Weird News

[osprey]

Yay, double post!

[quote]
Newborn babby Superman is '4real'

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A New Zealand couple is looking to call their newborn son Superman — but only because their chosen name of 4Real has been rejected by the government registry.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton say they will get around the decision by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages by officially naming their son Superman but referring to him as 4Real, the New Zealand Herald newspaper has reported.

The Wheatons decided on the name after seeing the babby for the first time in an ultrasound scan and realizing their babby was “for real.â€

[Rooster]

Leigh Holmwood
Friday August 10, 2007
MediaGuardian.co.uk

Russian submarines in the Arctic Ocean
Titanic error: Reuters issued this film still with a story about the Russian flag being planted beneath the North Pole. Photograph: Reuters

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.

The images were reproduced around the world - including by the Guardian and Guardian Unlimited - alongside the story of Russia planting its flag below the North Pole on Thursday last week.

But it has now emerged that the footage actually showed two Finnish-made Mir submersibles that were employed on location filming at the scene of the wreck of the RMS Titanic ship in the north Atlantic some 10 years ago.

This footage was used in sequences in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster about the 1912 disaster.

The mistake was only revealed after a 13-year-old Finnish schoolboy contacted a local newspaper to tell them the images looked identical to those used in the movie.

Reuters has admitted that it took the images from Russian state television channel RTR and wrongly captioned them as file footage originating from the Arctic.

RTR had also used the footage to illustrate stories about the North Pole expedition, but it is thought as library footage, and it never claimed it was actually of the flag-planting.

The pictures were first broadcast by RTR when the Russians were still several hours away from the North Pole.

Reuters distributed a package of clips that included the scenes from Titanic, alongside computer animations and footage of ships on the surface at the North Pole.

In its piece on the subject, two of the four Reuters pictures were from the Titanic filming.

Reuters has now apologised for the error and has made changes to its video material on the expedition, with captions denoting the various origins of the file footage used.

In a statement, Reuters said: "On August 2, 2007 in a TV story about two Russian submersibles planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole, we used file shots of MIR submersibles as part of this story.

"Reuters mistakenly identified this file footage as originating from the Arctic, and not the North Atlantic where the footage was shot.

"This footage was taken during the search for the Titanic and copyright is held by Russian State broadcaster RTR.

"This location error was corrected as soon as it was brought to our attention. A still image of the submersibles was also taken from the footage and put out on the Reuters photo wire. The caption has been corrected."

The incident is doubly embarrassing for the agency since it follows a case in August last year in which it published an image by a freelancer of Israeli bombings in Lebanon that had been dramatised using photo manipulation, with the addition of smoke rising from allegedly burning buildings.

After that gaffe, Reuters promised to tighten up its controls on material being put out in its name.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/ ... tworkfront

[VisibilityMissing]

Just imagine the potential for mischief . . .

Aug 16, 7:40 PM EDT

Couple Tries to Name babby 'At' Symbol


BEIJING (AP) -- A Chinese couple seeking a distinctive and modern name for their child chose the commonly used Internet 'at' symbol, much to the consternation of Chinese officials.

The unidentified couple and the attempted naming were cited Thursday by a Chinese government official as an example of bizarre names creeping into the Chinese language.

The father "said 'the whole world uses it to write e-mails and translated into Chinese it means 'love him,'"' Li Yuming, the vice director of the State Language Commission, said at a news conference.

The symbol pronounced in English as 'at' sounds like the Chinese phrase "love him."

Written Chinese does not use an alphabet but is comprised of characters, sometimes making it difficult to develop new words for new or foreign things and ideas.

In their quest for a different name, Li said that the parents of babby '@' were not alone. As of last year, only 129 surnames accounted for 87 percent of all surnames in China, Li said, suggesting that the uniformity drove people to find more individual given names.

"There was even a 'Zhao-A,' a 'King Osrina' and other extremely individualistic names," Li said, according to a transcript of the news conference posted on the government's main web site, http://www.gov.cn .

Li did not say whether police, who are the arbiters of names because they issue identity cards, rejected babby '@' and the others. But nationwide last year there were 60 million people's names that used "unfamiliar characters," Li said.

[Tom Flapwell]

Special Topping: Dominick A. Rao, a school custodian in Hackensack, N.J., is alleging in a lawsuit that his co-workers laced his pizza with the hallucinogen LSD in an attempt to poison him at an office party in 2005.

Two questions:

1. Why did he take two years to file the suit?

2. Shouldn't we be looking at something more severe than a lawsuit -- i.e., the threat of prison? Something tells me he prefers money to justice.

[CodeCat]

China Bans Reincarnation Without Government Permission

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation." But beyond the irony lies China's true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.

