In shock* news it has emerged that a group of sheep in America, out of their minds on Class A drugs, have been repeatedly blasted using controversial electric Taser stun weapons.
Rather than some kind of degenerate drug-fuelled brouhaha indicative of the moral decline among America's sheep community, the ovine electro-stunning incident was the result of experiments by Taser International in-house boffins intended to show that it's safe to use Tasers on human meth-heads.
The issue arises because, in the natural course of things, a high proportion of the people that American police officers have to forcibly subdue are tripping the light fantastic on crystal meth or related substances at the time. Tasers are supposed to be a replacement for other and more damaging plod tactics such as bludgeoning, pepper-spraying or choking suspects into compliance, so it's important to be able to use them on meth fanciers.
Taser International has already shown to its own (and more importantly most courts') satisfaction that its weapons are without significant ill effect on people not chemically disadvantaged at the time, but it has been argued that a sudden electric shock administered to a methamphetamine connoisseur is likely to cause a heart attack. Certainly a fair number of such people have subsequently died after being subdued by Taser-wielding cops, though this also happened before the stunguns came into use.
Hence the company study, in which 16 Dorset sheep weighing from 26 to 78 kg were given various doses of methamphetamine (four unlucky control animals got none at all) and were then repeatedly zapped with a Taser X26 "compliance device".
According to the Taser boffins and assisting academic colleagues, none of the meth'd up sheep suffered ventricular fibrillation or full-blown heart stoppages. In the case of little ones weighing less than 32kg, the Taser "exacerbated atrial and ventricular irritability induced by methamphetamine intoxication, but this effect was not seen in larger, adult-sized animals".
Taser will no doubt argue that this indicates that it is safe for plods to use their products on meth users, or adult ones at any rate. The study seems highly unlikely to win over the weapons' critics, but perhaps might prove handy for company lawyers in future.
British cops are using Tasers more and more these days, though the governing body of the nation's biggest police force - the Met - remains firmly opposed to them. In recent high-profile incidents, Met officers making questionable use of force have relied on old-school methods: perhaps wisely, as a Taser generates a permanent internal record and scatters forensically verifiable confetti every time it is discharged.
Dominic Deville stalks young victims for a week, sending chilling texts, making prank phone calls and setting traps in letterboxes.
He posts notes warning children they are being watched, telling them they will be attacked.
But Deville is not an escaped lunatic or some demonic monster.
He is a birthday treat, hired by mum and dad, and the ‘attack’ involves being splatted in the face with a cake.
‘The child feels more and more that it is being pursued,’ said Deville.
‘The clown’s one and only aim is to smash a cake into the face of his victim, when they least expect it, during the course of seven days.’
If the boy or girl manages to avoid the ‘hit’, they are given the cake as a birthday present. Well, that’s alright then.
The frightening fun can be stopped at any time, which is handy for parents who have second thoughts and don’t fancy the cost of child therapy.
Deville said: ‘The clown will never break into a residence or show up at work. ‘It’s all in fun and if, at any point, the kids get scared or their parents are concerned, we stop right there.
04-16-2010, 02:20
drone
Re: News of the Weird
Can't sleep, clown will eat me...
Can't sleep, clown will eat me...
04-16-2010, 05:28
Gregoshi
Re: News of the Weird
Well they're some bad things known to man But ain't too much badder than The fears of a clown when there's no one around
The severed head and torso of a man has been found in a temple in the Indian state of West Bengal in what the police say is a case of "human sacrifice".
The head and the body were found at the local temple to the goddess Kali near Chotomakdampur village in the western district of Birbhum.
Police say they have detained a tribal villager for questioning.
Human sacrifice is illegal in India. But a few cases do occur in remote and underdeveloped regions.
"This man has been sacrificed to propitiate the gods," said local official Kalyan Mukherjee.
04-16-2010, 15:05
Beskar
Re: News of the Weird
Lemur, you need to get Wicked Clown for your son. He looks zombie enough too.
04-16-2010, 16:12
drone
Re: News of the Weird
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
The severed head and torso of a man has been found in a temple in the Indian state of West Bengal in what the police say is a case of "human sacrifice".
