Weird News Thread ....

[bbjoan]

I LOVED THIS POST KEEP THEM COMEING

[the fugative]

Chuck Shepherd: News of The Weird


Published October 9, 2003

Hurricane Isabel roared through Virginia Beach, Va., in September, inflicting serious property damage, despite public calls for prayer to keep it away by prominent resident the Rev. Pat Robertson, whose Christian Broadcasting Network is headquartered there. In 1998, Robertson condemned the city of Orlando, Fla., for sponsoring a Gay Days festival, and warned that the city could be torn up during the subsequent hurricane season, as God punishes those who promote homosexuality. Instead, Bonnie, the first hurricane of that season, made a direct hit on Virginia Beach.

• Alongside recent weight-loss and body-part-growth mass e-mails have been messages from Robert Todino, 22, of Woburn, Mass., who uses the spam (100 million messages so far) to locate time-travel hardware to buy because of his need to revisit his childhood, during which he believes a woman drugged him and implanted a device to give her followers the ability to monitor his every move. According to an August Wired magazine story, Todino has earnestly been seeking an "Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built-in temporal displacement" and an "AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 induction motor," among other gadgets, but that "the conspiracy" has subverted his attempts to acquire them.

Our civilization in decline

• The school district in Elgin, Ill., decided in August that although four new schools that cost $40 million were ready to be occupied, the district has no money to operate them and that they will thus stay locked up for at least the school year. A September General Accounting Office report described (based on undercover work in seven states) the customer-friendliness that motor vehicle offices display when people try to obtain driver's licenses fraudulently; clerks routinely give "applicants" back their bogus papers (instead of confiscating them) and cheerfully instruct them exactly how to "correct" the applications to assure that they'll get that license on the next attempt.

• A July Wall Street Journal report revealed that some women's clothing stores in Tehran, Iran, do a brisk backroom business in tight, colorful, sheer, form-fitting robes that are severely frowned upon by the conservative Islamic government, which prescribes the formless hijab robe. One clerk showed one that was actually a "paper-thin beige tunic made of stretchy material with two slits on each side," "with a matching tank top." Other popular robes make strategic use of zippers for women who have to convert their flashy clothing into something conservative in a hurry.

• In September, religious fundamentalists brawled in Brooklyn when the locally dominant Satmar sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews moved aggressively against slightly less-ultra-Orthodox Jews who were using a loophole to be able to push baby strollers and wheelchairs around during the Sabbath, when such activity is prohibited in public. "The [Satmar]) were like animals," said a security guard who witnessed the incident. (The "eruv" loophole allows such labor inside a symbolic wall, which the more liberal ultras had constructed with sticks and string.)

• State and local law-enforcement officials met in Salt Lake City in August to discuss the growing and seemingly intractable problem of the radical, Mormon-based polygamist community that reaches from Hildale, Utah, to Colorado City, Ariz., and which has been denounced by mainstream Mormons. Issues included not just religious freedom and forced marriage for young girls, but the $5 million annually in federal benefits that go to polygamist wives who say they are "single" mothers on their welfare applications.

• In August, bookstores began selling Revolve, a glossy, 392-page softcover title that directs a thought-by-thought rendition of the New Testament to its target audience of teenage girls, alongside text on typical teen-magazine subject matter such as beauty, fashion secrets and dating. (For example, proper etiquette, according to Revolve founder Laurie Whaley, requires the boy to initiate a relationship: "There's no indication from Scripture that Mary Magdalene ever [called] Christ.")

Least competent criminals

• Florida wildlife officials, suspecting that Israel A. Cervantes was illegally shooting at deer from his car in the Ocala National Forest in August, asked to inspect his home freezer for stored meat, and, professing innocence, Cervantes agreed. There was no deer meat, but apparently Cervantes forgot about the pound of marijuana in the freezer, and he was arrested.

• William Penny was arrested in Greenwood, Ind., in August, putting a halt to his alleged identity-theft business. He was caught because, three times in a three-day period, he had aroused suspicion of several people in a neighborhood by approaching a certain ATM on foot, carrying a motorcycle helmet, donning the helmet as he neared the ATM's camera, making a withdrawal (with someone else's ID, allegedly), walking away, and then removing the helmet.

Latest alarming headlines

• "Man With Ear Ache Gets Vasectomy" (an August Reuters dispatch from Rio de Janeiro about a patient who answered the wrong doctor's call at a clinic and endured the procedure because he thought the ear inflammation had deep roots). "Groups Fight Over Fate of Feral Chihuahuas" (an August Reuters report on 170 wild Chihuahuas taken from a breeder in Acton, Calif., and ultimately given to one animal rescue outfit rather than another). "Woman With No Baby Given Caesarean" (a September Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun report on an overweight woman who went into cardiac arrest at a hospital after telling doctors she was pregnant, motivating them to try to deliver the baby in case they couldn't save her. She survived; the baby never existed.

