Offbeat Blog

Parade of Cadillacs Stretches a Mile, Sets New World Record

2011-08-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

Photos: Cadillac

So how does one go about drumming up interest for the local fair in a hometown of the founding father of a major car company? Simple, have a parade.

That is what the folks in Barton, Vermont did for their Orleans County Fair in honor of Henry M. Leland who founded Cadillac in 1902.

What started out as a simple honor to Leland and a promotional event for the fair led to a new Guinness World Record Aug. 17 as 298 vintage and new Cadillacs formed a parade that stretched nearly a mile long and included vehicles from across the U.S. and Canada.

The idea for the parade came from Lorie Seadale, superintendent for the Floral Hall Arts and Crafts department of the fair. “Our initial goal was for the fair but it’s become a dual-purpose event to honor Henry Leland’s legacy and contribution to this country with his inventions, ingenuity, and entrepreneurial spirit,” Seadale said. “It’s great to bring the world record back the United States where it belongs.”

The previous record of 102 Cadillacs went to Leimuiderbrug, the Netherlands, for a parade on Aug. 18, 2002.

Doug Leland, a descendant of the honoree, and his wife Sally rode in the pink 1959 Cadillac convertible that led the record-setting parade. Several of Leland’s descendants still reside in the area and participated in the parade.

“He was a unique individual. They called him the ‘Master of Precision’ because he had such high standards,” said David Leland, great great nephew of Henry Leland and a resident of Shelbourne, Vt. “It’s nice to see him recognized like this.”

“Cadillac congratulates the residents of Barton and all of the Cadillac owners who participated in the parade for setting the world record in Henry Leland’s home town,” said Cadillac Vice President of Marketing Don Butler. “The success of this event demonstrates that Cadillac still fuels the same passions that Henry Leland inspired in the brand.”

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Shuttle Diplomacy: Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain How the Space Shuttle Was Never Really About Science

2011-07-11T01:33:00.000-07:00

Posted by Alex_Pasternack

Among those gloating over the demise of the Space Shuttle are none other than scientists, who argue that the costly and overly complex program was sapping valuable resources from real space science and sending them up on toilet repair missions instead.

But this animosity is based on a false premise, astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson reminded us at the World Science Festival. The Shuttle was never really intended to promote research or fulfill NASA’s goal of space exploration. Instead, like the Apollo missions to the moon, the $160 billion Shuttle program was the product of politics.

As inspiring as the grandeur of the spaceship has been to legions of young people – and as important as it was in fixing the Hubble telescope – it was actually the Western battle against the Soviet Union – and later, other diplomatic interests – that left NASA operating this amazing low-orbit dump truck. To criticize the Shuttle for not doing more science, or to say that that the Shuttle budget should have been devoted to science, is to misinterpret reality. The money wouldn’t have existed at all if the program hadn’t been political.

We’re afraid to say that to ourselves. We know that if we say we’re going to do science with it, that’ll sort of gather more adherents. And we feel more comfort in selling it that way. But selling it that way was the delusion… There are reasons for doing things in this world that are not driven by science.

Watch:

Read an interview with Neil and visit the Neil deGrasse Tyson Motherboard.
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Joan Parker Nailed for Assault After Kissing Homophobe Preacher at Gay Pride Rally

2011-07-11T01:31:00.000-07:00

By Cory Zurowski in Police bungling, bad clergy

Bible-thumping preacher James Belcher abhors felching and anyone who partakes in a sharing of the love. He's also a hater of bi's, trannies, bull dykes and sodomites. Packed with that full matching set of unmagnanimous baggage, the Man of God took to the streets recently...

The event which attracted the attention of the 49-year-old Belcher's devout crosshairs was the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Day in Salisbury, North Carolina, a town located about 45 miles southeast of Charlotte.

On a flawless Saturday afternoon beneath the big sun of a hot southern day, approximately 2,000 prideful and flaming homosexuals, cross-dressers and bisexuals sashayed down the town streets in solidarity, shouting slogans like, "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!"

Also on hand was roughly 200 raging homophobe protestors, Belcher among them.

As the day's colorful and vocal festivities were rocking and rolling, there was Belcher calling out the sodomites, who he said were doomed to an eternity in Hades because they won't marry within heterosexual circles, have kids only to divorce, and scar their offspring with worthiness issues for the rest of their lives.

One of the pride day's participants -- 74-year-old Joan Parker -- spotted Belcher ranting and raving and not playing nice. Instead of hollering back at the preacher man, the AARP card-carrying uber lesbian decided to show Belcher some love.

After all, isn't that what Jesus would do?

Belcher turned to squawk at a man who was about to snap a photograph of him. It was at that same time when Parker embraced Belcher and planted a big wet one, her lips snuggling up to his cheek.

With a Bible clasped in one of his hands, Belcher then thrust his arms skyward, turning towards a nearby police officer who witnessed the lip-to-cheek-trespass.

Belcher was soon telling police that he wanted to press charges; Police Chief Rory Collins agreed.

"... [I]t wasn't done as a show of affection," he said. "It was an unwanted touching."

Parker was slapped with one count of misdemeanor simple assault. If convicted, the sentence for a first-time offender is a max of 30 days of community service. She's due back in court Sept. 12.

Belcher argues that Parker's disingenuous kiss move "was just one of the many attempts to silence the preaching to those in need of salvation who practice a death style that they call a lifestyle."

Parker counters by simply saying, "I thought he needed a hug. So I gave him a hug."

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Man Attacked by Rabid Bobcat Strangles Animal to Death With Bare Hands

2009-12-20T04:00:00.000-08:00

By James King in Animal Use and Abuse

Officials at the Arizona Game and Fish Department say a Yavapai County man was attacked by a rabid bobcat on Monday. Rather than panic, he strangled it with his bare hands.

The man's name is not being released because of privacy laws, but AGFD officials say the attack happened in the front yard of his Crown King Trail home, about 12 miles north of Lake Pleasant.

"This was particularly unusual because the gentleman killed the animal with his bare hands, and that was very advantageous because the animal wasn't out potentially exposing other people to rabies," Randy Babb, spokesman for the AGFD, tells CBS 5 (KPHO).

Arizona is seeing record numbers of rabid animals in 2009, with 244 that have tested positive for the disease. That is an increase from the 176 cases reported last year, which was the previous record.

However, Arizonans prove to not be backing down to these rabid rascals.

Just last month, a Chino Valley woman was attacked by a fox while she was jogging. The fox bit down on her arm and wouldn't let go, so the woman kept jogging for about a mile and a half, with the fox clamped into her flesh.

She finally reached her car with the fox still attached, where she managed to pry the thing off and put it in the trunk. It was later determined that the maniac fox had rabies.

Officials at the AGFD, however, don't recommend taking matters into your own, um, hands if you can help it. They say that if confronted by an animal that has allowed you to get close to it, or has no problem with getting close to you, get the hell away as fast as you can because it may be rabid.

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Killer Tripped on Baggy Pants, Plunged to Death after Slaying Three

2009-12-20T03:58:00.001-08:00

By LARRY CELONA, JOHN DOYLE, and LAURIE KAMENS

(The New York Post) - A career criminal who slaughtered three members of a family in their apartment in New York's trendy Upper West Side Thursday plunged to his death after tripping over his baggy pants.

The bloodshed began when the killer barged into the family's third floor apartment and opened fire at around 1:45 p.m. Thursday, near a string of upscale shops.

Gunman Hector Quinones blew away 24-year-old Carlos Rodriguez Jr., and his father Carlos Rodriguez Sr., 52, and then repeatedly stabbed grandfather Fernando Gonzalez, 87, to death before the elder Rodriguez's wife and adult daughter walked unwittingly into the carnage in the apartment they all shared.

As soon as Gisela Rodriguez, 49, and her daughter, Leyanis, 28, walked inside, Quinones, 44, opened fire again at the mother, grazing the back of her head, police said.

He then went after Gisela's daughter, who scrambled for safety and ran to a nearby bedroom. The killer was inches away from grabbing her but tripped over his low-slung pants, sources said.

The horrified woman managed to slam and lock the door just in time, only to find the bloodied bodies of her brother and dad inside.

A relentless Quinones kicked the door in and lunged for Leyanis, but she was able to make it to a fire escape, screaming for help to construction workers on the roof of the building next door.

"She just ran in and told the contracting guys there was a shooting, there's somebody who got shot," said the building manager, who declined to identify herself. "She was hysterical, she couldn't talk."

Meanwhile, her wounded mother scrambled to safety out the front door.

Fleeing empty-handed, Quinones ditched his gun, a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol loaded with hollow-point bullets, and made a dash down a rear fire escape.

But again, his low-slung pants fell to his ankles, tripping him and sending him falling three stories to his death, authorities said.

Investigators found a "significant amount" of heroin and a smaller amount of cocaine inside the apartment, as well as a cash-stuffed lockbox that police confiscated, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

The suspect, who has 14 prior arrests for offenses that include manslaughter, assault, drugs and robbery, knew Rodriguez Sr. from when they were in prison together, sources said.

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Top 7 insane homeowners association rules

2009-12-20T03:55:00.000-08:00

The astonishingly restrictive ways of homeowners associations (HOAs) came under scrutiny this month when a Sussex Square, Virginia, HOA demanded that a 90-year-old World War II vet remove an unapproved flag pole from his front yard. After receiving support from members of Congress, and even the Obama administration, Medal of Honor recipient Van T. Barfoot, who once singlehandedly took on three Nazi tanks, triumphed in his quest to fly Old Glory. Other homeowners haven't been as lucky in their battles against their own HOAs' "fascist" rules. Here are seven of the most controversial commandments:

1. Thou shalt not plant too many roses
A Rancho Santa Fe, California, homeowners' association targeted Jeffery DeMarco for exceeding the prescribed number of rose bushes allowed on his four-acre property. When DeMarco balked, the HOA levied monthly fines, threatened foreclosure, and ultimately defeated DeMarco in court. After a judge ruled that the willful rose enthusiast had violated the community's architecture design rules, DeMarco was forced to pay the HOA's $70,000 legal bill — and lost his home to the bank.

2. Thou shalt not use "inconsistent" shingles — even after a plane destroys thy house
After a plane crashed into the Sanford, Florida, home of Joe Woodard, killing his wife, Janise, and their infant son, he decided to rebuild a new home on the same lot. But his reconstruction came to a screeching halt when his HOA informed him that he'd positioned the new structure unacceptably and failed to achieve a perfect shingle match with his neighbors' homes. Threatened with a lawsuit, the grieving widower told a local reporter that he'd hoped to change things up to avoid "reliving" painful memories — but eventually capitulated to the unsympathetic HOA.

3. Thou shalt not post a "For Sale" sign
When Denise Hicks placed a "For Sale" sign in front of her Lebanon, Tennessee, residence, the Spence Creek homeowners association quickly reprimanded her for a breach of contract, citing a rule prohibiting signs, banners or billboards. Ultimately, Hicks was forced to display her realtor's signs in her home's windows, hidden from view.

4. Thou shalt not offer thy homeless granddaughter shelter
Assuming guardianship of their six-year-old granddaughter, Kimberly, after her drug-addict mother was ruled unfit, Jimmy and Judy Stuttler brought the child to live with them in their Clearwater, Florida, retirement village. Since Kimberly was not technically "over 55" or arguably "retired," the alarmed HOA tried to force the girl out. Attempting to move, the Stuttlers failed to sell their home even after slashing its price from $250,000 to $129,000 and were eventually sued by the HOA. Kimberley's fate is now in the hands of the courts.

5. Thou must carry thy dog at all times
After Pamela McMahan, a geriatric who walks with a cane, was fined $25 every time she failed to carry her cocker spaniel through the lobby of her Long Beach, California condominium, which stipulates that pets' feet must never touch the floor of common areas. "There are just too many things going on in the lobby," said Stormy Jech, the building's assistant property manager. "The dog might jump on someone or go to the bathroom." After racking up hundreds of dollars in fines, McMahan was forced to move.

6. No smoking — even in thy own bathroom
HOAs' ban on smoking in all public areas — including balconies, patios, courtyards, and swimming pool areas — has recently been extended into residents' homes. Citing the negative health effects of secondhand smoke, multiple court hearings have ruled in favor of HOAs. As Realty Times points out, "The Constitution does not guarantee Americans the right to smoke in their homes...."

7. Thou shall maintain a consistently green lawn
The Beacon Woods Civic Association in Bayonet Point, Florida, took 66-year old resident Joseph Prudente to court for failing to properly maintain his lawn after a $600-per-month increase to his adjustable rate mortgage threw him on hard times. Though Prudente was ultimately jailed for failing to resod his lawn, other members of the community took pity on the faulty landscaper, and paid for new sod, flowers, mulching, and functioning sprinklers. Their charity was enough to spring their elderly neighbor from the slammer, but Prudente still faces court and association fines.

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When I grow up I want to be just like mom, a letter

2009-12-20T03:53:00.000-08:00

The Plot Thickens, The Legend Grows: Camano Island Teen Suspected of Idaho Airplane Theft

2009-10-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

By Damon Agnos

It's hard to tell if this kid is really an epic fugitive along the lines of Jason Bourne and Frank Abagnale, Jr. or just a convenient scapegoat for sundry thefts in the rural Northwest. Colton Harris-Moore is now suspected of stealing a plane in Idaho, "hard-landing" it in Granite Falls, and walking away. This followed a series of thefts--in which he is apparently suspected--of handguns, food, and beer at an airport in Creston, B.C. Who knows what the international element could add to his chase, but the cross-state foray has brought the FBI to the list of those investigating him, which already includes local law enforcement and the Federal Aviation Administration.

If he is indeed guilty of the crimes of which he's accused, someone has to make a movie of his unprecedented run. He's an unlikely super-fugitive, having grown up in a trailer in the woods and honed his skills stealing equipment form his middle school. But, police allege, he quickly moved on to stealing and flying planes, having taught himself to do the latter by reading flight manuals and Internet articles. And he jumped from a stolen Mercedes he was driving during a police chase, letting it crash into a grocery store while he disappeared into the woods, laughing at his pursuers.

Of course, all of this sucks for the victims of his crimes. But time heals wounds and Hollywood loves a precocious lawbreaker. See you on the big screen, Colton.

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School bus crashes into Wis. home, flees the scene

2009-10-04T10:38:00.000-07:00

By Emily Kaiser in What's Wrong with Wisconsin?

Photo by NIOSH

A 49-year-old man is in custody after he crashed an empty school bus into the side of a Kaukauna, Wis. home this morning and then tried to flee the scene in the bus. We've tried to outsmart police while driving a damaged bus too. Totally escaped. You just head to a school and blend in with the yellow sea of mayhem.

Richard Kleiber is being held on charges of eluding an officer and reckless endangerment. Might have just been smarter to stay on the scene of the crash, dude.

Kleiber crashed the school bus into a home around 7:10 a.m. The home was occupied by one woman and two children who were nearly hit by the bus as it crashed into the room they were sleeping in.

When police arrived on the scene, Kleiber tried to take off in the bus lodged in the house. He managed to free the damaged bus and take off through a backyard nearby.

7 Hilariously Failed Attempts at Politically Correct Toys

2009-10-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

By Adam Brown, Kristi Harrison

Sometime in the 1970s, toy makers realized that not all the children of the world are rich, healthy, white Americans. Eager to get their hands on some non-white dollars, they got busy redecorating their dolls with new ethnicities, diseases and unwanted teen pregnancies.

And really, who better to handle sensitive racial and social issues than toy makers? As it turns out, just about anyone.

#7.

Happy Family Pregnant Midge

Wanting to stay vigilant at the forefront of producing children's toys that make everyone horribly uncomfortable, Mattel identified three universal truths about little girls:

1. They love dolls.
2. They value - no, cherish - no, get high on the institution of marriage.
3. They love uncapping pregnant bellies to get sneak peeks at unborn fetuses.

Using this wisdom as a blueprint, Mattel conceived (get it?!) Happy Family Pregnant Midge and Baby (her original name "Unwed Janet and Bellysack Full Of Jason the Blockbuster Clerk" was deemed too controversial).

So What's the Problem?

The pretty picture of wholesomeness starts unraveling the minute you lift up Midge's dress, which every single one of us would do within two seconds so there's no point in denying it.

She looks pretty much the same as our moms did, minus the tattooed stretch marks and appendix scars. Things don't get offensive until the kids want to play C-section with Midge, which by the way they totally fucking can. Her baby gut is magnetic, so snap that son of a bitch off and boom, it's upside-down fetus time.

Whip that placenta-less baby out and it's ready to play dress up, but don't forget to snap Midge's skinny belly back on or else Daddy will have to beat the pretty back into her.

The quickest way to tight abs? Child birth, apparently.

Shockingly, Knocked-Up Midge and her creepy ass baby were scrapped shortly after their launch.

#6.

Chinese New Year Barbie and Amazonia Barbie

Much like Madonna, Barbie is super great at bastardizing other people's heritages in the sexiest, most gap-toothed way possible, and Mattel decided she needed to give the ladies of China and the Amazon a makeover. Check out the picture above; the Chinese is practically radiating from her body.

Meanwhile, Barbie's visit to the southern hemisphere yielded similar results in the form of a doll that doesn't look a thing like Megan Fox.

Clearly modeled on actual people living near an actual river called the Amazon.

Mattel captures the spirit of both of these mighty nations flawlessly, from the feathers atop Amazonian Barbie's sleek, gleaming hair and the tribal tattoos on her pasty white thighs to the distinctly European facial features of Chinese Barbie, these dolls scream EFFORT from the get-go.

So What's the Problem?

In the case of Amazonia Barbie, "effort" means crapping out a design of a white woman wearing enough make-up to pass for a gay guy passing for a white woman posing as an Amazonian disco queen.

Looking at authentic pictures of Amazonian women, we can see where there'd be some confusion:

And their depiction of a Chinese woman can be excused provided that your definition of "Chinese" is "Catherine Zeta-Jones."

Chinese.

Besides the full-on disregard for a major physical trait of Asian races (THE SHAPE OF THE FUCKING EYES), Mattel went through the trouble of actually painting on eyebrows that were distinctly lighter than the color of the doll's hair, as if they weren't quite ready to go "full-Chinese" just yet.

It's much better to imply that this pale-skinned, sedately smiling beauty is gently aware of the people of China and honors them with her wig and Mandarin dress, but at the end of the day she can still take all that shit off and go back to being white.

#5.

TheSock Obama and Cuddle with Me Lil' Monkey

During the presidential election race in 2008, a Utah-based company called TheSock Obama Co. released what they referred to as "historical presidential memorabilia" and what everyone else in the world referred to as "a sock monkey Barack Obama."

Basically the same thing.

They began selling the doll on their website www.thesockobama.com, proving that some marketing campaigns never move beyond the weed-fueled play on words they began with.

"Dude, you know what totally rhymes with Barack? Like... sock. Do we have any more cheese?"

Meanwhile, Brass Key Keepsakes, a company known primarily for manufacturing children's dreams in the form of Disney Princess dolls, recently introduced a line called Cuddle with Me, which features racially diverse infants packaged together with a stuffed animal companion.

This can do nothing but succeed.

Depending on which version you buy, that companion is either a panda bear or a monkey, animals that rank just below "crocodile" and "scorpion" on the list of things you should never let anywhere near your children. Both dolls were available in white, black and Hispanic and were sold in Costco warehouses, presumably bundled together with 200 AA batteries and a triple pack of Frosted Flakes.

So What's the Problem?

This may come as a surprise to people who've lived their lives completely isolated from all black people and black culture as a whole, but they tend not to like the "black people are monkeys" thing. Yes, it's truly political correctness run amok when you can't even stereotype an entire race as subhuman.

As you may have noticed, both Barack Obama and the Lil' Monkey baby doll are in fact black people. Media outlets across the country picked up the story on both, as tends to happen with this sort of thing.

"Damn! They're on to us!"

TheSock Obama Co. defended their product, calling it "cute and cuddly" and insisting they hadn't meant to upset anyone with their "charming association" between a black man and a monkey.

Pictured: charm.

In fact TheSock Obama is still available for sale online along with a sock monkey Joe Biden, which was probably meant to be given as a gift to misbehaving children.

Lil' Monkey, meanwhile, was pulled from stores and the line was discontinued, presumably teaching Brass Key Keepsakes to spend a little more time developing their next product before unleashing it on an unsuspecting public.

#4.

Spirit and Airborne, Native American G.I. Joes

Hasbro upped the racist ante in the early 80s with not one, but two Native American G.I. Joes. On the left up there is Charlie Iron-Knife, AKA "Spirit," a mystical tracker. On the right is Franklin E. Talltree, a thrill-seeking airborne specialist creatively nicknamed "Airborne."

So What's the Problem?

Despite their somewhat confusing and stereotypical last names (Talltree, OK, fine, but Iron-Knife... what?), there doesn't seem to be anything immediately objectionable about these two NavaJOES. Except for, well, Spirit has an eagle on his arm and seems to be wearing an apron for no reason... but Native Americans get those standard issue on the reservation, right? Maybe his file card clears that all up:

"Spirit comes from a family so far below the poverty line that they never realized they were poor." Yes, seemingly unhappy with the regular old "Indians are poor" stereotype, they decided to go all-out and have Spirit be so fucking broke he doesn't even know it.

He was a hunting guide, because hunting is all Native Americans know how to do, and after Vietnam he rejoined the Army for "reasons inexplicable to anyone but a Native American mystic warrior," which might as well read "because of some Dances with Wolves bullshit."

Sadly, Airborne fares no better:

See? He's wealthy, he's smart, an accomplished lawyer-OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD:

You look at him and sometimes he's looking right through you. Must be the Indian in him. The Navahos [sic] call it "the far-seeing look." Spooky!

Those crazy Native Americans. If they're not summoning spirit devils with their mystic mind powers, then they're just looking at you, all aloof-like. Damn them and their crazy injun ways!

#3.

Pink Ribbon Barbie

In 2006, Mattel (again) had the nutty idea that they should honor breast cancer fighters/survivors with a special Pink Ribbon Barbie and donate a percentage of the profits to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which is so noble that 17 bald eagles exploded when you read that sentence.

So What's the Problem?

Imagine creating a doll whose sole purpose was to honor people born with flipper arms, but instead of crafting actual flipper arms for your doll you give her the most beautiful arms mankind had ever seen and a withering, condescending smile to beam back at the mutated horror-children she is meant to honor. This Barbie is kind of like that.

Mattel's approximation of someone with cancer.

Women battling breast cancer frequently lose their hair from chemotherapy and, in extreme cases, end up having one or both breasts removed as a last ditch effort to save themselves from the disease.

So "honoring" survivors with a fully coiffed pink princess and two gigantic, perfect boobs, who's on her way to the Healthy Lady Ball didn't quite sit well with a few people.

What makes this more confusing is the fact that the creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler, was a breast cancer survivor herself. So why was Mattel--who had the nerve to mass produce a doll with a fetus inside of it--too squeamish to make a toy actually depicting the symptoms suffered by the very woman who created it?

Oh right, because nobody would've fucking bought it.

#2.

Preemie Cabbage Patch Dolls

Following the phenomenal success of the Cabbage Patch Kids, Coleco chose to expand the doll line in a new direction, wisely targeting the whimsical joys of life-threatening premature births.

The Cabbage Patch Preemie dolls featured smaller bodies than their full-term counterparts, tiny diapers and baldish heads that smelled like they'd been rolled around in baby powder for seven hours.

So What's the Problem?

You know what's not all that cuddly? A one and a half-pound infant fighting for its fragile life in a coffin-shaped incubator with more tubes and machines attached to it than Weapon X. Don't forget the bandages that keep the light out of its underdeveloped eyes, or the little heating beds it has to lay in because it can't maintain its body heat. Toss in some weeping parents and a couple of nurses probing and prodding its frail little body and you've got the must-have toy of the season.

Coleco didn't even remotely try to emulate actual premature babies, which was probably for the best because other dollmakers have and this is what they ended up with:

Transforming delicate babies into big, fat-headed Cabbage Patch dolls is hardly endearing to preemie parents, but Coleco stepped up to the plate with this brilliant commercial, telling us once and for all that all it takes to keep a premature baby alive is a shitload of cookies:

#1.

Oreo Barbie

Sigh. Yeah, we had a sneaking suspicion that we weren't done with Barbie.

In 1997, Mattel joined forces with Nabisco in a cross-promotional effort that delighted fat little girls nationwide. And to prove once again that Mattel has the racial sensitivity of a package of Handi Snacks, they picked the one cookie in the universe that could ever be construed as offensive, ever.

Not a Photoshop.

Marketed as a toy that girls could feed their Oreos to after school (what?), Mattel manufactured both white and black dolls each sporting clothes that had "Oreo" written all over them as if they had just been attacked by a crazed team of Nabisco executives armed with magic markers. Early plans to pair the white doll with Ritz and stencil the word "Cracker" all over her clothes were nixed before production.

Cracker Barbie.

So What's the Problem?

"Oreo" happens to be a derogatory term used within the African-American community to describe a black person who, on the inside, really wants to be white. Get it? Because an Oreo is a chocolate cookie with white filling. It's the kind of thing it would take the whitest toy design team in the world to miss.

That's why it wasn't until the dolls were on shelves and baffling people across the country that Mattel realized their mistake (thanks to a collective "Are you shitting me?" from members of all races).

The Oreo Barbies were yanked from stores and discontinued, immediately turning them into sought after collectibles and leaving us with the riddle of what ethnic group Mattel will offend with their next promotion.

Original here

Denmark: Selling a lie

2009-09-17T00:04:00.000-07:00

Selling Denmark with a lie: Karen and August as they appear on YouTube. But Karen is a Danish actress, and August is not her son - it was all a tourist gimmick.. - Foto: Privatfoto

Læs også

VisitDenmark removes bogus video (14. sep.)

A Youtube video purporting to represent a pretty young Danish single mother looking for the foreign father of her son, may have garnered Denmark’s national tourist agency VisitDenmark some 800,000 clicks – but the story behind the video is a lie.

According to confirmed reports, the national tourist agency VisitDenmark generated the story of a one night stand with a foreign man producing a son, to get more people to visit the home of Shakespeare's 'To be or not to be'.

The video, however, is definitely 'Not to be' – the young woman in the video is a Danish actress and the baby is not hers.