The head and the body were found at the local temple to the goddess Kali near Chotomakdampur village in the western district of Birbhum.
Police say they have detained a tribal villager for questioning.
Human sacrifice is illegal in India. But a few cases do occur in remote and underdeveloped regions.
"This man has been sacrificed to propitiate the gods," said local official Kalyan Mukherjee.
In other local news, a stone has been reported stolen from the village of Maypore...
EUREKA — For now and into the foreseeable future, a portion of the road leading to Six Flags St. Louis will be paved with a lot more than good intentions.
It will be covered as well with serendipity, ingenuity, creative persistence and ... recycled swine manure.
All that ingenuity has gone into a project believed to have created the first asphalt ever produced from the stuff. And one thing's for sure:
The witnesses lining the bright stretch of North Outer Drive along Interstate 44 — particularly those with noses and an abiding interest in sustainable technology — won't soon forget the moment the red dump truck deposited a 15-ton load of the designer asphalt into
a road paver late Wednesday morning.
"Whew!" gasped a worker with Pace Construction Co., the St. Louis County road contractor that joined forces with Innoventor, the Earth City-based engineering and design firm that perfected the process of converting the animal waste into a bio-oil used in asphalt binder.
To others, the air swelled with the sweet smell of potential for new manufacturing opportunities, jobs and, possibly, profits. How big is that potential? Nobody knows yet.
"If this works out, it's a win-win situation for everyone," said Karlton Krause, a hog producer from northern Iowa. "For farmers, it produces revenue. And at the same time, it helps clean the environment. We're taking a waste product and finding a value-added purpose for it."
The road leading to Six Flags, such as it, began 10 years ago when neighbors started raising a stink over the odors at the hog farm operated by Kent Schien's in-laws in Barry, Ill., east of Hannibal, Mo., about 125 miles from St. Louis.
Schien, Innoventor's founder and chief executive, is among the legions of former McDonnell Douglas engineers who left the aerospace giant to start their own companies.
A native of Barry himself, Schien understood the pitfalls of alienating the folks next door in RELATED LINKS
Get more business news, blogs and opinion
a small town where, as likely as not, the neighbors were also cousins, aunts and uncles. RELATED LINKS
Get more business news, blogs and opinion
He turned the problem over to his engineers, who soon developed a technique to "scrub" animal odor as it moved outdoors through fans installed on the outer walls of swine sheds.
Schien was justifiably proud of the company's accomplishment — until he ran into an acquaintance, also a prominent hog producer. The acquaintance praised the invention for removing the stink. But, he pointed out, an air scrubber is not a revenue generator.
What farmers really needed, he suggested, was an invention capable of turning swine waste — up to 8 pounds of it a day per animal — into a money-maker.
Seeking an answer, Schien returned to his alma mater, the University of Illinois, where an agricultural engineering professor named Yuanhui Zhang was developing a process to transform pig manure into bio-oil.
About three years ago, Schien wedded Zhang's research with the Innoventor team and put Rick Lux, an engineer with a background in biofuels, in charge of the project.
Lux tackled the mission on two fronts: the former Earth City warehouse space that Innoventor converted into an office, adorned with the names of inventors such as the Wright Brothers and Louis Pasteur. And Rick Rehmeier's hog farm, outside Augusta, which became an off-site laboratory where the team discovered situations and problems they never expected to encounter.
"I don't think I ever had a class (in engineering school) that ever covered that," said engineer Gary Winkler, referring to the hog manure pit now integrated into his professional life.
The objective, Lux understood, was to turn time on its head by compressing the process that created crude oil from decomposed critters that died ages ago.
To reach that goal, the team drew on chemistry, engineering and innate common sense in developing a multiple-stage system that ultimately moved the manure into a reactor, which applies heat and pressure to the waste material.
"Instead of taking 10,000 years, they can (produce bio-oil) in about an hour," said Michael Formica, chief environmental counsel with the National Pork Producers Council.
As Lux and the engineers grappled with the biggest obstacle standing between Innoventor and success — pig hair and dander that constantly "chewed up" grinders and pumps — it seemed they might not be able to improve on Mother Nature's timeline.
By this winter, though, Innoventor was ready to move to the next phase.
The team got a big boost when tests conducted on the paving material received a passing grade as a "lower-grade asphalt binder" from John Wenzlick, a research engineer with the Missouri Department of Transportation.
And Wednesday morning came the biggest test of all.
The sun was still coming up when Lux pulled into the lot of an asphalt plant operated by Pace Construction in a limestone quarry about six miles from Six Flags, the bed of his Innovator pickup truck loaded with 20 gallons of the bio-oil.
Five hours later, a chute beneath a Pace silo dropped a batch of pig asphalt into the red dump truck operated by Mike Cain of Dittmer, Mo.
As Pace employees shoveled the asphalt into buckets for testing in an on-site lab, Cain asked a reporter to confirm the reason the load was drawing so much attention. He got the confirmation; it was exactly what he thought it was.
He sniffed the air. "Smells nasty," the driver continued. "But I live in the country; I'm used to it."
Within minutes, Cain was backing his truck up to the paver.
In the coming weeks and months, MoDOT and Innoventor intend to keep a close eye on the 500-foot stretch where history, of a kind, was made Wednesday morning. The state will monitor wear and tear on a road subjected to a lot of traffic in the seasons when the amusement park is open for business.
Lux and Innoventor see the earlier blessing by MoDOT as permission to move their work to a larger platform.
"We'll keep going ahead," he said, as workers tamped down the still-fresh asphalt with rolling machines. "We've shown this stuff can be processed at the farm, processed at an asphalt plant and put down on a road."
Other parties will be keeping an eye on what Innoventor has wrought as well.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has an obvious interest in what Glenn Curtis, the chief of wastewater and infrastructure management for the Kansas City field office, calls a "fairly unique concept."
And Formica, with the Pork Producers Council, believes it is important to ascertain whether the value of manure-generated bio-oil offsets the cost the electricity, conventional fuel and other expenses needed to produce the substance.
As for Schien, he is making plans to manufacture the prototype on Rehmeier's farm for use at hog production facilities across the nation.
The plant, he says, will be located in the place where it all began: Barry, Ill.
04-16-2010, 17:49
Lemur
Re: News of the Weird
Sounds like a pork project to me, just another example of a local business with its snout in the trough.
Meanwhile, is that a fecal highway or are you just happy to see me?
04-16-2010, 22:09
Gregoshi
Re: News of the Weird
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
Sounds like a pork project to me, just another example of a local business with its snout in the trough.
Nah, it is new highway technology to improve vehicle safety via enhanced manu'rability.
High Street retailing giant GameStation decided to put this to the test and inserted a new clause into their terms and conditions earlier this month that granted them legal rights to the immortal souls of thousands of their online customers.
No problem. Just reload the previous save and re-do the purchase. :laugh4:
SEATTLE — A convicted cocaine smuggler has been arrested for running what authorities say appears to be a bestiality farm in Washington state in which visitors could engage in all sorts of twisted sex acts with animals.
Douglas Spink was arrested at his ramshackle, heavily wooded compound near the Canadian border in Whatcom County along with a 51-year-old tourist from Great Britain who is accused of having sex with three dogs.
Dozens of dogs, horses and pet mice were seized, along with what investigators described as thousands of images of bestiality and apparent child pornography. The mice were euthanized, said Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo, whose office assisted federal agents in the case.
"This stuff is just truly bizarre," he said. "These were mice that had their tails cut off, they were smothered in Vaseline and they had string tied around them." [...]
Spink has not been charged with any bestiality or child porn charges at this point, only with violating the terms of his supervised release. Stephen Clarke of Peterborough, England, was arrested on state charges for allegedly abusing the dogs.
Spink's lawyer, Howard Phillips, insisted there's no evidence his client violated the terms of his release. "There's no hard evidence he's been engaging in bestiality at all," Phillips said.
Spink [...]calls his operation Exitpoint Stallions Limitee and expounds at length on its Web site about his philosophy.
"Are we unconventional in our approach to stallion care? Absolutely," he writes.
