News of the Weird

Cyborg moths
Researchers at North Carolina State University say they have developed the potential to use electronics to control the flight muscles in insects such as moths, setting the stage for the potential creation of remote-control insects, or "biobots," useful in emergencies or in disaster response.
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TheBeastie said:
Motorcyclist Crashes, Flips And Sticks A Perfect Landing On A Car's Roof
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Wow, that is a good one. Lucky that he landed ok, and lucky the car didn't slam on its brakes.
 
TheBeastie said:
Kingfish said:
[youtube]o9BqrSAHbTc[/youtube]

Incredible what lies beneath :wink:
Freckled and proud! KF
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Wow, what a fantastic sun awareness video. I have seen those UV camera face exposure shots on the odd local news article in the past in AU but its not nearly enough. Some of those faces remind me of braised chicken skin in the oven.

Australia has the biggest skin cancer rate in the world. What I have long found interesting is seeing European girls come down the AU beaches and bbq them selves and they think its healthy.
The most active slogan for sun awareness they have in Australia is 'There is nothing healthy about a tan', and its true I believe during their euro winters some young girl friend will come back from a south east asia/down under etc holiday looking all golden and healthy but its got nothing to do with the sun exposure and EVERYTHING to do with the EXERCISE she got moving around and doing things. Sitting on your butt getting BBQed in the suns radiation with no exercise is going to make one look as nasty as the worst UV facecam exposure shot in that video.
But its going to take decades for everyone in Europe to finally learn that. Plenty of middle aged women down here with the most leathery faces have spent their life to work that out spend the rest of their life fighting skin cancer.
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one of the girls who was an operator in the clean room at our facility spent a lot of time in the sun tan booths and had skin cancer too. leathered face and she was in her twenties.

it turns out that the sun tan creams also kill the phytoplanton in the water so the more suntan oil that goes into the ocean then there is less food for the little crustaceans like tiny shrimp to feed on. they measured the levels of hydrogen peroxide in the water where these pigs were roasting and found 4 times the level of beaches not polluted by humans.
 
An Icy Solution To The Mystery Of The Slithering Stones

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Good read!

A century ago, miners working in California's Death Valley reported seeing boulders on the desert floor with long trails behind them — as if the stones had been pushed across the sand. But despite 60 years of trying, no one ever saw what moved them. Now scientists think they've solved the mystery of the "slithering rocks of Death Valley." Using GPS tags pasted to the boulders, and a video camera, a geologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his engineer cousin have evidence that broad, jagged panes of melting ice push the stones across the desert, nudged in one direction or another by the breeze. The team details their results in the current issue of the journal Plos One.

For decades, scientists trekked out to a dry lake bed in Death Valley called the Racetrack to see these rocks for themselves. Some of the stones weigh as much as 500 pounds. And many do indeed leave a long trail in the sand; some paths are straight, some zigzag. "They do things like ... take high-angle turns," says Richard Norris. "Sometimes they reverse course." Norris, a geologist at Scripps, was just as puzzled as everyone else when he first saw the rock trails. Some were even parallel, as if the rocks had moved in tandem. "They are just going every which way out there," he says, "but in a very regular kind of fashion — like they're moving in fleets."

Fleets of boulders mysteriously sliding across the lake bed, or playa — a small community of scientists became rather obsessed with the phenomenon. "Every couple of years," Norris says, "somebody goes out there and tries to figure out what's going on." Some scientists said windstorms were behind it. In 1953, a guy landed a plane on the lake bed and tried moving the rocks with the wash from his propellers. No go. Though a few stones rolled, they didn't slide. The trails were clearly not the sort made by rolling rocks. Another group thought, "It's ice!" Temperatures get below freezing on the playa in winter. Maybe the rocks were ice-skating. But no one observed it.

Norris and his cousin had an idea: What if we put GPS trackers on those rocks, and video cameras around them? Didn't anyone think they were nuts? "Oh, well, kind of," Norris admits. "I think that a lot of people thought, 'Why are you putting GPS trackers on rocks?' " But it paid off. Here's how Norris remembers that December day at the lake bed, just before dawn: "It was beautiful sunny conditions — this sort of light breeze blowing, that was not even strong enough to blow your hat off."

Rain had fallen the day before, he says, and, overnight, a thin sheet of ice had formed on the desert surface. Then the sun came up. "And at that point the ice began to melt out in the center of the playa," Norris says, "and the ice began to pop and crackle all across the playa surface as the ice began to move." Sheets of ice — thin, but 40 or 50 feet across — were sliding atop a film of melted water. "It's basically being like a tugboat or a bulldozer," Norris says. "It's pushing the rocks very slowly along."