”I don’t understand the advertising agency that has produced this story. What do they think people will think,” says Roskilde University Sociologist and Women’s Affairs Researcher Karen Sjørup.

”They’re obviously trying to sell a type of promiscuous Danish woman and exploit the idea that you can lure quick, blonde Danish women home – without a condom,” Sjørup says, adding however that foreigners who come to Denmark with that idea will be very disappointed.

Broad-minded
VisitDenmark disagrees.

”Karen’s story shows that Denmark is a broad-minded country where you can do what you want. The film is a good example of independent, dignified, Danish women who dare to make their own choices,” says VisitDenmark CEO Dorte Kiilerich.

Why have you chosen to market Denmark as a country with drunken women who have unsafe sex with casual acquaintances?

”That is not a story that I recognise. We tell a good and sweet story about a mature, responsible woman who lives in a free society and shoulders the responsibilty of her actions. And she uses a modern social medium,” Kiilerich says.

Ad agency
The Grey advertising agency that produced the video says it is a major success.

”It is the most successful viral advert ever. We have got through the media noise and it cost the same as a 30-second spot shown a couple of times on TV2,” says Peter Helstrup from Grey’s.

Since last Thursday, the video has notched up 1.9 million Google searches, 773,000 YouTube viewings and is linked to 83,000 websites.

No reproach
In the video, the young woman, claiming to be called Karen says: ”I don’t reproach you, but I think you should know that (a young boy called) August is here.”

Karen, however, is the actress Ditte Arnth Jørgsensen, the baby is not hers, and the viral advert was produced using taxpayer’s money.

The fabricated story behind the video is that the young woman met a tourist by chance in the Nyhavn area of Copenhagen, introduced him to the Danish concept of ’hygge’ or cosiness. The next morning his side of the bed was empty when she woke up, and nine months later the now one-and-a-half-year-old August appeared on the scene.

Edited by Julian Isherwood

Original here

The 5 Most Maddeningly Unresolved TV Plotlines

2009-09-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

By Dan Seitz

Writing TV shows is hard. We think. Actually it probably depends on the show.

Either way, with all those characters and plotlines going on it's apparently really easy to lose track of what you're doing. That's why even good shows have plotlines that they've just discarded like so many Egg McMuffin wrappers on the street.

#5.

Peter from Heroes Dumps his Girlfriend... in the Future

In season two of Heroes, superpowered protagonist Peter Petrelli and his girlfriend Caitlin time-travel to a virus-riddled, post-apocalyptic New York City.

Peter's time travel powers conveniently wonk out, stranding Caitlin in the future. Once back in the present, Peter thwarts the world-ending pandemic, thereby altering the timestream, saving humanity and scoring another cheap victory for bullshit TV physics.

But wait! Before you uncork that champagne, Peter, we have one big elephant in the room to address: Where the hell is your time-displaced girlfriend?

Why It's Maddening:

Who knows? And frankly, who cares? Certainly Peter doesn't, seeing as how he never mentions Caitlin again.

It's not actually Peter's fault here. Caitlin was a casualty of the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike. NBC aired only half the season's episodes, effectively shelving Heroes' spring storylines.

When the next season rolled around, Heroes creator Tim Kring was eager to jump-start the flagging series, sans time travel and pointless tertiary love interests. When asked if Caitlin would ever return, he blithely responded, "No, we passed it, we leapfrogged it."

Fair enough, but Peter's total lack of concern for Caitlin raises some disturbing implications for his character. At best, he's left her in a hellish alternate reality where 93 percent of humanity is dead. At worst, he's erased her from existence, or at least consigned her to some unfathomable living death.

Any way you cut it, he's whatever the diametric opposite of a hero is. What's that term? Oh right: douchetard.

Though if NBC had renamed the show Heroes (and One Huge Douchetard) it would probably still beat Chuck in the Nielsen ratings.

"For the last fucking time, I am NOT Jim from The Office."

#4.

A Loose End Bugs Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Early in season one, Xander Harris, Buffy's endearingly pathetic sidekick, catches the eye of a substitute teacher who's really a giant, sex-hormone-secreting praying mantis. Sadly, this fling is the apex of Xander's sexual competence throughout the entire series.

She mates with virginal men and kills them post-coitus, thereby sparing them either the embarrassment of losing one's virginity to a giant insect, or at least the burden of a lifelong giant insect fetish, Spider-Woman notwithstanding.

We know spiders aren't insects. We just felt like posting some classy art.

Luckily, Buffy saves the day and preserves Xander's innocence. Unluckily for Sunnydale High, the episode ends with a cache of hidden she-mantis eggs hatching in the science room!

Why It's Maddening:

We never see the creepy sex-mantises again.

Plenty of lesser shows allow minor plots to meander off into nothingness, but this is Buffy, a show notorious for never, ever letting plot threads die, no matter how mind-bendingly convoluted (see: Dawn, Buffy's magical, whiny real-not real hallucination of a sister).

So yeah, Joss Whedon, we're calling you out on this: Where the hell are our sex bugs? And while we're at it, can we have Eliza Dushku too?

Scratch that. You can keep the sex bugs.

We get that the episode's statutory rape subplot may not have jibed with the WB's family-friendlier fare, but this is Buffy. Every other week some vampire/demon/yeti tries to kill Buffy/enslave mankind/take Willow to a gay pride parade. In Sunnydale terms, some Mary Kay Letourneau action would register on the low end of the weird-o-meter.

#3.

Mr. Turner Eats Pavement on Boy Meets World

During the season five finale, Cory's motorcycle-riding "cool" teacher Mr. Turner discovers that sometimes, despite the charm of that old Irish saying, you really don't want the road to rise up to meet you. Indeed, he crashes his bike off-screen and ends up in critical condition.

As far as season finales go, it's a doozy. The episode concludes with Mr. Turner still laid up, a young Ben Savage blissfully unaware of his future unemployment, and Topanga looking equal parts totally hot and totally like Janice from The Muppets.

Our libidos have no idea what to make of this.

Like getting gored in the torso with a flaming scimitar, this finale is heartwarming and heartrending. Surely, Mr. Turner will make a full recovery!

Why It's Maddening:

Aaaaaaand that's the last we hear of Mr. Turner. Ever.

In most cases we'd accept this turn of events, as characters on sitcoms vanish all the freaking time. Hell, Topanga's older sister Nebula had already disappeared from the Boy Meets World cast.

The crazy thing here is that Mr. Turner was one of Cory's favorite teachers and an important, recurring character on the show. By the time the season six premiered, Mr. Turner's name was completely verboten. It's like everyone discovered he was a kiddy-fiddler during the off season.

#2.

Tony Soprano's Unkillable Russian

In the 2001 episode "The Pine Barrens," Tony Soprano's nephew Christopher and capo Paulie shake down Valery, a mouthy Russian mobster.

Valery proceeds to piss off Tony's muscle to such an extent that Paulie smashes the Russian's prized universal remote control. And his wind pipe.

A broken universal remote is a tragedy, but a broken Russian is all in a day's work for Christopher and Paulie, so they drive to the New Jersey Pine Barrens to dump the body. Unfortunately, Valery isn't dead and promptly beats Paulie's ass with a shovel. As usual, Paulie totally overreacts and puts a bullet in the Russian's head.

To everyone's surprise, Valery shrugs off the headshot and capers off into the woods. At this point, the mooks get a concerned call from Tony:

According to Tony, Valery is a nigh unkillable ex-Russian military man. And what's this? Christopher's car has been stolen! Looks like the NJ Turnpike will run red with borscht and blood tonight!

Why It's Maddening:

This episode hints at an epic Goodfellas versus Eastern Promises style mob war. Valery is bulletproof, Tony's browning his trousers out of fear, and chances are Viggo Mortensen is en route for some naked wrastling with Edie Falco. There's enough material here for a decade worth of story arcs.

That is, if Valery ever reappeared on the show. Seriously, the one guy who could bring the full brunt of the Red Mafia down on the Soprano family never appears again.

Discounting some half-assed foreshadowing from Tony by episode's end ("Paulie, [...] he's your problem, not mine."), the entire cast totally forgets that there's an invincible Ruskie on the loose, plotting his revenge. What's the deal? Is chronic amnesia an obscure Italian stereotype we've never heard of?

"I cut off your leg and I don't-ah know why!"

Anyway, fan reaction to Valery's disappearance has irritated the show's writers so much that they'll just tell you to piss off should you dare bring him up.

Which is too bad. Imagine if instead of the "cut to black" series finale, we got a gunshot to Tony's head, and a pan up to the missing Russian mobster! Holy shit! We'd have bought multiple copies of the DVD just so David Chase could have the extra cash.

#1.

24 Silently Impeaches the President

In season four, President John Keeler suffers an audacious aerial assault on Air Force One. He survives, but is hanging onto his life by a thread! To make matters worse, Charles Logan, Keeler's Machiavellian vice president, now controls the Oval Office! Will Keeler pull through?

Why It's Maddening:

Eh, he's just the leader of the free world. Who gives a rat's ass?

See, 24 pulls this stunt so often that fans have a slang term for it: "Behroozing," after Behrooz Araz, a key player from the fourth season who inexplicably vanished from the face of the franchise. This example is particularly insane as the character the writers "Behrooz" is the goddamn President of the United States.

Behrooz, prior to his Behroozing

We realize that a lot of exciting stuff happens in the world of 24. Heck, it's so thrilling that no one has the time to drop a deuce. But the fact that Logan was permanently installed as president kind of indicates that, you know, the actual President fucking died.

Not that the show mentions it, ever again, in any capacity. In the universe of 24 the passing of the leader of the free world was met with no media coverage, no national day of mourning, no US Weekly retrospective. Hell, the writers didn't even bother to placate us with a throwaway line here and there ("We need the extra security for the President's funeral!")

Then again, in the world of 24 they've been through nine presidents in seven seasons, so maybe we can't blame them for reporting a dead president somewhere under the hockey scores.

Original here

Bulgarian lottery repeat probed

2009-09-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

The chance of the same numbers appearing were one in four million

The Bulgarian authorities have ordered an investigation after the same six numbers were drawn in two consecutive rounds of the national lottery.

The numbers - 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 - were chosen by a machine live on television on 6 and 10 September.

An official of the Bulgarian lottery said manipulation was impossible.

A mathematician said the chance of the same six numbers coming up twice in a row was one in four million. But he said coincidences do happen.

Minister of Physical Education and Sport Svilen Neykov said the commission established to investigate would provide answers towards the end of the week.

The lottery organisers described it as a freak coincidence and pointed out that the numbers were drawn in a different order.

Nobody won the top prize in the first draw.

But a record 18 people guessed all six numbers in the 10 September draw.

Each will win 10,164 leva (5,196 euros; $7,643).

Original here

Boy's Poodle 'Fried to Death' at Ohio Dog Groomer

2009-08-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

MyFOXNational

Miles, the toy poodle, who "fried to death" at an Ohio dog groomer.

Young Josh Jones was excited for his best friend Miles, a toy poodle, to receive a new haircut at the groomer. In a horrible turn of events, though, the dog never came home.

When Jones’ cousin arrived to pick up the dog Friday afternoon at Pet’s Choice in Parma, Ohio, groomers nervously told her the dog was dead, according to MyFOXNational. The dog had “fried to death” in the blow-dryer.

“The groomer left the dog in the drying cage and left… didn’t tell anybody,” Pet’s Choice owner Jim Detlich told MyFoxNational. The dog was in the blow-dryer for almost an hour, much longer than the standard 10 to 15 minutes.

Jones’ mother, Narsina, was horrified. She said the boy and dog were “inseparable.”

"We told him, of course, we'll get him a new dog, but for him to accept it is really hard. And that's what hurts the most," Narsina told MyFOXNational.

Authorities said that Ashley Weaver, 22, has been charged with animal cruelty, and is expected in court this week. She has been fired from Pet’s Choice.

Original here

Woman Sets Herself On Fire in Miami Mall

2009-08-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

By TODD WRIGHT

Miami Herald

A woman walked into a crowded Miami mall on Thursday and lit herself on fire as shocked shoppers watched in horror.

Cecilia E. Casals, 42, walked around the Mall of the Americas while lit and evetually made it out of the mall and into the parking lot, according to witnesses. Several concerned people who saw the amazing and disturbing sight were burned while trying to put out the flames.

Witnesses said Casals was completely engulfed in flames and her clothes were melted off, yet she did not scream. It was like a scene from a movie, said one man who had his hands burned when he tried to help the woman.

"It looked like a big fireball," eyewitness John Torres said. "I know she lost all her clothing."

Shoppers React to Woman on Fire

WATCH

Shoppers React to Woman on Fire

Casals was eventually extinguished before she left the mall but still managed to make it to the parking lot where Miami-Dade fire rescue personnel found her with severe burns over most of her body. She was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital with what is considered life-threatening injuries.

Investigators believe this was a suicide attempt known as self-immolation. They have no motive for the horrible public display.

Original here

6 Cheap Acting Tricks That Fool The Critics Every Time

2009-08-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

By Adam Brown

There comes a time in every major actor's career when they attempt to put the lighthearted comedies and inane chick flicks behind them and tackle a more serious role. The kind of role that will get them the one thing that every Hollywood actor craves: free cocaine. And also an Academy Award nomination.

The award is made entirely of golden cocaine [citation needed]

Sometimes, it works. Other times, not so much.

#6.

The Biopic

There is a famous Hollywood rule that we made up for this article that goes like this- if it worked for Gary Busey, there is no reason it won't work for you.

How effective is the biopic in earning Hollywood credibility? Busey actually scored a Best Actor nomination for playing Buddy Holly in the aptly titled The Buddy Holly Story.

Yeah, this guy

This simple formula rarely fails. Pick a deceased (or soon to be deceased) musician, artist or mathematician, make sure they're the sort of person the New York media could conceivably refer to as brilliant, insert a big name actor (or Gary Busey) to play the role; watch movie critics and audiences far and wide go apeshit.

The best thing about the biopic is that Hollywood is free to embellish the back story as much as they would like. How do you know Ray Charles didn't really walk on the moon? Were you there? No, so shut up and watch the movie. Speaking of Ray Charles, Jamie Foxx took home a Best Actor trophy also for his heroic portrayal of a young Stevie Wonder playing Ray Charles.

Seriously, this fucking guy

For Example:

Prior to 2005, Reese Witherspoon was best known for playing the ditzy lawyer in Legally Blonde or for playing the ditzy ______ in _______. Then came Walk the Line. By simply adopting a southern accent, dying her hair black and not cringing as Joaquin Phoenix spent two hours making Johnny Cash look like the victim of severe head trauma, Witherspoon walked away with her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Other Famous Examples Include:

Robert Downey, Jr. in Chaplin

Bill Paxton in Apollo 13

Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth

Hell, Phoenix got nominated for Best Actor also. Seriously, this shit cannot fail. Unless you make one crucial mistake (foreshadowing alert!).

The Exception That Proves the Rule:

As insane as he may be, you have to admit Russell Crowe is also a pretty shitty musician. Fortunately for him, he's an actor. Up to a few years ago, Crowe got nominated every time he managed to leave the house without hurling a phone at somebody. Hell, it almost seemed like cheating when he took the starring role in the biopic Cinderella Man, in which he played a blue collar boxer who gave America something to root for during the Great Depression.

Crowe's depiction of former heavyweight boxing champ James J. Braddock was almost universally praised. After SAG and Golden Globe nominations, he put on his Oscar crapping diapers and got ready for an Academy Award nomination ... that never came.

Crowe forgot that to get your biopic performance lauded as ingenious, you have to pretend to be someone the Academy has heard associated with the word genius, or at the very least someone they've heard of in the first place. Braddock was a blue collar boxer and a family man. Hell, the guy didn't even have a heroin problem. Crowe might as well have been playing Gandhi.

Astute readers will point out that Ben Kingsley took home an Oscar for playing Gandhi, and that Robert De Niro took home an Oscar for playing a decidedly non-brilliant boxer. But astute readers are about to get served by trick number five ...

#5.

Physical Transformation (a.k.a. Hot Chick Goes Ugly, Hot Dude Starves Himself/Gets Fat)

Yes, Kingsley and De Niro both utilized the Christian Bale principle of "dropping and gaining weight like a high school wrestler = extraordinary acting ability."

By comparison, the ladies have it easy. Many actresses who have built their careers on being pleasant to look at finally decide the only way to be taken seriously is to ugly it up for a role. "See? I intentionally ruined my beauty, yet still enthralled audiences! I'm not just a pretty face and pair of perfect boobies!"

For Example:

If there was a Mt. Rushmore for hot chicks who uglied it up for respect, all four faces would be Charlize Theron. In Monster, she didn't just apply a little extra facial hair or gain a few pounds. That wouldn't do the trick. Instead, she went from this...

To this...

The woman found the forest where the wood for ugly sticks is grown, then went crashing through it while strapped to the grill of a semi. That's dedication to the craft if we've ever seen it.

Would Monster have been an awesome flick if she still looked her normal, outrageously fuckable self? Absolutely. But Charlize went the extra mile, and Hollywood noticed.

Up to that point, Theron could be found slumming it in horseshit like Reindeer Games and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

Other Famous Examples Include:

Salma Hayek in Frida

Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich

Nicole Kidman in The Hours

Christian Bale in The Machinist

Robert De Niro in Raging Bull

Ben Kingsley in Gandhi

The Exception That Proves the Rule :

You may have noticed that women can get away with wearing a less attractive Halloween mask, but we expect our men to actually undergo physical transformations. Mel Gibson found out the hard way that it doesn't work both ways when he made his directorial debut with The Man Without a Face, a film that asked audiences to imagine a world in which women didn't want to fuck Mel Gibson.

FAAAAKE!

Despite turning in a strong performance in a movie that Roger Ebert was gay for, the only recognition the film got were a couple of acting nods from The Young Artist awards, and even they went to the kids in the movie. Having learned his lesson, Gibson went on to sweep the Oscars a few years later with a historical biopic that climaxed with Gibson getting disemboweled for 15 minutes.

#4.

The Comedic Actor Turned Serious

Much like the beautiful woman who learns to hate the fact that people find her beautiful, so does every comic actor eventually grow to hate the sound of laughter. "If the audience REALLY loved me," they think while making cocaine snow angels on their floor, "then they wouldn't CARE if I made them laugh or not!"

Thus, they take on their obligatory serious role. Some make the transition easier than others. Robin Williams, for example, seamlessly morphed from obnoxious "funny" guy to creepy weirdo while remarkably never breaking character. Could it be that Robin Williams has been creepy and off putting his entire career? (Yes.)

For Example:

Bill Murray briefly flirted with dramatic acting in 1984's The Razor's Edge, a film that damn near nobody saw because they were busy seeing Ghostbusters for the 15th time. After that brief dabbling in drama, Murray took on an endless array of comedic roles, some of them were classics in Groundhog Day, What About Bob), some of them were Space Jam. But he finally hit dramatic gold with 2003's Lost In Translation.

His role as jaded actor Bob Harris earned him a Best Actor nomination. The film itself was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Murray would subsequently chuck his new found serious actor cred right out the goddamn window by taking on the lead voice role in Garfield. But hey, how many times has Will Ferrell been nominated for an Oscar?

Other Famous Examples Include:

Will Smith in 6 Degrees of Seperation

Tom Hanks in Philadelphia (His previous credits included sitcoms, Big and Splash)

Eddie Murphy in Dream Girls

Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love

Jamie Foxx in Any Given Sunday (The role that put him on the map, thus allowing him to exploit rule #6)

The Exception That Proves the Rule :

We're not sure why it is, but "Being Jim Carrey" seems to be the only exception to this rule. As laughable as the thought may be today, we can say with complete sincerity that Jim Carrey should be an Academy Award Best Actor winner. After 1998's The Truman Show cleaned up at the Golden Globes, including a Best Actor win for Carrey, it was all but certain that he would at least get a Best Actor nod at the Academy Awards later that year. Inexplicably, he did not.

Instead, the award went to the clearly insane Roberto Benigni who proceeded to give the most obnoxious acceptance speech in Hollywood history. Carrey didn't give up on his serious actor dream though. He played the brilliant comedian Andy Kaufman in the biopic Man on the Moon, doing his damnedest to not be funny the entire time. In 2001, he played the lead role in The Majestic, a film that would have garnered a mountain of awards if the Academy recognized outstanding achievement in the field of making audiences want to punch a film projector until it explodes.

#3.

The Outsider Who Inspires a Ragtag Group of Kids

Everybody needs a little inspiration from time to time. Some people (us) draw their inspiration from the magic of Jagermeister and truck stop speed. For those with slightly more concern for the well-being of their liver, nothing is quite as inspiring as a tale of long odds overcome, courtesy of a teacher or principal who is out of his element.

Also, for whatever reason, it seems to help if the teacher in question has his own naturally occurring dermatological challenge to overcome. Hey, we don't make up the rules people.

For Example:

Before making the leap to the silver screen, acne scarred Edward James Olmos was already pretty well respected as an actor. In 1985, he won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for his portrayal of Lieutenant Martin Castillo, the only non-hilarious character on Miami Vice. But as Don Johnson would soon learn, it's a long road from television star to film star. That road is littered with bumps, potholes and unintentionally hilarious movie posters.

But Olmos was not fucking around. Olmos cemented his place as a respected actor with his role in the 1988 film Stand and Deliver. His portrayal of Jaime Escalante, a math teacher who turns a rebellious group of East L.A. school kids into calculus wizards, earned him a Best Actor nomination.

He would go on to enjoy a career filled with well respected roles in films like American Me, My Family/Mi Familia and Selena. Granted, it's no Nash Bridges, but it's a living.

Other Famous Examples Include:

Robin Williams's chest hair in Dead Poets Society

The weird stuff on Morgan Freeman's face in Lean on Me (the role which took him from soap operas to Driving Miss Daisy)

The Exception That Proves the Rule :

Like an inverted version of rule five, the less people want to have sex with you, the better this role works. Meryl Streep managed to get an Oscar nod for Music of the Heart, when she was well past the age that anyone wanted to see her naked. Antonio Banderas got laughed out of theaters in Take the Lead. Everybody was pretty sure Freedom Writers was terrible, which is about how certain most people are that they'd have sex with its star Hillary Swank. And the one objectively hot actress who tried it made Dangerous Minds, one of the most objectively ridiculous movies of the 90s.

It should be noted that, just as we expect our good looking actors to actually disfigure their bodies, we expect our ugly actors playing teachers to actually have weird shit going on with their skin.

"I will teach you to pay it forward with my face burns."

#2.

Get Retarded!

Movie goers love the mentally challenged. Or rather, the quirky, innocent versions who show up in one inspirational movie after another. This is most likely because rooting for them on screen makes us feel better for avoiding them at all costs in real life.

For Example:

Before building a successful career playing himself in a string of blockbuster films, Billy Bob Thornton actually stretched a bit to play the role of Karl Childers, a mentally impaired man who befriends a young boy in Sling Blade. Not only did Thornton get nominated for Best Actor, he also won an Oscar for Best Screenplay and nailed Angelina Jolie. Repeatedly! And he didn't even have to adopt a fleet of kids to do it. Now that is success.

Meanwhile the annals of Academy Award history are littered with actors who earned buku actor cred by playing mentally handicapped characters. Dustin Hoffmann won a Best Actor Oscar for his role in Rainman. Tom Hanks did the same with his role in Forrest Gump. Even the women got in on the act when Jodie Foster was nominated for her lead role in Nell. You 'member dat?

Other Famous Examples Include:

Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape

Giovanni Ribisi in The Other Sister

John Malkovich in Of Mice and Men

The Exception That Proves the Rule :

In 2001's I Am Sam, Sean Penn swung for the retard fences and came up short. Was his portrayal of a mentally retarded man accurate? Hell yes. If you met him on the street, you'd be fooled. Come to think of it, if you met Sean Penn on the street out of character you'd get the same result. But that's beside the point. Even though he was nominated, Penn still went home with no award.

Why? As Robert Downey, Jr. famously warned in the comedy Tropic Thunder, taking on the role of a mentally handicapped person is tricky ("Never go full retard!"). To take home the gold you need to play the kind of mental handicap that just makes you quirky--or even better, gives you special powers somehow. You can't actually show audiences what life is like for these people. Who the fuck wants that?

#1.

When All Else Fails... Go Gay

Being the kind of movie star who can do both blockbusters and award-winners means treading a fine line. You need to go edgy, in the sense that your roles will touch on controversial subjects, but not so edgy that it will turn off middle-America. So you can't do two hours of you in a dark room, shitting on an American flag while off in one corner a robot molests a child, for instance.

Or can you?

Instead, you need to hit that controversial sweet spot where you're challenging the beliefs of some people out there, but not so many that you can't still fill many theaters with people who agree with you (and who will purchase a ticket as a means of congratulating themselves for being so enlightened). Once upon a time it was racism, and then abortion. But right now, gay rights are where it's at.

For Example:

Who the fuck is Hilary Swank? That's probably what most people were asking when word of mouth spread that they should probably check out this Boys Don't Cry flick. Before that, Swank had a brief run on Beverly Hills 90210 and starred in Karate Kid Pt. 4, a film that we're pretty sure doesn't actually exist.

Except that there's evidence.

She was paid a total of $3,000 dollars for her work in Boys Don't Cry, but the notoriety gained by playing a homely looking dude was priceless. Overnight, Swank went from nobody to Academy Award winning actress. Her immediate success can be attributed to the fact that she is one of the first to stack the above techniques by going gay, biopic and ugly in the same role.

Holy shit, we're surprised they didn't just rename the Oscar after her.

The Exception That Proves the Rule :

Who are we kidding?

This...

Shit...

Always...

Works...

Read more from Adam at the Academy Award winning comedy site ScenicAnemia.com..

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For careers that were destroyed after winning the big one, check out 5 Great Careers Destroyed By The Post-Oscar Curse. Or find out about some movies that were likely cursed, in The Insane True Stories Behind 6 Cursed Movies.

And stop by our Top Picks to see Swaim's first gay role (he didn't know the cameras were on).

And don't forget to follow us on Twitter to get previews of upcoming articles and trick your friends into thinking you're psychic.

Original here

Ex-Marine Kills 300-Pound Bear With Log

2009-07-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

Chris Everhart just had a Father's Day he'll never forget.

