Category: 40yrs

This is Too Awesome for Words

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Some cops in the UK were on their way to a fancy dress party (in the US we call them a costume party), and they encounter, and apprehended a man threatening people’s lives at a super market while dressed as a zebra and a monkey:

A pair of off-duty police officers who made an arrest while dressed as a zebra and a monkey have been commended for their bravery.

PCs Tracy Griffin and Terri Cave were on their way to a fancy dress party when they came across a man yelling threatening abuse in a supermarket in Coventry in March 2014.

The pair, dressed in zebra and monkey onesies, wrestled the man to the ground as he left the Co-op store and told one of the staff to ring 999.

The man was arrested and taken into police custody on suspicion of public order offences, said West Midlands police. The PCs, who are based in Solihull, spent the rest of their evening filing reports at the police station rather than heading to the party.

On hearing the news of the arrest, colleagues tweeted from @SolihullPolice: “Man threatening to kill people didn’t expect to be wrestled to the ground by our off-duty officer in a zebra onesie. We go that extra mile.”

This is so awesome on so many levels.

H/t the PBS news/comedy show Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me.

God Bless the Satanists*

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The Satanic Temple has demanded an exemption from state laws restricting abortion using the Hobby Lobby case as precedent:

The Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision, which allowed some for-profit companies to claim a religious exemption to Obamacare’s contraception mandate, has sparked a heated debate over the definition of religious liberty and its role in modern society. At this point, even a Satantic cult has decided to weigh in.

The Satanic Temple — a faith community that describes itself as facilitating “the communication and mobilization of politically aware Satanists, secularists, and advocates for individual liberty” — has launched a new campaign seeking a religious exemption to certain anti-abortion laws that attempt to dissuade women from ending a pregnancy. The group says they have deeply held beliefs about bodily autonomy and scientific accuracy, and those beliefs are violated by state-level “informed consent” laws that rely on misleading information about abortion risks.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, the Satanists point out, it strengthens their own quest to opt out of laws related to women’s health care that go against their religious liberty. “Because of the respect the Court has given to religious beliefs, and the fact that our our beliefs are based on best available knowledge, we expect that our belief in the illegitimacy of state­ mandated ‘informational’ material is enough to exempt us, and those who hold our beliefs, from having to receive them,” a spokesperson for the organization said in a statement.

Truth be told, their case is actually far stronger than Hobby Lobby’s because they are objecting to forced state speech, which is far more significant from a constitutional perspective than an incidental requirement that a company provide full insurance coverage.

Well played.

*Yes, I know that will piss off Satanists, but what the hell!†
†Oops.

The Depressing Thing is that this is a Close as a Googler will Ever get to Being as Cool as John Belushi.

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You know the story, a man, a femme fatale, injected heroine, and death:

Police have arrested a 26-year-old high-priced call girl from Georgia who is suspected of injecting heroin into a Santa Cruz tech executive on his yacht and then fleeing when he overdosed

Alix Catherine Tichelman and 51-year-old Forrest Timothy Hayes found each other online and had met a few times before their Nov. 26 encounter on Hayes’ 50-foot yacht, Escape, at the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor, said Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark.

Tichelman provided heroin for Hayes, a Google executive, while they were inside the yacht, police said. A surveillance video from the boat shows that Hayes was “suffering medical complications” and lost consciousness, Clark said. She made no effort to help him, and instead gathered her belongings and even gulped a glass of wine before she drew a window blind and left, the video shows.

I am the worst person on the internet today, but the parallels to the death of John Belushi are striking.

I So Want to See this Covered on the Daily Show

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While posing for a photograph, an American student fell off a statue of a Giant Vagina and had to be rescued by firemen:

………

On Friday afternoon, a young American in Tübingen had to be rescued by 22 firefighters after getting trapped inside a giant sculpture of a vagina. The Chacán-Pi (Making Love) artwork by the Peruvian artist Fernando de la Jara has been outside Tübingen University’s institute for microbiology and virology since 2001 and had previously mainly attracted juvenile sniggers rather than adventurous explorers.

