Offbeat News

[Jet]

Introducing the "liger" one of six new Hybrid animals.

Pictures and story of the results of different but closely related species occasionally mating....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ygreen/20100...ghybridanimals

[SuperFemme]

Mom turns in son for stealing drugs from her bra

The Associated Press

MEMPHIS, Tenn. --A Memphis woman called police after she found her son stealing her prescription sedatives from her bra. The Commercial Appeal reported that police found a 28-year-old man hiding under a neighbor's sport utility vehicle Wednesday morning. The mother, whose name police didn't release, told officer she awakened before dawn to find her son filching Xanax from her bra, where she kept it to prevent him from stealing it.

Police said the man had 22 Xanax pills, 15 of them wrapped in toilet paper and hidden in his sock. Officer said a search of the man's room turned up more pills and various drug paraphernalia.
He was in jail Thursday with bond set at $40,000.

Read more: http://www.bnd.com/2010/04/30/123757...#ixzz0mnGUEWzs

[Jet]

Spanish man with face transplant discharged from hospital

SEVILLE, Spain (AFP) – A Spanish man who received a new face in a transplant this year checked out of hospital on Tuesday, thanking doctors and the donor's family for making the groundbreaking surgery possible.

More.....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/healthsu...ransplantspain

[Rook]

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Police in Columbus are looking for a man they say robbed a bank near downtown, then handed two $100 bills to passers-by as he ran away. FBI Special Agent Harry Trombitas said the man robbed a Huntington Bank branch early Monday afternoon after showing a teller a gun in his waistband. Trombitas said the man was running up the street when he encountered a mother and daughter window-shopping.

The robber stopped and gave them each a $100 bill, assured them it was real, then kept running.

Trombitas said the mother and daughter from the Cleveland area were in town for a visit to Ohio State.

They took the money to the nearest bank which turned out to be the Huntington branch that was just robbed, and there told police what happened.

How come this shit doesn't happen to me??? I need 100 $ too !!!

[Jet]

Modern marvels: 18 of the world's strangest bridges

Just wow!

Gallery

http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...op&ha=1&kw=ist

[Jet]

World's largest herring caught of swedish shores

12 footer with pics
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100512/..._giant_herring

[Jet]

Why Snakebites Are About to Get a Lot More Deadly


http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...op&ha=1&kw=ist

[Jet]

Divers explore sunken ruins of Cleopatra's palace

wow
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/...en_treasures_2

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by Jet

Divers explore sunken ruins of Cleopatra's palace

wow
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/...en_treasures_2

The finds from along the Egyptian coast will go on display at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute from June 5 to Jan. 2 in an exhibition titled "Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt."

tryna think if i know anyone in Philadelphia- i would love to see this...maybe they'll come to Houston

[Medusa]

The "Amityville Horror" house is up for sale:

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05...-the-market-2/

[Jet]

Hawaii first in nation to ban shark fins

By AUDREY McAVOY, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 33 mins ago

HONOLULU – Hawaii has become the first state in the nation to ban shark fins. Gov. Linda Lingle on Friday signed a bill prohibiting the possession, sale, trade or distribution of shark fins, which are used in pricey Chinese dishes.
Exceptions will be made for researchers who have obtained a permit from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. Lawmakers hope the new law will help prevent overfishing and extinction of sharks harvested for their fins.

Many Chinese consider shark fins to be a delicacy, served in high-end Chinese restaurants in soup and as fillets in gravy.

The bill passed the state Legislature earlier this year with broad support.

[Enigma]

First human 'infected with computer virus'

By Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent, BBC News
Thursday, 27 May 2010


A British scientist says he is the first man in the world to become infected with a computer virus.

Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading had a chip inserted in his hand which was then infected with a virus.

The device, which enables him to pass through security doors and activate his mobile phone, is a sophisticated version of ID chips used to tag pets.

In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems.

If other implanted chips had then connected to the system they too would have been corrupted, he said.
Medical alert

Dr Gasson admits that the test is a proof of principle but he thinks it has important implications for a future where medical devices such as pacemakers and cochlear implants become more sophisticated, and risk being contaminated by other human implants.

