News of the Weird

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Originally Posted by Rythmic

California Drug Dealers?

Huh?

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Wicked.

I wonder where did they get that nifty one billion dollars from.

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District Judge Nick Sanders was told that as Tiger Woods was due to tee off at the Open Golf Championship last year Mr Roberts ran around the green with just a toy squirrel covering his genitals and a golf ball between his buttocks.

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:laugh4:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/m...de/6935605.stm

His solicitor said that he'd turned over a new fig leaf. :laugh4:

Mark Roberts deserves a knighthood at some point. :yes:

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...and a golf ball between his buttocks

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Mr. Roberts almost got a hole in one...

Giant Lego Man fished out of Dutch seas
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...87011420070808

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Three councillors from Europe who sailed across the English Channel on a homemade raft to deliver a goodwill message were arrested on arrival.

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and quite right too. :laugh4:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/6938748.stm

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Originally Posted by Giant Lego article

A woman nearby added: "I saw the Lego toy floating toward the beach from the direction of England."

The toy was later placed in front of the drinks stall.

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Originally Posted by Goodwill Messengers article

Three councillors from Europe who sailed across the English Channel on a homemade raft to deliver a goodwill message were arrested on arrival.

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Interesting contrast in treatment of cross channel visitors... :laugh4:

Oooh, she knows where it came from. The woman must have some 1337 mad skills in geography. :laugh4:

Man has surgeon "whittle" his thumbs ... so he can type more easily on his iPhone. Yikes!

Surgically alters thumbs to better use iPhone

Written by James Benfly, Wednesday, 08 August 2007

Thomas Martel, 28, of Bonnie Brae is a big guy. So he has a hard time using the features on ever-shrinking user interfaces on devices like his new iPhone. At least, he did, until he had his thumbs surgically altered in a revolutionary new surgical technique known as "whittling."

"From my old Treo, to my Blackberry, to this new iPhone, I had a hard time hitting the right buttons, and I always lost those little styluses," explains Martel. "Sure, the procedure was expensive, but when I think of all the time I save by being able to use modern handhelds so much faster, I really think the surgery will pay for itself in ten to fifteen years. And what it's saving me in frustration - that's priceless."

"This is really, on the edge sort of stuff," explains Dr. Robert Fox Spars, who worked on developing the procedure. "We're turning plastic surgery from something that people use in service of vanity, to a real tool for improving workplace efficiency."

The procedure involved making a small incision into both thumbs and shaving down the bones, followed by careful muscular alteration and modification of the fingernails. While Martel's new thumbs now appear small and effeminate in comparison to his otherwise very large hands, he says he can still lift "pretty much anything I could lift before the surgery - though opening spaghetti sauce jars has been a problem. That was a big surprise."

The iThumb...great.

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While Martel's new thumbs now appear small and effeminate in comparison to his otherwise very large hands, he says he can still lift "pretty much anything I could lift before the surgery - though opening spaghetti sauce jars has been a problem. That was a big surprise."

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You know a chocolate flavoured vibrator that could open jars and kill coakroaches would replace men... this guy is one step down on that ladder. :clown:

Lamb born with 7 legs

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

WELLINGTON, New Zealand --A lamb born with seven legs will have to be euthanized, local media reported Thursday.

The animal has three hind legs, two forelegs and two extra legs that hang useless behind its forelegs.

Veterinarian Steve Williams at the Canterbury Vets clinic in the rural town of Methven said the lamb, born Friday, also was missing a portion of its bowel and so would have to be destroyed.

"To keep it alive is probably inhumane really," Williams told the Ashburton Guardian newspaper.

Williams said he believed an error during embryo formation had resulted in the lamb being born polydactyl -- with many legs -- a condition that occurs once in several million sheep.

Dave Callaghan said he was surprised the find the seven-legged lamb on his farm along with its mother and normal twin sibling.

"I have never seen anything like that," he said.

Here is the link with a picture:
http://www.boston.com/news/odd/artic...n_new_zealand/

I actually find it quite sad, that poor lamb. It was on the news 2 days ago that they had put it down.

Yeah, I read that I thought it was rather sad... particularly as it had a twin.

Reminds me of my last couple of months on the farm in NZ before moving to Aus to become a city kid. A ewe had twins, one running around like lambs do... the very picture of spring... the other sickly and no matter what I did I could not get it to feed so it died... I'd like to have a punchline, but for some reason that little life had a much larger impact on me then I expected... and it was other twenty years ago and I still can remember the hollow feeling.

