Weird News

VisibilityMissing · Postby **VisibilityMissing** » Fri May 06, 2005 1:31 am

Penguins and gambling. How could it get any better?  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> May 5, 8:27 PM EDT Pittsburgh Aviary Plans Penguin Bingo Game PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The National Aviary in Pittsburgh is planning to celebrate National Migratory Bird Days with various promotions, including a bizarre game of penguin bingo. The birds will be released on a giant bingo board and allowed to waddle around. The numbers will be called whenever a bird, ahem, goes to the bathroom on a numbered square. Aviary experts say each bird will do that every 20 minutes or so. 2005 The Associated Press. </td></tr></table>

Henohenomoheji · Postby **Henohenomoheji** » Fri May 06, 2005 11:47 am

how embarrassing for the penguins...

VisibilityMissing · Postby **VisibilityMissing** » Tue May 10, 2005 12:52 am

Just for the penguins? ---------------------------------- Chicken. Road. You do the math.  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> May 9, 4:42 PM EDT Chicken Ticketed for Crossing the Road RIDGECREST, Calif. (AP) -- Linc and Helena Moore may have finally learned the answer to that age-old question: Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the chicken doesn't know jaywalking is illegal. Kern County Sheriff's Deputy J. Nicholson does know, however. The deputy issued a ticket March 26 because one of the couple's chickens allegedly impeded traffic in Johannesburg, a rural mining community near Ridgecrest, some 220 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The Moores were in Superior Court on Friday to plead not guilty. A trial was scheduled for May 16. Nicholson has declined to discuss the matter, but sheriff's Sgt. Francis Moore said chickens on the roadway have been a problem in the community of 50 residents. Officials didn't believe it could be resolved by simply issuing the couple a warning. "Sometimes you have to let people talk to the judge," Moore said. The chicken's owners say they believe they were cited because they were among several people who complained that sheriff's deputies haven't done enough to control off-road vehicle riders who create dust and noise in their neighborhood. Sheriff's officials say that isn't so, adding they are doing what they can to keep off-roaders away from homes. "The chicken thing has nothing to do with the motorcycle thing," Moore said. 2005 The Associated Press</td></tr></table>  --------------------------------------------------- We have a hostage, and we demand pizza!  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> May 9, 8:40 AM EDT Aussie Officials Trade Pizza for Hostage SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Officials bought 15 pizzas to secure the release of a guard who had been held for 42 hours by inmates at an Australian top-security prison, police said Monday. Twenty prisoners were involved in the standoff, which began Saturday when inmates occupied part of Risdon Prison on the southern island state of Tasmania, complaining about conditions in the aging institution and taking guard Ken Hannah hostage. Hannah finally was released late Sunday night after authorities caved in to demands for pizza. "The final sticking point with the inmates was that they were requiring pizzas to be delivered," said senior prisons official Graeme Barber. "We had held off in relation to that - we obviously wanted the release of our staff member," he added. "Our staff member was negotiated out by the delivery of 15 pizzas." The last prisoner involved in the siege gave himself up Monday. No one was injured. The siege followed months of violence and unrest at Risdon, which holds one of Australia's most notorious convicts, Martin Bryant, who went on a shooting rampage at Tasmania's Port Arthur historic penal settlement in 1996, killing 35 people. 2005 The Associated Press.</td></tr></table>

VisibilityMissing · Postby **VisibilityMissing** » Wed May 11, 2005 12:51 am

Don't you dare take his name in vain!  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> May 10, 6:51 AM EDT Jesus Christ in Legal Battle in W.Va. By ERIK SCHELZIG Associated Press Writer CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Even Jesus Christ can't circumvent the rules for getting a driver's license in West Virginia. Attempts to prove his name really is Christ have led the man born as Peter Robert Phillips Jr. through a lengthy legal battle and a recent victory in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. "This all started with him expressing his faith and his respect and love for Jesus Christ," attorney A.P. Pishevar told The Associated Press. "Now he needs to document it for legal reasons." Described by his attorney as a white-haired businessman in his mid-50s, Christ is moving to West Virginia to enjoy a slower lifestyle. He bought property near Lost River, about 100 miles west of Washington, and has a U.S. passport, Social Security card and Washington driver's license bearing the name Jesus Christ. But he still falls short of West Virginia title and license transfer requirements because his Florida birth certificate has his original name on it and he has been unable to obtain an official name change in Washington. "We just need official documentation that that's his name," said Doug Stump, commissioner of the West Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles. "He will be treated no different than anybody else." Christ applied for the legal name change in May 2003, but it was denied by District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Tim Murphy because "taking the name of Jesus Christ may provoke a violent reaction or may significantly offend people." In his appeal, Christ's attorney argued that Phillips had changed his name to Jesus Christ 15 years earlier, and "has been using the name since then without incident." The appeals court last month sent the name-change proposal back to the lower court, saying some required hearings in the case had not been held. Any comment from the man in the middle of this legal tussle? "Christ is not speaking to the press at this time," Pishevar said. 2005 The Associated Press</td></tr></table>

Muninn · Postby **Muninn** » Wed May 11, 2005 2:08 pm

Today prison guard Ken Hannah learned his life is worth 15 pizzas.