"With the benefits of this type of technology come risks. We may improve ourselves in some way but much like the improvements with other technologies, mobile phones for example, they become vulnerable to risks, such as security problems and computer viruses."

He also added: "Many people with medical implants also consider them to be integrated into their concept of their body, and so in this context it is appropriate to talk in terms of people themselves being infected by computer viruses."

However, Dr Gasson predicts that wider use will be made of implanted technology.

"This type of technology has been commercialised in the United States as a type of medical alert bracelet, so that if you're found unconscious you can be scanned and your medical history brought up."

Professor Rafael Capurro of the Steinbeis-Transfer-Institute of Information Ethics in Germany told BBC News that the research was "interesting".

"If someone can get online access to your implant, it could be serious," he said.

Video at BBC News Link

[Nat]

'Gaydar' may actually exist: study shows gay people to be more detail-oriented, discerning

link

"Gaydar," that innate ability gay people supposedly have to zero in on other gays even in a crowd, may really exist.

When Dutch scientists examined how heterosexual and homosexual people focus their attention, they discovered gays are much more detail-oriented.

For the research, 42 gay and straight volunteers were presented with photos of outlines of large squares and rectangles. Each shape was packed with smaller shapes. Generally, the human brain is programmed to take in the larger picture, so when people see a rectangle-filled square, they're likely to say it is filled with squares.

When the men and women were presented with similar questions about the pictures they had been shown, the straight volunteers answered faster but were less accurate. The gay men and women, on the other hand, were slower to answer but were right more of the time, especially when they were asked about the smaller shapes.

This suggests they are able to hone in on even very small details as well as the bigger picture, according to the research, which appeared in the journal Frontiers in Cognition. In gays' daily routine, researchers believe, this close attention to detail could help them to detect others' sexual preferences.

"This is the first time that scientific proof has been found for the existence of a gaydar mechanism amongst homosexuals," researcher Dr. Lorenza Colzato of Leiden University in the Netherlands told the Daily Mail. "This perceptual skill allows homosexuals to recognize other gay people faster and we think it's because they are much more analytic than heterosexuals."

People who are naturally more perceptive and detail-oriented may have a greater chance of picking up on subtle clues in other people that they may be homosexual, which makes it easier for them to search out gay friends and sexual partners, the study found.

[Jet]

Gay-Friendly McDonald's Ad Goes Viral

Story and video...
http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93724?fp=1

[Jet]

Oldest leather shoe steps out after 5,500 years



By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer – Wed Jun 9, 7:11 pm ET
WASHINGTON – About 5,500 years ago someone in the mountains of Armenia put his best foot forward in what is now the oldest leather shoe ever found.
It'll never be confused with a penny loafer or a track shoe, but the well-preserved footwear was made of a single piece of leather, laced up the front and back, researchers reported Wednesday in PLoS One, a journal of the Public Library of Science.

Worn and shaped by the wearer's right foot, the shoe was found in a cave along with other evidence of human occupation. The shoe had been stuffed with grass, which dated to the same time as the leather of the shoe — between 5,637 and 5,387 years ago.

"This is great luck," enthused archaeologist Ron Pinhasi of University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, who led the research team.
"We normally only find broken pots, but we have very little information about the day-to-day activity" of these ancient people. "What did they eat? What did they do? What did they wear? This is a chance to see this ... it gives us a real glimpse into society," he said in a telephone interview.

Previously the oldest leather shoe discovered in Europe or Asia was on the famous Otzi, the "Iceman" found frozen in the Alps a few years ago and now preserved in Italy. Otzi has been dated to 5,375 and 5,128 years ago, a few hundred years more recent than the Armenian shoe.
Otzi's shoes were made of deer and bear leather held together by a leather strap. The Armenian shoe appears to be made of cowhide, Pinhasi said. Older sandals have been found in a cave in Missouri, but those were made of fiber rather than leather.