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Originally Posted by Thumb Article

revolutionary new surgical technique known as "whittling."

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That's not revolutionary, that's just carpentry that's been converted over to surgery!

Looks like the thumb-whittling was a hoax.

I feel so dirty and used ...

Editor's Note

Written by Guerin Lee Green
Saturday, 11 August 2007

Strangely, while many readers have grasped that "Surgically alters thumbs" represents satirical social commentary, many on the internet, alas, have not.

Careful reading of the piece makes it clear to any critical consumer of information that the piece is pure humor and not news or reported as fact.

Among the points of the piece: that U.S. society accepts plastic surgery and decorative deformation of the human body for vanity, but not other reasons (consider the Bonds steroid stories); that technology has become a new cult phenomena, in which items are praised or ridiculed based upon tribal allegiances instead of functionality and performance (and we are members of the Cult of the Mac- iPhone division); and we like to pretend that some of our writers have a sense of humor.

For those who have "debunked" the HUMOR piece, thanks for pointing out that there are no muscles in the thumbs (BTW, there are muscles in the thumb), and that the timeline from iPhone release to successful surgery is pure fantasy. Also "whittling"?!?! Come on, pollexplasty, from the Latin for thumb, pollex, perhaps, but not whittling!!

Additionally, many commentators have derided Mr. Martel for stupidity first and foremost, which may indicate something about their credulity. In an era when fake news, like Paris Hilton, has crowded out real news and public debate, the lesson is that skeptical consumption of information, whether from the North Denver News, the New York Times, or the National Review, is a must.

By the way, for odd skeptics, the North Denver News is a monthly community newspaper serving Northwest Denver, with about 35,000 readers. The North Denver News is entering our sixth year of publication, and along with our sister paper, The Cherry Creek News, are the largest community news presence in Denver. Our web presence, which features stories from the paper as well as other news, satire and commentary, is updated several times weekly, and will do about a million page views in calendar 2007.

FYI, there is no Thomas Martel (aka Tommy the Hammer) or Dr. Ben Fox Spars. The Fox of course, is reference to Fox News (aka Faux News). James Benfly is fictive as well, the nom de plume of one of our writers. And thanks to Franz Kafka, who must be smiling upon this whole episode.

:laugh4:

Being the most critical reader here, i of course, ahem, didn't even read the article, I tend to trust my fellow orgahs to post the best excerpts here anyway. And it pays off, I myself would most likely not have found that it was a hoax, except maybe by reading the original article, which I didn't.:dizzy2:

Anyway, thumbs do have muscles, at least if there are hairs on the thumbs.

Now knowing it was a "humour" piece, I still find whittle humour in it. You'd think thumbthing in it would be funny. Same can be said for this post, come to think of it...

Senegal are over the Moon

:laugh4:
Only an Irishman..

Click here for Wide Open Beaver

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Swedish grandmother hospitalised after beaver attack

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A grandmother taking a leisurely swim in a Swedish river ended up in the hospital after a beaver attacked her with its tail, regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda reported Wednesday.

Police sources said it was the second time a beaver had attacked humans at the beach on the banks of the Bottenaa River, around 150 kilometres (93 miles) west of Stockholm, the newspaper reported.

"The beaver attacked the grandmother. She was seriously hit by the animal's tail and received a number of bites and scratches," an officer told the newspaper.

The authorities have decided to kill the dozen or so beavers living near the beach to eliminate any further risk to local bathers.

Are they sure it was a beaver? I hear the British have been releasing man-eating badgers all over the place ...

Ward, I'm worried about the Beaver.

This couple was playing with the wrong gun while having close quarter relations...
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6877561

Louisiana man shot while having sex involving a firearm

LAKE CHARLES, LA (KPLC) - Shortly after midnight Thursday, one Lake Charles man died while engaged in sexual behavior involving a firearm.

The Calcasieu Parish sheriff's office has charged 36 year old Kimberly Grosset with negligent homicide in connection with the shooting death of her boyfriend.

Officials say she and 49 year old Robert White were engaged in consensual sexual behavior when he was shot in the head with a gun at his McCindy road home.

No bond has been set.

Crazed Rabbit

Well that certainly answers the question "is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

Biker fails to notice missing leg

From correspondents in Tokyo
August 14, 2007 12:03pm

A JAPANESE biker failed to notice his leg had been severed below the knee when he hit a safety barrier, and rode on for 2km, leaving a friend to pick up the limb.