At 72, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959, is beginning to plan his succession, saying that he refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it's under Chinese control. Assuming he's able to master the feat of controlling his rebirth, as Dalai Lamas supposedly have for the last 600 years, the situation is shaping up in which there could be two Dalai Lamas: one picked by the Chinese government, the other by Buddhist monks. "It will be a very hot issue," says Paul Harrison, a Buddhism scholar at Stanford. "The Dalai Lama has been the prime symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet, and so it's quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be a lot more important than the others."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/08/2 ... 61444.html

[Steve the Pocket]

Special Topping: Dominick A. Rao, a school custodian in Hackensack, N.J., is alleging in a lawsuit that his co-workers laced his pizza with the hallucinogen LSD in an attempt to poison him at an office party in 2005.

Two questions:

1. Why did he take two years to file the suit?

2. Shouldn't we be looking at something more severe than a lawsuit -- i.e., the threat of prison? Something tells me he prefers money to justice.

In theory (at least as I understand law, based on the crappy social science texts I had in high school), civil suits, just like criminal suits, are supposed to claim that the defendant did something genuinely illegal. How the kind of frivolous suits that clog up the court system today work, I'm not sure, though I suppose they claim "criminal negligence" and stretch the meanings of the relevant laws as necessary.

[VisibilityMissing]

Looks like we've got another terrorist group to worry about . . . at least they like beer

Aug 25, 6:19 PM EDT

Running Club Members Face Felony Charges

By CARA RUBINSKY
Associated Press Writer

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) -- Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.

The sprinkled powder forced hundreds to evacuate an IKEA furniture store Thursday.

New Haven ophthalmologist Daniel Salchow, 36, and his sister, Dorothee, 31, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany, were both charged with first-degree breach of peace, a felony.

The siblings set off the scare while organizing a run for a local chapter of the Hash House Harriers, a worldwide group that bills itself as a "drinking club with a running problem."

"Hares" are given the task of marking a trail to direct runners, throwing in some dead ends and forks as challenges. On Thursday, the Salchows decided to route runners through the massive IKEA parking lot.

Police fielded a call just before 5 p.m. that someone was sprinkling powder on the ground. The store was evacuated and remained closed the rest of the night. The incident prompted a massive response from police in New Haven and surrounding towns.

Daniel Salchow biked back to IKEA when he heard there was a problem and told officers the powder was just harmless flour, which he said he and his sister have sprinkled everywhere from New York to California without incident.

"Not in my wildest dreams did I ever anticipate anything like that," he said.

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14.

"You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know," she said. "It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We're thankful it wasn't, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out."

[Doc Sigma]

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/ne ... 2000c.html

Article is totally not safe for work and is pretty much rated R due to text (no dirty pictures or anything). You have been warned. But dammit it's hilarious.

[VisibilityMissing]

"Oh, lady—you've got dead people!"

Somebody didn't do his job . . .

An Oak Brook back yard also is a graveyard

By Steve Schmadeke

Special to the Tribune

September 2, 2007




It was just a routine road-widening project in DuPage County until a backhoe operator saw a human skull tumble out of a load of dirt.

Later that day a police officer walked a short distance from the site to the Oak Brook home in which Nancy Salazar and her family had lived for 24 years and told her something that changed her life.

"He said, 'Oh, lady—you've got dead people,'" she recalled.

Within a few months of that Sept. 17, 2001, discovery, the Salazars learned that their spacious back yard along Midwest Road south of Interstate Highway 88 was once a cemetery established by a pioneer farming family and that 29 graves likely remained on their property.

Now the Salazars have filed a lawsuit against the title company involved in their home purchase, and archeological research has implicated the wealthy man who incorporated the well-heeled village of Oak Brook in 1958.

"I had a huge garden at one point and it's just disgusting to me that we could've been growing our vegetables through somebody's remains," Salazar said. " . . These were human beings."

In the summer of 2003, the county paid more than $300,000 to have the remains of 22 people discovered on public property removed and reburied. But the Salazars are responsible for the costs of locating and removing any remains in their yard and having them reburied at another cemetery, and because such work is regulated by state law, it is costly, Salazar said.

For the last six years, she has used a mixture of humor and sadness in dealing with the cemetery. But after not getting anywhere with the county, village and their title insurance company, the Salazars on Aug. 2 filed suit against Chicago Title Insurance in DuPage County for failing to disclose that the cemetery was on the lot they bought in 1977. They hope to use any money they are awarded to pay for the remains to be moved.

"The house is the largest asset that we own," she said, "and I want to feel like I can use it. The cemetery shouldn't be here anymore."