The shoe found in what is now Armenia was found in a pit, along with a broken pot and some wild goat horns. But Pinhasi doesn't think it was thrown away. There was discarded material that had been tossed outside the cave, while this pit was inside in the living area. And while the shoe had been worn, it wasn't worn out. It's not clear if the grass that filled the shoe was intended as a lining or insulation, or to maintain the shape of the shoe when it was stored, according to the researchers.

The Armenian shoe was small by current standards — European size 37 or U.S. women's size 7 — but might have fit a man of that era, according to Pinhasi.He described the shoe as a single piece of leather cut to fit the foot. The back of the shoe was closed by a lace passing through four sets of eyelets. In the front, 15 pairs of eyelets were used to lace from toe to top.

There was no reinforcement in the sole, just the one layer of soft leather. "I don't know how long it would last in rocky terrain," Pinhasi said.
He noted that the shoe is similar to a type of footwear common in the Aran Islands, west of Ireland, up until the 1950s. The Irish version, known as "pampooties" reportedly didn't last long, he said. "In fact, enormous similarities exist between the manufacturing technique and style of this (Armenian) shoe and those found across Europe at later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn for thousands of years across a large and environmentally diverse region," Pinhasi said.

While the Armenian shoe was soft when unearthed, the leather has begun to harden now that it is exposed to air, Pinhasi said.

Oh, and unlike a lot of very old shoes, it didn't smell. Pinhasi said the shoe is currently at the Institute of Archaeology in Yerevan, but he hopes it will be sent to laboratories in either Switzerland or Germany where it can be treated for preservation and then returned to Armenia for display in a museum.Pinhasi, meanwhile, is heading back to Armenia this week, hoping the other shoe will drop.

The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Chitjian Foundation, the Gfoeller Foundation, the Steinmetz Family Foundation, the Boochever Foundation and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA.

[Jet]

Rare photo of slave children found in NC attic

By NICOLE NORFLEET, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jun 10, 4:22 pm ET
RALEIGH, N.C. – A haunting 150-year-old photo found in a North Carolina attic shows a young black child named John, barefoot and wearing ragged clothes, perched on a barrel next to another unidentified young boy.



Art historians believe it's an extremely rare Civil War-era photograph of children who were either slaves at the time or recently emancipated.
The photo, which may have been taken in the early 1860s, was a testament to a dark part of American history, said Will Stapp, a photographic historian and founding curator of the National Portrait Gallery's photographs department at the Smithsonian Institution.

"It's a very difficult and poignant piece of American history," he said. "What you are looking at when you look at this photo are two boys who were victims of that history."

In April, the photo was found at a moving sale in Charlotte, accompanied by a document detailing the sale of John for $1,150, not a small sum in 1854.
New York collector Keya Morgan said he paid $30,000 for the photo album including the photo of the young boys and several family pictures and $20,000 for the sale document. Morgan said the deceased owner of the home where the photo was found was thought to be a descendant of John.
A portrait of slave children is rare, Morgan said.

"I buy stuff all the time, but this shocked me," he said.
What makes the picture an even more compelling find is that several art experts said it was created by the photography studio of Mathew Brady, a famous 19th-century photographer known for his portraits of historical figures such as President Abraham Lincoln and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Stapp said the photo was probably not taken by Brady himself but by Timothy O'Sullivan, one of Brady's apprentices. O'Sullivan took a multitude of photos depicting the carnage of the Civil War. In 1862, O'Sullivan famously photographed a group of some of the first slaves liberated after Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

Such photos were circulated in the North by abolitionists to garner support for the Union during the Civil War, said Harold Holzer, an author of several books about Lincoln. Holzer works as an administrator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most of the photos depicted adult slaves who had been beaten or whipped, he said.

The photo of the two boys is more subtle, Holzer said, which may be why it wasn't widely circulated and remained unpublished for so long.
"To me, it's such a moving and astonishing picture," he said.
Ron Soodalter, an author and member of the board of directors at the Abraham Lincoln Institute in Washington, D.C., said the photo depicts the reality of slavery.

"I think this picture shows that the institution of slavery didn't pick or choose," said Soodalter, who has written several books on historic and modern slavery. "This was a generic horror. It victimized the old, the young."
For now, Morgan said, he is keeping the photo in his personal collection, but he said he has had an inquiry to sell the photo to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He said he is considering participating in the creation of a video documentary about John.