• The Danish beer company Carlsberg announced it was relocating a plant from Stockholm, Sweden, to Gothenburg because there was too much uranium in the spring it uses near Stockholm. The interior minister of the Netherlands, citing public concern, proposed to ban police officers from coffee shops that also legally sell marijuana. Authorities in Putnam County, W.Va., announced that someone had broken into a sheriff's deputy's home while he was away on vacation and set up a methamphetamine lab.

Out of control in Boston

• Furious at a rush-hour accident that blocked traffic in the Boston suburb of Weymouth, motorist (and software engineer) Anna Gitlin, 25, went ballistic at a police officer and then allegedly bumped him with her car, screaming, "I don't care who [expletive deleted by the Boston Globe] died. I'm more important!" (June). Joseph DiGirolamo, 43, distraught over domestic problems, allegedly barricaded himself inside an ex-girlfriend's home in Boston and hurled household items (TV set, room air conditioner, broomstick, a pot of boiling water) at police officers, threatening to kill them, before he was subdued (May).

• A 20-year-old man was killed in Denver during afternoon rush hour on Sept. 1 when he jumped from a car going about 40 miles per hour. According to friends, he had been planning a nonfatal jump for a while because he wanted to endure some trauma in order to muster the courage to get a tattoo. A 15-year-old boy in Maryland Heights, Mo., who had been demonstrating his pain tolerance by clobbering himself on the head with his skateboard, invited a pal to take a shot, too; the first blow knocked him out, and he died four days later.

• In the past month: A 47-year-old man was arrested for allegedly trying to steal a woman's backpack, his 177th arrest (Boulder, Colo.). A 36-year-old man was captured by a SWAT team after holding off police for 10 hours in a hotel room, an incident that began when he threatened to kill hotel workers because there was no ice (Houston). Because of a mixup over polling places, no one voted in a school board election in Mississippi County, Ark., on Sept. 16, not even Carl Miner, the only person on the ballot.

[Jolie Rouge]

Wayward Deer Enters N.J. Clothing Store

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...48.htm&sc=1120

LINDEN, N.J. (AP) - A wayward deer entered a clothing store through the front door and wandered around for more than an hour Monday, knocking down shelves and trampling clothes, before it was shot with tranquilizer darts by a New York City Police Department team.

The full-grown, antlered buck walked into the Planet Kidz store between noon and 1 p.m. A few customers were inside, but they quickly left and no one was hurt, said head manager Joseph Velelis.

He said he tried to calm the deer down by talking to it, but the animal panicked and charged toward the back of the store.

At one point, the deer, which weighed between 160 and 180 pounds, approached a full-length mirror and apparently thinking its reflection was another deer, jumped into the mirror front hooves first.


Linden authorities contacted the closest emergency unit with a tranquilizer gun, a Staten Island-based NYPD team. Team members fired three tranquilizer darts, and the officers were able to subdue the animal and carry it out.


The deer was taken to the Linden animal shelter and was expected to be returned to the woods once the tranquilizers wore off.


The 10,000-square-foot Planet Kidz store is in a shopping center near a 26-acre forest. A Union County wildlife official said deer often get confused during this time of year, which is the height of mating season.


``They kind of get disoriented at this time of year and act irrationally,'' Karen Invillo, assistant director of the county's Trailside Nature Science Center, told The Star-Ledger of Newark. ``Something also might have spooked him, and he just got disoriented and ended up in a strange location.''



10/14/03 14:23

[Jolie Rouge]

You Won't Believe Who Has a Tattoo!

Fully 16 percent of all Americans have a tattoo. That's the word from Harris Interactive, which conducted a nationwide poll of 2,215 randomly selected adults to find out how many of us have body art. In the 25 to 39 age group, the number is even higher at nearly 30 percent sporting a tat, reports Wireless Flash.


Who has a tattoo?

--31 percent of gays and lesbians
--18 percent of Democrats
--14 percent of Republicans


How does a tat make you feel? Those with tattoos say:
--34 percent say it makes them feel sexier.
--29 percent say it makes them more rebellious.
--20 percent say it makes them feel more spiritual.
--5 percent say it makes them more intelligent.
--3 percent say it makes them feel more athletic.

Any regrets?