Ed Andersen, director of Chicago Title's claim office, said it was against company policy to comment on pending litigation. But court documents contain a 2002 letter from the company's associate general counsel, Scott Fandre, denying the Salazars' claim against the company because it said the Village of Oak Brook had declared the cemetery vacated.

"We certainly understand the seriousness of this matter and also sympathize with the insured's situation," he wrote.

The cemetery, which was in use from about 1848 to 1903, was to be moved in the 1960s to make way for a redevelopment project by Paul Butler, the late industrialist-turned-real estate developer who formed Oak Brook.

The old graveyard was known as Thurston Cemetery after a farming family that originated from Broome County, N.Y. David Thurston and his wife, Catherine, bought 160 acres along what is now 31st Street for $250 in 1843, according to the 2003 report by Midwest Archaeological Research. When David Thurston died in 1875, his will specified that a half-acre of his farm was to be set aside for a cemetery.

Developer bought cemetery
Butler Co., Butler's real estate firm, eventually bought the land and in 1962, he moved to subdivide it into what is today the Forest Brook development.

In the early years after Oak Brook's incorporation in 1958, Butler essentially controlled what happened in the town, say village residents involved in politics at the time. He owned an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 acres and successfully lobbied the state legislature to pass a law that allowed the town to incorporate. His influence also moved the alignments for I-88 north and I-294 east so they avoided his 13 polo fields.

At Butler's request, the town declared Thurston Cemetery a public nuisance. In an ordinance signed Sept. 11, 1962, Oak Brook allowed the cemetery to be vacated on the condition that Butler's company remove all the headstones, coffins and human remains at its own expense and, working under the supervision of licensed undertakers, put them in another cemetery.

There are no records that anyone applied for permission from the state to move the bodies, according to the Salazars' attorney. But Dawn Cobb of the Illinois State Historic Preservation Agency said in 1962 only a county disinterment permit would be needed—the state didn't pass a law protecting old cemeteries until 1989.

The company did move remains from a few well-marked graves, but archeologists and local historians say most of the graves were unmarked. Some of those remains were discovered as road crews were preparing to construct a retaining wall near the west end of the Salazar's property as part of a county project to widen Midwest Road. It soon became apparent that many, if not all, coffins never had been removed, and the Butler company's work crew simply tossed some remains and headstones into a pit and buried them.

A team of archeologists found more than 1,000 bone fragments; some of the remains included a young woman buried with an infant and a teenage girl buried with a rose brooch, tea cup and perfume bottle.

Further investigation revealed that almost all of the roughly 132-foot-by-1450-foot cemetery sat in the Salazar's back yard, with its eastern border near their concrete patio. A survey on the property last summer using ground-penetrating radar, a technology that can detect possible grave shafts but does not indicate if they hold remains, indicated 29 grave sites, said Thomas Soebel, the University of Illinois at Chicago archeologist who performed the work.

That discovery left some of Thurston's descendants hopping mad.

"Basically, it's a 'Poltergeist' story,' " said Sycamore resident Matthew Woodstrup, 44, Thurston's great-great-great-great-grandson. "Old man Butler moved the stones but not the bodies. The Butler family made [a lot] of money off the town of Oak Brook and somebody needs to pay up [to have the remaining bodies moved]."

Oak Brook resident William Watson, 78, was president of the town's influential Civic Association in 1962 and doubts that Butler was aware of what happened.

"Paul would never say just rip it out—no, no, no," said Watson, who believes unscrupulous workers are to blame. "That's not the Paul Butler that I knew. He was a very good, quiet man—though he was a tough businessman—and he had a lot on his plate. If someone had told him this was going on, he wouldn't have stood for it."

Discovery's consequences
After the graveyard was discovered, Nancy Salazar found there were some small social consequences. Her daughter, who was about 10 at the time, had friends who no longer wanted to visit. One friend of the couple's still refuses to be in the house at night.

"We're not freaked out about it because we've been here so long—this is our safe haven," Nancy Salazar said. "But had we just moved into the house and they unearthed that, I think I'd be running down the street screaming."

She spoke of how the discovery brought back memories of her oldest son's death in 1982 from a brain tumor and how she feels responsible for the people who may be buried in her back yard.

"I've sat here and cried by the window many, many days wondering, 'What did I do wrong?' " she said. "You get to the point where we feel guilty because there's no resolution to it. And we're not guilty—we didn't do anything wrong."

"I've become very protective of them. At Christmastime they get an angel and their own little tree in the back yard. But yet, I don't want them there, either.

"I feel that they don't have a voice and somebody has to respect them, and that's my job."

