My neighbour got wood
This story may not be as exciting as you would expect, but it is nonetheless something I just gotta share with the rest of the world.. . There really isn’t much more to say..
Happy Holidays and don't eat the yellow snow!
We look at the light and fluffy side of life around here. And what could be lighter or fluffier than snow? Here’s some advice about a certain kind of snow… Frank Zappa’s songs have some rather weird lyrics. However, the first two carols in the list below (press the left and right arrows to navigate) are not by him. The rest is, and the very last one is a real treat: he appears on Crossfire back in the 80s defending his right to free speech. Without further ado, Happy Holidays!
Vietnamese-Japanese-Canadian man builds fembot with $25,000
33 year-old Trung Le from Brampton, Ontario, managed to build his ideal life partner on a budget. Because of the financial strains imposed by his hobby, he had to move in with his parents. In a recent interview he declared: She's not really my girlfriend. Aiko's a robot who can do a lot of things, and hopefully more soon. I have friends – I don't need to create friends. There was a lot of stress. Of creating her, of having almost no money left and finding no sponsor. We know about Aiko: Aiko – which means love child in Japanese – can speak about 13,000 sentences in Japanese and English, do algebra, trig and geometry, and tell the weather in foreign cities, courtesy of Internet links. She can move her hands, nod her head – and shout indignantly if touched roughly. When Le lightly slapped her, she cried out: "It's not nice to touch a girl's head. Touch your own head." Le is now trying to teach her to make tea and coffee, and do simple household chores. Warning to all men who hope to duplicate Trung Le’s efforts in the hope of a quieter life: he had a heart attack last year, so we can safely assume she’s not as nice as she seems. Sources: ts
Woman prank calls parents to attend imaginary school meeting
Shelan Waisberg, 34, faces 28 charges after calls were made to parents asking them to attend an imaginary school meeting discussing sexual assault and the mental health of their children. Carmen Chai from the Toronto Star reports: The night before, nine anonymous calls were made to parents telling them that their child had been sexually assaulted by a teacher, or the principal had secret files concerning their child's mental health, Det. Steve McIlwain said. The caller said she was a teacher at the school. The parents were asked to attend a meeting with the principal the following morning at the school. "When the parents showed up, the principal didn't know what was going on," McIlwain said. The woman was charged with nine counts of public mischief, eight counts of personation, mischief interfere with property, nine counts of conveying a false message and criminal harassment and will appear at College Park Courts on Jan. 22, 2009 at 2 p.m. Source: ts
Police Cruiser fully-loaded with 12-gauge shotgun stolen & recovered
A man stole a police cruiser but was apprehended shortly thereafter. Police used the GPS emitter and caught him within minutes. Henry Stancu and Precious Yutango from the Toronto Star wrote: Toronto police arrested a man and recovered a cruiser minutes after it was stolen from an accident scene in Weston. The low-profile traffic stealth car with a shotgun mounted between the two front seats was stopped on Weston Rd. near Lawrence Ave. W. when the theft occurred around 7:30 p.m. Using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, police managed to locate the car within minutes. It was found behind stores on Weston Rd. at Wilby Cres., a short distance from the accident scene. A 36-year-old man was arrested. Police said the 12-gauge shotgun was locked in its harness and would have been difficult for anyone to remove. The car had minor damage to its front fender when it clipped a vehicle on a side street. Most police vehicles are equipped with GPS tracking systems, said Staff Sgt. Randy Smith. "It's an officer safety issue," he added. "We can locate our police cars. We can ensure we know where our cars are at all times." Source: ts
Fred Thompson on the economy
Fred Thompson has come up with a message of hope and holiday cheer for all those of us who watch in misery how the world around us collapses. Watch and listen, it's worth it! If this didn’t cheer you out and you still feel you’re about to lose the shirt off your back, consider joining a strip poker championship.
Gay penguins - fathers by stealing eggs
At the Polar Harbin zoo in eastern China, a gay penguin couple is stealing eggs from heterosexual penguins and attempt to conceal their theft by placing stones at the feet of their parents before waddling away with their eggs. Even though they wear suits, heterosexual penguins are not dumb, so they noticed the deception and ostracized the couple. Keepers then physically separated the gay couple from the group to avoid disrupting the hatching. There are numerous examples of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, but gay penguins have captured the public's attention more than any other species. A German zoo provoked outrage from gay lobby groups after attempting to mate a group of gay male penguins with Swedish female birds who were flown in especially to seduce them. But the project was abandoned after the males refused to be "turned", showing no interest in their would-be mates. In 2002 a couple of penguins at a New York zoo who had been together for eight years were "outed" when keepers noticed that they were both males. Source: tlg
China’s Andy Rooney, GNR and Chinese Democracy
For many-many years, investigative TV reporting was a synonym of CBS 60 Minutes. And every single one of them had a common fixture meant to make you laugh and think at the same time: Andy Rooney. Unfortunately, he is largely unknown to the new Internet generation. When we first watched the Chinese Andy Rooney we thought it’s hysterical. For many, however, the joke will be lost, as not everybody is familiar with his work. So we made a YouTube compilation of his best, including parodies and an interview with Ali G which you can navigate by pressing the left or right arrows: Source: ONN, YouTube, 60 Minutes
Here's the Chinese version, courtesy of ONN:
Wars are followed by a baby-boom
As it turns out, this may have very well been the reason for going to war in Iraq: averting a recession and manufacture a fresh new start. Upon returning from Iraq, most army men have babies. Or at least it seems so at the US military town of Fort Bragg. Last weekend Rebekah Sandelin, 32, was one of 1,000 mothers from Fort Bragg and the nearby Pope Air Force Base, who attended an event billed as the largest military "baby shower" in history, where local businesses plied the new mothers with baby clothes and other gifts. The baby boom has been so widespread that the Womack Army Medical Centre on the base has had to send military mothers to civilian facilities, where patients have given birth in waiting rooms because of overcrowding. Births were up 50 percent in October at Fayetteville's Ob-gyn clinic. Local shops have run out of baby strollers and cots. Mrs Sandelin, who attended the baby shower with two-month old daughter Rudy told The Sunday Telegraph that when her husband redeployed to Afghanistan earlier this year, "I went to stay with my family in Tennessee. When I came back in August I started noticing pregnant women everywhere. "The mood is very optimistic right now. Most of the soldiers at Bragg are at home. That's a celebration in and of itself. People are pretty happy about all these births. Resources here are strained. There are not enough doctors and beds but people are taking it in their stride." Sue O'Brien, who leads a group of nurses and social workers who run the New Parents Support Programme at Fort Bragg said: "It's incredible. There are just babies everywhere. You can't go to the market or the stores both on the base and at the mall without seeing them. It's exciting and it is good for morale. We run an informal support group that meets every week. We used to have 30 people at that now we get 100." Last year the support group employed five people. It now has 19 staff. For the new fathers she runs a Dads 101 class. "It's a hard job to transition from a soldier to being a nurturing dad," she said. "There's been a huge increase in that class too." Fort Bragg officials worked with a community group called Fayetteville Cares to organise the Boots and Booties baby shower, an American tradition where new mothers are given gifts to help with their new arrival. Kirk de Viere, chairman of Fayetteville Cares, said: "We're getting about 400 births a month at multiple hospitals in the community. Everyone got a bag full of diapers and lotion and a laundry bag full of goodies; some got a bigger present like a car seat and one person won a car. Source: tlg
Deodorant – boy killer?
Daniel Hurley, a 12-year-old boy, collapsed in January after spraying on Lynx deodorant in the bathroom of his Derbyshire home.A coroner in Britain has determined that a 12-year-old boy died after using too much spray deodorant in a confined space. He died five days later in hospital because from a cardiac arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythms. His father Robert Hurley told the coronial inquest that Daniel was a fit and healthy young man who was proud of his appearance, and lavish in his use of hair gels and deodorants, which he often sprayed all over his clothes. By spraying the deodorant in a confined space, the coroner found, the concentration of solvents affected the 12-year-old's heart. His death followed a previous incident several weeks earlier, when he had collapsed in the bathroom but immediately recovered. The New South Wales president of the Clean Air Society, Kerrie Ross, says spray-on deodorant is safe if used properly. "It was not being used in accordance with instructions; it was not being used in accordance with what one would normally call common sense," she said. "In normal use, in normal sensible use, they wouldn't be a problem. [But] if you lock yourself in a room, you have a medical condition, you overuse it, of course you can cause problems. "And if you fail to heed warnings from previous attacks, of course you can get into problems. But that's the same with anything. (…) Just use [the products] with common sense, use them according to the instructions and it should be OK. It seems he was using excessive quantity," he said. The manufacturer of Lynx deodorant, Unilever, has expressed condolences to the Hurley family; the company says it has never seen a case like this before.