According to De la Jara, the 32-ton sculpture made out of red Veronese marble is meant to signify “the gateway to the world”.

Police confirmed that the firefighters turned midwives delivered the student “by hand and without the application of tools”.

The mayor of Tübingen told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that he struggled to imagine how the accident could have happened, “even when considering the most extreme adolescent fantasies. To reward such a masterly achievement with the use of 22 firefighters almost pains my soul.”

I want this to get the Daily Show treatment.

I am not sure what is weirder, the Germans having a giant vagina sculpture, or someone getting stuck in it.

Help me Jon Stewart, you’re my only hope.

Thank You for Keeping Maryland Weird

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I just heard about this on the radio, and confirmed this on the Prince George’s County Police Department Facebook page:

PGPD Issues BOLO for Bunny

The PGPD is asking for our community’s help in finding the burglar who snatched a bunny costume. Please keep your eyes peeled for a 6′ gray and white furry bunny with pink ears and a pink nose.

Unfortunately, we aren’t joking. On June 6, 2014, patrol officers were called to the 4600 block of Calvert Road in College Park for a burglary. Employees discovered a storage shed had been broken into overnight. The only item taken was the costume.

Last week, we told you about how our officers helped a tortoise (http://tinyurl.com/p2wpojj ). Please help us rescue the hare now too.

Anyone with information on this case is asked to call the Prince George’s County Police Department’s Regional Investigation Division – Northern Region at (301) 699–2601. Callers wishing to remain anonymous may call Crime Solvers at 1–866–411–TIPS (8477), text “PGPD plus your crime tip” to CRIMES (274637) on your cell phone or go to www.pgcrimesolvers.com and submit a tip online.

Posted via mobile.

I Had an Epic Day at Work Today

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I generally embargo anything that happens at work, on the theory that it’s my employer’s business, and with a few exceptions, blogging about is just not a good idea.

However, what happened today breaks this embargo:

John at work came in limping today.

 He had a Brown Recluse bite on his leg, and he said that the doctor had prescribed steroid and Sulfa drugs (probably Dapsone).

 I told him that he should drink lots of water, because Sulfa drugs tend to accumulate in the kidneys.

 Then as I was walking away, I turned and said:

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 You know where this is going, don’t you…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 Wait for it…

 I’m an Engineer, not a Doctor, Dammit!!!!!!

I haz a happy!

The Joys of Mass Transit

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I’m taking the bus and Metro to work today.

I’m doing out to see how it goes.

If this works for me, our will  save some money, along with some wear and tear in my psyche.

There its a guy in the Metro car with me, and I cannot tell if he is having a conversation via a bluetooth equipped cell phone, our if he is mentally ill.

The joys of modem technology, neh?

[on edit]
No loss of signal underground, and the conversation continues, so, to paraphrase Cheap Trick, it’s those men inside his brain.

Posted via mobile.

Best Comment Ever on the Comcast/Time Warner Cable Merger, With Taiwanese News Video

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Telco Maven, and fellow medieval recreation afficianado, Harold Feld, gives us the best comment ever on the merger:

OH MY GOD!! YOU COMCAST PEOPLE HAVE NO LIMITS! YOU’RE LIKE SOME GIANT, COAX-TENTACLED CTHULHU-BEAST THAT KEEPS PROMISING TO DEVOUR US ALL BETWEEN 8 A.M. AND NOON BUT DOESN’T ACTUALLY GET AROUND TO DEVOURING US UNTIL AFTER 3 P.M. BECAUSE YOU GOT ‘STUCK IN TRAFFIC’ AND A PREVIOUS DEVOURING RAN LONGER THAN EXPECTED . . . .

Not only that, he raises one of the famous (infamous?) Taiwanese CGI news animations.

Mr. Feld, you are a f%$#ing genius.

Not a Photoshop, Not The Onion

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This is where the spill occurred


Look at the detail on the billboard

If you do a Google maps of 2237 Pennsylvania Ave, Charleston, WV 25302, and then you do a Street View, you will see that it is right across from Freedumb Industries, the company that tainted water for 300,000 people in West Virginia.

If you do a street view, you will notice that there is a billboard which says, “The President talks about creating jobs, but his EPA is destroying jobs.”

Irony, you are soaking in it!

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS

Cows on Beano™

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Scientists are working to develop a flatulence free cow:

A new research project looks into the possibilities of adapting every aspect of cattle husbandry and selection processes to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

You may think that climate change is being caused by burning oil, coal and gas. But not so fast! The emission of methane from cattle is a surprisingly important factor. Methane from cows — a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — makes up 20% of greenhouse emissions from agriculture, or about 1% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gases. That’s according to Phil Garnsworthy, professor of dairy science at the University of Nottingham in the UK. He is also one of the project scientists of an EU-funded research project, called Ruminomics, which is using cutting-edge science to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cattle.

The key to the project, Garnsworthy says, is that cattle vary by a factor of two or three in the amount of methane their stomachs produce. It is therefore possible to imagine a dairy herd producing the same volume of milk for lower greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, different diets mean that cows can produce the same amount of milk with lower emissions. “It is possible to imagine cutting emissions from cattle by a fifth, using a combination approach in which you would breed from lower-emitting cattle as well as changing their diets,” Garnsworthy said.

Different genetic strains of cow emit different amounts of methane. “There are three issues: diet, genetics, and the microbiology of the cow’s rumen. We think that animal genetics may well influence their gut microbiology. However, this link has not been proved and we are still in the data collection phase,” explains Lorenzo Morelli, director of the faculty of agriculture at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Piacenza, Italy, who is a microbiologist and a project scientist.

Until now, the European cattle industry was mainly interested in improving aspects of livestock such as their fertility and their overall shape. But Morelli thinks that the market will soon add lower methane production to the list of desired cattle characteristics. Indeed, a herd that emits less methane is likely to be more productive. “The methane is lost energy that could go into producing milk. So if we can find the right genetic mix, we can find cattle that are less polluting, more productive, and more profitable for the famer,” Morelli said.

I, for one, welcome this effort to push back against bovine tyranny.

F%$#ing Civil Liberties, How Do They Work?

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Insane Clown Posse – Miracles, (Completely NSFW) it explains the reference in the post title

It’s not odd that a group would object to being characterized as a criminal gang by the FBI.

What is odd when a the group in question are fans of music group.

Here’s a hint to the FBI, if you are being accused of being over the top by a a group called Insane Clown Posse, and they are making cogent arguments that the response is excessive and an unconstitutional violation of the constitutional right to free assembly, perhaps it is time for some self examination:

The Michigan rap group Insane Clown Posse filed suit on Wednesday against the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying that the United States government had made the “unwarranted and unlawful decision” to classify fans of the band as criminal gang members, leading to their harassment by law enforcement and causing them “significant harm.”

The lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in Detroit by lawyers for the band and for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. Plaintiffs include the Insane Clown Posse founders Joseph Bruce and Joseph Utsler, who perform as Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, and whose fans call themselves Juggalos.

Also listed as plaintiffs are four Juggalos from Nevada, California, North Carolina and Iowa, who offered details of incidents in which they said they had been subjected to police harassment or other punishments for identifying with Insane Clown Posse.

………

The seeds of this lawsuit were sown in 2011, when the F.B.I.’s National Gang Intelligence Center published a report that described Juggalos as “a loosely organized hybrid gang” whose members were “expanding into many U.S. communities.”

The report, titled “National Gang Threat Assessment: Emerging Trends,” cited a 2011 incident in which “two suspected Juggalo associates were charged with beating and robbing an elderly homeless man,” and another in 2010 in which “a suspected Juggalo member” shot and wounded two other people.

The report also included a photograph of a woman described as a “Juggalo member,” wearing face paint similar to the kind used by Insane Clown Posse and pointing a gun at the camera.

………

The lawsuit asks the court to set aside the findings of the 2011 F.B.I. gang assessment, order the elimination of “criminal intelligence information” on Juggalos from government and law-enforcement databases and prohibit the gathering of further information without “sufficient facts” of a “definable criminal activity or enterprise.”