The 54-year-old office worker was out on his motorcycle with a group of friends in the city of Hamamatsu, west of Tokyo, yesterday, when he was unable to negotiate a curve in the road and bumped into the central barrier, the Mainichi Shimbun said.

He felt excruciating pain, but did not notice that his right leg was missing until he stopped at the next junction, the paper quoted local police as saying.

The man and his leg were taken to hospital, but the limb had been crushed in the collision, the paper said.

I'm guessing his shifter was on the left. :fainting:

I get a mental picture of him coming to a stop, putting his legs out to hold up the bike, and falling over...

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Originally Posted by drone

Click here for Wide Open Beaver

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Swedish grandmother hospitalised after beaver attack

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A grandmother taking a leisurely swim in a Swedish river ended up in the hospital after a beaver attacked her with its tail, regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda reported Wednesday.

Police sources said it was the second time a beaver had attacked humans at the beach on the banks of the Bottenaa River, around 150 kilometres (93 miles) west of Stockholm, the newspaper reported.

"The beaver attacked the grandmother. She was seriously hit by the animal's tail and received a number of bites and scratches," an officer told the newspaper.

The authorities have decided to kill the dozen or so beavers living near the beach to eliminate any further risk to local bathers.

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They are working with the octo-squids.
The squids can't enter our water so they use the beavers instead.:help:

I'm not going to make any of the obvious puns surrounding a wide-open beaver. I will, however, discuss the importance of stem cell research.

We need it to make new, more natural vaginas.

Doctor builds new, more natural vagina

Operation uses stem cells to help women with rare congenital syndrome

ROME - An Italian doctor has reconstructed vaginas for two women born with a rare congenital deformation, using their own cells to build vaginal tissue in the lab for the first time.

Dr. Cinzia Marchese of Rome’s Policlinico Umberto I hospital, giving details of the operations on Wednesday, told Reuters a 28-year-old woman who underwent the first such operation a year ago now has a healthy vagina.

“She has got married and is living a normal life,” said Marchese, whose study has been published in the journal Human Reproduction.

The second operation was carried out on a 17-year-old girl on Tuesday and the first signs are that the cells taken by biopsy from the area where her vagina should grow and provide mucosal tissue.

Mucosal tissue is found inside the vagina, the mouth and elsewhere in the body and has important attributes distinct from ordinary skin.

The two women had a condition called Mayer-Von Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome, or MRKHS for short, which affects an estimated one in 4,000 to 5,000 female infants.

Girls with the syndrome are born with no vagina. The patient often has a normal uterus, ovaries and external secondary sexual organs such as breasts, but cannot have sexual intercourse or give birth.

“Usually the syndrome is diagnosed when they are young and they try to have sexual intercourse for the first time and it hurts,” said Marchese.

Often embarrassed to talk about it with their parents when they are young, MRKHS sufferers often “live the rest of their lives with no normal sexual life, even though they are normal women with normal feelings,” she said.

Stem cells generate new tissue

So far, surgeons have been able to correct the condition by reconstructing a vagina out of grafted skin or from intestinal tissue, but the surgery is highly invasive, lengthy and painful. And it takes a long time to grow a normal mucosal wall.

Such women, if they have healthy ovaries, have been able to achieve pregnancy by artificial insemination but would then need a surrogate mother to carry the fertilized eggs and give birth.

“What we do is to take a little biopsy of 0.5 cm from the place the vagina should be, “ Marchese said. They used an enzyme to break down the tissue and then let the immature cells, called stem cells, generate new, mucosal tissue on their own.

t took about 15 days to get a thick enough layer to transplant into the patients, Marchese said.

Marchese, a 47-year-old professor of clinical pathology and biotechnology, studied the use of stem cells to build sheets of skin in vitro to provide skin grafts for burn victims at Harvard Medical School with the technique’s pioneer, Howard Green.

“When I came back to Italy I modified this technique for mucosal vagina tissue,” she said, adding that its success could be good news for women with cancer and other vaginal complaints.

Well, score another one for non-embryonic stem cell research.

~;p

Crazed Rabbit

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Originally Posted by Kongamato

Giant Lego Man fished out of Dutch seas
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...87011420070808

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My God, what are the Octosquid up to now? They've enslaved Legoland, and are using the residents as marines... is there any hope? :help: