slide. This guy is reportedly worth $100 million, if I had that much money I would not be freaking out at things like this.’

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‘Adolf Hitler kept a vast record collection of ‘forbidden’ music by Jewish composers, it was revealed yesterday.

Recordings by Mendelssohn and Offenbach were hidden in sealed boxes – but scratchmarks suggest they were among his favourites.

Russian composers were also banned under the Third Reich. But in private Hitler repeatedly played Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky and hundreds more works he publiclly labelled “sub-human music”.’

‘In the early 1990s, a Russian drilling rig encountered something peculiar two miles beneath the coldest and most desolate place on Earth. For decades, the workers at Vostok Research Station in Antarctica had been extracting core samples from deep scientific boreholes, and analyzing the lasagna-like layers of ice to study Earth’s bygone climate. But after tunneling through 414,000 layers or so– about two miles into the icecap– the layers abruptly ended. The ice below that depth was relatively clear and featureless, a deviation the scientists were at a loss to explain. In search of answers, the men drilled on.

Unbeknownst to the Russians, their drill had mingled with the uppermost reaches of one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world; a pristine pocket of liquid whose ecosystem was separated from the rest of the Earth millions of years ago. As for what sort of organisms might lurk in that exotic environment today, no one can really be certain.’

‘At the time of the Crusades, Europe was divided into states whose rulers were involved in petty territorial disputes. In Jerusalem (the most popular site for pilgrimages in Medieval Europe) at the time, the Seljukian Turks were gaining power and Europe saw it as a threat to the safety of the Pilgrims and to Christendom. In 1070 Jerusalem was taken, and in 1071 Diogenes, the Greek emperor, was defeated and made captive at Mantzikert. Asia Minor and all of Syria became the prey of the Turks. Antioch succumbed in 1084, and by 1092 not one of the great metropolitan sees of Asia remained in the possession of the Christians.’

‘More than 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols distributed to Iraqi forces by the US are missing, feared fallen into the hands of insurgents, a congressional watchdog warned today.

The highest previous estimate of missing weapons was 14,000, but a new report from the government accountability office (GAO) said US military officials did not know what had happened to 30% of the weapons the US had given to Iraqi forces since 2004.

“They really have no idea where they are,” Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Centre for Defence Information, told the Washington Post, which reported the GAO’s findings. “It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors.”‘

‘The Army Corps of Engineers, which accidentally dumped sand filled with old military ordnance on Surf City’s beach, now wants the town to help pay to remove it.

Local officials are angered by the suggestion that they should help foot the bill for a federal goof that already has cost the town an unknown amount of tourism business.

“If they’re talking about getting any money out of Surf City to pay for their mistakes, they can forget about it,” Mayor Leonard T. Connors told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Army Corps spokesman Khaalid Walls said local governments are routinely asked to help pay for projects.

“That’s protocol. All our projects are cost-shared,” Walls said.

The town had to close its beach in March after World War I-era ordnance, including fuses and other military hardware, started surfacing in sand pumped ashore during a $71 million beach replenishment project.’

A pastor says “tits” by accident during a sermon. This was followed up by a candid camera prank where the pastor is told he’s in all sorts of trouble.

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‘Today I come rushing home because it’s the end of the semester and I have finals coming up and I need to write two papers tonight so that I can go camping this holiday weekend with peace of mind so I get home and GIL says, hey honey, you’re just in time! I’m cooking french fries!

Oh that’s good, I say, because I haven’t eaten yet and I have all this work to do. Let me just put my bike away. I walk into the kitchen and notice my computer’s not on the kitchen table. Which. Means. It’s…. oh, SHIT!!!!

I open the over door. No fries. Just one miserable looking laptop. (STOP: EXPLANATION OF WHY I KEEP MY LAPTOP IN THE OVEN: I keep it there because I live in a high crime area in a house with windows that don’t even lock. I figure the oven’s actually a very safe place. Who would think to look there for valuables? and if the house burns down the computer’d be okay. The system worked just fine when I was living alone.)’

‘Two dairy farms have dumped milk after the discovery of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope in 25 nearby drinking water wells.

Officials from Sorensen’s Dairy and Oasis Dairy said they will stop selling milk until it is tested for the isotope, polonium-210, by the Food and Drug Administration. Officials said there’s no known health risk at this time.

A study released Friday by the U.S. Geological Survey found the radioactive isotope in 24 private wells and one public well around Fallon, about 60 miles east of Reno. Polonium-210 is known to cause cancer in humans.’

‘Even by astronomical standards, Roger Angel thinks big.

Angel, a leading astronomer at the University of Arizona, is proposing an enormous liquid-mirror telescope on the moon that could be hundreds of times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Using a rotating dish of reflective liquid as its primary mirror, Angel’s telescope would the largest ever built, and would permit astronomers to study the oldest and most distant objects in the universe, including the very first stars.

“It’s an idea that’s been around, and we decided to flesh it out,” Angel says. [..]

Angel dreams of a 100-meter mirror, which would be larger than two side-by-side football fields and would collect 1,736 times more light than the Hubble.’

‘We began receiving these photographs, without any explanatory text, in July 2007. Presumably they document the case of a young boy who somehow managed to impale his nose with a fork, with the first picture (possibly taken in an emergency room or doctor’s office) showing him before medical treatment, and the second showing him some time later after the fork had been removed and his injury had begun to heal. However, we do not yet have any specific information about the origins of these images.’

He looks like he might be secret service or something. In any case, they really don’t want that woman to go past those containers. :)

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‘A man accused of selling a teenage girl for sex in return for drums of diesel denied yesterday that it ever happened.

David John Chaney, 58, of Cwmbran, is accused of procuring the girl to become a prostitute and living off the profits of prostitution.

He has denied the charges and nine other counts at Cardiff Crown Court. The other counts include five charges of indecent assault, one of rape, and three of supplying drugs.

Chaney, of The Crescent, told the court he visited a burger van in a lay-by with the girl on a number of occasions and that a lorry driver who stopped there had offered him diesel.

Asked by his barrister, Hilary Roberts, if he had offered the girl to the driver to buy or have sex with, on that or any other occasion, Chaney replied “no”.’