Not that slowly. The rocks slid several feet per minute along the muddy desert floor. By the end of the day, some had moved hundreds of feet. And by noon, the ice and water had evaporated, leaving behind, in the now-dry sand, the furrowed trails that marked each rock's journey. Norris' group tracked and filmed this migration — and witnessed it with their own eyes. He says the right conditions — rain followed by cold and sunshine, a steady wind and mud that's just slippery enough — coincide very rarely. He was lucky. But the effort was worth it. "It's so much fun!" he says. "Pretty much everybody was out there because it was a neat problem, and it was fun to do. And I think there's no purer form of science than that."
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More picts and animation on the website.

I always suspected cause was from ice. And aliens.
Drifting, KF
 
Facebook Map shows America really "likes" the Broncos

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The map is color-coded according to which team gained the majority of likes in every county. It turns out the Broncos and Cowboys pretty much own the middle of the country. The Oakland Raiders have a decent smattering of fans — in Los Angeles. The New Orleans Saints are pretty popular in the South, with the team's appeal stretching across Mississippi and Alabama. There was only one team in the entire NFL that did not win a plurality of fans in any U.S. county. Sorry Jets fans; like people who root for the New York Mets, you have been overshadowed by another team, in this case the New York Giants.
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Wot are we, chopped liver? Hawks clearly have the lead by territory! KF
 
IMO this graph is waaaay misleading because it shows territory vs population. The bronco territory is far less populated then say the the NY Giants area or the SF 49'rs territory. How about some population estimates?

:D
 
Double-header of weird...

Al Pacino: I was offered Han Solo role in 'Star Wars'

The actor confirmed the long-standing rumor that producers offered him the role that eventually went to Harrison Ford.
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Yeah, after he whacks Greedo in the Cantina (note the similarity to "Guido"), then he's off to whack the rest of the mob!

Talk about a miscast opportunity - Sheesh! Imagine the dialog: "Hey kid - pass me a cannoli" :p

...and then there's...

Keith Richards on writing children's book

He's a singer, guitarist, songwriter and founding member of one of the bands that's come to define rock 'n' roll, but Keith Richards isn't ready to rest on his laurels. At 70, the iconic Rolling Stones rocker has added an unexpected entry to his impressive resume: children's book author.
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That's a stretch. But if you have millions to burn... KF
 
Al Pacino as Han Solo? Is he sure they weren't just "Out Talking?" The studio requires them to at least try to get name talent, plus Lucas was still mostly nobody getting a chance to talk to Pacino of 'Serpico' and 'Dog Day Afternoon,' even if he had no interest in making the offer.

The story goes that when George Lucas was moving into an office when 'Star Wars' was ramping up he had someone hire a carpenter. That was how Harrison Ford was making a living at the time. Lucas of course remembered him from the small role in 'American Graffitti,' So Ford is hired to play Han Solo for the auditions of OTHERS. Such as Terri Nunn, the lead singer of the band 'Berlin.' I think she's the one in the scene with him in the audition film (Can't find it on YouTube, darn it, not certain it's her) where he says "This audition is going great, EXCEPT FOR HER!" She gives him a dirty look and he smiles and says "Oh you know I was just kidding." And it works, she smiles, as he turns his face away and . . . .

I just can't believe that Shirley of 'Laverne and Shirley' read for Leia. Picture the second movie with her saying "I love you." and Pacino responding "I know." Just doesn't work.
 
Keith Richards childrens book is looking to be very well thought out. It is a story of how his grandfather introduced him to guitar and gave him his first tutoring. Of how he spotted Keith as a potential guitarist and how he piqued his interest in the instrument. In the end, you also discover the illustrations are done by his granddaughter.
 
Anything creeper then a black eyed ghost?....

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/chilling-sightings-black-eyed-child-4341525

Chilling sightings of 'Black Eyed Child' ghost spark paranormal hunt

Sep 28, 2014 21:13
By Mike Lockley

The spectre, who was last seen 30 years ago, is described as having black eye with 'no iris, no white, nothing'
Haunting: The Black Eyed Child has been spotted on heathland

A leading paranormal investigator has scoured a beauty spot following chilling sightings of a ghost known as The Black Eyed Child.

Lee Brickley launched an in-depth investigation of Cannock Chase in Staffordshire after reports that the ghoulish apparition has returned to the sprawling heathland.

The child was last spotted 30 years ago, sparking worldwide interest – and is today a cult internet sensation.

Latest descriptions of the girl, who has coal-black pits for eye sockets, are identical to those chronicled in the early 1980s.

According to the Birmingham Mail, Lee, author of books about the paranormal, was stunned recently when he received a new eye-witness account of the Black Eyed Child.

Alerted by what sounded like screams, a shocked woman came across the wandering, sightless spectre while walking Birches Valley.

“We instantly started running towards the noise,” she said. “We couldn’t find the child anywhere and so stopped to catch our breath.