(ABC News)

The ex-Marine saved the lives of his three young sons when a 300-pound bear attacked their Georgia campsite last weekend.

While cleaning up after dinner, the family came face to face with the large animal.

"From out of nowhere we heard this loud crash," Everhart said on "Good Morning America." "For a second, I didn't know what it was, but I realized it was a bear. I went to the back of the Jeep to get my pots and pans to scare the bear off."

At the same time, Everhart's 6-year-old son, Logan, tried to frighten the animal. Instead of running away, the bear turned on the boy. Logan's brother, Kyle, tried to help him.

"I threw about five rocks at the bear to keep him away," Kyle Everhart said.

Realizing his sons could be killed, Everhart grabbed a log and threw it at the bear's head, striking and killing him.

"I forgot all about pots and pans and picked up whatever I could to try to distract, fend off, do what I could to get this bear away," Everhart said.

Latest in a String of Bear Attacks

The Georgia campsite incident is the latest in a string of bear attacks. One week ago in Utah's American Fork Canyon, 11-year-old Sam Ives died after a black bear dragged him from his tent and fatally mauled him.

The same bear ripped through another couple's tent hours before the attack. It was later killed and airlifted out of the park.

In upstate New York Monday, a black bear was caught strolling in and out of yards in a small residential neighborhood.

Jim Karpowitz of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources believes the abundance of bear sightings may be due to recent droughts.

"When it's hot and dry like this bears are short on food and they go looking for food and sometimes they create problems," he said.

For Everhart, the 300-pound bear that attacked his sons was almost a problem too big to handle.

"This one got a little too aggressive for me," he said. "If the bear had gotten near my kids, I would have just jumped on it. Knowing me, that's what I would have done, anything to make sure my kids were safe."

Original here

Biggest Diamond Heist Suspect Found With Rough Stones

2009-07-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

By Eliot Van Buskirk

Last week, Milanese authorities found Leonardo Notarbartolo, the man accused of masterminding the world’s biggest diamond heist, in possession of approximately 2.2 pounds of rough, uncut diamonds.

Many of the stolen diamonds were never recovered, and Notarbartolo was detained for driving around with hundreds of diamonds stashed in his BMW, just a few months after being released from prison for the crime.

Case closed? Not so fast.

Due to the slippery nature of rough diamonds — and of Leonardo Notarbartolo himself — the alleged criminal mastermind could walk away scot free, with the confiscated diamonds back in his possession.

Ever the charmer, Notarbartolo claims he purchased the diamonds legitimately for a mere 10,000 euros, as he told Wired’s Joshua Davis last week through an intermediary. (Davis wrote about the heist in March.) On Monday, the alleged jewel thief contacted Davis again to say that the confiscated diamonds are not precious jewels, but rather industrial-grade diamonds used to manufacture cutting tools, which is why he paid only 10,000 euros for the whole pile.

“Notarbartolo is saying, ‘These are my diamonds. I got them legitimately. Give them back.’ And he’s hired a lawyer, Basilio Foti, to advocate for the return of the diamonds,” explained Davis.

Notarbartolo’s defense will likely hinge on the fact that rough, uncut diamonds are nearly impossible to trace. Polished diamonds typically have certified identities that accompany them during transport, and often contain laser-etched logos or certification numbers that are invisible to the naked eye.

A rough diamond, on the other hand, is pretty much a rough diamond. Because they’re soon to be cut and polished, which changes their characteristics, they’re not certified by the industry. “To say with certainty that any rough diamond is the same rough diamond that was in a vault six years go is almost impossible,” explained Davis, who has reported extensively on the diamond trade.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of the diamonds stolen six years ago were in rough form — and that the guy proven to have organized the crime was just found with a big pile of rough diamonds — authorities probably lack sufficient evidence to put Notarbartolo back behind bars, due to the early-untraceable nature of unpolished stones. Most likely, they will be forced to return the jewels to the convicted jewel thief and send him on his merry way.

“I don’t understand the Italian legal system, of course,” explained Davis, “but speaking on purely logical grounds, if you can’t prove that the diamonds are stolen, then you would logically have to give them back.”

In other words, Leonardo Notarbartolo, who famously liberated $120 million in diamonds and cash from a bank so “secure” it didn’t even need live security guards, may finally have found a suitable second act: freeing himself after being caught red-handed, six years later, with hundreds of what could very well be the very same diamonds.

Original here

7 Fatal Injuries (That People Somehow Survived)

2009-07-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

By Son Tran

The human body is a miracle; though you may disagree if you're sitting there in the throes of an allergy attack or a hangover.

The truth is your body can take a lot of abuse, and we've all heard amazing stories of people living through hacked off limbs, extreme temperatures and even falling out of airplanes. So how much punishment can the human body take? Well, under certain circumstances you can apparently survive...

Getting Cut... In Half

When you work on the railroad, you probably know that something terrible can happen. Maybe you'll break a bone, or lose a limb. Or maybe you'll lose the entire lower half of your freaking body

That's what happened to Truman Duncan, who, after falling off of a moving train, was dragged underneath the wheels. They severed his body in half at the waist, incredibly leaving him alive and conscious to hear the machinery grinding his body in two as he was dragged 75 feet.

Truman decided that screaming like a little girl was neither manly nor helpful and instead pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911 from right there under the train. Then, because it took rescuers 45 minutes to get him out from under the train, he placed a few calls to his family as well.

Jesus, how do you start that conversation?

Doctors are unsure how he managed to survive the accident but suspect that the weight of the wheels may have kept him from bleeding to death (though not very well--he lost about half the blood in his body). It may also have been due to his Kryptonian ancestry, but we're just speculating. Still, it took 23 surgeries over four months before Truman could leave the hospital, minus his legs, pelvis and a kidney.

Today, Truman is back at work at a desk job. He says he can still do the things he did before the accident like swimming, playing with his kids and screaming, "Fuck you!" at every train he passes.

#6.

Getting Shot... And Shot... And Shot

Despite what the NRA would have you believe, guns do kill people. Just not all people.

After all, we've seen Bruce Willis get shot like five or six times in four movies, so clearly you can shrug off a couple of slugs. Rapper 50 Center got shot nine times and lived to rap another day. So how many shots can a man take before we declare him to be either a superhero or a zombie?

How about 19?

New Yorker, Joseph Guzman, took that many slugs and walked away (alright, he didn't exactly walk). Joseph's problems began back in 2006 when he was out at a bachelor party with some friends.

According to Joseph, his friends had left the party reading quotes from the bible to each other and were on their way to assist the homeless. According to the police, the group was shooting off flamethrowers and wheeling a giant cannon down the street toward an orphanage. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

One way or another, the cops started shooting. And once you get started with the shooting, well, it's kind of hard to stop. Fifty rounds were fired at Joseph. Thirty-one of them missed, but the police probably figured that the ones that hit home were more than enough to do the job.

"Another one? Anderson, are you throwing the bullets
back in here just to fuck with me?"

Joseph was rushed to the hospital where doctors discovered the 19 bullet-holes in his body. The attending physician later testified that Joseph was "probably in severe pain." Dr. Obvious likely went on to say that the red stuff pouring out of Joseph's body was "probably blood."

After they determined that he was indeed bleeding, the doctors found seven bullets still inside him. He had been hit in the legs, chest, abdomen and one bullet shattered his cheekbone. A liter and a half of blood was drained from his chest and then he was given a tetanus shot, which is something we wish we could take credit for making up.

By the way, not only did he survive the shooting, Joseph was still strong enough to be described as "combative" when he was wheeled into the hospital, possibly due to the doctor asking him if he was in any pain. Today, Joseph walks with a limp and a cane, but fortunately shows no signs of tetanus.

#5.

Getting Shot... By A Rocket Propelled Grenade

If you've watch news coverage of a war--or seen a war movie--over the last couple of decades you probably saw the bad guys using the above Rocket Propelled Grenades, which is a kind of shoulder-fired missile about the size of the head of a baseball bat.

They're designed to take out tanks and jeeps and other things made of metal. You can imagine what happens when one of them hits a human being, unless that human being is living in the video game universe or is named Channing Moss.

We believe that's an "I survived a bazooka to the torso" awareness wristband

Moss was in the army busy putting his boots far up Taliban asses, when his convoy was caught in an ambush. In addition to the machine gun fire, the enemy also unleashed several of the ever-popular RPGs at the Humvee he was riding in. Moss felt something hit him in the side and when he looked down saw that he had a fucking smoking rocket jutting out from his body.

Because there was a policy against evacuating people with bombs inside them, due to the whole explosion problem, his commanding officer told the helicopter crew the RPG was just some shrapnel.

When the doctors at the field hospital found out he had a whole, working rocket inside him, there was the usual panic and screaming until someone finally calmed down enough to try and save his life. This was despite the fact that the army manual called for him to be dumped far away from everyone and treated last. Seriously, nothing makes you more unpopular to a group than having a live bomb inside you.

Upon closer inspection it turned out Channing had a bit of luck on his side, in that the exploding warhead part of the rocket was not in his body, just the rocket and detonator. So instead of the big exploding part, there was only the little exploding part left inside of him. A note on his file also states that the rocket propellant was "mostly expelled."

Doctors finally sawed the fins off the rocket and then pulled the tube out of him, along with the wads of clothing and equipment that had been crammed into his guts by the impact. Incredibly, the huge projectile missed his vital organs and Channing lived.

We mentioned Bruce Willis earlier; what's great about Channing's story is if in Die Hard 5 you saw John McClane take a missile to the abdomen and walk away good as new, you'd be screaming bullshit so loud they'd have to drag you out of the theater.

#4.

A Gaping Hole... In Your Brain

Come on, you knew we couldn't leave this one out.

Number one on the list of things you don't want blasting a hole through your skull and brain is a giant cannon ball. However, a very close second on this list is a large metal spike. Just ask Phineas Gage.

Gage worked on a railroad crew back in the old-timey days. Part of his job was to blast holes in rocks with dynamite. Because this wasn't considered dangerous enough, the procedure also called for packing dirt in the holes with a metal pole after the dynamite was inserted, maybe to get the dynamite good and angry or something. The pole was called a "tamping iron" because calling it a "pointy suicide stick," while more accurate, tended to scare the employees.

"Nothing can ever go wrong with this."

Probably to no one's surprise, one day this practice of smacking a metal bar against live dynamite caused an explosion. This resulted in the tamping iron, which was three-feet, eight-inches long and weighed about 13 pounds, being shot through Phineas's cheekbone and exiting through the top of his skull.

Looks bad but you probably don't feel much after the first 12 inches

Sometimes people get impaled by objects but miss the vital organs. Phineas was not this lucky, unless you consider the brain to not be a vital organ. When they found the tamping iron 30 yards away it had pieces of bone and brain stuck to it.

Because medical science was about on par with the science of blasting holes through rock at the time, the only treatment Phineas received was having the huge tunnel through his brain cleaned out and wrapped in bandages, with the occasional draining of pus. Amazingly, five months after the accident Phineas was back to leading a fairly normal life, except for the giant hole in his head and probably a lot of new hats.

His friends and family also reported that he was kind of a dick after the accident, and scientists have come up with all kinds of theories about the damage affecting his impulse control. But, holy crap, some of us turn into dicks after missing morning coffee. Can we not cut a guy some slack after surviving a fucking spike through the skull?

#3.

Getting Punctured with a Dozen Nails... In Your Brain

Alright, so how does a guy top the whole "spike in the brain" thing? Two spikes?

How about 12?

Back in 2006, a guy in Oregon got really depressed, probably because he realized he lived in Oregon. He decided it was time to end his life and after ruling out faster, better, more proven alternatives, he decided he would end it all by shooting himself in the head with a nailgun (we've all been there, right?). We're going to go out on a limb and assume that he was probably a bit disappointed when the first nail pierced his skull and he found himself still alive and in Oregon.

He was serious about ending it all though and kept pulling the trigger on the nail gun like a guy waiting for an elevator. By the time he was done, he had a dozen nails embedded in his head. It's unclear why he stopped but a good guess is because it really hurts to shoot nails into your skull.

"Eh, a gun is a gun, right?"

He finally went to the hospital and complained to the doctors that he had a headache. While this was technically true it's kind of like telling someone your buddy is a bit of a douche bag and then the guy turns out to be Spencer Pratt.

The nails had gone so far into his brain that the doctors couldn't even see them until they X-rayed his head. Not only did they find 12 nails, but the nails were fired into both sides of his head--which meant he had to switch hands at some point (apparently nailguns get pretty heavy after a while). Doctors had to remove the nails with needle-nosed pliers and a drill. Yeah, the whole scenario was pretty much sponsored by Home Depot.

The tale probably involved caulk at some point as well

We'd like to say he is doing fine today, but last we heard he left the pysch ward against his doctor's wishes. Damn, we were so sure the 12 nails to the head story would have a happy ending.

#2.

Getting Stuck Under Water... For an Hour

Your body has some pretty basic needs: food, water, air, some basic broadband Internet access. Of these the most important is without a doubt air. While you can go for weeks without food and days without water, most people get a serious case of death if they go for more than 15 minutes without breathing. Even guys who spend all their time training to hold their breath only last about 11.5 minutes and they need two months to recover afterward to ponder whether they need a different hobby.

This is why Michelle Funk caused the Journal of the American Medical Association to use the word "miraculous" when she was pulled out of the water after she staying under for more than an hour. A medical journal using the word "miracle" is the equivalent of "WTF?" in non-medical speak. If her awesome last name and amazing mutant half-fish abilities weren't impressive enough, consider she was only two-years-old when this happened.

"What the fuck?"

This was back in 1986, she had been playing near the creek when she fell in and by the time they found her an hour later, she had a core body temperature of 66 degrees and no heartbeat, both of which is supposed to mean "dead" according to everything science thinks it knows about the body.

Doctors warmed Michelle's blood with a heart-lung machine (it actually removes the blood from the body to do it, which to the untrained eye would also seem like something you wouldn't live through). We assume that Michelle's blood was the consistency of a Slushie when it first came out.

It took more than three hours before doctors were finally able to detect a heartbeat. No one is really sure how she survived, although one of the doctors thinks the cold water helped to freeze her so that her brain didn't suffer any permanent damage. This basically means she survived drowning to death by freezing to death first.

Michelle has fully recovered and is living somewhere in Utah, pretty much a living "fuck you" to the world of medical science.

"Screw it, we're going with 'miracle.'"

#1.

Dislocation... Of Your Head

Alright, so we've confirmed that you can survive a whole range of foreign objects in your skull. How can we top that? Well...

The word "decapitation" is one you never want to hear in your prognosis. It usually signals something really bad has happened to you, like a teen horror movie, or a French revolution. Shannon Malloy, however, was past her teens and nowhere near France when she was in a car crash a few years back, but still had the word "decapitation" turn up in her medical charts. OK, so her head didn't go rolling away like a bowling ball, but it was pretty close.

When she was brought to the hospital after her accident, doctors discovered that she had severed every single ligament and tendon connecting her skull to her spinal cord. Her head was basically flopping around, connected to her body only by skin and muscle tissue (they call it an "internal decapitation"). The spinal surgeon who treated her said he had never seen anyone survive such an injury, because the head is a fairly important part of your body.

Yet her child remains unimpressed

However there was some good news for Shannon. Her spinal cord itself was actually still in good shape. Doctors worked hard to set her skull back on to her spine which is apparently no easy task as she told people she felt her skull slip off about five times during the procedure. We don't know what is worse, the fact it took them five tries to get it right or the fact that she was awake while they tried.

Actual photo of the surgery

Doctor Butter Fingers finally managed to get her skull in place though and they screwed everything in good and tight. Eventually she recovered from the ordeal and even avoided being paralyzed. She has suffered from some sight and speech impairment, but really what can you ask for considering, you know, decapitation.

Original here

My alcoholic boy, facing death at 22

2009-07-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

Sarah-Kate Templeton

A MOTHER has made public the plight of her son who became a teenage alcoholic and is now dying because he is not allowed a liver transplant.

Gary Reinbach started drinking alcohol with friends when he was 13. Now 22, his is one of the worst cases of cirrhosis of the liver among young people that his doctors have seen.

His predicament may serve as a wake-up call to a generation of young drinkers who are downing large volumes of cheap alcohol.

Doctors at University College hospital (UCH), in London, have given Reinbach the most advanced therapies, including a one-off treatment with an artificial liver from San Diego, California. But all have failed and they believe only a transplant will save him.

Reinbach, from Dagenham, Essex, does not qualify for an organ because official guidelines state that heavy drinkers must prove that they can be abstinent outside hospital before they are considered. His condition is so severe that he cannot be discharged to prove he can remain sober.

His mother has chosen to speak out in an attempt to reverse the verdict that he is not entitled to a liver transplant, which would give him a 75% chance of survival. Without one his chance is about 30%, according to his doctors.

Madeline Hanshaw, 44, his mother, said: “Gary didn’t know what he was doing when he was 13. He didn’t know it would come to this when he was 22. He didn’t know he was going to die. All his friends who were drinking with him are still at home, they are fine.”

Hanshaw, who works as a kitchen assistant, says she worked full-time when her son was growing up and was initially unaware of the extent of his drinking. This is the first time he has been hospitalised for alcohol damage.

One of Reinbach’s doctors, Professor Rajiv Jalan, a consultant hepatologist at UCH, said: “This is a young man who has never known any better. He has been drinking for eight or nine years and did not see what was coming to him. We feel this boy deserves a transplant because it is the first time he has come to the hospital with an alcohol-related problem.

“Most of us feel that if the patient has been abstinent for a period of time, and not a repeat offender, they should be given an opportunity. The debate is whether there should be exceptions to that rule.

“Gary has been in hospital for 10 weeks now and is teetering on the brink of death. He is in a catch22 situation because, if he does not get better, he is going to die in the hospital. He is never going to have the time to demonstrate he has been abstinent [outside hospital].”

There was an outcry when George Best, the late Manchester United footballer, was given a liver transplant in 2002, only to return to binge drinking within a year. He was criticised for putting people off organ donation. More than 8,000 Britons are awaiting an organ transplant, 259 of whom require livers. More than 400 people died on the waiting list last year.

The shortage of organs has been exacerbated by them being given to overseas patients who pay for the transplants. This year the health department was forced to investigate after it emerged that in the past two years the livers of 50 British donors had been given to foreign patients.

Binge drinking among young people has led to a sharp rise in deaths from cirrhosis of the liver in the 25-34 age group and hospital admissions among young people have been increasing. In 2007-8 the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust dealt with 8,126 alcohol-related calls for 11 to 21-year-olds, a 27% increase on 2004-5.

Reinbach’s doctors say cheap alcohol has contributed to the crisis. Raj Mookerjee, a consultant hepatologist at UCH and another of Reinbach’s doctors, said: “Young people can readily avail themselves of cheap alcohol in large volumes.

“Gary was drinking when his mother thought he was at school. He was drinking with several other people. In less than 10 years he has developed advanced cirrhosis. This backs the suspicion we have had for a long time that the liver is more susceptible at a young age.”

Reinbach enjoyed playing football and golf when he was younger but these sporting outings turned into binge-drinking sessions.

Hanshaw added: “I think it is too easy for young people to get alcohol. You can buy a bottle of whisky for about £7.”

A spokeswoman for NHS Blood and Transplant said: “This case highlights the dilemma that doctors [face] because of the shortage of donated organs. They have to make tough decisions about who is going to get the most benefit and who is going to take best care of this precious gift.”

Original here

Long-lost Love Letter Led to Couple Marrying After 16 yrs...

2009-07-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

By Daily Mail Reporter

A couple have married after they were reunited when a long-lost love letter sent ten years ago was found unopened behind a fireplace.

Steve Smith and Carmen Ruiz-Perez, both 42, walked down the aisle on Friday following a separation of 16 years.

The pair fell in love and got engaged in their 20s after Carmen moved to England as a foreign student.

Newly weds: Steve and Carmen have married after 16 years apart

But after a year-long relationship the couple drifted apart when she had to move back to France.

A few years later Steve wrote to her in a bid to rekindle their romance - but Carmen's mother put it on the mantlepiece and it slipped down the back of the fireplace.

It remained there unopened for the next decade until the fireplace was removed for renovations.

Carmen - who had remained single and never forgot the love of her life - was given the letter in which Steve had written: 'I hope you are well. I was just writing to ask if you ever married and if you ever still thought of me?

'It would be great to hear from you, please great in touch if you can. Steve XXX.'

Factory supervisor Steve said: 'I didn't write much because I assumed she would be remarried. I never thought it would take ten years to hear back.'

Carmen said she was initially too nervous to call as so much time had passed but plucked up the courage and the pair arranged to meet.

They met up in Paris a few days later and have now wed - 17 years after they first fell in love.

Steve, of Paignton, Devon, said: 'When we met again it was like a film. We ran across the airport into each other's arms.

As they were: The couple were in a relationship in 1993 when Carmen was studying in the UK but drifted apart when she returned to France

'We met up and fell in love all over again. Within 30 seconds of setting eyes on each other we were kissing.

'Now we're married, I'm just glad the letter did eventually end up where it was supposed to be.'

Carmen, who is now living with Steve in Paignton, said the wedding was the pinnacle of an 'amazing' love story.

She added: 'I never got married and now I'm marrying the man I have always loved.'

Original here

Oldest UK television discovered

2009-07-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

By Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent, BBC News

Rory Cellan-Jones meets the owner of Britain's oldest working TV

Britain's oldest working television has been tracked down in a house in London.

The 1936 Marconiphone is thought to have been made in the months that Britain's first "high-definition" television service began.

The set belongs to Jeffrey Borinsky, an electrical engineer and collector of antique television and radio sets.

He bought the set, which has a 12-inch (30cm) screen from another collector 10 years ago and is still working on restoring it to its original state.

The screen is mounted inside a wooden cabinet. The image from the cathode ray tube, mounted vertically inside the cabinet, is reflected onto a mirror.

The few controls include volume and vertical hold, but there is no channel changer, as there was only one channel when it was made: the BBC.

Modern in part

The set appears to be in good condition, but Mr Borinsky aims to replace a number of modern components with originals.

"The cabinet was beautifully restored by the previous owner," he explained,' but my aim is to gradually restore its electronics to its true 1936 magnificence," he said.

Marconi also made the "Instantaneous Television Camera" shown in 1936

But the Marconiphone 702 still works as a modern television.

It has been hooked up to a Freeview box so that it can show digital channels, although Mr Borinsky has had to install a standards converter so that a modern television signal can be seen.

Mr Borinsky only keeps the set turned on up to two hours at a time, and he uses it to view films from the 1930s and 1940s.

He says he enjoys watching the kind of pictures that might have been seen by the original owners.

The National Media Museum in Bradford has a similar set, but does not use it to show television pictures for fear of damaging it.

Iain Logie Baird, the curator of television at the museum, said it is a thrill to see the Marconiphone working.

"It's very exciting to see the image the way people would have seen it in 1936, before television became ubiquitous as it is today," he said.

Mr Logie Baird, grandson of the television pioneer John Logie Baird, says this set would have been of huge local interest when it was first acquired at a cost of 60 guineas - the equivalent of £11,000 today.

"Television was a very exciting thing, it was something that the whole neighbourhood would come over to watch. People would crowd into the home of the owner."

The set was discovered as the result of a competition run by Digital UK, the body overseeing the switch to digital television. The aim was to publicise the message that just about any television, however old, can be used to show digital channels.

Original here

Facebook Party Raided By Police Helicopter, Dogs, 70 Cops

2009-07-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

By Colin Fernandez

A teenager whose party became a riot after it was gatecrashed by 150 revellers who saw it advertised on Facebook has boasted about how much it cost to break up.

It took 70 police officers, a helicopter and specialist dog handlers to stop the troublemakers after drunken youths began fighting in the street.

The helicopter alone costs around £500 for every hour it is in the air and estimates for the police operation as a whole have been put at up to £10,000.

But far from regretting the damage and disturbance caused by the party, one of the teenage organisers said: 'It was wicked.'

Jordan Wright, 17, said: 'I have no regrets at all. It was a great party and a great night. I am well proud that people are saying it cost the police £10,000.

'My mates are saying what a sick party it was - the best yet. Seventy or eighty police officers came down for a house party. I have put my street on the map.'

No regrets: Jordan, second left, with friends at the party

Chaos: Police officers (on the right) take on troublemakers at a teenage party in Farnborough, which was gatecrashed by more than 100 people

The stepfather of the other host spoke of his dismay that she seemed 'proud' of the mayhem she caused - which he called 'stupid, unnecessary and embarrassing'.

Seva Nurueva, 15, held the gathering jointly with neighbour Jordan at their adjoining homes in Farnborough, Hampshire.

Around a month before the event she had invited friends - but ignored her stepfather's instructions to keep the details off the internet.

By 10pm on Saturday youths from miles around descended on the gathering. Revellers smashed a table in Jordan's home and fights broke out outside.

Officers had to be called in from the Hampshire and Surrey forces to disperse the crowd.

Jordan said: 'My mum is saying that after this I have got to have my 18th birthday party in a hall instead of at home but I am going to invite even more people to that.

'She says "no way" but just you watch me. Seva was crying most of the night. She invited about 40 people and I invited about 200 on Facebook.

'She says the party was good but now she regrets it. But I don't. I don't really care. It was a great party.

'The only thing I would change another time would be that the DJ could have got there earlier and the police shouldn't have gatecrashed the party. The party would have gone off the Richter Scale if the police hadn't arrived.'

Teenagers Seva Nurueva (right) and Jordan Wright in the garden where the Facebook party began

Deborah Hunter, who lives on the street, said: 'We came home after an evening out and were confronted by hundreds of youths - male and female - spilling out on to the street from a party that was being held at the two houses. It escalated into a riot.

'There were more than 50 police officers in a shoulder-to-shoulder formation, pushing a crowd of 150 kids down the street. It was scary.

'It could have been really nasty had police not stepped in. There were children as young as 14 who were drunk.'

Miss Nurueva's stepfather, who does not wish to be named, said he warned her not to publicise the party on Facebook.

He said yesterday: 'As soon as two kids know, 200 know, that's why I told her not to put it on Facebook.

'I think the kids were proud because they got on to the news. I told them it's nothing to be proud of. It was stupid, unnecessary and embarrassing.'

He described violent scenes that erupted as partygoers poured into the quiet residential area.

'One girl hit the other on the head with a bottle. I couldn't control it,' he said. 'At half past ten the police turned up.'

He said officers confiscated cans of drink from revellers, before sealing off the road and marching in riot formation to clear the crowd. They finally left at 4am, after making five arrests.

Jordan was unrepentant last night about the trouble. He said: 'I have no regrets at all. I am well proud that people are saying it cost the police £10,000. My mates are saying what a sick party it was - the best yet.'

Original here

Well, I've Sold The Paper To The Chinese

2009-07-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

By T. Herman Zweibel

As the longtime publisher of this news-paper, it is my duty and unrestrained pleasure to inform you spittle-soaked readers that I have sold The Onion and all of its various holdings to a syndicate of industrious China-men from the deepest heart of the Orient. One of their representatives oozed and crawled from his dank hut to visit me in person at my bedside last week, and make known his superiors' desire to expand their clammy clutch into the Western world. After subjecting me to a good 20 minutes of infernal bowing and other assorted chinky-dinkery, he offered to pay me what I've been assured is an appropriately absurd parcel of riches to take this tiresome publication off my feeble hands for good.

Naturally, I accepted his heathen bargain without the slightest twinge of regret, and why on earth not? When my ancestor Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel founded The Mercantile-Onion in 1756, he did so with the express purpose of fleecing its porridge-brained readers out of as much precious capital as could be wrung from their grubby, desperately toiling fingers, and I say bully and bully again to that. I may be a news-paper-man through and through, but I still have enough sense in my 141-year-old skull to abandon some silly centuries-old loyalty to the periodical page when there are spacious coffers to be stocked.

Oh, how heavenly it shall be to never again hear the ungodly shriek of a printing press, or breathe the insufferable stench of a news-room full of unwashed scribes churning out mindless pap on the subject of photo-play actresses and their adopted African brood. And as far as the whimpering clods who have the temerity to call themselves "readers" are concerned, I do not suppose I shall miss their ilk in the slightest. Why, just imagining their pallid, toothless faces fills me with such colossal rage that at this very moment my nurse-maid is administering to me a near-lethal dose of laudanum just so I may find the composure to reach the end of this missive.

Any-way, I wish you all the best of luck making sense of the dis-jointed drivel contained in this inaugural issue of the Chinese Onion. If the new owner-ship does not suck the very blood from your veins, they'll surely dizzy you into stupefied obedience with their unnatural black Orient arts. Oh, and in accordance with the contractual terms of the buy-out, let me remind you all that Yu Wan Mei Fish Time is the best Fish Time, perfect eating for you and me and so delicious. That is all.

Original here

Finances force sale of beacon Chez Vous

2009-05-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

Dorchester venue behind on loan

Greer Toney, owner and general manager of Chez Vous, could lose her business to auction. (Matthew J. Lee/ Globe staff)

By Matt Collette

After years struggling to provide a haven for city youths, Chez Vous roller rink has again fallen prey to fiscal troubles and is set to go on the auction block on Wednesday, Greer Toney, the rink's owner and general manager, said yesterday.

The 77-year-old Dorchester landmark will be sold, Toney said, because she failed to pay the latest mortgage bill. Chez Vous has faced foreclosure in the past and was operating on an agreement with its creditors that it would be auctioned off if it missed a mortgage payment. A letter from creditors at the beginning of the month warned that the auction would go forward if the payment is not made.

Toney said she doesn't have the money to pay.

She said she used the money, about $10,000, to finance the rink's second annual Peace Night, held last Wednesday. Rapper Bow Wow was slated to perform, but his manager cancelled the performance at the last minute, citing safety concerns.

"I couldn't believe it," she said. "I can't believe that any superstar like Bow Wow would do this."

She said she had to refund 500 tickets, which cost $35 each. Because some expenses had to be paid for in advance, Toney said that she had to use personal funds to reimburse ticket-holders. Neither Bow Wow, whose name is Shad Gregory Moss, nor his manager could be reached for comment last night.

Toney said that Rhodes Street, where the rink is located, was shut down by police the night of the concert and that there were close to 50 people working security inside. The rink is behind the Area B-3 police station, which is at Blue Hill Avenue and Morton Street.

The rink is an important part of the community because it offers an alternative to the gang culture that has dominated Dorchester and Mattapan, Toney said.

The Peace Night concert was held to encourage youths to abandon violence. "I've gone to so many funerals, and I'm tired. I'm sick and tired," Toney said. "We came up with the idea to bombard these kids with peace."

In 2006, Chez Vous owed the city more than $80,000 in unpaid taxes, but city officials said they were committed to keeping the business open and set up a payment plan for the rink.

In the past, Mayor Thomas M. Menino helped secure money to keep Chez Vous in business. But now, because of the financial problems plaguing the city, officials are unable to step in and help the rink stay open, said Nick Martin, a spokesman for the mayor. "This time around, the city is not in a financial position to help them out," he said.

Toney said teens often bring their homework to Chez Vous, and older students help younger ones with difficult coursework. She said parents are allowed in for free to encourage adults to be more active in the lives of their children.

"They may be fighting [on the streets], but now you get to know someone in here," she said.

Chez Vous has not always been a haven for peace. In January 1994, hooded gunmen stormed into the rink and opened fire, injuring seven people.

Bruce Wall, pastor of Global Ministries Christian Church, conducted outreach and church services at Chez Vous from 1988 to 1992, when the rink was under different ownership. He described the venue as one of the last places teens could go to escape the streets.

"It was one of the few places left where young people felt like they had a place, like they had a home," Wall said. "To not have that anymore, I feel like it's a major death."

At the rink last night, teens described Chez Vous as an alternative to gang culture.

Ty Avonterogers, 14, said a friend brought him to Chez Vous a few years ago. Now he comes so frequently that he owns his own skates.

"I come here a lot. There's a gang on my street," Avonterogers said last night. "There used to be nothing for me to do."

"To me, it's a family," said 16-year-old Gerald Vick. He said he is afraid more young people will wind up back on the street if Chez Vous closes. "I think more kids will get in trouble. They won't have things to do," he said.

Original here

Time Magazine Throws Up Its Hands As It Gets Pwned By 4Chan

2009-05-02T11:49:00.000-07:00

by Erick Schonfeld

The hackers of 4Chan have succeeded in completely gaming Time Magazine’s online poll for its Time 100 list of the most influential people on the planet. At the top of the list is Christopher Poole, aka Moot, the founder of the 4Chan online forum, whose members used some coding to get his name to the top of the list. Not only did they help moot win the poll, but they also arranged the next 20 names to spell out “Marblecake, also the game.” Marblecake is a lewd sexual reference, but is also supposedly the name of the chat room where one of 4Chan’s online collective actions, Project Chanology, originated.

This is just the “people’s choice” list, not the official list picked by Time’s editors, but still it makes you wonder whether the editors at Time bother to read anything on the Internet. It is pretty well-documented that the 4Chan community was trying to manipulate the poll results. Nevertheless, Time just threw up its hands and named Moot the winner. Time is obviously aware of the controversy, but tries to justify the choice nonetheless by writing that:

Moot denies knowing about any concerted plan by his followers to influence the poll, though TIME.com’s technical team did detect and extinguish several attempts to hack the vote.

Except Time.com’s technical team didn’t do a very good job, because the top 21 names still spell out the Marblecake sentence. Time knows it was pwned by 4Chan, but simply throws up its hands. Time.com’s managing editor Josh Tyrangiel tries to defuse criticism by admitting that the poll is meaningless. He says, “I would remind anyone who doubts the results that this is an Internet poll. Doubting the results is kind of the point.” Or maybe the point is to name an Internet celebrity and create a controversy so that people click through to read the results. Well played.

Original here

'Put your dead baby in the fridge': What nurse told mother who suffered miscarriage

2009-05-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

'Traumatised': Sophie Hill, with her seven-month-old daughter Marnie-Faye, stored the foetus in a Tupperware box

She had just endured the trauma of a miscarriage.

But when Sophie Hill phoned her hospital with her dead child next to her, she was simply told to put it in the fridge for two days until her scheduled appointment.

Confused and in shock, Miss Hill followed the nurse's instructions and stored the foetus in a Tupperware box in her fridge so it could be kept cool for testing.

Last night, as hospital bosses investigated, Miss Hill said she had been 'betrayed by the NHS' and her father called for the nurse who gave the advice to be suspended.

Miss Hill, 21, was overjoyed when she become pregnant for a second time with boyfriend Jamie George, 29, and the pair had been planning for the arrival of what they hoped would be a second daughter.

The 12-week scan showed the baby was growing well but subsequent tests revealed problems.

She was told in February, when she was four months pregnant, that the baby had died.

Weeks later, she miscarried.

Miss Hill, from Crawley, West Sussex, said: 'I was woken up at three in the morning with horrific pains in my stomach.

'I was in agony and went to the toilet and that's when it happened. I thought I should keep it and next morning I spoke to the hospital to find out what I should do.'

She phoned the early pregnancy unit at East Surrey Hospital in Redhill and spoke to a nurse.

'I said to the woman what had happened and asked what I should do,' she said.

'I don't think she really understood what I was saying or believed me. She replied that I was not due back in for my next appointment for another two days so I would have to wait until then because they were unable to see me.

'She said I had to keep the child cold for testing reasons and I should keep it in the fridge until my appointment.

Let down: East Surrey Hospital where Miss Hill sought help is managed by the Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust

'At no point did she say I should go to hospital. I was really upset, my head was a mess and I did what she said. When you call up a pregnancy unit at a hospital you expect them to give you good advice so I took it as gospel.

'I put it in a Tupperware box and sealed it up and wrapped it in a plastic bag because I could see the arms and legs and some of the head and put it in the fridge towards the back.

'It was horrible. Every time I went to the fridge I had to look at it.'

Miss Hill took the child to her appointment two days later.

Later on, her health visitor said the nurse's guidance was entirely wrong and she should have sought immediate medical attention.

She added that in 25 years of midwifery she had never seen anything like it.

Miss Hill, whose daughter Marnie-Faye is seven months old, said: 'I'm furious at how I've been treated and I can't understand why on earth the nurse told me what she did.

'I'm haunted by what happened to me and shudder every time I look at my little girl because it reminds me.

'I want her to have a sister one day but I will wait because I'm so traumatised and let down by the hospital.'

Miss Hill's father Paul, 45, a cargo handler with British Airways, last night attacked the hospital for their 'neglect' of his daughter.

He said: 'I'm disgusted with the way they treated her and that nurse should at least be suspended.

'She had no support, no counselling and has had no apology.'

It is understood the nurse who advised Miss Hill is on holiday and has not been disciplined.

A Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust spokesman, said: 'We acknowledge and
appreciate that Sophie Hill has been through a very difficult time and would
like to express our sympathy for her loss.

'Our Early Pregnancy Unit provides care to women during the early stages of their pregnancies and we strive to offer responsive, supportive and sensitive care to a high standard.

All our nurses are specifically trained to offer advice and support to women at
varying stages of pregnancy.

'Our early Pregnancy Unit advice is that in exceptional circumstances in
order to find out why a woman has miscarried the foetus will need to be
examined at the hospital. The woman will be advised to come to the hospital
immediately. If she is unable to come to the hospital, she will need to keep
the foetus preserved for it to be suitable for examination.

'We are unable to discuss the individual circumstances of this case, but
would welcome Sophie contacting the hospital to arrange a meeting with her
and offer our support.'

The spokesman added the Trust hadn't received a formal complaint from Miss Hill and if they received one they would have a full internal investigation.

Original here

5 things I fear more than the swine flu

2009-05-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

By: Bobby Finstock

WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!! Of course we all are eventually. But if you have watched any cable news in the last week you would know that it is going to happen soon and it is going to be from swine flu. More people have died from being struck by lightening in the US than have died of swine flu but we need to ramp up the hysterics. (Thanks 24-7 cable news with nothing to talk about!) It cracks me up to think that if the outbreak stayed to Mexico we all would have listened to the 20 second news story which would be buried 18 minutes into the nightly news broadcast and just thought, “Meh… maybe it will clear up the drug cartel problem down there. I want ice cream.”

I have determined that there are actually five more things that I fear more than swine flu right now.

5) Getting HIV from playing basketball with someone wearing a Magic Johnson jersey

When Magic returned to the NBA a few players said they feared getting HIV from him if they sweated on by him, if he bled on them, or if he had anal sex with them while fighting for a rebound. (Maybe that last one wasn’t a reason.) Of course none of this was really possible but the fear and rumors were out there. I will never play against him but the dangers could possibly be transmitted via his jersey.

I think though I have a better chance of getting HIV from playing basketball with someone wearing a Magic Johnson jersey than getting swine flu.

4) Heidi and Spencer procreating

The idea that children will be born with giant teeth, plastic noses, and a disgusting desire to be the largest attention whores possible.

“Mom I am going to take my diaper off and shove shit through the screen door at about 11 am. Can you make sure the paparazzi are there so they can ‘catch me in the act’? Thanks babe, whip out your tit at noon and we will do lunch.”

Through there constant attention whoring they will come media moguls and eventually will enslave the entire human race through mind control.

3) Getting hit by a piano/safe that has fallen from an apartment window

Shit these things happen on cartoons… Cartoons are on TV…. And ANYTHING on television HAS to be true. (Except anything said by Glenn Beck. He makes Charles Manson seem well adjusted.)

I don’t know about you but the last thing I want to happen is to walk down the street and get crushed by a large object that 97% of America doesn’t have in their apartments anymore. But that is more likely to happen than me getting the swine flu.

2) Becoming retarded because I got vaccinated from swine flu

Apparently according to some people that are super intelligent:

There is a major link between autism and vaccinations. I don’t know if it is true or not but when a chick that posed naked in Playboy and has contributed such important things to my life like “Singled Out” well I know I should listen to and fear what she says.

So if it gets to the point where we all need to get vaccinated in order to prevent the spread of swine flu I worry that I could possibly become retarded and have to wear a diaper for the rest of my life because I was vaccinated.

(Note: If you have autism it does not make you retarded. But listening to Jenny McCarthy does.)

1) A Zombie Chuck Norris

I think that threat speaks for itself. Not only would our way of life be endangered but the internet would implode when two stupid and annoying memes unite. Remember Chuck Norris jokes suck.

What do you fear more than swine flu?

About the author

Bobby Finstock

Bobby Finstock is the founder of pointlessbanter.net and writes here on a semi-daily basis. He enjoys scatological humor, pop culture, politics, and is a closet watcher of the Bachelor. Finstock hopes to one day be able to write under his real name again and to cure his issues with premature ejaculation.

Original here

6 Ways That Porn Runs The World

2009-05-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

By Ian Cheesman

This world is rife with moral decay. Doubters need only look to the vacant church pews and surging Cracked readership for confirmation. That, and the fact that the porn industry utterly dominates all others.

Think we're exaggerating? We've got the numbers to back it up. As big as you think porn is, it's bigger, and its influence on modern society is deeper. As Jules Verne once said, "Some day, this whole thing is gonna be titties."

#6.

Porn > Hollywood

The Long, Hard Facts

Hollywood cranks out around 500 movies a year to an international audience of 2.8 billion. Its closest competitor, India's Bollywood, makes about 1,000 movies a year, but 50 percent aren't released and 95 percent of those released are financial flops. This is unfortunate considering every Bollywood clip we've ever seen has been absolutely amazing.

In 2008, The Dark Knight alone grossed $533 million domestically and over $1 billion internationally, certifying it in the top five highest grossing films of all time and a crown jewel in the Hollywood empire. It's just further evidence that the institution of Hollywood cannot possibly be bested in any way, and certainly not by the data in the following paragraph.

The Moneyshot

As early as 2002, about 11,000 adult movies were released per year--more than 20 times the mainstream movie production. Of course, it's not really fair to compare them in that regard since Hollywood has to worry about dialogue, special effects and plot, while porn only requires a handcam, titties, and maybe a pizza delivery guy costume. To meet current demand, a new pornographic video is being created every 39 minutes in the U.S. We don't know if that includes filming Giada De Laurentiis handling zucchini, eggplants or eclairs for various shows, but it damn well should.

I'm not sure that eggplant is clean yet, Giada. Give it another quick rubdown, wouldya?

When it comes to cinematic preferences, people let their money do the talking. Since mainstream theater chains won't show The Crotchmen in wide release, we're forced to use other means of comparison. And every time, porn wins.

For example, in hotel chains that offer in-room X-rated content alongside major Hollywood releases, porn movie rentals represent 55 percent of the overall pay-per-view usage. Porn consistently generates more revenue than the hotels' mini-bars, though that probably wouldn't be the case if the hand-lotion was locked up in there too.

In 2005, there were approximately 425 films released in Hollywood, including a Star Wars prequel and a Harry Potter movie, with domestic grosses of $8.597 billion. That's very impressive. In 2006, the cumulative grosses for porn videos in the U.S., leveraging video sales, rentals, mobile phone content and Internet revenues--came out to....

Are you ready?

$8.65 billion.

About the same, and that's minus the billions Hollywood spends on promotion. Oh, and we're going to take a wild guess and say that the combined budgets of every porno shot that year wouldn't even pay for the CGI in the opening credits of a Harry Potter movie. So, yeah, we're thinking that $8.65 billion is pretty much all profit.

#5.

Porn > Barack Obama

The Long, Hard Facts

In the digital age, there is no better snapshot of the zeitgeist than Web search trends. They allow you to view the ebb and flow of fads and news stories, as well as identify moments of hysteria:

If you examine top search trends in the U.S. over the last year an unsurprising amount of traffic was dedicated to coverage of the presidential election. We could have probably saved the electorate a lot of time by declaring Obama the winner when the search term "McCain" was trailing in popularity behind "American Idol," but apparently the constitution doesn't have those kinds of provisions.

The Moneyshot

Barack Obama was not only the front-runner for much of the presidential race, he garnered some attention as a "celebrity" along the way, particularly among the young people and internet users.

But it wasn't enough to make him number one. Most people just didn't feel they could fully absorb the nuances of presidential politics without rubbing one out first.

To illustrate this, we compared the volume of searches over the last year for "Sex" to those for "Obama" and "Iraq." We also added "Color Me Badd" because we thought it'd make them feel good just to be included, despite effectively serving as a statistical baseline:

Source.

Look a the poor red Obama line, looking like the ocean floor under blue sea of sex. It's no surprise, considering that in any given second, approximately 372 Internet users are typing "adult" search terms into search engines. Note the brief spike for Obama at point E up there. That's election day. It took a black man becoming leader of the free world to wrangle the collective consciousness away from sex for roughly 23 minutes.

#4.

Porn > Diamonds

The Long, Hard Facts

To further illustrate how utterly porn dominates the internet, let's give you one more.

Domain names are to Internet commerce what location is to real estate. That's why corporate giants like Toys 'R' Us shelled out $5.1 million for Toys.com. The difference between toys.com and toysrus.com is the difference between a house in Hawaii and a house in Dipshit, Michigan.

We do apologize to the good people of Dipshit.

The Moneyshot

So toys.com, that's got to be the most expensive domain name ever, right?

Not even close. Not even the 1999 sale of business.com at $7.5 million (a record at the time) makes the top. No, topping them all is, you guessed it, Sex.com, at a jaw-dropping $14 million.

Courtesy of sex.com and porn.com, smut sits pretty in the top five most expensive domains, trumping the keyword-monsters diamonds.com and creditcards.com. One could even argue that diamonds.com likewise qualifies as porn, if the sensation of being vigorously boned in the wallet while browsing there counts.

#3.

Porn + USA > Everybody Else

The Long, Hard Facts

If Michael Phelps demonstrated anything in the 2008 Olympics, it was that the United States Of America is pretty much the best at everything. OK, not so much education or health care or manufacturing things. But we rule at swimming. Oh, and internet porn. We produce more than anybody on the planet. Even adjusted for population, not even Japan can touch us.

Now, we know what you're saying: as a country we probably just produce more websites in general, and porn happens to be one variety. Not so. As early as 2003, Germany was producing 84.7 websites for every 1,000 members of their population to America's 63.7. In 2006, Israel was number one in the monthly hours spent on the Internet. Even Luxembourg, Germany, and Ireland lead in broadband penetration, a statistic so upsetting that we refuse to use it as a segue to a perfectly tuned dick joke.

And this is just a picture of Germany.

Things aren't looking much brighter going forward. China overtook us in total users by nearly 30 million in 2008 (of course, everyone knows the Chinese multiply by binary fission, so raw usage doesn't count). At least we're number one in is percentage of population using the Internet ... well, as long as you don't count Japan, Australia and Canada. That's right, we're losing the Internet war to our freaking hat.

The Moneyshot

But then, we have porn.

America has produced the most pornographic webpages of any country, or any 10 countries for that matter. At last count, we were responsible for 244,661,900 pages of perversion. Our nearest neighbor in that respect is Germany with 10,030,200 pages, but given the depraved material they're renowned for one can safely assume most of those pages have only been visited once or twice.

But we probably just lead because we have a higher population, right? Wrong; based on the current U.S. population, there is approximately 0.8 porn pages per U.S. citizen, six times the average of Germany. And if you think we're stopping before it's a one to one ratio, don't forget that there's a little Michael Phelps in ALL of our pornographers. U-S-A! U-S-A!

#2.

Porn > Productivity

The Long, Hard Facts

It is nearly impossible to quantify the effect that the desktop computer has had on production in modern business. Their capacity to automate, error-check, schedule tasks and intercommunicate are the very core of productivity. Even the inclusion of solitaire on most systems is vastly more efficient than breaking out a deck of cards and clearing the desk to play.

Three monitors, two towers and a laptop. Fuck you, procrastination.

The Moneyshot

There is no question that computers make our lives more efficient. After all, the staggering amount of pornography browsed at work probably cuts down on the time finding it at home significantly.

According to a 2008 Nielsen Online study, 25 percent of employees with internet connections use them to visit porn sites, which is up 23 percent from the previous year. M.J. McMahon, publisher of Adult Video News Online, further reports that hits on adult content peak during office hours. Its prevalence at work is blamed on the availability of non-subscription sites, a growing sentiment in the younger generation that pornography is not taboo, and those hydraulics on office chairs that let you ride low enough to facilitate covert wanking.

"Titties!"

It's not just a syndrome here in the Land of the Free (hand). Queen's University in Belfast conducted a survey of employees at 350 businesses in the U.S., U.K. and Australia for the porn-filtering firm SurfControl. Overall, 28 percent admitted to downloading sexually explicit content from the Web while on the job, though U.S. employees were slightly less likely to do so. Or they were smart enough to deny it.

The good news is you don't have to worry about that lagging work ethic hurting the economy. The porn industry employs about 12,000 people in California and pays over $36 million in taxes every year, so every clandestine tug is helping, really.

#1.

Porn > Everything

The Long, Hard Facts

Remember at the beginning when we said as big as you think porn is, it's actually bigger? We meant it.

Microsoft, purveyor of the operating system used on most of the computers in the world, reported 2008 profits in excess of $16 billion. ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded company and number five on Forbes' top 2000 companies, posted 2008 profits of $40.6 billion. Though there is little in common with their industries, they do share one common bond: porn revenues spank them both, and then poop on their chest.

Secretly, Microsoft kind of enjoys it.

The Moneyshot

In 2006, the sum of international revenues from pornographic videos, sexual novelties, magazines, "dance" clubs, pay-per-view and Internet was approximately $97 billion.

Can you even wrap your mind around that number? Try it this way: that's larger than the combined annual revenues of the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball. Think about how many stadiums full of furiously masturbating people that is. Just don't think of it the next time you're at a game.

Still not impressed? Well, our domestic revenues for pornography are larger than the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink combined.

This means $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography internationally every second. To put that in perspective, when ExxonMobil posted a quarterly profit of $11.7 billion last year, the largest in American history, they were effectively making $1,947 less per second than the world of filth mongers. Worse, Astroglide is water-based, so Exxon isn't even getting a cut of the lube commodities market.

When you start talking about money this big it's not even fair to compare individual companies, so we just made the jump to entire fucking countries. If you compare porn revenues to Gross Domestic Product, the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year, it is bigger than Morocco. And with mobile porn estimated to grow to become a $3.3 billion business by 2011, it's only a matter of time before Kazakhstan goes down like...

Well, you know.

Original here

World's first cloned camel unveiled in Dubai

2009-04-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

By Richard Spencer in Dubai

Injaz, or Achievement, was unveiled to the world alongside her surrogate mother five days after being born at the city's Camel Reproduction Centre.

"This is the first time scientists have cloned a camel calf," the scientific director of the central veterinary research laboratory, Dr Ulrich Wernery, said. "She is a healthy female."

The project had the personal backing of Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, best known in Britain as one of the world's leading racehorse owners.

The Camel Reproduction Centre now hopes to use the technique on some of Dubai's leading racing camels to preserve elite bloodlines for the future.

Camel racing is a popular past-time in the Gulf region, though the traditional child riders have largely been replaced by robots due to humanitarian concerns.

"We are all very excited by the birth of Injaz," Dr Lulu Skidmore, the centre's scientific director, said. "This significant breakthrough in our research programme gives a means of preserving the valuable genetics of our elite racing and milk-producing camels in the future."

The scientists employed the standard animal cloning techniques first used in the case of Dolly the sheep in 1996 by scientists in Edinburgh.

Injaz is the clone of a camel slaughtered for its meat in 2005. The ovaries were removed and DNA extracted and placed in an egg taken from and re-implanted into the surrogate mother.

Tests since Injaz's birth have shown the camel's DNA to be a copy of the dead animal, not the mother.

The birth, after an "uncomplicated" gestation period of 378 days, followed a number of unsuccessful attempts at producing a clone.

The Camel Reproduction Centre previously produced the world's first "Cama", the first surviving hybrid of a camel and a guanaco, a type of llama.

Original here

14 horses die just before polo match

2009-04-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- Fourteen thoroughbred horses dropped dead in a mysterious scene Sunday before a polo match near West Palm Beach, Florida, officials said.

Teams are trying to figure out what happened at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Florida.

State and local veterinary teams are trying to figure out what happened at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington, Florida, as team Lechuza Caracas prepared to compete in a U.S. Open match.