"This kid was abused and mistreated and people forgot about him," Morgan said. "He doesn't even exist in history. And to know that there were a million children who were like him. I've never seen another photo like that that speaks so much for children."

[Jet]

Little Dog, Large Estate
by Mark Maremont and Leslie Scism
Friday, June 18, 2010
provided by The Wall Street Journal


A chihuahua is at the center of a fight over the will of the late Miami heiress Gail Posner, a daughter of the corporate takeover artist Victor Posner.'.

Her name is Conchita, a thin, spa-loving, diamond-draped heiress, and she's at the center of one of America's nastiest estate battles.

When Ms. Posner died in March at age 67, Conchita and two other dogs inherited the right to live in her seven-bedroom, $8.3 million Miami Beach mansion, their comfort ensured by a $3 million trust fund.

The canines weren't the only ones who benefited from Ms. Posner's munificence. Seven of her bodyguards, housekeepers and other personal aides were left a total of $26 million under her will, and some also were allowed to live, rent-free, in the mansion to care for the dogs.

Now, in an attempt to revoke the will, Ms. Posner's only living child, Bret Carr, has filed a lawsuit against a bevy of his mother's former staff members and advisers alleging a dark intrigue.

Household aides, he claims, drugged his sick mother with pain medications and conspired to steal her assets by inducing her to change her will and trust arrangements in 2008. Others, including his mother's trust attorney, he alleges, used their influence to bend her wishes. Mr. Carr, who was bequeathed a relatively paltry $1 million in his mother's will, makes the claims in a lawsuit filed last week in probate court in Miami-Dade County.

Among Mr. Carr's claims is that the aides directed a "deeply disturbed" Ms. Posner to hire a publicist to promote Conchita as "one of the world's most spoiled dogs" -- complete with a four-season wardrobe, full-time staff and diamond jewelry. Mr. Carr's lawyer, Bruce Katzen, says he believes the publicity campaign was part of a "ruse" to explain why a large trust fund was needed to care for the dogs.

It's too early to predict the outcome of the case. But Ray Madoff, a Boston College law professor and co-author of an estate-planning guide, says wills that leave little or nothing to legitimate heirs but millions to caretakers are usually thrown out by courts, as likely to have been written with "undue influence" by the caretakers.

The case has echoes of the late Leona Helmsley. In 2007, the New York real estate magnate left a $12 million trust fund to Trouble, her pet Maltese. A judge later cut that down to $2 million and directed the rest go to charity. Under the terms of Ms. Posner's trust, the mansion is to be sold after her dogs die, and the proceeds donated to charity.

But the Posner dispute has a grimmer backdrop. The clan has long been haunted by drug and alcohol addiction, claims of sexual abuse allegedly committed by Victor Posner and prior legal battles over the spoils of Mr. Posner's 1980s-era checkered career.

A master of the hostile takeover who became one of America's highest-paid executives, Mr. Posner pleaded no contest to tax evasion charges in 1987 and was later barred from involvement with public companies.

Mr. Carr, a Hollywood screenwriter and filmmaker, has his own troubled past. He was arrested in 1992, charged with counterfeiting traveler's checks. He received probation, and told The Wall Street Journal in 1994 that his grandfather severed all contact with him after the incident.

Mr. Carr also names as a defendant BNY Mellon, which helped oversee a trust that Mr. Posner established for his daughter in 1965. According to the complaint, the trust at one point was worth more than $100 million. It was terminated in 2008 and its remaining assets distributed to Ms. Posner.

A BNY Mellon spokeswoman said the bank "acted appropriately" as trustee, and plans to "vigorously defend" against the lawsuit. Martin Rosen, an attorney who was a trustee for the trust until shortly after Victor Posner's death in 2002, said that it held "in the area of $6 million" when he left his post and "never had $100 million or anything like it."

