Police Taser sheep blocking traffic

By staff writers

POLICE zapped a runaway sheep that was blocking traffic with a Taser stun gun, a weapon issued for use in violent situations.

Motorists trapped in the traffic jam caused when the sheep got out of a field in north Wales in Britain were horrified to see the sheep stunned by police then carried to the side of the road where it continued to convulse, the Daily Mail reported.

They and animal welfare advocates say police did not have to use the weapon on a defenceless sheep.

But officers said they had to prevent the ram "causing major disruption and possible danger to motorists" on the A55, the Mail reported.

Motorist Mark Faulkes said his 13-year-old daughter Amy was distressed after seeing the sheep Tasered.

"We came across a traffic jam and we saw there was a sheep in the road. Everyone had stopped their cars and a few people had got out and were trying to herd the sheep away from the carriageway.

"The police then arrived and they went towards the sheep but it moved away from them. Then one of the officers got out his Taser gun and fired it at the sheep. Then he carried it to the side of the carriageway.

"Amy was very distressed. I don't know if the sheep was all right. When we left it was lying by the side of the road, shaking.

"I thought it was excessive to use a Taser on a defenceless sheep," he said.

A north Wales police spokeswoman said Sparky, as the sheep was nicknamed by locals afterwards, was unhurt.

The RSPCA said it would investigate the incident, which happened last Wednesday.

Home Office Minister Tony McNulty eased restrictions on the use of stun guns last year, saying they could be used "where officers are facing violence or threats of violence of such severity that they would need to use force to protect the public, themselves and or the subjects of their action".

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The Man Who Stuck His Head Inside a Particle Accelerator

So with all the recent news about the Large Hadron Collider, many of you may have this nagging question: what, exactly, would happen if you stick your head in the particle accelerator?

Well, actually, we know the answer to that because someone did stick his head into a particle accelerator. Here’s the story of Anatoli Bugorski:

Bugorski, a 36-year-old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, was checking a piece of accelerator equipment that had malfunctioned - as had, apparently, the several safety mechanisms. Leaning over the piece of equipment, Bugorski stuck his head in the space through which the beam passes on its way from one part of the accelerator tube to the next and saw a flash brighter than a thousand suns. He felt no pain.

From what we know about radiation, about 500 to 600 rads is enough to kill a person (though we don’t know of anyone else who has been exposed to radiation in the form of a proton beam moving at about the speed of sound). The left side of his face swollen beyond recognition, Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow so that doctors could observe his death over the following two to three weeks.

Over the next few days, skin on the back of his head and on his face just next to his left nostril peeled away to reveal the path the beam had burned through the skin, the skull, and the brain tissue. The inside of his head continued to burn away: all the nerves on the left were gone in two years, paralyzing that side of his face. Still, not only did Bugorski not die, but he remained a normally functioning human being, capable even of continuing in science. For the first dozen years, the only real evidence that something had gone neurologically awry were occasional petit mal seizures; over the last few years Bugorski has also had six grand mals. The dividing line of his life goes down the middle of his face: the right side has aged, while the left froze 19 years ago. When he concentrates, he wrinkles only half his forehead.

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