Two horses initially collapsed, and as vets and team officials scrambled to revive them, five others became dizzy, said Tim O'Connor, spokesman for the polo club.

"A total of seven died on our property," O'Connor told CNN. Seven other horses died en route to a Wellington horse farm and a veterinary hospital.

The cause of the deaths has not been determined, and necropsies and blood tests were underway, he said.

O'Connor said each team brings between 40 to 60 horses for matches, and they are continuously switched out throughout a match to keep the horses from overexerting themselves.

A meeting will be held to determine whether Lechuza Caracas will compete at a later date, he said.

"Everybody is kind of in shock and trying to figure out what happened," he said. "Nobody can recall an incident in which this many horses have died at once."

Original here

Easter Gifts, Multiplying on the Loose

2009-04-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

Karena Cawthon for The New York Times

The rabbit population is booming on Okaloosa Island, Fla., and some have been hanging out in the backyard of Phil and Shirley Dykes, left. Trapping has begun.

By DAMIEN CAVE

OKALOOSA ISLAND, Fla. — What is it about Florida that inspires pet owners to set their captives free?

Green iguanas released decades ago now splash in the pools of Palm Beach. Peacocks roam free in parts of Miami, Burmese pythons are spreading through the entire state — and here, on this two-mile shoelace of beachfront land, the bunny problem keeps multiplying.

Dozens of rabbits, the spawn of Easter gifts from as far back as 2002, now run wild in a field of two-story condominiums.

Actually, wild is an exaggeration. “I have two that let me pet them,” said Denise Callahan, 55, out for a walk on Wednesday with her dog, Gigi. “One’s Peter; the other’s Mama.”

A few feet to her right, a snow-white rabbit with dark eyes sniffed the sand near a boat trailer. Behind her, a chubby brown one hopped past a parked Hyundai. Clearly, in a neighborhood of mostly parking lots and small apartments, these bunnies felt at home.

John Wagnon, 45, a bartender working on a bicycle in his garage, said they often cheered him up. “Some days,” he said, “you have a bad day at work, you turn the corner and you say, ‘Bunnies!’ ”

He pointed excitedly, mimicking his usual reaction. “It’s like the homeless situation,” he said. “Where else would they want to live?”

Next door, Russell Beasley just shook his head. He had been building cabinets in his garage when he felt compelled to offer an opinion. “They’re a pain,” he said, revealing a Massachusetts accent. Antibunny bile followed: He compared them to rats; he said they would attract snakes; he said they would cause car accidents because drivers would swerve to miss them. “People might think they’re cute, but they’re a menace,” said Mr. Beasley, 61. “They’re multiplying like crazy — that’s what they do.”

Previous cases of unintended fertility in Florida have led government officials to step in. State rules that took effect last year force anyone who buys a python to purchase a $100 annual permit, and the slithery reptile gets a mandatory microchip that would let officials track the animal back to its owner.

Palm Beach County Commissioners have pushed for the same policy to deal with its leathery iguanas.

Here in Okaloosa Island, the solution has been a little more old-school: wire traps with carrots as bait. The local animal shelter put them out after Easter this year, and the first rabbit was caught on Wednesday, in the front yard of Phil and Shirley Dykes. Their little patch of green had already become ground zero for all things bunny because they lacked a dog and provided a delicacy — healthy rose bushes.

Even with a large, confused brown rabbit in the cage, a half dozen others sat nearby, including a black, furry baby that would fit in a child’s hand. “This is an animal friendly environment,” said Mr. Dykes, 68, a retired engineer who once worked for NASA.

Standing on his front porch, he admitted that his wife had to convince him to host the trap. His soft spot for animals was well-known; recently he let a group of doves nest in his garage. He even left the door partly open so they could come and go as they pleased.

The rabbits initially received the same warm welcome.

“It’s amusing to watch them play in the yard,” he said, adding, “I didn’t mind them until they ate the shrubbery.”

His wife was less generous. “I just had three in the garage, and one came right up to me,” she said. “No thank you.”

Mr. Dykes insisted, however, that they not be killed — a common request here that previously kept the Panhandle Animal Welfare Society at bay. Dee Thompson, director of animal control at the agency, said a solution emerged only in the last few days: a man with lot of land in Walton County volunteered to take them after seeing an article about them in The Northwest Florida Daily News.

“He already has rabbits on his property,” Ms. Thompson said. “He said he wouldn’t eat them.”

Residents here are likely to miss the bunnies if too many disappear. Cassandra Higgins, 25, said they did not cause much harm, and even her dogs, Lady and Rugar, seemed to like them.

When told about the traps, Ms. Callahan said, “Oh no.” Come to think of it, she said she had not seen Mama — “a huge brown rabbit with scars all over her like she’d been through the mill” — in days. And as she walked Gigi down the road during a gorgeous coastal sunset, she turned around with a final call to action.

“Save the rabbits!” she said, laughing, knowing it sounded a bit ridiculous. “Save the rabbits!”

Original here

Dog honoured for tackling burglar

2009-04-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

Toby suffered a punctured lung as he fought off the intruder

A Labrador who fought to protect its owners from a knife-wielding burglar has been honoured for his bravery.

Toby was stabbed four times in the chest and legs by the intruder but still managed to chase him out.

The Morton family, from Barnoldswick in Lancashire, had been staying at Leconfield Barracks in East Yorkshire.

They awoke to find their pet in a pool of blood. But the eight-month-old survived and has been awarded by the animal charity, PDSA.

The armed burglar, who attacked Toby with three knives taken from the kitchen, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years for the offence.

Toby suffered a punctured lung in the attack, in June 2007, as he fought to stop the offender going upstairs to the sleeping family.

After succeeding in chasing the offender out of the building Toby then woke his owner, Jonathan Morton, by barking.

Had it not been for Toby's determined barking and lunging at the intruder, Mr Morton would not have been aware of the threat to his family.

Chris Heaps, PDSA deputy chairman

Mr Morton and his wife Samantha praised their pet's actions.

He said: "Toby is our hero. I dread to think what could have happened if he had not intervened that night."

The Labrador has been presented with the PDSA Certificate for Animal Bravery by the charity's senior deputy chairman Chris Heaps.

He said: "Had it not been for Toby's determined barking and lunging at the intruder, Mr Morton would not have been aware of the threat to his family.

"Toby is indeed a worthy recipient of the PDSA Certificate for Animal Bravery."

Original here

5 Winners Teach Us How to Learn From Failure

2009-04-21T10:20:00.000-07:00

Photographed by Michael Nemeth/WonderfulMachine

When her marriage ended, former soldier Randi Ketchum bounced back and started teaching kindergarten.

When author J. K. Rowling addressed the graduating class at Harvard last June, she didn't focus on success. Instead, she spoke about failure. She related a story about a young woman who gave up her dream of writing novels to study something more practical. Nonetheless, she ended up as an unemployed single mom "as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless." But during this rock-bottom time, she realized she still had a wonderful daughter, an old typewriter, and an idea that would become the foundation for rebuilding her life. Perhaps you've heard of Harry Potter? "You might never fail on the scale I did," Rowling told that privileged audience. "But it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all--in which case, you fail by default.

"You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."

Lots of Americans are tasting failure for the first time now and immediately trying to spit it out. Whether it's a home foreclosure, unemployment, or the evaporation of hard-earned savings, the have-it-all generation suddenly doesn't. But in the bitterness that accompanies adversity are lessons worth savoring--and, if you look hard enough, sweet opportunity.

On the pages that follow, you'll learn how the brain responds to failure and how it can be reprogrammed for success using some simple tricks. You'll also find advice from a successful entrepreneur who claims that times like these are actually among the best for launching dreams. But most valuable, you'll meet some ordinary people who were in some tough situations. A few screwed up; others got sucker punched. But even though their stories are quite different, the outcomes are the same. They all bounced back. And you can too.

As Rowling herself would admit, it doesn't take a wizard to do it.

"I failed to be the wife with a white-picket life, but I've since given it to my children …"
--Randi Ketchum, 36, Huron, Ohio

It was one of the happiest times of my life. I was 29 and had just received my bachelor's degree, graduating with honors despite working two jobs and being a wife and mother. My parents and five-year-old son were in the audience when I walked onto the stage at Ashland University to get my diploma. I was so excited and proud to be starting a teaching career and contributing more to my family's well-being.

But when I got home that evening, there was a note from my husband written on the back of an envelope. It basically said he'd come to get his clothes and wouldn't be back. We'd been having trouble, but the finality of that note still came as a shock. He had emptied our bank account. We were horribly in debt. I had quit my previous jobs in anticipation of interviewing for a teaching position. Plus, I was eight months pregnant.

Most young women have an idealized picture of the happy-go-lucky life they're going to live in a house with a white-picket fence. But no one ever sits you down and says that's not reality, and sometimes life is just darn ugly. It all caved in for me that night. I was embarrassed, scared, and angry and felt I had failed.

But I had my son, and I was about to bring a new life into the world, so despite my deep sadness, I had to go on. The next morning, I woke up (literally and figuratively), put my feet on the floor, took a deep breath, fixed breakfast, and basically did everything I always did. I used my routine to keep me moving. After being in the military for six years, I guess you can say I fell back on my training, like all good soldiers do in tough situations. One small step after one small step was the way I bounced back.

And in the seven years since, I've continued moving forward. I got a job as a kindergarten teacher, earned a master's degree in education, and watched my babies grow to 12 and seven. I certainly would never have chosen to put them through this, but in retrospect, I'm glad it happened to me when it did. It helped me find my voice and myself a lot sooner. It helped me grow independent, confident, and strong--things I'm hopefully instilling now in my children.

"I failed at everything when I was young, but I just sold my company for $75 million …"
--Bob Williamson, 62, South Florida

In 1970, when I was 24, I hitchhiked to Atlanta and, ironically, ended up on Luckie Street. I was anything but lucky at the time. I was a drug addict and was wanted by police. Everything I owned was in a pillowcase. I had decided I was going to either straighten up or commit suicide. I sold a pint of blood for $7 and got a room for the night at the Luckie Street YMCA. The next day, I landed a job cleaning bricks, then moved into a boardinghouse and slowly started making my way back.

But luck wasn't on my side just yet. I got into a head-on collision in a borrowed car and was hurt so badly, I was in the hospital for three months. While I was there, I took to reading the Bible. I picked it up out of boredom and really thought I would disapprove of it. But I read the New Testament, then the Old, and then the New again--every word of it. And at that moment, I started to feel a gentle, steady pull of encouragement. Even though I had the morals of a junkyard dog, I felt forgiven and even loved.

Shortly after I left the hospital, I met a wonderful young woman, whom I married six months later. She was like something out of The Brady Bunch, as opposite to me as you could imagine, but we've been married now for 38 years and have a large, loving family. I went on to become a pillar of the community and a successful businessman. In fact, I just sold my software company, the ninth business I founded, for $75 million.

I don't believe in coincidence or luck. I believe in God. And if there's a lesson I learned from this, it's that God seems to show his strength and power through weakness. I think he picks the down-and-out on purpose to demonstrate what's possible. But it isn't always an aha moment. He doesn't just bless you and heap on the millions. Rather, God shows you the way and supplies the opportunities. Then it's up to you to set the goals, devise the strategy, and, most important, provide the man-hours. That's the way you get to lucky street.

"I failed to save someone's life, but I didn't make the same mistake twice …"
--Mary Wilson, 65, Montecatini, Italy

I was making dinner in my apartment in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1996 when I heard breaking glass and a woman screaming next door. I knew immediately what was happening: The young woman was being beaten by her husband--and this time, I didn't hesitate to act.

Photographed by Preston C. Mack/Redux

Bob Williamson once sold his blood for $7 a pint. He recently sold his software company for $75 million.

You see, 15 years earlier, when I was living in a house near Boston, I had another young couple as upstairs tenants. They would fight occasionally and get loud, but they'd always settle down when I phoned to complain. But very early one morning, I heard screaming. I called like I normally did, and when no one answered and things quieted down, I went back to bed. The next thing I knew, someone was banging on my door, and when I opened it, I saw the man who lived upstairs. "I've killed Sandy," he said. He was covered in blood and, as I later found out, had used knives and broken bottles to stab her to death and then tried to kill himself. I called the police and went upstairs. What I saw was so horrible, I couldn't continue to live there. I sold the house at a loss that week.

I was pretty traumatized afterward. I never sought psychiatric help but probably should have. I couldn't get over the fact that I had an intuition about that guy, but I dismissed it. I knew my guilt wasn't rational, but it never left me. Deep down, I always felt I could have done something.

And that's why when I heard the screaming again in '96, like a cruel déjà vu, I was immediately on the phone with police and then out the door to help. I was angry, livid, maybe even a little out of control. Their door was dead-bolted from inside, but through the broken glass panels, I could see him dragging her into the bathroom. He was covered in blood from crawling through the glass and was screaming, "I'm going to drown you!" I started pounding on the door and yelling, "Leave her alone! I can see what you're doing!" That must have surprised him, because he stumbled, and then she broke free, and he fled out the back door.

The girl was bruised but not seriously injured. Since I was in the Navy at the time, I took her to the base for safekeeping and then helped her through the entire legal process until he was finally convicted.

In retrospect, the whole story is so strange, I almost can't believe it. It's like it was meant to happen. I no longer feel guilty, because things have come full circle. But what I still occasionally ponder is how opportunity exists even in horrible situations--the opportunity to learn, to improve, and ultimately to react differently if you're ever given a second chance.

"I failed to be careful and lost my eye, but it's helped me see things more clearly …"
--Alex Gadd, 52, Pikeville, Tennessee

I was loading my truck to go to the flea market when a hook on one of the bungees bent and snapped back into my left eye. The pain was like a hot sword had been shoved through my head. I fell down on my hands and knees, and when I saw what looked like gelatin and blood dripping onto the ground, I knew it was bad.

They took me to Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, where there's a special eye center. The doctors there operated on me several times but couldn't save my eye. When they told me the news, I wanted to die. I was divorced, and I figured no woman would ever want anything to do with me. All that was left of my eye was white, and my face was swollen and bruised.

Even after I got my prosthetic eye, I couldn't shake the depression. To make matters worse, I lost my job as a transportation officer for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services because of concerns about my driving ability. But one morning, I woke up and the TV was on, and there was this 16-year-old girl. She had been severely burned on her face, hands, and legs and was learning to walk again. She wore a big smile and seemed to look right at me and said, "You can't ever give up." At that moment, I thought, This is just an eye. Get over it.

And I did.

It's been almost 12 years since my accident, and there isn't anything I can't do now that I used to do. Women still seem to like me, and no one can even tell I have a prosthetic eye, because the new one is that good. And although I didn't get my old job back, they reinstated my license, and I haven't had so much as a fender bender in over a million miles of driving.

I read a story once where this man was feeling bad because he had no shoes, until he met a man who had no feet. No matter how devastating your problem is, remember there's always someone somewhere who's worse off. Despite having just one eye, I see things a lot more clearly now.

"I failed to realize my dream, but I've since realized other things …"
--Daryl Nelson, 36, Brooklyn, New York

A record deal. It happened to my best friend and me when we were juniors at Virginia State University playing in a hip-hop band called BizzrXtreemz. I heard that Clive Davis, the founder and president of Arista Records, blessed the deal himself. We dropped out of school to move to New York in the summer of '94. We were 21 years old, and we were on our way.

In order to concentrate on our music, we hired a manager and entrusted him with our $5,000 advance. But one day when we showed up at the studio, we were told we couldn't record anymore because they hadn't been getting paid. Our manager was a crook. With no money of our own, we threw together a few songs, but the quality was horrible. The head of Arista's music department hated them, and we lost the deal.

After six months, it was over.

I remember sitting in a daze under a bridge with winos and homeless people. Nothing had ever hinted at failure. I thought I was destined. Of course, we didn't immediately give up. We cut other demos and took them around town, but after a while, we had to start working to survive. The music never left us; it just became a smaller part of our lives. I'm a benefits coordinator for a union now, the latest in a long string of customer-service jobs I've held in the 15 years since that summer. My partner and I broke up some years back, and I've released a few solo songs under the name River Nelson for a small London-based label. But I'm not chasing the same dream anymore. There comes a time when you have to reassess your dreams and cast out what's lofty or no longer reality. At the same time, though, you keep those things that are valuable, which for me was the resiliency, perseverance, and focus I'd acquired. If you go at it this way, you'll see that the pot of gold is really chasing that pot of gold.

I still do music, but I do it for music's sake now. I've redirected all the energy I used to put into the business of music into other creative things. And that's been a new beginning. I still have a piece of my original dream, but now I also have all these other blessings.

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When Pixels Find New Life on Real Paper

2009-04-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

Jodi Hilton for The New York Times

Randall Munroe, creator of the popular Internet comic strip xkcd, plans to venture forth from his playpen filled with plastic balls to publish an actual book.

By NOAM COHEN

IT’S not exactly Quentin Tarantino directing Ibsen, or Jeff Gordon racing go-carts, but the idea that Randall Munroe, creator of the online comic strip xkcd — wildly popular among techies the world over for its witty use of programming code in its gags — would for the first time publish a book is still something of a head scratcher.

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xkcd.com

Not a book for Kindle, I should add. A print book — you know, dead trees, ink, no text search, nonadjustable font size. The plan is for an initial press run of 10,000 copies sometime around June. And judging by the enthusiasm of the strip’s fans, who frequently act out the concepts in the strip in real life, those copies should sell quickly.

So, are we seeing an all-too-rare example of the triumph of print books over digital content? Does even an online legend like the 24-year-old Mr. Munroe crave the respectability of print? (Mr. Munroe once before climbed the respectability ladder when in October he competed against the illustrator Farley Katz of The New Yorker in a “cartoon-off.” No winner was declared.)

In fact, the xkcd story previews the much more likely future of books in which they are prized as artifacts, not as mechanisms for delivering written material to readers. This is print book as vinyl record — admired for its look and feel, its cover art, and relative permanence — but not so much for convenience.

The print xkcd book is not being published through a traditional company but rather by breadpig — which was created by Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of the social-news Web site reddit. The site has sold high-concept merchandise like refrigerator magnets or T-shirts, but never a book. (Its profits go to the charity Room to Read.)

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“We never made any projection — 10,000 seems like a good run,” Mr. Ohanian said, adding that this lack of research “is laughable from the perspective of anyone who knows the book industry. It’s what makes sense.”

The book — with the working title “xkcd,” though Mr. Ohanian says it may carry a subtitle like “a book of romance, sarcasm, math and language” — will not initially be sold in bookstores, and probably never in the big chains. Instead, it will be sold through the xkcd Web site.

“It doesn’t need to be in bookstores,” Mr. Munroe said. “I don’t have hard numbers about this, but the impression I get is that the amount of eyeballs you get from being on the humor shelf at Barnes & Noble — it is almost insignificant.”

Mr. Munroe said he had been contacted by large publishers, particularly those that specialize in comics and graphic novels. “The traditional model is they send us a royalty, and they handle getting it sold,” he said. “We figure that most of our audience is people who know us from the Internet — normal publishers weren’t as interested.”

Naturally, without an established publisher and with a devoted fan base online, the book will not be promoted through traditional publicity. Rather, the plan is to rely on word-of-keyboard.

Such online recommendations, Mr. Ohanian said, were how he discovered xkcd. “The first time xkcd showed up on reddit — it was just good,” he said. “The Internet really facilitates good stuff being read.”

Will there be review copies sent to newspapers and magazines? Good question, Mr. Ohanian said. There’s no reason why not, he quickly concluded.

While Mr. Munroe conceded a nostalgic love of books, remembering how he devoured books of a favorite comic strip, Calvin & Hobbes, he said he is now a committed Kindle 2 user, preferring it to print. Still, he said: “I have this urge. You want to print them out and put them up on places. There is something good about collecting them together.”

Publishing a book is an extension of the selling of items like T-shirts and posters, which pays the bills, he said, to a “free culture” mind-set about the cartoons themselves. “We have been encouraging people to share things, saying that it is a good business decision,” he said. “Instead of trying to convince people, why not make a bunch of money?”

The book will have 150 to 200 of strips out of more than 500 so far published online and is expected to sell for $19. The selection was made by a fan who is also doing the layout for breadpig. “I took a few off and added a few others,” he said.

The book will include a foreword from Mr. Munroe as well as red-ink commentary from him on the most popular strips. One trick in transferring the material from online to print has been how to recreate the “title text” that comments on the strip when your cursor hovers over it.

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“It’s not supposed to be a punch line, but hopefully if you didn’t laugh, you’ll laugh at this,” he said. The title text will appear where the tiny copyright notice would appear on a traditional strip.

Does that mean that the book won’t carry a traditional copyright and instead take its lead from the online comic strip itself, which Mr. Munroe licenses under Creative Commons, allowing noncommercial re-use as long as credit is given?

“To anyone who wants to photocopy, bind, and give a copy of the book to their loved one — more power to them,” he said. “He/She will likely be disappointed that you’re so cheap, though.”

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I breastfeed my dad

2009-04-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

As Georgia Browne breastfeeds her baby son Monty, nothing could seem more normal or natural. At eight months old, Monty thrives on his mother’s milk, but someone else is also thriving on Georgia’s milk – her father Tim!

That’s because Tim’s battling cancer. He drinks his daughter’s breastmilk every day to boost his immune system and give him the strength to fight the disease.

After researching the idea on the internet, Georgia, 27, expresses her breastmilk as often as she can for her father to drink. He has the milk on his bowl of cornflakes every morning. It’s been his daily routine for the past six months and Tim believes the milk has given him a boost.

A shock diagnosis
Georgia’s world was turned upside-down when her beloved dad was diagnosed with cancer in July 2007, just a week before she was due to get married.

Tim, 67, was admitted to hospital with stomach pains and within hours doctors discovered he had colon cancer. He was rushed into surgery where they operated to remove a tumour. But despite the major surgery, a tearful Tim was released in time to walk Georgia down the aisle.

‘It felt amazing having him at the wedding – it made it more emotional for everyone,’ she says. After the wedding, Georgia’s family rallied to support Tim as he went for further tests and treatment. But within weeks, he was told the cancer had spread. And soon after the family received even more devastating news – the cancer was terminal.

‘It was a terrible shock. He’d never been ill before,’ Georgia says. ‘He still is really fit. He goes to the gym three times a week.’ Tim endured gruelling chemotherapy and after a year went into remission. But the cancer returned when Georgia was pregnant with her first child.

Life-saving milk
Georgia gave birth to Monty last July and began breastfeeding. A month later, she watched a TV documentary in which an American man believed his prostate cancer had been helped because he drank breastmilk.

‘The man went to a milk bank for his supply of breastmilk and drank it in a milkshake,’ Georgia recalls. ‘I started researching on the internet immediately and found separate studies in America and Scandinavia both supporting the health benefits of breastmilk to cancer sufferers.

‘I watched the documentary and thought it was a really mad idea, if it was true,’ she says. 'I started looking on the net and found research suggesting breastmilk helps kill cancer cells.

‘Finding out I could help was amazing. I could play my small part in helping my dad do something positive for his illness. 'When I talked to him about it, he thought it was a great idea. He thought: “Why not?”’

Seeking support
Georgia broached the subject with her family before going ahead. They all thought it was fantastic and supported her 100 per cent. ‘My mum thought it was great and my sisters and brother were supportive,’ she says.

With the family’s blessing, Georgia started expressing her milk for Tim straight away. She dropped the first batch round to her parents’ home in a freezer bag, which her mum popped in the freezer.

‘I thought he’d mix it into a milkshake like the man in the documentary, but when Mum defrosted it the next day, he simply poured it on his cornflakes with a splash of normal cow’s milk. He said it didn’t taste that different to cow’s milk, maybe just a bit sweeter if he didn’t get the mix right,’ Georgia says.

‘I know some people think it’s shocking but we didn’t think it was shocking at all. He thought it was funny. He was telling all his friends about it.’

Tim spoke to his doctors and nurses about drinking breastmilk and they were more than happy for him to try the unconventional treatment. 'They told him that anything that could help was positive,’ Georgia explains. ‘They were very supportive and backed the idea.’

Hope at last
A month after starting the regimen, a scan of Tim’s cancer showed a slight, but distinct, improvement. Although doctors can’t say whether the breastmilk’s helped, Georgia says he’s brighter and has more energy.

She has promised to continue feeding Tim for as long as she can. 'He has been having chemo as well as drinking the milk so there’s no way of really finding out if it is helping,’ Georgia explains. ‘I’m still feeding Monty so I feed him first, then I fill a bag for my dad. We’ll continue as long as I am breastfeeding.

‘It feels like I’m doing the most natural thing for the people I love. 'I’ve been there when he has drunk it and it’s just not an issue. 'Not many women can say their dad drinks their breastmilk. But I would do anything to give my dad more time with me, our family and Monty.’

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Red-Hot Redheads: Cool Facts About Carrot Tops

2009-04-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

By Allison Ford

We’ve all heard that blondes are dumb, brunettes are smart and dependable, and that curly-haired women are unhinged, but of all the hair stereotypes out there, no one suffers more injustice than redheads do. Throughout history, they’ve been subjected to discrimination and fearful prejudice, being viewed as untrustworthy, mischievous, temperamental, and lustful. In ancient Egypt, red hair was seen as so unlucky, red-haired girls were burned alive. According to Greek myths, redheads turn into vampires when they die. It’s even said that redheads get stung by bees more often. Ouch!

It can be hard to grow up with red hair, constantly getting called names like “ginger” and “carrot top.” Having the rarest hair color might make a redhead feel awkward, but it turns out that there are some special attributes that make them pretty unique. Maybe they’re the ones who have more fun. At the very least, their hair doesn’t go gray.

The Rarity of Red
In the late 1990s, scientists discovered that gene mutation causes red headedness. Specifically, it’s a variant of the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R), one of the key proteins that determines hair and skin color. The mutated gene is recessive, so in order for someone to have red hair, she has to inherit two copies of the gene, one from each parent. Lots of people, especially those with Northern European ancestry, carry one copy of MC1R, but relatively few carry the two copies required for flaming tresses. Red hair can occur in any ethnicity, but the greatest concentration of redheads originates in Northern Europe, near the U.K. Scotland has the highest percentage of natural redheads, with 13 percent and Ireland is a close second, with 10 percent. Only about 2 percent of people in the United States have naturally red hair.

If red hair is so rare, why does it occur so often in the same geographic area? Some biologists think that it’s an evolutionary adaptation. In cold and dark climates, fair coloring lets the skin absorb more light, which encourages the body to retain heat and produce more vitamin D. Also, for most of human history, people didn’t stray very far from the place where they were born and intermarried with people with similar genetic traits. When there were plenty of people carrying the gene, their children were very likely to get two copies of the mutated MC1R. Now that people migrate more, carriers of MC1R are more likely to intermarry with non-carriers. That’s good for genetic diversity, but maybe not so good for the survival of redheads in general.

For the past few years, there’s been a rumor that redheads are going extinct, but that’s not exactly true. Because of intermarriage, the numbers are declining, but there will always be redheads, because there will always be carriers of the MC1R gene. It might be less likely that one carrier will meet another and have redheaded children, but it’s always a possibility. In fact, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine a future where everyone knows exactly what’s in his or her genome, and MC1R carriers can choose to have children with fellow carriers, maximizing the likelihood that their children will have red hair.

A Redheaded “Knockout?”
The mutated MC1R gene has some other surprising effects. Although doctors and medical practitioners have long speculated that redheads were harder to sedate, a recent study from the University of Louisville determined that redheads really do require more anesthesia during surgery.

The researchers ran an experiment where they put women under sedation, and then tested their response to pain. The redheaded patients required 20 to 30 percent more anesthetic than other women to achieve the same level of sedation. Scientists at the university also tried to replicate the experiment with mice, and found that animals with a MC1R mutation required more sedation, too. They theorize that the mutated gene somehow has implications beyond hair color, and perhaps affects hormones or enzymes involved in our neurological system.

The Siren Song of Red Hair
Throughout history, redheads have been mistrusted and maligned. In medieval Europe, the infamous witch-hunting manual, Malleus Maleficarum, instructed that red hair and green eyes were marks of a witch, as were freckles, which redheads tend to have aplenty. This belief might have stemmed from the general consensus that redheads were evil, wanton, and hot-tempered. In the Bible, Mary Magdalene and Judas Iscariot are often portrayed as redheads, as was Lilith, Adam’s first wife who insisted on sexual equality. Even Jonathan Swift, in his 1726 classic Gulliver’s Travels, characterized redheads as being wanton and promiscuous.

There might actually be some truth to the myth of the lustful redhead. A recent study by a sex researcher in Hamburg, Germany found that women with red hair had sex more often. Another survey in England duplicated those findings, and reported that redheads had sex an average of three times per week, compared to twice per week for blondes and brunettes. For these studies, it didn’t matter whether the women’s hair was naturally red or Natural Instincts. Of all the women who color their hair, 30 percent choose to become redheads—more than the 27 percent who go brunette and the 26 percent who go blonde. Some scientists theorize that these women are capitalizing on the perception of the fiery redhead to signal to men that they are looking for partners.

Even if redheads do have to endure a lifetime of sunburns and being called “ginger,” their hair doesn’t just make them stand out, it makes them incredibly unique. Some famous fiery redheads include Queen Elizabeth I, Galileo, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon, and Vincent Van Gogh. More recent redheads include comedienne Lucille Ball and birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. Not exactly a bad crowd to be associated with, if you ask me. If this is the company that redheads keep, then I’m off to the salon.

Original here

Italian scientist, turning 100, still works

2009-04-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

ROME – Rita Levi Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said Saturday that even though she is about to turn 100, her mind is sharper than it was she when she was 20.

Levi Montalcini, who also serves as a senator for life in Italy, celebrates her 100th birthday on Wednesday, and she spoke at a ceremony held in her honor by the European Brain Research Institute.

She shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.

"At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20," she told the party, complete with a large cake for her.

The Turin-born Levi Montalcini recounted how the anti-Jewish laws of the 1930s under Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime forced her to quit university and do research in an improvised laboratory in her bedroom at home.

"Above all, don't fear difficult moments," she said. "The best comes from them."

"I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately, in university institutes but in a bedroom," the scientist said.

Her white hair elegantly coifed and wearing a smart navy blue suit, she raised a glass of sparkling wine in a toast to her long life.

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Woman handed Asbo for loud sex sessions after neighbours complained to police 25 times

2009-04-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

By Daily Mail Reporter

A woman has been given an Asbo banning her from making too much noise when having sex with her husband.

Caroline Cartwright was found guilty of breaching a noise abatement notice served on her after 25 complaints to police.

The 47-year-old denied the latest five charges but was found guilty after Sunderland magistrates listened to recordings of her loud lovemaking with husband Steve.

Screams: Caroline Cartwright and husband Steve's loud, marathon sex sessions kept their partially deaf neighbour Margery Ball awake at night for two years

The couple’s partially deaf neighbour Margery Ball said she had not had a decent night’s sleep in two years because of the noise made by the couple.

As well as being given an Asbo, Mrs Cartwright was yesterday fined £200 with £300 costs.

She was taken to court after Environmental Health officers placed recording equipment in the flat next door to her house in Concord, Tyne and Wear.

Her neighbour, Rachel O’Connor, pressed a button on the machine every time she was disturbed by noise from next door.

She told the court: ‘I heard sounds of a sexual nature, they were really loud, and there was a lot of moaning and groaning and screaming as if in pain.

‘It wasn’t just the woman, it came from both parties.’

Miss O’Connor told the court that when she first moved into the flat, in November 2007, the noise started at midnight and lasted until 3am.

Now, she said, the noise started at about 6.30am and lasted until 9am.

Environmental Health officer Pamela Spark told the court she had listened to 23 recordings of the couple having sex.

She said: ‘There was an excessive screaming female voice on the recordings.’

Mrs Cartwright told the court that she was not ‘making the noise on purpose’.

She added: ‘I can’t understand why people ask me to be quiet. It’s normal to me.’

But chairman of the magistrates Alan Griffins said: ‘You were ordered to refrain from screaming and shouting at such levels when engaging in sexual activity with your husband.

‘You could have made efforts to minimise your vocalisation while having sex. You have not shown due respect for other human beings.’

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Giant robot spider in Yokohama (pics/ video)

2009-04-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

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A pair of giant robotic spiders designed and built by French performance art group La Machine have come to Yokohama to take part in the upcoming Expo Y150, a 5-month festival commemorating the 150th anniversary of the opening of the city’s port.

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Although the Expo Y150 festivities are not scheduled to officially begin until the end of April, the enormous steampunk spiders could be seen prowling the Yokohama waterfront this weekend.

Here is some superb video of the spectacle on Friday (April 17) night, when one of the 12-meter (40-ft) tall, 37-ton mechanical spiders was observed in the red brick warehouse area of Yokohama — far from its natural habitat of Nantes, France.

+ Video

On Saturday (April 18) evening, one of the mechanical spiders performed a water dance at Shinko Pier while the other looked on from its perch atop a nearby shipping container. For the performance, the spider moved its mechanical legs and shot steam and water and from its mouth and rear end, while suspended over the water from a large crane. Water cannons, fog machines, lights and live atmospheric music added to the drama.

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On Sunday (April 19), both spiders were scheduled to depart Shinko Pier, take a stroll up Nihon-Odori street, and head back to the red brick warehouse area.

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La Machine’s giant spiders will be on public display at Expo Y150 from April 28 to September 27.

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PHOTOS: Coin-Size Frog Found -- One of World's Smallest

2009-03-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

As the smallest known frog species in the world's second largest mountain range, this new amphibian is easy to miss.

But scientists searching the Andes mountains' upper Cosnipata Valley in southern Peru, near Cusco, spotted the coin-size creature--a member of the Noblella genus--in the leaf litter of a cloud forest between 9,925 and 10,466 feet (3,025 and 3,190 meters).

(See pictures of other new frogs and amphibians found recently in South America.)

"The most distinctive character of the new species," scientists write in the February issue of the journal Copeia, "is its diminutive size." Females grow to 0.49 inch (12.4 millimeters) at most. Males make it to only 0.44 inch (11.1 millimeters).

What's most surprising is that the frog lives at such high elevations, said study co-author Alessandro Catenazzi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. In general, larger animals are found at greater heights.
A new species of frog in the Noblella genus grasps her two eggs, which she will watch over and keep moist until they hatch into froglets, a February 2009 study says.

The smallest frog in South America's Andes region and one of the smallest frogs in the world, the newfound amphibian has some unusual traits. For instance, females hatch only two eggs--a small number for a frog--and each egg is nearly a third the size of the adult.

The tiny amphibian is also rarescientists estimate there are between 30 and 75 frogs in each hectare (2.5 acres) of their highland habitat, which is located in a transition zone between forests and grasslands.

In Peru's southern mountain scrublands, field assistant Eduardo Luna holds a new species of frog in the Noblella genus, first documented in a February 2009 study.

The smallest frog yet found in the Andes, the critter was discovered during a research study of the deadly chytrid fungus, which has killed frogs and salamanders around the world in recent years, said study co-author Alessandro Catenazzi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

Although the deadly fungal infection has been recorded in southern Peru, no infections were detected in the new frog species.

That's because chytrid usually strikes frogs that rely on water for their reproductive cycle, Catenazzi said.

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Cat shot 27 times - and lives

2009-03-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ben Blomfield

THE relentless torture of a pet cat that was shot 27 times at point-blank range in the head and neck with an air rifle has outraged animal welfare authorities.

Possum magic: Veterinarian Max Fargher hopes to nurse this cat back to health after a shocking case of cruelty in which it was shot with a slug gun (inset)." width="320">

Possum magic: Veterinarian Max Fargher hopes to nurse this cat back to health after a shocking case of cruelty in which it was shot with a slug gun (inset).

An X-ray reveals the extend of the cruel attack on Possum.

Possum after treatment.

Possum, a two-year-old male domestic cat, somehow survived shocking cruelty after cowards trapped him in a cage about 9pm on Friday.

The gun was shoved in the animal’s face and mouth with two direct shots penetrating his tongue and lodging in his nasal cavity.

Police are investigating the violent attack on the cat, which will have surgery today to remove 15 remaining pellets.

Owner Jodi Mulley pulled out five of the pellets herself while seven other pellets that punctured the skin were not found.

It is believed the animal was caught in a cat trap somewhere at Portsmith and repeatedly shot with the slug gun. One lead pellet narrowly missed the cat’s jugular vein.

Ms Mulley rang four veterinarians who told her they would not see Possum unless they received a $150 emergency call-out fee.

"One vet told me if I didn’t take him to the vet ASAP, they would have me fined for trying to clean him up myself,’’ she said. "I spent the whole night crying because I thought my baby was going to die."

Greencross Veterinarians principal surgeon Max Fargher, who treated Possum around 1.30pm on Saturday, said: "The cat is going to be fixed regardless of the cost."

He said in 18 years working as a vet, he had never seen such a disturbing attack on an animal.

"In general, this is the worst episode of animal cruelty I’ve ever seen," he said.

An RSPCA spokesman said Possum’s incident was part of a new wave of animal cruelty cases reported in the past 12 months.

"We’ve had some instances in the last year where the level of violence has been taken to a new level," he said.

"The extent of the violence of the crimes is getting more intense."

Possum will undergo surgery today, estimated to cost $700.

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Young couple moves in with her ex-husband

2009-03-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

By Jessica Ravitz
CNN

Editor's note: This story is part of an ongoing series of profiles CNN is doing about economic survival in this time of financial crisis.

Nicole Thompson-Arce poses on her wedding day with her husband, Mathew Arce, and her ex-mother-in-law.

(CNN) -- Struggling to make ends meet, trying to dig themselves out of debt, Nicole Thompson-Arce and her husband have moved in with her ex-husband.

Together, the unlikely threesome of Omaha, Nebraska, is raising two young daughters from the first marriage.

It's the kind of situation that has left cable guys howling.

"They'd never heard anything like this," Thompson-Arce, 28, remembered with a laugh. "And they're in people's homes everyday."

When she and Craig Thompson, 42, were going through a divorce in 2005, this was not a deal either of them could have imagined striking. It was a messy divorce, the kind involving a custody dispute. But once they ironed out that battle, agreeing to joint custody, Thompson-Arce said they were able to move on and forward. iReport: Read Thompson-Arce's post

By the time she married Mathew Arce last July, she said she and her ex were friends. In fact, they were so close that his mother -- meaning Thompson-Arce's ex-mother-in-law -- was in (not just at) the second wedding ceremony.

Soon after the Florida wedding, the new lovebirds flew into a financial mess. She had left a job, and as soon as she found another (a temp position), her 22-year-old husband was fired from his higher-paying gig. iReport.com: Job hunt stories

They fell behind in rent. The bills stacked up. The credit card debt grew. iReport.com: What are you cutting from budget?

A couple months later, Arce, landed a temporary Wal-Mart cashier position, which has since turned into a full-time job. But finances remained shaky and digging themselves out of debt seemed insurmountable. Tell us how you're surviving in this economy

In walked the ex with an offer, just in time for Christmas. Thompson, an 18-year bakery employee at Wal-Mart, lives in a three-bedroom, one-bath home.

"I knew they were having money problems, so I just asked them to move in," he said. "I figured I'd get to see my girls, my daughters, more often. And Nicole said yes right away."

Besides the economic savings, the benefits are many.

No longer do they have to shuttle Victoria, 7, and Caitlyn, 6, between two households. As a team, they can parent and be on the same page. Finding a baby sitter is never a problem. They take turns making meals, which they all share.

Thompson and Arce, who are 20 years apart -- "I had to get the whole spectrum going there," Thompson-Arce joked -- have become the best of friends, and share a similar sense of humor. They have tackled home improvement projects, run around together on days they both have off and often hang out at the kitchen table building plastic models.

"We just clicked," Thompson said. "When I tell people, 'I'm living with my ex-wife and her husband,' I get some really strange looks. ...It's different. It's unusual, but it works."

The transition has been smooth and great for the kids, Thompson-Arce said. And for their benefit, irrespective of finances, she thinks it's a living situation they'll stick with for at least five to 10 years. It has, however, taken a little time for the little ones to get the story straight.

Seven-year-old Victoria went back to school after winter break -- and after the whole team had blended under one roof -- and started telling people this: " 'My mommy has two husbands,'" Thompson-Arce remembered. "I was like, 'No, honey, don't tell them that!'"

What she and both men hope the girls are learning is that divorced parents can work together and be friends.

"There are so many families that go through divorce and can never let it go," she said. "I'm thankful, and hopefully our situation can help people rethink things because if they have kids, it's in their best interest to get along."

One might wonder whether the couple, who've been married for less than a year, get enough time alone together, given where they're living. Thompson-Arce points out that her ex works a shift that sends him to bed at 7 p.m., so the evenings -- after the kids are asleep -- are for her and her husband to share. Watch restaurant holds date night event »

"When they do have a romantic evening, I don't hear them, so we're not going there," Thompson quipped. "There's a bathroom between our two bedrooms."

The ex-husband hasn't dated since the divorce. He said it's because he's been focused on work and taking care of the kids. Thompson-Arce, however, said that she and her husband are forever trying to get Thompson on the dating scene and want him to meet someone special.

Special, and understanding, she would most definitely need to be.

"He'd have to find a very open-minded woman because we don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon," Thompson-Arce said.

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Pen mightier than sword for artist who helped nab suspect

2009-03-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

Whoever said the pen has lost its power hasn't met Tim Griggs, who helped Galveston police nab a suspect who was causing a disturbance on The Strand. Here's the story, as outlined by Global IMB, a Houston-based media and marketing firm where Griggs works as a writer and comedy film director:

Island artist Tim Griggs (shown above) helped Galveston police nab a suspect by doing what he has been doing on the Island for the past 19 years -- he drew a caricature of the man and gave it to police to aid in their search.

Griggs was drawing caricatures on The Strand on Friday afternoon when he heard a disturbance at a local shop. The shop clerk was being harassed by a man and Griggs took it upon himself to come to her defense. The perpetrator became loud and hostile, and when Griggs told him he would call the police the man threatened to come back and murder everyone.

Griggs and the shop clerk called the police, and as soon as the man left Griggs did the only thing he knew to do -- he drew a caricature of the man. He handed the caricature to the police as soon as they arrived and the police used the drawing to quickly apprehend the suspect.

Global IMB President Tim Dillard had this to say when he heard the story:

Tim Griggs is no small guy. For anyone to threaten him would require a disturbed mind. The fact that Griggs didn't squash the suspect and decided to draw a picture of the guy proves, I guess, that the pen is mightier than the sword.

A Fort Worth native, Griggs has lived on or near Galveston Island for the past 19 years. When asked if he would consider a career change as a police sketch artist, Griggs replied:

No thanks. That sounds too much like work, though it was a lot of fun identifying that guy as he sat hand-cuffed in the back of the police car.

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The Top 10 People Who Almost Destroyed Fun

2009-03-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

We take a lot of things for granted. We turned the internet into a free utopia of naked boobs and girl-on-girl pornography. We knock back strong drinks until our arms don't have the strength to lift the glass to our green faces. We watch grown men, both real and fictional, beat the living juices out of each other for our own amusement. But there was a time when these moments of euphoria were in danger of becoming nothing more than a distant memory.

10. Jack Thompson

Source: GuardianV

First of all, he's an attorney, so he's pretty much been trained to seek out and destroy all forms of fun like a fun-seeking tactical missile. Second of all, he's dedicated his already-stained profession to enforcing a morality clause in just about everything he deems offensive from Howard Stern's radio show to overrated rap music. But mostly, he's known for rearing his grey-haired head whenever tragedy strikes to blame the whole sordid mess on video games. If an angry kid shoots up his school, Thompson is on TV the next day to blame the whole thing on the fact that the shooter played video games.

9. Charles Keating

Source: Thomas Ives/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The former face of the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal didn't spend his entire life trying to take the life savings of every man who walked into the scope of his view. He also spent part of it trying to take their pornography from them. The Cincinnati attorney formed the Citizens for Decent Literature in the late 1950s, an organization that used any legal recourse necessary to outlaw pornography in all of its forms. He even produced his own film, Perversion for Profit, that became a huge bestseller among disappointed men in trench coats.

He not only failed to outlaw porno, but ended up in jail on charges of wire and bankruptcy fraud, where the term "Perversion for Profit" has more to do with earning cigarettes.

8. John McCain

Source: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

If history has taught us anything, it's that banning something only makes it stronger. Tell people they can't have something and they will want it ten times as much as they did before. Presidential loser John McCain learned that lesson the hard way when he tried to completely ban mixed martial arts and disband the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the 1990s by getting nearly 40 states to outlaw the sport and two major cable networks to take the fights off of their pay-per-view rosters.

Now the league is worth millions of dollars and enjoys more popularity than ever. We're not saying his stance on the issue cost him the chance to become president in 2008, but if debate rules allowed him to anaconda choke his opponent the minute he starts stammering, it couldn't have hurt him.

7. Joe Lieberman

Source: Alex Wong/Getty Images

The Democratic turncoat sounds and looks like the world's most boring human being. So it should serve as no surprise that he has dedicated more than half of his political life trying to snuff out any form of objectionable entertainment from passing past your eyes and making them bleed from their extreme filthiness. He not only led a public crusade against violence in video games, but even helped pass the Communications Decency Act, which aimed to regulate and monitor objectionable and offensive material on the internet. The measure obviously didn't work because you're reading Spike.com and a SWAT team hasn't tossed a flash bang in your living room and rappelled through the windows for clicking on a PG Porn link.

6. Dr. Frederic Wertham

Source: University of Würzburg

Adults like to blame lots of things for children's bad behavior, other than a convenient lack of knowledgeable parenting. In the 1950s, Dr. Frederic Wertham aimed his blame-thrower on comic books, specifically EC Comics titles like Tales from the Crypt, Shock SuspenStories, and even classics like Wonder Woman, which he claimed carried undertones of bondage and S&M behavior. It sounds like he developed that theory based less on careful scientific thought and more on wishful thinking.

Wertham managed to get most of EC's titles banned, except for a little-known title named Mad, by forming a Comics Code that forbade comic publishers from the use of certain words, gory depictions, or females with "exaggeration of any physical qualities." Thank God those rules don't apply anymore. That last one would have made Catwoman completely unwatchable.

5. Carrie Nation

Source: Hulton Archive/Stringer/Getty Images

Imagine you're in a bar with your best buds enjoying a beer or maybe something stronger when, without any reason, an axe-wielding grandmother storms in and smashes your glass to pieces. You'd probably try to punch this woman dead in the face, assuming you still had all of your fingers.

Extreme abolitionist Carrie Nation tried to do just that throughout the early 1900s in bars throughout the Midwest, all in the name of divine intervention, the world's oldest excuse. I'm still waiting for my God to come down from heaven and order me to impregnate NFL cheerleaders in order to fulfill some divine plan to achieve peace or cure hunger. I would be willing to make the sacrifice.

4. Frank Hogan

Source: Getty Images

This former New York County District Attorney isn't all bad. He dedicated his career to bringing down corruption within the police department and sent some hardcore murderers and racketeer…ers to the slammer.

That part of his resume gets erased when you get to the part about how he led a witch hunt prosecution against comedian Lenny Bruce for obscenity. The legendary comedian spent most of the latter part of his life in and out of court defending his act before judges and grand juries, only to die from a drug overdose in the bathroom of his Hollywood home. Bruce's sacrifice in the press and the legal system helped keep future groundbreaking comedians on stage and out of legal trouble, which is a good thing as long as you don't count Dane Cook and Carrot Top.

3. Tipper Gore

Source: Cynthia Johnson/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The former second lady or vice lady or whatever the hell you call the wife of a former vice president led a crusade against objectionable music by creating the Parents Music Resource Center. This group is responsible for the warning labels you find on CDs that contain at least one curse word or references to naughty behavior that would get you the business end of a nun's ruler in private Catholic school.

The group didn't succeed in an outright ban of the music, but it did rile the feathers of artists like Frank Zappa, Joey Ramone, and John Denver, who joined forces to stop the organization, making it the only time in history that Frank Zappa, Joey Ramone, and John Denver ever appeared together in the same sentence.

2. Anita Bryant

Source: GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty Images

Believe it or not, there was a time when lesbians were not revered as productive and useful members of society. If the very thought of such intolerance fills you with uncontrollable rage, take a second to calm yourself down. Then if the very thought of lesbians fills you with…well if we have to tell you what to do, then that explains the uncontrollable rage.

The chief crusader against gays and homosexuals in the 1970s and '80s was sickly sweet singer Anita Bryant, who not only publicly spoke out against the acceptance of such "deviant" behavior, but even tried to help pass or squash state and federal legislation that helped or hurt her cause. Her cause failed so miserably that she ended up with egg on her face, as well as a quarter of a cup of sugar, one-eighth of a cup of flour, two cups of milk, and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

1. Jack Valenti

Source: John Sciulli/WireImage/Getty Images

If you and your friends ever tried to sneak into an R-rated movie, got caught and then banned for life from your favorite local movie theater, you have this man to blame. The longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America helped develop the movie rating system that continues to plague the influential young minds of children today. Today the system is used to water down overtly sexual films to get them out of the dreaded NC-17 rating and prevent the world from understanding the peace, harmony, and love that can be achieved from seeing a naked boobie.

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Man wrongly jailed for 27 years walks free ... and is hit by a taxi

2009-03-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

By John Garth

The man released after spending 27 years in jail for a murder he did not commit has spent his first weekend of freedom in hospital after being hit by a taxi.

Sean Hodgson needed stitches in his face after being struck by the cab as he was about to cross a busy road in London.

His solicitor said the accident was just one example of how difficult it was for Mr Hodgson to adjust to life on the outside after nearly three decades behind bars.

Bitter taste of freedom: Sean Hodgson, left, with his brother Pete leaves the High Court before they headed for the pub - where Sean had to be stopped from lighting up

Mr Hodgson was convicted in 1982 of killing barmaid Teresa De Simone after he confessed to the murder while in prison for another offence.

But the 58-year-old was finally released last week after new DNA evidence came to light proving he could not have committed the 1979 murder.

Declaring himself 'ecstatic' as he left the Royal Courts of Justice last Thursday, Mr Hodgson headed straight for the pub for a pint with his brother Peter and the £46 prison discharge grant he had in his pocket.

But in a moment reminiscent of Rip Van Winkle - the classic story of a man who falls asleep for 20 years and wakes to find the world changed - Mr Hodgson immediately had to be stopped from lighting a cigarette, unaware of the smoking ban introduced in pubs nationwide two years ago.

Solicitor Julian Young said his client was upbeat but was finding especially difficult to adjust to life in the capital.

Mystery: Police have reopened the investigation into the murder of Teresa De Simone, above, after Sean Hodgson was proven innocent

Describing the accident, Mr Young said: 'He was struck by the wing mirror of a taxi that mounted the kerb and taken to hospital where he had two stitches in his face.

'He's OK but I think he's struggling with life on the outside, and particularly in London. He's been in to see us and his spirits are up,' he said.

Mr Hodgson, who left prison with just £46 discharge grant, is now staying in a small hotel paid for by housing benefit arranged with the help of the Royal Courts of Justice's miscarriage of justice team.

Mr Young said work had now begun on Mr Hodgson's claim for compensation for the years he spent inside.

He added: 'We're hopeful things might be moved through a bit quicker for someone who has wrongly spent 27 years in prison.

'You might think a moral stand could be taken given the nature of the case.'

A Home Office scheme means compensation is capped at £500,000. But Mr Hodgson may make a further claim against the Forensic Science Service (FSS) after a blunder prevented him being released ten years ago.

In 1998, the FSS wrongly told his solicitors no scientific evidence had been kept from the murder scene behind the Tom Tackle pub, in Southampton, Hants.

Mr Hodgson was jailed for life for strangling Miss De Simone after her body was found in her Ford Escort in December 1979.

He confessed to the murder a year later while in jail for stealing a car - but later retracted his confession, saying he was a 'pathological' liar.

Despite this a jury convicted him of the grisly murder of Teresa, who also worked as an accounts clerk for a gas company.

Mr Hodgson appealed unsuccessfully against his conviction in 1983.

Although he continued to protest his innocence while being held in Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, his case remained closed until he contacted solicitors last year.

Earlier this year, a review of the DNA evidence showed the genetic material found at the scene did not match a sample taken from him.

Police have now reopened their investigation into the killing of the 22-year-old.

Original here

The 10 Most Perverted Old School Video Games

2009-03-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

By Seanbaby

Sean "Seanbaby" Reiley was writing comedy over at Seanbaby.com when Cracked was a poor man's MAD Magazine. He's been a major influence on some of our best writers, and starting in April, he's going to be Cracked.com's newest columnist. "Seanbaby's Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle" will be our first new column since Robert Brockway came along back in November and started punching words through your computer screen. Today, we're introducing him to some of you, and reintroducing him to the rest, with his look back at some of the most disturbingly erotic old school games.

Just like orphans and tap dancing, eroticism and video games were meant to be together. Barrel-throwing gorillas and nudity are a perfect match, and sand paintings show that even as far back as ancient Egypt primitive man has been mixing pornography with Zaxxon. But "adult game" designers often cross the line between sexily risque and fucking lunacy.

Warning: Some of the things and the breasts attached to them discussed in this article may confuse and frighten younger readers. If you are one of them, please stop reading and go play any of the games where you splatter the heads off of aliens with a rocket launcher.

#10.

Bubble Bath Babes (NES)

One day, a game designer was playing Tetris and said, "What if I was playing this type of game, but at the same time had a huge erection?" Bubble Bath Babes was born. It's a lot like Tetris, only there's a naked woman on the screen as you play.

Also, as you do well, the game shows you screenshots of slutty women surrounded by flowers and screaming about bubble baths. For example, one girl in a bikini shrieks, "WAY TO GO HOT SHOT! CARE TO LATHER ME UP?" And if that doesn't put you in the mood for sex and Tetris at the same time, you're either a robot or a gay robot.

Eroticism: 2/10

While the screenshots you earn in Bubble Bath Babes are easier to masturbate to than any of the bonus screens the original Tetris gave you, they're still not that sexy. When a badly rendered woman who clearly can't speak English is trying to seduce someone with puns about soap bubbles, it's an uphill battle. It doesn't matter how attractive she is. She could be playfully washing your car with a group of topless cheerleaders, but when the words "POP MY BUBBLE NOW I BET I CAN MAKE YOUR'S BURST!" come out of her mouth, you're going to be a little too busy backing cautiously away to have anyone bursting all over your bubbles.

Nudity Challenge: 9/10

Each level, the screaming women get more and more nude, losing a little bit more of their mind each time. So by the point of full nudity, you'll probably have to strap a straitjacket on her anyway. Not that anyone would know. Getting them out of their panties requires such a fantastic level of hand-eye coordination and rapid reflexes that it becomes a death trap. Because if you masturbated using your amazing dexterity, there's a good chance it'll end with a pleasure-induced brain seizure and a fucking disturbing corpse for your landlord to find.

#9.

Strip Fighter 2 (Turbo Grafix 16)

This is a tit-based spoof of Street Fighter 2. Karate women face off in a pit fighting tournament where the winner takes home naked pictures of other women. Like in all fighting games, they come from varied backgrounds and cultures. There's a girl in a swimsuit and matching bird-shaped hat, a fat pro wrestler, a ballerina in her lingerie and a woman who's just wearing a snake.

Unlike other games where they come together for the glory of victory or the conquering of some retarded combat-dimension-thing, the fighting spirit that binds these noble warrior souls together is the fact that most of their martial art techniques revolve around showing their panties to one other.

Eroticism: 3/10

There were a lot of half-naked people already in Street Fighter 2, so the actual game doesn't even seem unusually erotic. Yes, I understand there is something wrong with an industry when a group of women kicking the crap out of each other in thongs is totally normal, but fuck that; I'm not a sociologist. I'm just telling you that probably nothing in this game is going to turn you on until you win a picture of a naked girl.

If you can get off to this, I hope you're reading from
inside something with a good lock on it.

Unfortunately, that's when it gets a little bit creepy. Before the camera pans down her strategically blurred body, there's an inept attempt by the graphic artists to make it look like the girl's winking at you. A stupid graphic of an eyelid slides over one eye then disappears. And I don't know if you've ever seen anyone wink without moving the rest of their face, but it looks less like flirting and more like a horrible sleepy-waky baby doll with a broken eyeball.

Gah!

Nudity Challenge: 7/10

You only earn pictures of naked women if you beat the game on a high level of difficulty, and the fact that each character has a total of three possible attacks makes it hard to keep your enemies guessing. And Strip Fighter 2's controls are so unresponsive, you usually can't tell which of the women you're supposed to be controlling. I forgot, am I the fatty or the bird-headed Indian? And more importantly, how in the name of balls can I masturbate to either?

Since it's hard to stay awake through a whole fight, you can usually only tell if you've won if you get the terrifying winking naked woman afterward.

#8.

Burning Desire (Atari 2600)

In Burning Desire, you play the role of a naked air rescue worker swooping in to save a woman from cannibals. She's tied to a pedestal and being slowly burned to death. For your daring rescue, you dangle yourself from a helicopter and drip the fire out with one of the two rod-shaped things jutting out of your pelvis. I'm not a physiologist, but I'd like to think the one squirting all over the fire and the distressed lady's face is a fire hose and not a monstrous ejaculating penis, but because this was released as an ADULT game, I have a feeling we should all be pretty grossed out.

Two things growing out of your groin, and both of them
are longer than your legs.

Eroticism: 1/10

Once you put out the fires that are cooking the woman alive, you lower yourself down to her. Her near-food experience didn't make her any less cock crazy, so she'll grab your previously unused, non-squirting rod with her mouth and hold on with her teeth as you fly away. So if you're still trying to solve the mystery that the bad graphics have given us, you're either a rescue worker carrying a fire hose and airlifting a woman out mouth-first with your penis, or you have double the normal amount of reproductive organs, one of them a handle and the other a fire extinguisher. Whichever of those fantasies this erotic game is trying to create, unnhh! oh my God-- ohmigod I NEED THIS GAME INSIDE ME!!!

Nudity Challenge: 2/10

Putting out the fire takes a few minutes, and while you're doing it, the only thing natives can do is throw rocks at the strange flying machine stealing their lunch. And just like you'd expect, a rock is no match for a helicopter dangling a naked man with a groin that can put out forest fires. The actual rescue is simple, but your only reward is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it animation of a half-monster woman sixty-nining you.

"Thank you, miss, but I'm just doing my job. There's no reason
to... um, sit on my face and suck my balls."

And if riding out of the jungle biting on the end of a man's unit didn't give you a good indication of how smart this woman is, it takes this dumbass all of three seconds to find her way from your face back to the native people's cooking pot to start the whole ordeal over.

#7.

The Yakyuken Special (Sega Saturn)

The Yakyuken Special is a complicated game. First you select from a stable of cute Japanese girls to play Rock-Paper-Scissors against. Actually, "cute" isn't the right word for all of them. Some of these girls are at least half donkey. After you pick one, she politely gives her name, measurements and age, and then challenges you to Rock-Paper-Scissors. If you win, she removes a piece of clothing. Then there's a video of her dancing. But not a sexy, stripper dance. All the girls dance like adorable bouncing princesses.

"Little girl! Listen very carefully! Run away from the man
with the camera--run away as fast as you can!"

Of course, this is a game from Japan. We should just be happy that an octopus demon didn't slither into the room and take a crap on her forehead.

Eroticism: 8/10

The innocence never leaves these dancing girls' faces. There are times where you swear they have no idea that getting naked and dancing on a Sega Saturn is naughty. They have the same demeanor they'd have if they were performing in a talent show for their grandmothers. That means that no matter how naked they get, you, the player, are the one who feels dirty. Here's the thing, though: That doesn't make it less hot. Because whether you're innocently smiling while you hop in your underwear or climbing a sleazy juice-bar's pole with your vagina, if you're an Asian teenager, perverted old men are going to like it.

Nudity Challenge: 9.5/10

Each strip-showdown lasts until someone loses five times. By that time, it's either game over, or you're watching a prancing nude girl spread the spirit of friendship with her smile and exposed nipples.

Above: The Yakyuken Special is unleashed! Inset: ass

Unfortunately, this game cheats. I swear it fucking cheats. Statistically, in Rock-Paper-Scissors, you should win about half the games. Here you maybe win one out of every 50 games. If you manage to spend the time and effort required to get a girl in this game to adorably peel her panties off, you probably could have gotten laid 30 to 40 times by actual women. The Yakyuken Special is like buying a stack of porno and only letting yourself read it if you can call a coin-flip 50 times in a row. That being said, believe this: You can lose at this game for 10 hours and spend each minute of it happy.

#6.

Gigolo (Atari 2600)

Note: For censorship reasons, all genitalia referred to in this particular review have had their original names replaced with the name of a vehicle.

With your Gigolo game cartridge and a little imagination, you and your Atari 2600 could go on an exciting ride into the world of street prostitution. The object of the game is to go from door to door and hump any men you find inside. When you find a customer, the game switches to an action sequence of you riding his throbbing Dune Buggy in his unfurnished apartment. Press the joystick up to shift your Hovercraft to the tip of his Fire Truck, then press the joystick down to slide your Rollerskate back down to the base of his Speedboat. You receive one dollar for each of these successful humps.

When the John is finished with you, you'll know, because he'll kick your cheap Dirtbike out onto the sidewalk. It's then up to you have to navigate through the empty streets and return the money to your pimp's walk-up window. The only real challenge of the game comes from the fact that many random houses contain people unwilling to solicit a prostitute, and they will throw you into the street and call the police. Then it becomes a mad scramble to escape the cops by ducking into houses and hoping someone in there will let you lay low while they pay you to bounce up and down on their Helicopter.

Eroticism: 1/10

Assuming this wasn't the Atari 2600 and the graphics DIDN'T look like two oatmeal robots humping, there's still nothing that desirable about running from house to house, jumping on strange naked men and fucking them on the carpet: take it from me.

Nudity Challenge: 3/10

You only get three lives, represented by small Paddle Boats in the top left hand corner, and you lose one every time the police arrest you. You'll run through these pretty quickly since you can't know if anyone's interested in the affordable treats in your pants until you barge right into their house and whip out your Zambonie.

As you can see, this customer has spent so much of his money on your
Big Wheel that he couldn't afford a bed.

That means that if you're unlucky, a lot of games of Gigolo end without even one opportunity to sell your sweet Rocket Ship. You won't mind losing, though; since controlling the stroking of someone's Bobsled in and out of your Forklift isn't much of a reward.

#5.

Cho Aniki (Playstation)

It was inevitable that a Japanese game designer would follow their Japanese/English dictionary along a trail of mistranslation leading from "happy" to "whimsical" to "gay" and finally to "fucking hell, that is ass-demolishing gay." It looks like that's what happened here. Cho Aniki is a cross between Gradius and lubricated men having sex with each other. You start the game as a nine-story flying man in a Speedo firing lasers out of your viking hat, and yes you read the beginning of this sentence correctly.

The main boss is a pyramid of men in bikinis launching Skittles out of
their mouths.

After a few minutes of this, you are transported to a dimension of pure homoerotica. You swim through the air with your two nude male assistants, who follow beside you and recline into various sexy positions. The three of you fight off hordes of tiny chariots filled with naked men, rocket-powered dildos with naked men dangling from them and giant naked men using other giant naked men as pogo sticks.

Eroticism: 0/10

Let me try to paint this baby-oil massage of a mental picture: The first boss is a monstrously huge man wearing a metal sphere for a codpiece. As you blast it, a second phallic-shaped man comes out of his crotch and tries to jab you with his stretching penis-arms and penis-head. While this is all going on, humpy jazz music is being mixed with the sounds of a woman panting. That sound you're hearing is probably you screaming, either from homophobic panic or from someone putting things up your ass.

Nudity Challenge: 0/10

The game itself isn't that hard if you know what you're doing. The only tough part is keeping your hand-eye coordination when things like a severed head riding a penis tries to kill you.

If you lose, one or both of your naked men fall in love with the stage boss.

Plus, even if you're terrible at it, and can't unlock the later, gayer levels, the game's intro features all the grinning, posing naked men you could ever want. It's not the worst shooter ever made, but it is the worst shooter to advocate putting your mouth on a man's asshole, and that's a good way for an impressionable kid to catch dysentery.

#4.

Beat 'em & Eat 'em (Atari 2600)

The object of Beat 'em & Eat 'em is simple. You control two naked women who run back and forth trying to catch falling semen in their mouth. You might ask why someone would do something like that. Well, the manual says that each drop of this stranger's seed "could have been a famous doctor or lawyer." The problem with that, and this is an actual medical fact, is that whether you swallow sperm from the sky or let it splatter all over the sidewalk, it's going to give you the same number of famous baby lawyers: zero. Also, if someone is masturbating off a roof onto people's heads, chances are he's not the best gene stock.

I suppose we shouldn't expect the designers of a game about a penis with a head stroking itself to be geniuses, but what happens when they settle down with their Beat 'em & Eat 'em royalties and want to have children? "You're still not pregnant, honey? Are you even eating the sperm I'm squirting off the roof?"

Eroticism: 1/10

There's something non-erotic about skipping past the courting, past the foreplay, past the actual sex and getting straight to the sperm-swallowing. They might as well have skipped directly to sleeping on the wet spot.

Nudity Challenge: 8/10

This game gets hard. I don't know how long this naked fruitcake on the roof has been without coitus, but his balls have a hell of a lot of germ waiting to be spurted free. As the game goes on, his seed falls like the goddamn rain and catching all of it in your mouth requires a miracle of perversion and reflexes. However, for each falling wave of future doctors you manage to swallow, you're rewarded with a disgusting animation of the women licking their lips. And due to the primitive graphics of the 2600, their attempt at drawing lips made it look like they have full beards.

#3.

Custer's Revenge (Atari 2600)

Custer's Revenge is a dramatic historical recreation of the battle of Little Big Horn, slightly rewritten to appeal to our adult fantasies. Instead of being killed by the savage godless Sioux and Cheyanne Indians, Custer wades through a hail of arrows to hump a woman tied to a cactus. I know what you're saying: "Finally, I can use our country's bloodiest military disaster as foreplay!"

Eroticism: 2/10

The way Custer's manhood dangles and sways in the wind in perfect rhythm with his pink scarf creates an image more majestic than any Montana sky. However, the American Indian he's sexually assaulting sort of looks like a cocktail wienie on a toothpick. Concerned parents might be wondering how to explain this level of intense sexuality to your children. Well, the Custer's Revenge manual advises, "If the kids catch you and should ask, tell them Custer and the maiden are just dancing." This advice is moot, though, since if you're the kind of parent who jerks it to what looks like a gay cowboy humping a hot dog made out of Legos, you're probably reading this far, far away from the safe location to which child services has moved your children.

To their credit, despite a hail of deadly arrows, they're all smiles!

Nudity Challenge: 3/10

Getting across the screen to score points with your pelvis is mostly a matter of luck since if you see an arrow is coming at you, you usually can't move fast enough get out of its way. Also, cacti appear randomly to skewer your wang without warning. These are both formidable obstacles on your noble quest, but the real challenge must have come when Custer had to convince the seventh cavalry to go through with this operation.

Custer: "Gentlemen, you are the bravest squadron of men it has ever been this Southerner's privilege to serve with. And you will need that bravery today, as your orders are to remove my pants and underpants. I will then attempt to force sex on an Indian girl under heavy enemy fire. Are there any questions?"

Custer's military advisor: "Yes, general. Several."

#2.

Boong-Ga Boong-Ga (Arcade)

Developed by Koreans for the Japanese, Boong-Ga Boong-Ga is the first arcade game that combines of assaulting assholes and fortune-telling. You select from eight characters like "Mother-in-Law," "Con artist" and "Child Molester" and then, steel yourself for this, you ram a giant plastic finger into an ass that protrudes out from the arcade unit next to the words "HAVE A FUN!! ENJOY." As you poke, spank and probe, the game plays an animation of your victim wailing in pain, and then the game, and I'm not fucking kidding, rates your sexual virility based on the impact of your finger against its virtual colon. Oh, and its corporate mascot is a six-foot magical monster made out of turd.

Boong-Ga Boong-Ga's corporate mascots, a finger beast
and a turd in pajamas.

If you're anything like me, you've already asked yourself about the dangers of this technology being in the hands of two foreign powers known for giant radioactive monsters and nuclear weapons, respectively. And again, if you're like me, this train of thought quickly hits a wall when you realize that you're not an accredited expert on foreign colon-probing policies. So until one of us is, let's just assume that we're all going to die, but not quite as quickly if we stay far away from Boong-Ga Boong-Ga.

Eroticism: ?/10

Since the entire idea behind this mess confuses me, I couldn't give it a fair Eroticism rating. So to come up with your own personal rating for how erotic this game is, rate the likelihood of you ever saying this sentence: "I am so horny after being at the arcade pretending to jam my finger up a child molester's asshole all day!"

If this game really wanted to help the world, it would
drop a steel cage around anyone who puts a quarter in it.

Nudity Challenge: 0/10

There's really no nudity to earn in this game, but after a successful game, a card pops out of the machine that "will explain your sexual behavior." And guessing what kind of people would assault a toy ass in public, it's a safe bet that each and every card reads, "You sex life big time number one disaster of freakish criminal behavior."

#1.

Miss World '96 Nude (Arcade)

The object of Miss World '96 Nude is to draw out areas of the screen to uncover a picture of a nude woman. The challenge comes from the creatures who try to ram into and kill you while you're drawing. For those familiar with it, it's exactly like the game Qix, only here you "will meet hot beautiful girl." And even though it's called Miss World '96 Nude, some of the nations' women were misinformed and kept their underwear or swimsuits on. On the other hand, some nations went a little too far and are represented by women who look like they were photographed by a man trying to climb up their birth canals.

Eroticism: -16/10

Most of the women in this game look good, that's not the problem. The problem is that at random points during gameplay, a little girl's head appears, shouts "TURNING!" and then transforms into Dracula. Then, the nude photo you're uncovering switches into a scene of absolute horror.

Hey, this isn't so bad at all...

... oh HOLY FUCK SHIT AAAAHHHHH!

Growling demon heads grow smaller demon heads out of their faces, and unleash an onslaught of terror that will cease any self-gratification you might have been starting on. The maggot-dripping vision of terror does eventually turn back into a topless girl, but by then the point is moot. It doesn't matter if a lump of dead bodies burning in a fiery pit of hell turns into the most beautiful girl you've ever seen--you're still done thinking about sex for awhile.

Nudity Challenge: 6/10

While it will probably take a few quarters and a strong stomach for demonic organ-launching madness to reveal an entire nude picture, each woman's body is silhouetted before you uncover it.

So if you have basic silhouette-decyphering skills, you can go straight for the body part you most want to look at. For example, if you like armpits, it's pretty easy to figure out where her armpits are and draw out the area around them. But keep your quarters. If you can get off on an armpit that transforms into Pinhead then back into an armpit, chances are you could masturbate to anything.

Original here

Serco Group's Gary Sturgess backs prisons where inmates are given keys to their cells

2009-03-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

By Imre Salusinszky

Key to success ... a private prison operator backs giving inmates keys to their cells / Reuters

Company likely to bid for private jails
Director says inmates should get keys
Says it would make jails safer

A COMPANY expected to bid for contracts to operate two jails has backed facilities in which inmates have keys to their cells and are on a first-name basis with their jailers.

Gary Sturgess, research director of the UK-based Serco Group, will tell a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry today that decency, not efficiency, is the main reason to privatise jails.

He says overseas experience shows that prisoners enjoy more privileges - including being given the keys to their own cells - in correctional systems where private and public providers compete, The Australian reports.

Prisoners in these systems spend more time out of their cells and have far greater interaction with their jailers - with whom they are frequently on first-name terms - than in systems where public providers face no competition, Mr Sturgess says.

The results are safer jails and lower rates of reoffending.

Serco is expected to bid for the contracts to operate Cessnock prison, in the Hunter Valley, and Parklea prison, in western Sydney, when the jails are privatised this year.

The company already operates one jail in Victoria and one in Western Australia.

Mr Sturgess's submission to the upper house inquiry links private jail services in Britain to the "decency agenda" pursued by former British prime minister Tony Blair.

"Contract prisons in the UK are more humane, partly because government demanded a higher standard when writing the original contracts, partly because price was not allowed to dominate the procurement process, and partly because the political and policy environment at the time when the market was first established was focused on the quality of prison life," the submission from Serco argues.

He said the inmates in low- and medium-security prisons in Britain had been allowed to hold duplicate keys to their own cells, which improved both efficiency and decency.

"If (the warder) is the only one with a key, then every time a prisoner wants to go in and out of their cell you've got to send somebody to look at it," he said.

"This way, the inmate has the dignity of having private space and a greater sense of security."

Original here

Why Smoking a Joint in the Park Is Completely Acceptable

2009-03-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

By John H. Richardson

Adam Simpson

Minor transgressions? Lemme see. How about egging cars on Dolley Madison Boulevard in Virginia? Flipping off a military policeman outside the Yongsan Army Base in Korea? Patronizing "bar girls" at an Army camp town? Selling LSD at Honolulu's International Market Place? Smuggling an illegal alien across the Mexican border? Trespassing in a closed national forest in the company of radical environmentalists?

But everybody does that stuff.

Here's a good one: I had a few hours to kill. It was a beautiful day. So I ended up in a little park south of Hollywood Boulevard. It had palm trees and carpet grass and a few homeless men stretched out on sleeping bags. I sat down on a bench and felt the sun on my face, and all was right with the world.

Then a guy walked by and hissed, "Sess."

Sinsemilla? Dude looked kind of sketchy. Plus there was that solemn oath never to make another park buy.

"Is it good?"

"It's got the little red hairs."

Ah, hell.

Ten minutes later, the world became a picture of the world, slightly blurred at the edges.

But just when I began to enjoy it, two thugs appeared out of nowhere and I got turned and tossed and twisted and cold steel on my wrists went click-click-click. And humiliation and helplessness were my portion.

Then they found the dime bag in my pocket. "Where's the rest of it?" one demanded.

"That's it. That's all I got."

Bullshit, they said. This was a known drug park. Honest citizens bought their nickels and dimes and skulked away. Only dealers stuck around.

Betrayal was the price they put on freedom. So I got a fun ride in the back of a squad car, sitting hard against the handcuffs while we scanned the sidewalks for the guy who made the sale. I was lucky; I didn't see him, didn't have to choose between being a rat and a liar. So they put me in a cinder-block room to worry about the worst that could happen.

After two hours, on proof of my steady job, they gave me a hundred-dollar ticket and released me.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. Not for the high, which was ruined along with the day, but for the principle of the thing — for a man's right to sit on a park bench on a sunny day, bothering no one, enjoying life in his own way.

Probable Penalty

You'll most likely be slapped with a fine of less than $500, but a nancy-pants judge could tack on probation, counseling, or community service.

Original here

5 Items you owned (that would bore today’s youth)

2009-03-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

First off, I don’t want to imply that the children of today are all spoiled shit heads. We’d simply like to point out that if today’s youth were given the recreational tools we had while growing up, they’d be pretty bored.

Big Wheel - If you could list off the best moments in your life, getting a Big Wheel would be somewhere at the top. It wouldn’t rank as high as getting a car or losing your virginity, but it would still easily make the top 10.

Today’s Replacement - The Wii Racing Wheel.

Rolling around outside really can’t compete with the excitement a five year old can get via any Wii racing game whilst gobbling down a bag of these.

Sling Shot - The wrist rocket used metal, plastic, and rubber to combine destruction with fun. Having a wrist rocket put you leaps and bounds in front of your buddies who had just the regular sling shot. You could spend an entire afternoon shooting shit with this bad boy and not get bored.

Today’s Replacement - The paint ball gun eliminates the labor it takes to make an object projectile through the air. The down side is that it’s pretty messy. However, even though taking a paintball to the dome isn’t fun, it’s a lot safer than being blasted by a rock.

a paintball shot to the ear. - Watch more

In a made up statistic, 9 out of 10 teenagers preferred the blast of a paintball to that of a rock from a sling shot.

Nintendo - For many of us, the NES is where it all started when it comes to gaming. Hours upon hours of hour lives got flushed down the 8 bit toilet while playing this masterpiece.

Today’s Replacement - Putting a Nintendo in front of a kid today would almost be a mean joke. In fact, if I wanted to be a real prick I’d put a kid in time out by making him save the princess. The Xbox 360 is to Nintendo like Katie Couric is to Barbara Walters. Newer, nicer looking, more expensive, and gets far more attention.

Rubik’s Cube - This awesome toy was invented in 1974 and remained a smash hit all through out the 80’s. Simple design, but not easy to conquer.

Today’s Replacement - A teenager can’t be seen with bulky entertainment accessories. However the pure genius of the Rubik’s cube goes unmatched - Thus, we bring you the Rubik’s iPhone app.

Journal/Diary - Guys don’t write in diaries because that would be a serious loss of man points. We do however remember how important this garbage was to our sisters and female class mates. Ever steel a diary? I have, and I will tell you right now that the beat down I received from my sister was one that I will never forget. A diary was a book of blank pages where girls left the most private of private thoughts. In 1992, a 15 year old might write the following in her journal:

Dear Diary, Mark is really cute and tonight we kissed for the first time. I hope he asks me to the dance!

Original here

5 Ridiculous Andy Samberg Music Spoof Videos

2009-03-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

Published by Nattyb

I watched the movie Hot Rod for the first time the other day. And while I understand that many people probably found it to be horrible, I loved it. I think the random stuff that Andy Samberg comes up with brings me back to the days of Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. I mean who the hell thinks of a random drunk penguin?

I believe that Samberg has that same kind of wacky thought process that Sandler did. And nothing is more random than Samberg’s spoof music videos. Again, I think it takes a special kind of sense of humor to laugh at this stuff. But if you have it, these videos are nothing short of amazing.

Here are 5 ridiculous Andy Samberg Music Spoof Videos (lots of NSFW Language)

Jizz in my Pants

Just hearing the phrase “Jizz in my Pants” is funny enough. But the beginning of the video actually has some serious vibe in it. When the twist comes, it’s incredible.

Lazy Sunday

Personally I think this is the video that put Samberg on the map. Him and Parnell are perfect. Everything about this song is right.