VisibilityMissing · Postby **VisibilityMissing** » Fri May 13, 2005 12:35 am

"The officer there today had a major lapse in judgment." Right.  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> May 12, 5:31 PM EDT Gun Safety Class in S.C. Ends With a Bang ANDERSON, S.C. (AP) -- A gunshot was fired into the floor in an Anderson County middle school after a student accidentally pulled the trigger of a deputy's holstered gun. The gun fired Wednesday morning after a student grabbed it as the deputy told them how hard it was to take a gun from an officer's holster, Sheriff David Crenshaw said. The student's finger apparently was small enough to get inside the holster and pull the trigger, the sheriff said. The bullet fired into the floor, and debris cut and scratched two students. But no one was seriously injured, school officials said. The sheriff's office has begun an internal investigation and the officer involved is on administrative leave, said Crenshaw, who would not identify the deputy or say whether he would be paid while on leave. "The officer there today had a major lapse in judgment," Crenshaw said Wednesday. "He was just trying to be nice to the kids and made a faulty decision. It was an accident. The good Lord blessed us that nobody got hurt." --- Information from: The Greenville News, <a href='http://www.greenvillenews.com' target='_blank'>http://www.greenvillenews.com</a> 2005 The Associated Press..</td></tr></table>

Zaaphod · Postby **Zaaphod** » Fri May 13, 2005 1:10 am

<table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: (VisibilityMissing @ May 12 2005, 05:35 PM)</td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> "The officer there today had a major lapse in judgment." Right.  </td></tr></table>  So, the deputy is teaching a gun safety class, eh? With a loaded gun? With the safety off? Yep, that's not just irony, it's utter stupidity as well.

VisibilityMissing · Postby **VisibilityMissing** » Tue May 17, 2005 11:17 pm

Important linguistic pioneer Yoda is . . .  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> AT RANDOM: ON LANGUAGE Out of this world Yoda's syntax always has been By Nathan Bierma Special to the Tribune May 17, 2005 This week's final installment of the "Star Wars" franchise is not only the end of a cinematic era. The completion of George Lucas' second trilogy will be the last hurrah for one of the most grammatically eclectic film characters of all time: Yoda. From the moment Yoda first appeared in "The Empire Strikes Back" in 1980 -- assuring Luke Skywalker, "Help you I can," and warning him, "If once you start down the dark path ... consume you it will" --Yoda caught our attention with his unique syntax, or system of word order. Geoffrey Pullum, linguist and co-author of the "Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" (Cambridge University Press, $160), can explain Yoda's strange way of speaking. His analysis may bring back some bad blackboard memories, but it goes to show that anyone can learn grammar with Yoda as teacher. Take a look at this Yoda sentence from "Empire Strikes Back": "Through the Force, things you will see." To hear Pullum tell it, this sentence is a galactic grammatical feat. That's because it places the object of the sentence ("things") before the subject ("you"). In English and many other languages, the more natural word order would be, "You will see things." On the lookout Even before Yoda arrived on the silver screen, Pullum was keeping an eye out for this kind of sentence structure -- which linguists call "object-initial" clauses -- in human languages. "Until 1977, I would have said that no human language used that as the typical order of constituents in an ordinary, unembellished clause with no special emphasis effects. In fact I did say so, in print in 1976," Pullum writes by e-mail. Later in the decade, Pullum discovered some obscure languages in South America that appeared to regularly use object-initial clauses, but those languages are exceptions. So whether he realized it or not, George Lucas stumbled upon a grammatical stroke of genius with Yoda's word order. "The one thing you could do to make your syntax seem quite strange to almost all the six billion people on this planet, no matter which of the 6,000 languages they spoke, would be to adopt [object-initial] order as the normal order of declarative clauses," Pullum said. Yoda is actually a syntactical switch-hitter, alternating among object-initial sentences ("Rootleaf I cook"), subject-initial sentences ("A Jedi's strength flows from the Force"), and sentence fragments ("No different! Only different in your mind.") Sometimes you will hear Yoda start a sentence with the kind of adjective grammar textbooks call a subject complement, as in "Strong is Vader," or he will separate helping verbs from main verbs, as in "Help you I can." "English allows this possibility but doesn't use it very often," Pullum says. "Yoda uses it at the drop of a hat." When English speakers use this inverted word order, it's usually for special emphasis or rhetorical effect. They might say, "One thing I know ..." instead of "I know one thing" or "Here I am" instead of "I am here." So Yoda's syntax could be a way to make him sound sophisticated, as well as extraterrestrial, says Mark Peters, who writes about language for Verbatim and The Vocabula Review and keeps a Weblog on words www.wordlust.blogspot.com). `Musical chairs' "In addition to making him sound like Kermit the Frog crossed with a fortune cookie, these Yodaisms mirror how Luke's world is being turned upside down (at times, literally, with the help of Jedi levitation)," Peters writes by e-mail. "If a green Muppet living in a swamp can be as smart and powerful as Yoda, and a mass murderer like Darth Vader can be Luke's (eventually) redeemable daddy, then maybe subjects, verbs and objects can play musical chairs too." Peters adds that Yoda's name is itself notable to word watchers. He says "Yoda" is entering English as, in his words, "a synonym for teacher, mentor, and all-around ... wise person." "On `Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' Spike the Vampire says of older vampire Angel, `You were my Yoda!'" Peters says. "I've complimented several excellent teachers I've known by calling them `my Yoda' too, and I don't think Spike and I are the only ones. I predict more dictionaries will get with it and include `Yoda' in the future." ---------- Write to Nathan Bierma at onlanguage@gmail.com. Copyright 2005, Chicago Tribune </td></tr></table>