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

[Rooster]

This isn't really "news" but I find it immensly ammusing:D

Code: Select all

Dasani was launched in the UK in January 2004. There were problems from the get-go. Early adverts referred to Dasani as "bottled spunk" or featured the tagline "can't live without spunk." In the UK, "spunk" is a euphemism for semen.[1][2] In March 2004, it became public through an article in The Independent newspaper that the tap water of Sidcup was being treated, bottled and sold under the Dasani brand name in the UK. Although Coca-Cola never implied that the water was being sourced from a spring or other natural source, they marketed it as being especially "pure". Hence, the public revelation of it being simply treated tap water caused a media stir. The media made mocking parallels with a popular episode of the well-known BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses in which the protagonist Del Boy attempts to pass off tap water as spring water. This scheme fails when the local reservoir becomes polluted (also because of Del) causing the bottled water to glow yellow. The episode is believed to have contributed to the severe negative reaction to Dasani by the press and public. Clips from this episode were shown in news reports and other programmes relating to the Dasani flop. Two weeks later, UK authorities found a concentration of bromate in the product that could be considered harmful if consumed in large quantities. Dasani was potentially carcinogenic. Coca-Cola recalled half a million bottles and pulled the "Dasani" brand from the UK market on March 19, 2004.[3] Shortly after, plans to introduce the brand on Continental Europe were announced to have been canceled as well. Ironically, bromate was not present in the tap water before Coca-Cola's treatment process. During that process the bromate was produced from the tap water's harmless bromide. The withdrawal of the product and the resulting PR disaster has been likened to the New Coke fiasco. Dasani did in fact make it to Ireland as it was sold quite freely in every major shop in the east of Ireland.[quote] I love it when major capitalist companies pants up, don't you?[/quote]

[Æron]

CINCINNATI -- A man with a needle sticking out of his arm crashed Wednesday afternoon into a Clifton Heights drug treatment center, witnesses said.

The driver, whose name has not been released, was arrested and taken to a hospital for treatment of unspecified injuries.

Police said the man was unconscious and had overdosed
on a drug, possibly heroin.

He regained consciousness when he was loaded into an ambulance and attempted to jump out and flee, but police caught him and restrained him with handcuffs.

Some patients at Gateway House said the driver had once been treated at the Vine Street halfway house.

No other injuries were reported.

[osprey]

This isn't really "news" but I find it immensly ammusing:D

Code: Select all

Dasani was launched in the UK in January 2004. There were problems from the get-go. Early adverts referred to Dasani as "bottled spunk" or featured the tagline "can't live without spunk." In the UK, "spunk" is a euphemism for semen.[1][2] In March 2004, it became public through an article in The Independent newspaper that the tap water of Sidcup was being treated, bottled and sold under the Dasani brand name in the UK. Although Coca-Cola never implied that the water was being sourced from a spring or other natural source, they marketed it as being especially "pure". Hence, the public revelation of it being simply treated tap water caused a media stir. The media made mocking parallels with a popular episode of the well-known BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses in which the protagonist Del Boy attempts to pass off tap water as spring water. This scheme fails when the local reservoir becomes polluted (also because of Del) causing the bottled water to glow yellow. The episode is believed to have contributed to the severe negative reaction to Dasani by the press and public. Clips from this episode were shown in news reports and other programmes relating to the Dasani flop. Two weeks later, UK authorities found a concentration of bromate in the product that could be considered harmful if consumed in large quantities. Dasani was potentially carcinogenic. Coca-Cola recalled half a million bottles and pulled the "Dasani" brand from the UK market on March 19, 2004.[3] Shortly after, plans to introduce the brand on Continental Europe were announced to have been canceled as well. Ironically, bromate was not present in the tap water before Coca-Cola's treatment process. During that process the bromate was produced from the tap water's harmless bromide. The withdrawal of the product and the resulting PR disaster has been likened to the New Coke fiasco. Dasani did in fact make it to Ireland as it was sold quite freely in every major shop in the east of Ireland.[quote] I love it when major capitalist companies pants up, don't you?[/quote]

Oh crap, I drink Dasani almost daily...

Also interesting to note that here in Canada, Dasani, along with a couple other water brands, were required to print "Public Water Source" on their labels.

[Steve the Pocket]

I figure if you're paying a dollar a bottle for f'ing water, you're pretty much throwing your money away anyway. Doesn't matter if it comes from a city's water supply, a mountain spring, or God's own tears -- it's still water.

[Tom Flapwell]

It really depends where you are. If you're in East Aurora, NY, then tap water should be acceptable. If you're in Durham, NC, you have to be a glutton for punishment. And if you want to drink water in a movie theater, you have three choices: leave for a fountain, break the rules by smuggling in your own bottle of water, or pay maybe $4.

[gforce422]

We have well water at my house. The water out of the tap tastes so much better than most bottled waters.

The only bottled water I ever really enjoyed was the brand Fiji... it's the only kind that doesn't taste like plastic or chlorine.