“That’s when I turned round and saw a girl stood behind me, no more than 10 years old, with her hands over her eyes.

“It was as if she was waiting for a birthday cake.

“I asked if she was OK and if she had been the one screaming. She put her arms down by her side and opened her eyes.

“That’s when I saw they were completely black, no iris, no white, nothing.

“I jumped back and grabbed my daughter. When I looked again, the child was gone. It was so strange.”

Paranormal investigator: Lee Brickley has launched an in-depth investigation Paranormal investigator: Lee Brickley has launched an in-depth investigation

On his paranormal website, Lee, 28 and himself from Cannock, said the woman’s experience mirrors the earlier sighting.

“In the summer of 1982, my aunt was 18 years old, and she and her friends would often meet on Cannock Chase in the evening time, probably in much the same way many teenagers still do today.

“One evening, just before dark, she heard a little girl frantically shouting for help. Rushing to locate the sound, she stumbled upon a dirt track and caught sight of the girl, about six years old running in the opposite direction.

“When my aunt caught up, the girl turned around and looked her in the eyes, and then ran off into the dark woodland. Her eyes had been completely black with no trace of white.

“There was a police search but to no avail. At the time, no-one had any reason to believe anything paranormal was going on. The girl certainly appeared to be of flesh and blood."

There have been similar sightings of Black Eyed Children around the world.

“Some people believe them to be extra-terrestrials, vampires or ghosts,” said Lee.

“But there is one big difference between the sightings around the world and the stories coming out of Cannock Chase.

“Only on Cannock Chase do the sightings consistently happen during the daytime.

“In the US many reports suggest that black-eyed children often appear in groups, regularly knocking at the door of unknowing victims and asking quietly if they may come inside.”
 
Seattle City Council to vote on Columbus Day name change

Sorry, applies mainly to USA and territories.

SEATTLE -- The Seattle City Council is scheduled to vote Monday on a resolution to change the name of Columbus to "Indigenous People's Day."

"It's really irritating to me, because of what Columbus stands for. He represents what many of our Native Americans believe when the genocide started," says Millie Kennedy, who identifies herself as a member of the Raven Clan in the Tsimshian tribe.

However, not all people feel the same way, including Seattleites who share Italian heritage with Christopher Columbus. "It's become a symbol of honoring Italian Americans and the legacy that our parents and grandparents left us with," counters Lisa Marchese, who sits on the board of the local chapter of the Italian American Chamber of Commerce. She will ask the Council on Monday to keep the current moniker.

Native American tribes have been pushing for the change for years and successfully persuaded the Minneapolis City Council to make the change earlier this year. It was a unanimous vote. The Seattle School Board also recently made the change and the Bellingham City Council is considering a similar resolution.

The native groups argue that Columbus Day has been celebrated as the beginning of European domination of the Americas.

Columbus Day officially became a federal holiday in the United States in 1937.
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Frankly if we're going to try to change the name to something that is reprehensible to the far larger majority, I'd rather we get rid of it since the only significance is mainly as bank holiday. Or maybe that's the point...

Nuts. KF
 
Hillhater said:
Bike sex man placed on probation
A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7095134.stm
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Looks like a nice bike. Looks like it's built for speed.
Really large triangle space there in the frame, could fit a big battery pack in there... Hhmm I think I am feeling a little engorged my self :mrgreen:
 
TheBeastie said:
Hillhater said:
Bike sex man placed on probation
A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7095134.stm
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Looks like a nice bike. Looks like it's built for speed.
Really large triangle space there in the frame, could fit a big battery pack in there... Hhmm I think I am feeling a little engorged my self :mrgreen:
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OK, his actions are freakish and bizarre... But since he was doing it to an inanimate object, and it was in the privacy of his own bedroom, I don't see how that can be a crime let alone put him on a sex offenders list. There must be some nuance left out of the article, or there has been a serious miscarriage of justice.
 
Drunk Woman Arrested, Mistook Jail for Bar: Police

Monday, Oct 20, 2014 • Updated at 8:17 AM EDT
One is a building with bars. The other is a building with a bar. A very drunk woman apparently had trouble telling them apart and ended up in a southwestern Michigan jail cell. The Van Buren County sheriff's department says a 39-year-old woman mistook the Van Buren County jail for the bar where she was trying to pick up her boyfriend.