Fully 83 percent have no regrets, although regret was highest among tattooed Republicans. Among those who did acknowledge the tattoo was a mistake, the reason most often cited was "because of the person's name in the tattoo." Among those who did acknowledge having made a mistake, the reason cited most often was "because of the person's name in the tattoo."

[Jolie Rouge]

Boy, 4, Attacked With Boiling Hot Fries

When a 4-year-old boy accidentally smeared ice cream on the sleeve of an 18-year-old woman who was nine months pregnant, she retaliated by chasing him through the McDonald's restaurant located in a Wal-Mart in Germantown, Maryland, pinning him in a headlock, and rubbing hot, greasy french fries in his eyes. The incident occurred last May, and on Tuesday the woman, Milikia Hayes, was sentenced to four days in jail and ordered to attend anger management and parenting classes, reports The Washington Post.

Hayes and the child did not know each other. When the ice cream touched her sleeve, she started screaming at the small boy, whom The Post describes as "terrified." State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler said Hayes smeared "boiling hot, greasy french fries" on his face. "The boy was scared to death," Gansler said. "It is incomprehensible to think that an adult would attack a child of any age in such a manner." The child's eyes were swollen after the attack, but he suffered no serious physical harm.


Hayes' excuse for her actions?

She was on her way to a baby shower and was wearing one of her nicest shirts. She pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. However, a Circuit Court judge sentenced her to 18 months in jail, with all but four days suspended, and ordered her to attend the classes, reports The Post. "Clearly, her own behavior was inappropriate and egregious for any adult, much less someone about to have her own child," Gansler told The Post. "In getting this type of sentence, we hope it will ensure that she's learned a valuable lesson and will help her in raising her own child."

[Jolie Rouge]

Bell May Identify Ship Lost with Up to $180 Million


MIAMI (Reuters) - A bell recovered off Georgia's coast could be proof that a Florida treasure salvage company has found a ship that sank almost 140 years ago with a cargo of up to $180 million in gold, the company said on Tuesday.

The bronze bell bears the inscribed letters "SSEE." The paddlewheel steamship, called the S.S. Republic when it sank, was originally named the S.S. Tennessee and ship's bells typically would carry the ship's original name, Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. said.

The Tampa, Florida-based firm said the rest of the inscription on the bell, found near the bow of the wreck, would not be visible until it was cleaned.

Odyssey announced in August that it believed it had found the Republic, which sank in a hurricane on Oct. 25, 1865, off Savannah, Georgia, reportedly with a cargo of 20,000 or more gold coins destined to pay for the reconstruction of the U.S. South following the Civil War.


The company's underwater robot found the wreck in 1,700 feet of water about 100 miles southeast of Savannah. The starboard side-wheel is visible but partially buried in sediment and the wreck site is littered with bottles and personal items.


The double-decked, 210-foot (64-meter) ship, en route from New York to New Orleans when it went down, was believed to carry gold coins then worth $400,000, Odyssey said.


The company said a coin expert has estimated the coins' retail value today could be $120 million to $180 million.


Odyssey said it began salvage work at the wreck site in early October using a remotely operated underwater vehicle.


"Detailed exploration of the site has begun and we are simply amazed at the cornucopia of well-preserved artifacts lying down there," Odyssey co-founder Greg Stemm said in a statement.


The Republic was launched as the S.S. Tennessee in August 1853, according to the company's research. During the U.S. Civil War, it served as a Confederate blockade runner.


Investors later bought the ship, renamed her the S.S. Republic and assigned her to the New York-New Orleans route.



10/15/03 09:00

[the fugative]

News of The Weird
Chuck Shepherd

Published October 16, 2003

Correction: In a July column, I incorrectly referred to two 22-month-old girls' "parents" as taking part in a standoff as to whose turn it was to take care of them, with both driving off, leaving the girls in the street. Christy Leann Radacy is indeed the mother, but the man, Sari Muhanna, is Radacy's boyfriend, not the girls' father. He was indicted, with Radacy, in September.

• Renewing a debate, Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr reported in September that human infection by Taxoplasma gondii (to which cat owners are vulnerable as they clean litter boxes) tends to make women "reckless" and "friendly" and men "jealous" and "morose." Although any mammal could pass along the toxins, cats that handle dead birds, bugs or mice rather easily pass it in their stools, although only for a few days after their first infection. (A 2001 report by researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland had suggested that such infections might even cause schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.)

People different from us

• For a September report, an LA Weekly writer hung out with Benji Breitbart, 20, Doug Marsh, and several other "Disneyana enthusiasts (DEs)," who spend hours nearly every single day at Disneyland, have almost total recall of the park's history and culture, rabidly collect memorabilia and preach with intensity on which aspects of today's park Walt Disney would not have approved. DEs usually wear Disney-themed clothes, use the pronoun "we" as if the park were theirs and are dismissive of the obsessives of "Star Trek." ("Trekkies are devoted to some stupid pop-culture fad," said Marsh, but "Disney fans believe in the magic.") Why, Breitbart was asked, was Disney such a central force in his life? "I tried to figure that out. I just ended up with no answers."

• In June, a judge in Washington, D.C., sentenced Bernard Johnson to 12 years in prison for shooting D.C. Police Detective Anthony McGee three times. However, the judge immediately suspended five of the years, and of the remaining seven, five were mandatory for merely carrying a firearm during the crime, leaving the add-on punishment for actually shooting the cop to two years.

• The July amateur wrestling match in Tbilisi (former Soviet republic of Georgia), between Dzhambulat Khotokhov (123 pounds, from Russia) and Georgy Bibilauri (112 pounds, from Georgia) ended in a draw, and both wrestlers broke training afterward for ice cream and cake to celebrate Bibilauri's birthday. Georgy is now 5 years old; Dzhambulat is 4.

Inexplicable

• A man fled the motor vehicles office in Leesburg, Va., after a September incident in which he, silently and calmly, presented a DMV employee with a postcard photograph of a banana being hit by a bullet, and the legend "banana DMV." The man then hurried out, and when several employees got to the parking lot in pursuit, there were bananas strewn around the lot but no one in sight.

• After a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge, FBI agent James Hanson III paid a $105 fine and $12,000 in restitution to the Barbary Coast hotel in Las Vegas for a May incident in which he fired two shots from his service weapon at a lobster in a walk-in cooler. It was a late-night incident, with no one in the vicinity, but Hanson was captured on a surveillance tape. Hanson was in Las Vegas for an accounting seminar.

• In August, around the time that the Ten Commandments monument was moved out of the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery because of a federal judge's ruling that it was too much of a religious statement for government property, resident Blanca Castillo petitioned county commissioners in Fort Worth, Texas, to remove a statue in front of the county's administrative building because it was insulting to religion. The offending statue, of a sleeping panther, struck Castillo as too paganistically feline, and therefore "sinister," and she recommended a statue of something else, such as a steer.

• Kevin French, 46, pleaded guilty of using an air rifle to shoot his neighbor in the head because he mowed his lawn too often (Elmira, N.Y., April). An inmate (unnamed in an internal report by a psychiatric prison) went into a violent rage and took a therapist hostage after fellow prisoners laughed at his drawing of "toilet paper" in a game of Pictionary (Abbotsford, British Columbia, July). Walter Travis, 68, was arrested for shooting a neighbor several times after the neighbor's dog defecated on his lawn (Indianapolis, August). Danny Ginn, 46, was arrested for commandeering a garbage truck at gunpoint because he was tired of the truck's driver using Ginn's driveway to turn around (Bedford, Ky., August).

• A 26-year-old man will be hospitalized "for months" in Illawarra, Australia, after an August accident that authorities speculate might have been inspired by the film "Jackass." The man was apparently walking across a room with a lighted firecracker between his posterior cheeks when he slipped and fell backward to the floor. The explosion resulted in a fractured pelvis, severe genital burns, hemorrhaging from the buttocks and ruptured urethra, leaving him incontinent and sexually dysfunctional.

• The Arizona Daily Star reported on an 18-year-old man who was having four modified deep-sea (8-gauge) fishing hooks threaded into his back so that he could be suspended for 20 minutes of what the man said was the worst pain he'd ever felt (for the privilege of which he paid $150). Said the piercing shop's Chris Glunt, "For some it's like a spiritual thing. I've suspended to clear my head. You can focus and concentrate on where you stand in life."

Good news for rodents

• (1) Japanese scientists (Yokohama City University) said in September that they had created tumor-suppressing nerve stem cells that reverse the symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats. (2) Wake Forest University researchers said in April that they had created a 700-mouse colony that could survive any number of direct cancer-cell injections. (3) University of Pittsburgh researchers said in April that they had developed a gene therapy in rats to restore surgery-damaged nerves needed for erections. None of the therapies has yet been successful with humans.

• Also, in the past month: Canadian military police seized 983 marijuana plants being grown by squatters on an active 17-square-mile artillery range (Nicolet, Quebec).

[the fugative]

Brain implant lets monkeys move objects with their thoughts
Rick Weiss, Washington Post

Published October 13, 2003

Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object.

The technology could someday allow people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries to operate machines or tools with their thoughts as naturally as others do with their hands.

In the new experiments, monkeys with wires running from their brains to a robotic arm were able to use their thoughts to make the arm perform tasks.