He later adds: "We don't wall off sexual energy in our stallions as something dangerous or inappropriate, but rather channel that energy towards positive, safe, appropriate paths. There's a proper time and place for it, and we work towards those sorts of skills rather than fighting un-winnable fights against deeply-rooted instincts."
04-18-2010, 05:39
Crazed Rabbit
Re: News of the Weird
I just came here to post that. Truly, no one can compete with Washington for weirdness.
An Australian publisher has had to pulp and reprint a cook-book after one recipe listed "salt and freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.
Penguin Group Australia had to reprint 7,000 copies of Pasta Bible last week, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.
The reprint cost A$20,000 ($18,000; £12,000), but stock in bookshops will not be recalled as it is "extremely hard" to do so, Penguin said.
The recipe was for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.
An Australian publisher has had to pulp and reprint a cook-book after one recipe listed "salt and freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.
Penguin Group Australia had to reprint 7,000 copies of Pasta Bible last week, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.
The reprint cost A$20,000 ($18,000; £12,000), but stock in bookshops will not be recalled as it is "extremely hard" to do so, Penguin said.
The recipe was for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.
Don't you mean spoilt taglines with sandals and prostitutes?
An Australian publisher has had to pulp and reprint a cook-book after one recipe listed "salt and freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.
Penguin Group Australia had to reprint 7,000 copies of Pasta Bible last week, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.
The reprint cost A$20,000 ($18,000; £12,000), but stock in bookshops will not be recalled as it is "extremely hard" to do so, Penguin said.
The recipe was for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.
My friend told me about it. The bookstore where she works was not happy at all. ~D
04-19-2010, 07:58
Cute Wolf
Re: News of the Weird
if that reverse (grounded white people) was happened in some third world countries, no one will care about that.....
04-19-2010, 09:42
InsaneApache
Re: News of the Weird
Black people go best on pasta and suchlike, white people is a must for a fried egg.
04-19-2010, 13:17
Hosakawa Tito
Re: News of the Weird
Quote:
Originally Posted by InsaneApache
Black people go best on pasta and suchlike, white people is a must for a fried egg.
And here I thought is was all soylent green.
04-19-2010, 13:53
InsaneApache
Re: News of the Weird
Well green people go best on muesli. :laugh4:
04-19-2010, 16:16
drone
Re: News of the Weird
Quote:
Originally Posted by InsaneApache
Black people go best on pasta and suchlike, white people is a must for a fried egg.
Control over heavily armed US war robots fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was lost last year after a cat climbed into machinery at an American command base and "fried everything", a US officer has confirmed. [...] "A cat climbed into one of the electronic nodes and fried everything," the colonel says [...]
It should be noted that when the satellite link to a Predator or Reaper is lost, the roboplane doesn't plunge to Earth or embark on a frenzied orgy of mechanised slaughter or anything. In general the plane simply circles where it is, awaiting further commands.
04-19-2010, 17:24
InsaneApache
Re: News of the Weird
Quote:
Originally Posted by drone
What kind if wines go best with those?
I'd have to plump for a full red for the black people and a nice crisp white for the white people. Oh a rose for mixed race. :)
Haggis, try before bashing it. It's yummie with a good bitter pint. Pepper and chocolate work great by the way, so do mature wines and chocolate
04-22-2010, 14:48
Ronin
Re: News of the Weird
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
It should be noted that when the satellite link to a Predator or Reaper is lost, the roboplane doesn't ... embark on a frenzied orgy of mechanised slaughter or anything.
Veteran Rep. Babette Josephs (D., Phila.) last Thursday accused her primary opponent, Gregg Kravitz, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters, a powerful bloc in the district.
"I outed him as a straight person," Josephs said during a fund-raiser at the Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant [...]
In an interview, Josephs said she stood by her comments about Kravitz. She said her opponent told her he was gay, then showed up at a campaign event with a woman who introduced herself as his girlfriend. On the trail, Kravitz has described himself as a "proud member of the LGBT community," and he discussed his bisexual orientation while pitching Liberty City for its endorsement.