I’m on a Boat - T-Pain

If there was ever a spoof rap video that was done to perfection, this is the one. I just didn’t think there was anyone that could encapsulate what it’s like to make an over the top rap video all set on a boat and make fun of it. I was wrong.

The Ardy Party

No clue what this is but it’s amazing.

Space Olympics

Perhaps the most random video of them all. You’re a winner!

Original here

Taco Bell Launches New 'Morning After' Burrito

2009-03-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

PURCHASE, NY—Hot on the heels of last week's FDA approval, on Monday PepsiCo subsidiary Taco Bell launched its controversial "morning after" burrito, a zesty, Mexican-style entree that prevents unwanted pregnancies if ingested within 36 hours following intercourse.

Developed by a team of top Taco Bell gynecologists, the $1.99 "ContraceptiMelt" burrito creates an inhospitable environment within the womb, causing fertilized ovum tissue to be flushed from the body.

Also available are ContraceptiMelt Supremes, featuring sour cream and extra cheese.

Taco Bell officials are excited about the offering. "In the past, before Roe v. Wade, young women literally had to 'make a run for the border' to terminate an unwanted pregnancy," Taco Bell public relations director Grant Lesko said. "But now, women can make that same run for the border at over 7,300 convenient locations right in their own hometowns."

Possible side effects of the new birth-control snack item include weight gain, stomach upset and gas, the same as with all other Taco Bell products.

Enlarge Image

Nineteen-year-old Alicia Vargas of Yuma, AZ, avoids getting pregnant with a delicious Taco Bell ContraceptiMelt.

"The new ContraceptiMelt is a safe, effective alternative to traditional forms of birth control that must be administered before intercourse," Lesko said. "Plus, it's delicious."

Customers who wish to purchase a ContraceptiMelt will be required to meet briefly for consultation with a registered Taco Bell counselor/cashier. The counselor will ring up the customer's order and collect money for it, then provide change, before being allowed to administer the ContraceptiMelt.

Additionally, a five- to ten-minute waiting period may be necessary during high-volume "busy periods" in the restaurant, depending on the length of the line.

"Late afternoon, like 3 p.m., is usually a good time to come in," said Gerry Frankel, an Arlington, VA, Taco Bell counselor/cashier.

While the new burrito is legal and available in all 50 states, parental-consent laws in 37 states require minors who wish to purchase the ContraceptiMelt to obtain permission from a parent or legal guardian—unless they order a side of Cinnamon Crisps and a large beverage.

Taco Bell vice-president of product research and development Marvin Sekuler expects the new product to be tremendously successful.

Enlarge Image

"All of our test marketing and demographic research indicates that among 14- to 22-year-old females, there is great demand for a quick, relatively painless termination of unwanted pregnancy via spontaneously induced rejection of fertilized, pre-fetal tissue from the uterine canal," Sekuler said. "Plus, 14- to 22-year-olds love delicious, Mexican-style fast-food products. We're thrilled that our newest menu item can meet both these important needs in a lip-smacking, tasty way."

While he hopes that many young women will purchase the new burrito, Sekuler stressed that the decision to terminate a pregnancy is an individual one.

"We are in no way advocating any particular view on this most sensitive of issues," he said. "We simply want to offer this option. And, of course, we fully respect our customers who decide to carry their babies to term. In fact, I'd like to point out that Taco Bell offers a wide variety of non-contraceptive menu items that can provide the crucial nutrients—such as mild sauce, shredded cheddar and beef—that a growing fetus needs to develop properly."

Sekuler noted that every pregnacy terminated by the Taco Bell ContraceptiMelt comes with a special guarantee.

"If any one of our customers becomes pregnant after consuming our new burrito, the Taco Bell Corporation will, guaranteed, hire that person to work for us at $6.25 per hour," he said. "Taco Bell's competitive, above-minimum-wage salaries; flexible schedules; and fun, team-oriented atmosphere make it the ideal place for a young, single mother, enabling her to provide for herself and her children with uninsured subsistence living."

Pending FDA approval, Taco Bell plans to follow up the ContraceptiMelt with the RU-486 MexiCarriage Deluxe. Already legal in France, the MexiCarriage Deluxe costs $1.59 if purchased during the first MexiMester, $1.79 during the second and $1.99 during the third.

Original here

5 Scientific Reasons People Act Like Assholes

2009-03-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

By: Robert Brockway

From Internet flame wars to reality TV, from road rage to the tabloids, anger is playing an ever increasing role in our society. Whether this is because communication is breaking down, social etiquette is being phased out or assholes are just breeding more often, anger seems to be on the upswing, and scientists are furiously scrambling to find out why. Here’s a little of what they’ve got so far:

#5.

Dickheads First

Bangor University’s School of Psychology has spent a good deal of time researching the reason why so much more energy seems channeled into anger instead of happiness, and why angry people get more attention than the positive ones. For an example, just look to the comments section of most websites: You’ll generally see a lot of positivity there at first, but little by little, it will all start to go wrong. Insulting comments start to crop up, and they are responded to–again insultingly–until the whole thing devolves into a giant pantie-fight over minor technicalities and personal opinions.

“It’s ‘there,’ not “their,’ and there’s no “the” in front of “Watchmen” and RRRAARGHAAAAAAHHHH!!! I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE!!!”

But it’s not entirely the Internet’s fault. When the Bangor scientists studied the section of the brain that responds to angry, happy or neutral faces, they found something interesting: This area is also tied closely to areas of the brain associated with survival instincts–like your fight or flight reflexes. When you detect anger in your vicinity, your facial recognition center suddenly lights, allowing you to better detect possible threats. Or, as one researcher puts it, “The ability to remember who is angry may have been of evolutionary importance in enabling us to respond to a threat situation. Remembering who’s happy is less important as it bears no relation to our own immediate safety.”

As a side effect of this–our brains being wired to pay more attention to anger–any pissed off dickhead who is otherwise irrelevant, will still seem much more important to you than a reasonable person who should otherwise take priority. It’s not necessarily the case that there is more negativity, it’s just that you pay more attention to it. So basically, the concept that “all you need is love” has officially been disproven by our very genetics. Sorry, hippies, but the brain has spoken: Impending punches are just flat out more important than Eskimo kisses.

#4.

Hate Circuit

Researchers have recently identified something in the human brain that they are calling the ‘Hate Circuit.’ Presumably located right next to the ‘Awesome Processor’ and just behind the ‘Titties Motherboard,’ the hate circuit consists of two subcortical areas of the brain that work in concert to create the emotional response of hatred in human beings. The Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology at UCL discovered this circuit in a study they conducted, wherein the brains of participants were scanned as they were shown pictures of people they personally hated, interspersed with other familiar, but otherwise neutral acquaintances.

When the subjects were shown pictures of the hated subject, heretofore known as the Motherfucker Control, two areas called the putamen and the insular cortex kicked into high gear. These areas are also associated with motor planning–so when the participants saw the Motherfucker Control, their brains immediately began preparing to act.

Pictured: Motherfucker Control

Now, that’s not to say they were revving up to fight or to flee–just gearing up for some sort of physical reaction. But if you’re not fighting or running, and your brain is still signaling some kind of action, what do you think that action’s going to be?

That’s right, science has officially found the ‘fuck you’ center of the brain.

#3.

Drunken Fury

You may want to sit down for this one: Scientists believe they may have found a link between alcohol and aggressive behavior. I know, right? Next thing you know you’ll tell me there’s some sort of mysterious link between Cracked writers and registered sex offenders. You so crazy, science!

But amazingly, it’s true! There’s a gene called MAOA that produces an enzyme which breaks down chemicals in the brain associated with mood. 174 prisoners–all with both a history of alcoholism and records of violent tendencies–were the subjects of a recent study conducted by Finnish scientists. The scientists, now in possession of about 200 violent criminals with poor impulse control, decided that the most logical thing to do was to get them all fucking hammered and then poke at them with needles because, as we all know, Finnish scientists have infamously giantic science-balls. They found that not only did all of the criminals show a drastically increased risk of impulsive violence, but all were registering highly active versions of MAOA in their brains as well.

Pictured: Scientific Progress

The researchers, all graduates from the Clint Eastwood University Of Just Not Giving A Shit, hope that one day their results could eventually lead to a pharmacological solution for this condition: In other words, someday there may well be a “don’t be such a fucking prick when you’re drunk,” pill.

Soccer hooligans, hillbillies and Bostonians (or at least their neighbors): Rejoice!

#2.

Envy-gasms

New studies are being conducted in Japan, focusing on the areas of the brain responsible for both envy and schadenfreude. Japanese scientists are scanning groups of students with an MRI machine while they’re forced to read stories about rich, lucky and successful people, followed by tales where life just shits all over the protagonist. Unsurprisingly, they found that subjects reading the “lucky” stories basically felt like life had lightly grazed their souls in the junk, invoking that slow, ebbing pain that crawls up your gut and is somehow worse than a direct hit–while the “hard luck” stories inspired a particularly spiteful kind of well-being, like sunning yourself on a clear spring day… on top of an orphan.

“Where your parents, kid?! Huh? Where your family!? Haha! You so gettin’ sat!”

But unexpectedly, they also found that these feelings were less like emotional responses, and more similar to actual, physical sensations. Envy is registered in the mind like a real feeling of bodily pain, while schadenfreude induces a pleasant euphoric state akin to a low grade orgasm. Well, mostly it’s just a low grade orgasm, but I suppose that if you’re truly evil enough, you could get a more literal orgasm from watching the suffering of others. And this would certainly explain Skeletor’s constant O-Face.

Happy Nightmares! Love, Robert.

#1.

Web Rage

Behavioral scientists have a keen interest in the increasing trend of so-called “webrage”: the tendency for Internet commenters to spew naught but filth and bile with little to no provocation (for some handy examples, just scroll all the way down to the comments section!) But aside from vitriol-laden feedback sections wrought with verbal filth and textual disease, the scientists are also pointing to the rise of new websites, like mybiggestcomplaint.com and justrage.com, which are dedicated exclusively to the world’s saddest expression of rage: Angry typing. These sites don’t even pretend to have content, they’re exclusively devoted to venting nerd fury for no valid reason. Although that does finally answer the age old Zen Riddle: If there were no Internet to flame on, would flamers still flame?

“Nice qeustion r-tard. lol wut fuck u newfag” - Behavioral Scientists

These researchers all differ on what, exactly, is causing this outpouring of impotent rage–some point to the anonymity of the Internet providing a consequence-free environment for dickotry, while others blame the anger on a lack of emotional cues like voice fluctuation and body language–but all can agree on one thing: The newfound ability to distance ourselves emotionally, while simultaneously remaining connected on a global level is leading to an overall increase in both anger and stress levels across the board. So, while the Internet may have linked humanity via information, and possibly ushered in a new era of human intelligence, it’s also allowed us just enough distance to constantly tell each other to go fuck ourselves unconscious for no apparent reason with a previously unheard of lack of empathy and remorse.

And on a completely unrelated note: Go fuck yourselves unconscious, dicktards.

Original here

Bamboozled! Amazing pictures of a 30 stone Silverback gorilla who has one too many - and ends up with a sore head

2009-03-24T03:54:00.000-07:00

By Bill Mouland

When wildlife photographer Andy Rouse was told he would find a family of endangered gorillas high on the mountain, he did not expect to find them this high.

Sitting back in the foliage as if it was a cocktail bar, the mountain gorillas had been gorging on alcoholic sap from fresh bamboo shoots and were looking distinctly the worse for wear.

Some were propping up the bar with a bleary air, while others staggered to their feet obviously hoping the mountain police would not ask them to walk in a straight line.

And for my opening number... Kwitondo is about to do it his way, but first a swift half of potent alcoholic sap from a bamboo shoot to get him in the mood

Who are you looking at? A fighting drunk Kwitondo takes offence when he's reminded that it's his round

'It was not exactly Gorillas In The Mist, more like gorillas who were p*****,' said Rouse, 43, who was on his fourth trip to see the animals in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda, Central Africa.

'I had heard they sometimes get like this, but I had never actually seen it. It was just like any family party when one or two members have a little bit too much to drink.

'The boss of the group, a huge silverback called Kwitonda, and some of the younger males were completely out of it.

How many fingers am I holding up? Kwitonda suddenly feels the effects of his liquid lunch as he finds difficulty in focusing on the forest about him

One too many: The sozzled gorilla can't resist last orders, but finds he's reached his limit and sinks into a maudlin reverie before starting to nod off

'Some were running round cackling to each other, others were going mad swinging through the trees, some were just lying on the ground in an inebriated state.

'Normally, they eat handfuls of other vegetation, like a sort of salad to soak up the sap, but this time they were just enjoying a drink.'

The bam-boozled family lives between 8,000 and 13,000 ft up the mountain and are some of the 380 gorillas still living in Rwanda, an area made famous after Dian Fossey's conservation work there.

Closing time: A pie-eyed and legless Kwitonda keels over as he attempts to get up from the bar

Hangover: He wakes up the next day with a pounding headache, but he has the perfect solution - another hair of the gorilla, barman!

The book and film, Gorillas In The Mist, told how the animals were threatened by loss of habitat, poachers and disease. Miss Fossey was murdered by poachers in 1985.

To protect the gorillas, photographers and safari groups are not allowed to go within 21ft of them.

Mr Rouse said: 'I was allowed to stay with them for only an hour each day and it was difficult taking photographs of them at their party because I was laughing so much. It was hilarious.'

As these remarkable pictures show, 30-stone Kwitonda could hold his liquor - up to a point.

'When I went back the next day, it was all very quiet, as if they were nursing gorilla-sized hangovers.'

Original here

Pink elephant is caught on camera

2009-03-24T03:51:00.000-07:00

By Rebecca Morelle

The little pink calf was spotted in amongst an 80-strong elephant herd

A pink baby elephant has been caught on camera in Botswana.

A wildlife cameraman took pictures of the calf when he spotted it among a herd of about 80 elephants in the Okavango Delta.

Experts believe it is probably an albino, which is an extremely rare phenomenon in African elephants.

They are unsure of its chances of long-term survival - the blazing African sunlight may cause blindness and skin problems for the calf.

Mike Holding, who spotted the baby while filming for a BBC wildlife programme, said: "We only saw it for a couple of minutes as the herd crossed the river.

"This was a really exciting moment for everyone in camp. We knew it was a rare sighting - no-one could believe their eyes."

The harsh sun poses a serious threat to the animal's survival, say experts

Albino elephants are not usually white, but instead they have more of a reddish-brown or pink hue.

While albinism is thought to be fairly common in Asian elephants, it is much less common in the larger African species.

Ecologist Dr Mike Chase, who runs conservation charity Elephants Without Borders, said: "I have only come across three references to albino calves, which have occurred in Kruger National Park in South Africa.

Surviving this very rare phenomenon is very difficult in the harsh African bush

Dr Mike Chase, Elephants Without Borders

"This is probably the first documented sighting of an albino elephant in northern Botswana.

"We have been studying elephants in the region for nearly 10 years now, and this is the first documented evidence of an albino calf that I have come across."

He said that the condition might make it difficult for the calf to survive into adulthood.

"What happens to these young albino calves remains a mystery," said Dr Chase.

"Surviving this very rare phenomenon is very difficult in the harsh African bush. The glaring sun may cause blindness and skin problems."

However, he told BBC News that there might be a ray of hope for the pink calf as it already seemed to be learning to adapt to its condition.

I have learned that elephants are highly adaptable, intelligent and masters of survival

Dr Mike Chase, Elephants Without Borders

Dr Chase explained: "Because this elephant calf was sighted in the Okavango Delta, he may have a greater chance of survival. He can seek refuge under the large trees and cake himself in a thick mud, which will protect him from the Sun.

"Already the two-to-three-month-old calf seems to be walking in the shade of its mother.

"This behaviour suggests it is aware of its susceptibility to the harsh African sun, and adapted a unique behaviour to improve its chances of survival."

He added: "I have learned that elephants are highly adaptable, intelligent and masters of survival."

Original here

Walking catfish spotted in the Thames by angler

2009-03-24T03:40:00.000-07:00

Walking Catfish

The air-breathing fish, which can survive out of water for 'extended periods' as it searches for water, was found in the Thames Estuary at Woolwich by angler Birol Koca.

Mr Koca immediately phoned the Environment Agency who sent an officer to the scene to confirm the find.

The walking catfish, or Clarias batrachus, is a species of freshwater airbreathing catfish found primarily in Southeast Asia.

The fish, which could be a 'significant risk' to the environment, used its pectoral fins to 'wiggle' on land as it searches out a new home.

Catfish can pose a threat to the environment if they escape into the wild by competing with native fish for food and habitats and spreading disease or parasites, the Environment Agency warned.

In Florida the fish has become a 'pest' after it was brought over from Thailand in the 1960s.

Residents of the US state regularly have to stop cars to wait for huge 'shoals' of the fish to pass as they shuffle along the road looking for water.

Mr Koca said: "I spotted the fish laying on the shore and instantly recognised it as a catfish.

"I knew that these fish should not be in our local rivers so I called the Environment Agency's 24 hour incident line. It looked dead, but I wanted to make sure."

Fisheries officer Emma Barton said: "Non-native fish can pose a significant risk to the local environment.

"The local angler acted very responsibly. By working with us, they have helped ensure that the Thames and the wider environment is protected. We urge others to do the same."

She added: "This species which is native to South East Asia has the ability to walk over land using its stiff pectoral 'spines' and a back-and-forth movement of the body.

"It also has an air-breathing organ which functions much like a lung when it's on land."

It is likely that the catfish was illegally introduced from an aquarium after it grew too large for its home.

Local Graham Telfer, 32, said: "Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come. The last thing we need is a bunch of walking catfish taking to the streets.

"Hopefully we've caught this in time and we're not going to face an invasion of these bloody things."

Original here

Mystery woman looked after elephant in back yard

2009-03-24T03:39:00.000-07:00

Belfast Zoo has launched a bid to identify a mystery woman who looked after one of its elephants in her backyard to save it from German bombs during the Second World War. Photo: PA

The baby elephant, Sheila, was moved out of the zoo because of fears it could be killed or freed to wreak havoc by bombers during the 'Belfast Blitz' of 1941.

She was one of the lucky ones at the zoo, which is built on the hills in the north of the city.

Many animals were killed because of public safety fears of an escape during the bombing.

The Ministry of Public Security ordered 23 zoo animals to be killed in case they got free and attacked people - they included a tiger, a black bear, a lynx, a hyena, two polar bears and six wolves.

Instead of meeting the same fate, Sheila was walked down the road by keepers to a red-brick house on the Whitewell Road where a woman gave her sanctuary in her back yard for several months until the bombing was over.

The woman has never been identified and the zoo knows her only as "the elephant angel".

But as it celebrates its 75th birthday zoo bosses have decided to finally identify the elephant angel.

It says it has many unusual stories from down the years, but is convinced that of the angel must be their most curious.

Zoo manager Mark Challis said: "The care provided by our mystery lady is unique to zoo history and we would like to make contact with her family and properly document this gap in our past."

The zoo has a couple of grainy black and white photographs of two women sitting on a garden seat watching Sheila drinking out of a tin bucket beside the back door of the house.

Giving house board to an elephant may be frowned upon by today's animal welfare officers, but in wartime needs must.

And the love and care Sheila got during her months in her temporary home did her no harm - she went back to the zoo and lived for another quarter of a century, dying of a skin complaint in 1966.

Original here

China's last eunuch spills sex secrets

2009-03-24T03:37:00.002-07:00

By Emma Graham-Harrison

BEIJING (Reuters) - Only two memories brought tears to Sun Yaoting's eyes in old age -- the day his father cut off his genitals, and the day his family threw away the pickled remains that should have made him a whole man again at death.

China's last eunuch was tormented and impoverished in youth, punished in revolutionary China for his role as the "Emperor's slave" but finally feted and valued, largely for outlasting his peers to become a unique relic, a piece of "living history."

He had stories of the tortuous rituals of the Forbidden City, Emperor Pu Yi's last moments there and the troubled puppet court run by the Japanese during the 1930s. He escaped back to the heart of a civil war, became a Communist official and then a target of radical leftists before being finally left in peace.

This turbulent life has been recorded in the "The Last Eunuch of China" by amateur historian Jia Yinghua, who over years of friendship drew out of Sun the secrets that were too painful or intimate to spill to prying journalists or state archivists.

He died in 1996, in an old temple that had become his home, and his biography was finally published in English this year.

It unveils formerly taboo subjects like the sex life of eunuchs and the emperor they served, the agonizing castrations often done at home and also often lethal, and the incontinence and shame that came with the promise of great power.

"He was conflicted over whether to tell the secrets of the emperor," said Jia, adding that Sun preserved a loyalty to the old system because he had dedicated so much of his life to it.

"I was the only person he trusted. He did not even confide in his family, after they threw away his 'treasure,'" Jia added, using traditional eunuchs' slang for their preserved genitals.

They were discarded during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when having anything from the "old society" could put lives at risk.

"He only cried about two things; when telling me about the castration and about the loss of his 'treasure'," said Jia, who works as an energy bureaucrat, but devotes all his spare time to chronicling the dying days of Imperial China after a childhood enthralled by the eunuchs and princes who were his neighbors.

STERILITY AND POWER

Over years of painstaking research, he has gleaned arcane details about every aspect of palace life, along with secrets about the emperor's sexuality and cruelty that would look at home on the front page of tabloid newspapers.

For centuries in China, the only men from outside the imperial family who were allowed into the Forbidden City's private quarters were castrated ones. They effectively swapped their reproductive organs for a hope of exclusive access to the emperor that made some into rich and influential politicians.

Sun's impoverished family set him on this painful, risky path in hopes that he might one day be able to crush a bullying village landlord who stole their fields and burned their house.

His desperate father performed the castration on the bed of their mud-walled home, with no anesthetic and only oil-soaked paper as a bandage. A goose quill was inserted in Sun's urethra to prevent it getting blocked as the wound healed.

He was unconscious for three days and could barely move for two months. When he finally rose from his bed, history played the first of a series of cruel tricks on him -- he discovered the emperor he hoped to serve had abdicated several weeks earlier.

"He had a very tragic life. He had thought it was worthwhile for his father, but the sacrifice was in vain," Jia said, in a house stacked with old books, newspapers and photos.

"He was very smart and shrewd. If the empire had not fallen there is a high chance he would have become powerful," Jia added.

The young ex-emperor was eventually allowed to stay in the palace and Sun had risen to become an attendant to the empress when the imperial family were unceremoniously booted out of the Forbidden City, ending centuries of tradition and Sun's dreams.

"He was castrated, then the emperor abdicated. He made it into the Forbidden City then Pu Yi was evicted. He followed him north and then the puppet regime collapsed. He felt life had played a joke at his expense," Jia said.

Many eunuchs fled with palace treasures, but Sun took a crop of memories and a nose for political survival that turned out to be better tools for surviving years of civil war and ideological turbulence that followed.

"He never became rich, he never became powerful, but he became very rich in experience and secrets," Jia said.

Original here

Michigan 15-year-old dies after police Taser him

2009-03-24T03:37:00.001-07:00

BAY CITY, Mich. – Police in Michigan say a 15-year-old boy has died after being Tasered by officers who were trying to break up a fight.

Police didn't release his name and say state police are investigating.

A Bay City police news release says officers answered a report of an early morning fight on Sunday. The statement says two males were arguing in an apartment, and one of them "attempted to fight the officers."

Police say officers Tasered him, and his reaction led them to immediately call for emergency medical help. He was pronounced dead at Bay Regional Medical Center.

Deputy Chief Thomas Pletzke tells WNEM-TV police placed one officer on administrative leave.

Original here

How to lose your job in 140 characters or less

2009-03-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

by Olivier Blanchard

Via the Thinkhammer blog and the I’m Not Really A Geek blog, this great little cautionary tale / wake-up call for people who don’t quite grasp that EVERYTHING they post on the internet is 100% public.

If you aren’t familiar with this story yet, let me set it up for you:

1. Dude gets job with Cisco.

2. Dude posts less than enthused opinion about the Cisco job on Twitter (actually naming Cisco as his new employer).

3. Cisco employee on Twitter spots the post and promptly responds.

4. Dude blocks his Twitter updates (hides them from public view)… but it’s too late. The damage is done, and he probably spends most of the day wondering if Cisco will now rethink its job offer.

Check this out:

And the response by the Cisco guy:

Ouch. @theconnor probably didn’t expect that, did he?

But the question is… What did he expect? That a comment posted on a public stream in the fastest growing social media “channel” on the planet, one currently used by 2,000,000 people and feeding into other services like Facebook and MySpace would go unnoticed?

Just because your boss, coworker, spouse or neighbor doesn’t know about Twitter, doesn’t read blogs and refuses to join FaceBook doesn’t mean your comments on the web won’t get back to him/her.

What you post on the internet today may not come back to haunt you tomorrow, but it definitely will someday. Everything on the web is archivable, which means it is also searchable. Comments you make today will be popping up in searches ten years from now.

What does this all mean? Simple: Everything you say/write can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion someday, somehow. Your behavior on the web can cost you a new job, a promotion, your career, your marriage, your friendships, endorsements, and even take you out of contention for college scholarships, military/law enforcement service, or public office.

So please, please, PLEASE, for your own sake THINK about what you are about to post to the web (especially blogs, social networking sites and Twitter). Before you click “send,” “publish” or “update,” assume that everyone you know will read your comment. And by everyone, I mean your boss, coworkers, parents, grandparents, exes, recruiters, future employers, and yes, even your kids (even if you don’t have any yet).

Use your brains. The internet is a very public place. More so even than the water cooler. Exercise the same common sense and decorum you would in “real life” social situations.

Have a great Thursday.

Original here

Offbeat Blog

Parade of Cadillacs Stretches a Mile, Sets New World Record

Shuttle Diplomacy: Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain How the Space Shuttle Was Never Really About Science

Read an interview with Neil and visit the Neil deGrasse Tyson Motherboard.

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About the author

Bobby Finstock

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Probable Penalty

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Bamboozled! Amazing pictures of a 30 stone Silverback gorilla who has one too many - and ends up with a sore head

Pink elephant is caught on camera

Walking catfish spotted in the Thames by angler

Mystery woman looked after elephant in back yard

China's last eunuch spills sex secrets

Michigan 15-year-old dies after police Taser him

How to lose your job in 140 characters or less