The experiments -- led by Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University in Durham, N.C., and published today in the inaugural issue of the Public Library of Science -- are the latest in a progression of increasingly science fiction-like studies in which animals -- and in a few cases people -- have learned to use the brain's subtle electrical signals to operate simple devices.

The new work is the first in which any animal has learned to use its brain to move a robotic device in all directions in space and to perform a mixture of interrelated movements -- such as reaching toward an object, grasping it and adjusting the grip strength.

The monkeys first learned to move the robotic arm with a joystick. The large arm was kept in a separate room, but the monkeys could track their progress by watching a schematic representation on a video screen.

The monkeys quickly learned how to use the joystick to make the arm reach and grasp for objects, and how to adjust their grip on the joystick to vary the robotic hand's grip strength. They were rewarded with sips of juice.

Then the researchers unplugged the joystick so the robotic arm's movements depended completely on brain activity. In effect, the computer that had been studying the monkey's neural firing patterns was now decoding the brain signals according to what it had learned from the joystick games and sending the appropriate instructions to the mechanical arm.

At first, Nicolelis said, the monkey kept moving the joystick. Then, he said, an amazing thing happened. "We're looking, and she stops moving her arm," he said, "but the cursor keeps playing the game and the robot arm is moving around." The animal was controlling the robot with its thoughts.

Initially, the animals' performance declined compared to the sessions on the joystick. But after just a day or so, the control was so smooth it seemed the animals had accepted the mechanical arm as their own.

[Jolie Rouge]

Found Alive: Dinosaur-Era Purple Frog
A genetic analysis of the creature has shown that it is like no other frog alive today, so scientists have placed it in a new frog family. The 4,800 known species of frogs are grouped into 29 families, the last of which was discovered in 1926. "I have no idea how many are left in the world," Frank Bossuyt with the Free University of Brussels told CNN. "It will be important to find that out in the near future." The frog's closest relative can be found in the Seychelles Archipelago, near Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. India and The Seychelles were once part of the same land mass, but separated 65 million years ago.


It hopped with the dinosaurs. A 3-inch long frog that is brilliant purple with a small head, tiny eyes, short limbs, a pointed snout, and a body that looks like a jelly donut has been discovered in the Western Ghats Mountains of Southern India. CNN reports that the Indian and Belgian scientists who discovered the rare frog have concluded it's been on this Earth since the days of the dinosaurs.

The purple frog is called a "living fossil" because it allows scientists to study the entire animal and learn better how amphibians developed and evolved over time. The research findings on this new frog family were published in the journal Nature.

[Jolie Rouge]

Foul Ball Cubs Fan Offered Asylum In...

...Florida.

Gov. Jeb Bush has offered the 26-year-old Cubs fan who deflected a critical foul ball in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series on Tuesday night a way to escape his police-guarded Chicago home and live a normal life: Move to Florida. They love him there.

After all, the Florida Marlins won that game and Game 7 and will now be in the World Series--for the second time in its 10 year history. The man, whose identity is not being revealed by several news outlets as a way to protect him from irate Chicago baseball fans who blame him for the Cubs' loss and the World Series that slipped away from them, would also be given free airfare and a free three-month stay provided by the Holiday Inn Oceanside Pompano Beach, reports The Associated Press. "People are compassionate in South Florida and people are talking about the unfortunate circumstances he must be facing today," Chuck Malkus, a spokesman for the property, told AP.

The guy would also get free steak dinners, free martinis, and a free water taxi ride. No word on whether he would get free Florida Marlins merchandise. "[It's] the least we could do for the fan that saved our season," Phil Goldfarb, president of the Holiday Inn Pompano Beach, told AP. "As dedicated Marlins fans, it is our honor to return the favor." Ouch.


See up-close photos of that fateful foul ball action.
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news...tos&floc=wn-nn

[Jolie Rouge]

New Actor Chosen For Ritter's '8 Rules'

Hollywood veteran James Garner will do a guest star arc in four episodes of ABC's "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter" with the sole purpose of transitioning the sitcom through the tricky plot line of the death of John Ritter's character. Ritter died suddenly on September 11 from a rare heart ailment

The Hollywood Reporter says that Garner will play the father of Katey Sagal's character, the widowed Cate Hennessy, "who comes to support his daughter and three teenage grandchildren as they grapple with grief and the harsh realities of becoming a single-parent family." Production on the series, which has been halted since Ritter's death, begins Monday even though the details of the story line are still being worked out. It is expected to air in early November and will run one hour.

Ritter's final three episodes of "8 Simple Rules" scored huge ratings for ABC--much higher than the show had ever gotten.