Mark Parsons, a Juggalo from Las Vegas and one of the plaintiffs listed in the suit, said in the complaint that he had been detained in July by state troopers outside Knoxville, Tenn., for displaying Insane Clown Posse’s insignia, known as “the hatchet man,” on his semi truck.

………

Jeff Engstrom, a lawyer and blogger who writes at Abovethelaw.com under the pseudonym Juggalo Law, said in an email that the government’s actions were “laughably off base” and “the equivalent of placing Phish fans on a terrorist watch list.” He added, “It elevates an Internet punch line into something even more absurd.”

You’ve seen this FBI report used to cancel concerts, refuse enlistments in the military, and deny custody in divorces.

This is not just a bit of silliness. This is a McCarthyesque abuse of power, and I hope that ICP, and the ACLU get their case to court, get the full story, and discover which nut job did this.

Whoever did this should not be in law enforcement.

Dafuque?!?!?!?

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This is a sign of the apocalypse

I went to UMass from 1983 to 1987.

I got my degree there.

There was a fair amount of weirdness there when I went there.  I imagine that there is still a fair amount of weirdness there now.

At least, there is symmetry.

Still, nothing could prepare me fopr tne news that UMass was rated as having the best college food in the nation.*

I remember eating there.

I remember when my friends ordered pizza delivered to the cafeteria.

I remember when they served chicken pucks.  I remember when they served chicken pucks with tomato sauce and mystery cheese, and they called it “chicken parmesan.”  (I called it “scabs”, which my table partners did not appreciate.)

What the f%$# has happened to my alma mater?

*And yes, “having the best college food in the nation,” is a lot like being the, “World’s tallest midget,” or being the, “Nation’s most ethical Republican.”

Our Loquacious Neanderthal Progenitors

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And yes, Neanderthal genes are in all of us, so they are in part our ancestors.

One of the enduring myths about Homo neanderthalensis (some would argue Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) is that they lacked the vocal structures to have our fluidity of speech.

30 years ago, the model that showed this was debunked because it was shown that it also prevented H neanderthalensis from swallowing.

The theory only barely passed the laugh test for about 5 years, but you still hear it coming up all the time.

One of the reasons for this is that the bone at the base of the tongue, the Hyloid is unattached to the rest of the skeleton, and fragile, so the fissile record is meager.

Well, they have found a Neanderthal hyloid, and it was very similar to ours, and now a group of scientist have modeled the Hyloid, and the surriounding soft tissues, and determined that they were very chatty folk:

An analysis of a Neanderthal’s fossilised hyoid bone – a horseshoe-shaped structure in the neck – suggests the species had the ability to speak.

This has been suspected since the 1989 discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid that looks just like a modern human’s.

But now computer modelling of how it works has shown this bone was also used in a very similar way.

Writing in journal Plos One, scientists say its study is “highly suggestive” of complex speech in Neanderthals.

The hyoid bone is crucial for speaking as it supports the root of the tongue. In non-human primates, it is not placed in the right position to vocalise like humans.

An international team of researchers analysed a fossil Neanderthal throat bone using 3D x-ray imaging and mechanical modelling.

This model allowed the group to see how the hyoid behaved in relation to the other surrounding bones.

Stephen Wroe, from the University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia, said: “We would argue that this is a very significant step forward. It shows that the Kebara 2 hyoid doesn’t just look like those of modern humans – it was used in a very similar way.”

Personally, I think that it is difference in fecundity that led to Neanderthals being supplanted by modern humans, but I am not a paleoanthropologist.

It’s Official, the Nobel Peace Prize is a Joke

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First, they give the following people Nobel Peace Prizes:

  • Henry Kissinger
  • Barack “Drones ‘R Us” Obama
  • Jimmy Carter (Bought a civil war and plunged Afghanistan into 30+ years of hell just to f%$# with the Soviets).

And now we have the, “International Academy of Spiritual Unity and Cooperation of Peoples of the World,” Nominating Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Of course, the Nobel committee has not awarded him the prize, but the fact Russian President “Cuddles” has been nominated does indicate that their credibility is shot.

No this is not The Onion.