Mr. Carr's relationship with his mother is portrayed in the lawsuit as rocky, but he says they had a close relationship during "the sober phases of her life." He also says she variously told him that he would inherit her entire estate; half of her inheritance from Victor Posner; and a house next door to hers, also owned by the family.

According to the complaint, Ms. Posner had a "long history of paranoia" and was concerned about her security. She eventually hired several bodyguards. The lawsuit contends that these people, along with other domestic staff, allegedly conspired to isolate Ms. Posner from family members, proceeding to "brainwash" her into believing her son was out to kill her and only the staff could be trusted.

Ms. Posner allegedly told her son she was "being kidnapped by the staff who was trying to kill her."

Around this same period, Ms. Posner began publicizing her pampered pooch. In an interview with the Miami Herald in 2007, she said the dog's most precious possession was a Cartier necklace worth $15,000, but the dog choked on it and was refusing to wear it.

"Conchita is the only girl I know who doesn't consider diamonds her best friend," Ms. Posner was quoted as saying.

In a 2009 interview with a blogger for browardpalmbeach.com, Ms. Posner said Conchita typically accompanied her on lunch dates and then shopping. Ms. Posner said she at one point considered getting the dog her own Range Rover, for transportation to the animal's weekly spa appointments for manicures and pedicures, but Ms. Posner decided to get herself a new car and gave the dog her gold Cadillac Escalade, she told the blogger.

In 2008, already sick with cancer, Ms. Posner executed a new will and trust agreement, overseen by a New York lawyer, Sanford Schlesinger, who is named a defendant in the suit. Under the new arrangement, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Posner left $10 million to one bodyguard, $5 million to another and $2 million to a personal trainer.

A housekeeper and personal assistant, Queen Elizabeth Beckford, would receive $5 million if she agreed to care for Conchita and two other dogs, April Maria and Lucia, at the mansion "with the same degree of care" they received while Ms. Posner was alive, according to the trust established to distribute Ms. Posner's assets. Ms. Beckford also was given permission to live, rent-free, in Ms. Posner's Miami Beach mansion, along with her mother. Ms. Beckford's daughter, another assistant, received $1 million.

Reached at the Miami Beach mansion, Ms. Beckford declined to comment, saying "everything is confidential" before hanging up. Hernando Quintero, the bodyguard who inherited $10 million, could not be reached for comment. Orion Sewell, who was bequeathed $5 million, declined to comment.

An attorney representing Mr. Schlesinger and Gail Posner's trust declined to comment.

Ms. Posner left the remainder of her estate to charity, with one-quarter directed to animal shelters and the rest to breast cancer and suicide-prevention causes. She also left another request: that the canine-care staff also look after her pet turtles.

-- James Oberman contributed to this article.

[Nat]

Gay Men Better at Recognizing Faces than Straight Men

http://m.torontosun.com/14475171.1

Gay men recognize faces faster and more precisely than their heterosexual counterparts because, like women, they use both sides of their brains, according to a new study.

York University researchers found that when homosexual men were asked to memorize and differentiate between faces, they showed patterns of bilaterality similar to those of heterosexual women.

"Our results suggest that both gay men and heterosexual women code faces bilaterally," associate professor of psychology Jennifer Steeves said in a release. "That allows for faster retrieval of stored information." Participants in the study, which looked into the effects gender, sexual orientation and hand dominance have on face recognition, were asked to memorize 10 faces and distinguish them from 50 others.

Researchers found hand dominance affected performance. Left-handed heterosexual participants were better at recognizing faces than left-and right-handed homosexuals.

Hand dominance is generally thought to be linked to both sexual orientation and brain hemispheric functioning.

The study is published in the journal Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition.

[Jet]

112 Year Old Shipwreck Found in Lake Michigan

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/...scovered_wis_5

[Jet]

Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans

Heartbreaking... Our whales are contaminated and could spell danger for marine life and humans who depend on seafood.

More....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_sc/whaling

Press and members outside IWC meeting
The IWC, the international body that regulates whaling, will gather for its 62 annual meeting next week in Agadir. The meeting is expected to seek a compromise between pro- and anti-whaling countries, which may include allowing commercial whaling on a limited scale.