The department says Deputy Robert Miersma spotted the Hartford-area woman backing into the jail parking lot in Paw Paw about 2 a.m. Sunday and noticed she smelled of alcohol and appeared intoxicated. It says a breath test showed her with more than twice the 0.08 percent blood alcohol considered drunk in Michigan. She's expected to face drunken driving charges. Paw Paw is about 15 miles west-southwest of Kalamazoo.
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Can we say opps? KF
 
Italy's Singing Nun Cristina Scuccia Covers Madonna's 'Like a Virgin'

ROME — Reviving Madonna’s blockbuster “Like a Virgin” may not seem an obvious pick for Italy’s singing nun, Sister Cristina Scuccia. After all, it's not entirely clear if Madonna was fully referring to the Holy Spirit when she belted out the words “touched for the very first time.” But Scuccia, who is set to release her debut album on Nov. 11 after winning Italy’s “The Voice” singing competition earlier this year, claims she only had the purest of intentions when she chose the track. “Reading the text, without being influenced by previous interpretations, you discover that it is a song about the power of love to renew people [and] rescue them from their past,” the nun told Italian newspaper Avvenire.
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“We have transformed this song from the pop-dance piece, which it was, into a romantic ballad ... something more similar to a lay prayer than to a pop piece,” she added. Both videos are set in Venice, but while the American singer rolled around sensually in a gondola, the nun sings in various landmarks wearing a habit. Scuccia said she did not think Madonna had heard her rendition, adding: “I’d like to see her face when they tell her it’s a nun singing.”
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Weird, in a good way. KF
 
Kingfish said:
......Weird, ........
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This reformed catholic says......yes weird but weird is normal for those that have layed prostate for Jesus Christ. Besides if God gave her a voice why not collect as much money as she can from the voice to give to the Pope of Rome.

nun laying prostate.JPG



:shock:
 
Shoulda had this nun singing it. For all the people who swear up and down she wasn't a real nun, yes she was. So was the 'Singing Nun,' though she'd quit before the movie came out.

But can it be a fun song anymore after a nun sang it?

http://www.sisterjanetmead.com/

[youtube]5pPk1eBEjO8[/youtube]
 
Alabama man gets $1,000 in police settlement, his lawyers get $459,000

Reuters said:
An Alabama man who sued over being hit and kicked by police after leading them on a high-speed chase will get $1,000 in a settlement with the city of Birmingham, while his attorneys will take in $459,000, officials said Wednesday.

The incident gained public attention with the release of a 2008 video of police officers punching and kicking Anthony Warren as he lay on the ground after leading them on a roughly 20-minute high-speed chase. Warren is serving a 20-year sentence for attempted murder stemming from his running over a police officer during the chase, in which he also hit a school bus and a patrol car before crashing and being ejected from his vehicle.

Under the terms of the settlement of Warren's 2009 federal suit, in which he accused five Birmingham police officers of excessive force, his attorneys will receive $100,000 for expenses and $359,000 in fees, said Michael Choy, an attorney representing the officers on behalf of the city. The agreement was reached last month and approved on Tuesday by the Birmingham City Council. The city settled to avoid further litigation and the risk of a higher payout, Choy said.

Warren's attorneys, Wendy Brooks Crew, Alyson Hood Rains and Cameron Hogan, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
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<sigh> Where to begin... KF :roll:
 
Kingfish said:
<sigh> Where to begin... KF :roll:
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Let's start with that annual hunting season to thin their numbers to a manageable size.

Reuters said:
Warren's attorneys, Wendy Brooks Crew, Alyson Hood Rains and Cameron Hogan, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
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With the kind of money they have to party on now, why would they hang around the office?

Do you know why the attorneys go into Federal court and ask for one dollar for their client to prove their honor? So that the attorneys get their FULL FEE from the defendant once the plaintiff is awarded anything at all. You think attorneys got into this because they care about justice?
 
Wireless Network Named for 'Al Qaeda' Causes Security Scare at LAX

A wi-fi network named “Al Qaeda Free Terror Network” prompted a security scare Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport after a passenger on an American Airlines flight spotted the alarming appellation shortly before the plane was scheduled to depart for London, an airport spokeswoman said. Alicia Ortiz, an LAX spokeswoman, said police responded to a call about 9:28 p.m. Sunday after a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 136 reported that while searching for a wireless network, his electronic device revealed the scary network name. The passenger reported this to the airline and the flight was returned to the gate for further investigation, she said.

Law enforcement sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Monday that agents from Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security and air marshals found no evidence that the network originated from anyone on the plane. They speculated that it could have been a mobile “hot spot” that was active in the terminal. Passengers on the flight, which had pulled away from the gate and was preparing to take off for London when the network name was spotted, were rescreened as a precaution and checked for any “derogatory information,” such as being on the government’s “no-fly” list. Nothing was found, the sources said.

The flight was further delayed because of a maintenance issue and the fact that the crew had “timed out” and had to be replaced. It was eventually rescheduled to depart on Monday afternoon. The sources added that it is not clear whether the owner of the network could be charged with a crime, because the name could be considered constitutionally protected speech.
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The name may be protected by the Constitution, but not from mob arrogance. Don't get caught.
~KF
 
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