Bocaj Claw · Postby **Bocaj Claw** » Tue May 17, 2005 11:28 pm

Someone is putting a liiiitle too much thought into this.

Richard K Niner · Postby **Richard K Niner** » Tue May 17, 2005 11:32 pm

Putting a little too much thought into this, someone is.

VisibilityMissing · Postby **VisibilityMissing** » Fri May 20, 2005 11:28 pm

Well, you wouldn't want any illicit talcum making it into the country, would you?  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> May 20, 4:12 PM EDT Drug Dogs Trained to Find Talcum Powder CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- When police sniffer dogs couldn't trace drugs, the Australian state police force soon discovered the reason: the cocaine sample used to train them was talcum powder. Seven dogs that had worked on drug searches over the past three months will need to be retrained, Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Paul Evans said Friday. "I'm sure our dogs have got very soft, nice smelling noses at the moment, but they are in fact trained in detecting talcum powder so that means that they will have to be retrained in detecting cocaine," he told reporters. "If there are any missing kids out there, we'd find them fairly quickly, I should think," he quipped. Evans said police did not believe cocaine had been stolen and blamed an administrative error for the mix-up. But internal investigations had been launched both within Victoria police and the Australian Federal Police which supplies illicit drug samples to the state force for training purposes. The state opposition described the case as either corruption or incompetence and called for a public inquiry into the state force. 2005 The Associated Press.</td></tr></table>

Archaemic · Postby **Archaemic** » Sat May 21, 2005 12:51 am

To the Yoda bit: It's mostly clause ordering. For accuracy, comma use in strange places is good. Example: Teach you I will. BAD Teach you, I will. Gooood.

Bocaj Claw · Postby **Bocaj Claw** » Sat May 21, 2005 1:19 am

Understand this, I do. Speak like this, I do. Obsessed, I am.

Zaaphod · Postby **Zaaphod** » Wed May 25, 2005 12:49 am

Age brings wisdom. Or not.  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> May 24, 4:26 PM EDT Woman, 86, Jailed for Calling 911 20 Times CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- An 86-year-old woman has been sent to jail after police said she called 911 dispatchers 20 times in a little more than a half-hour to complain about a pizza parlor. Dorothy Densmore remained in jail Tuesday charged with misusing the 911 system, a jail spokeswoman said. She told dispatchers Sunday that a local pizza shop refused to deliver a pie to her south Charlotte apartment, said Officer Mandy Giannini, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police spokeswoman. She also complained that someone at the shop called her a "crazy old coot," Giannini said. Densmore wanted them arrested. Instead, police came to arrest her, and she resisted, Giannini said. It's unusual for someone to face charges for nonemergency calls, Giannini said. But on Sunday, Densmore kept calling 911, even after she was told to stop, Giannini said. When an officer arrived at her apartment, the 5-foot-tall, 98-pound woman attacked him, Giannini said. Densmore scratched him, kicked and bit his hand, she said. Densmore is also charged with resisting a public officer and two counts of misusing the 911 system, jail records show. It was the second time she'd been charged with misusing the emergency system, court records show. In March 2004, police said she called 911 about 10 times after she was asked to stop, a police report says. She then threatened to hit the officer with a chair when he came to arrest her, the report states.</td></tr></table>

VisibilityMissing · Postby **VisibilityMissing** » Wed May 25, 2005 1:47 am

Nobody said intelligence was required to be a criminal.  <table border='0' align='center' width='95%' ><tr><td class='quotetop'>Quote: </td></tr><tr><td class='quotebody'> May 24, 4:09 PM EDT Cop Breaks Up Drug Deal Next to Squad Car ELKHART, Ind. (AP) -- Police Cpl. Mike Swygart said he did not believe it at first when someone told him two men were making a drug deal next to his patrol car. Swygart said he was on a break having a cup of coffee Friday night when a person told him what was going on outside. "I laughed because I thought no one would be so foolish as to handle illegal drugs next to a police car," Swygart wrote in his report. "He looked at me and told me that he was not joking." Swygart walked outside and spotted two men in a car parked next to the squad car, holding what appeared to be bags of marijuana. "I opened the passenger side door and shouted, 'Police, don't move!' Both suspects dropped the baggies and let them fall on the front seat," he said. Officers detained the two men and reported seizing two small bags of marijuana as well as some drug paraphernalia and pills. --- Information from: The Truth, <a href='http://www.etruth.com' target='_blank'>http://www.etruth.com</a> 2005 The Associated Press.</td></tr></table>

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