#3
I remember an interview where some zoologist kept mentioning the "pendulous breasts"....he would not let up on it - funny stuff.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
12/07/2006 14:21 Comments ||
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#4
I saw a show (it might have been Penn & Teller's Bullshit) the reported on the bigfoot video and showed the large friend who lived down the street from the video owner. The guy had an identical walk. It was pretty convincing.
#5
To make a long story short, M. K. Davis has been working his butt off for about three or four years or so trying to enhance, stabilize, and sharpen the Patterson-Gimlin footage, and recently made a public statement to the effect that the subject of the film wasn't an ape or a man in a suit, but some sort of human. He hasn't released all of his observations or anything yet.
Anyway, Coleman (whose site you're linking to) was apparently making some really odd unsubstantiated allegations about Mr. Davis, for which he had later apologized.
I really don't know how it became accepted in the Papparazzi community that we can exist in the wild, undetected by scientists, hunters, anthropologists, random hikers, and whatnot, leaving behind no solid evidence of our existance... but it's controversial to even suggest that my colleagues and I are more than "dumb apes."
There's an old joke in the Bigfoot community, that humans share 90% of their genetic material with chimpanzees... and 50% of their genetic material with cabbage.
From tuesday. Does it still count for TIOTD? You bet.
Both the driver and the front-seat passenger of the car were drunk far too drunk to drive. So it was quite sensible that they should stop, and let backseat passenger Te Aute Matuakore Collier take over instead.
Oh, except that Collier was blind.
29-year-old musician Collier who has only 5% vision Well, at least he's not deaf...
...was given directions on how to drive the car by his drunk fellow passenger. If that sounds like an entirely foolproof plan to you, then you'll probably be surprised to learn that they ended up driving into a wall.
As they headed to a supermarket in Hamilton, New Zealand, Collier missed the entrance to the store car park, instead taking out part of a retaining wall and a sign. When police arrived, he claimed that he'd merely been parking the car so that it didn't block the road.
In Hamilton District Court, Collier admitted a charge of reckless driving, and was banned from driving for two years. Which suggests, rather worryingly, that in two years time it'll be just fine for him to drive again.
#1
At the last place I worked a young man, who seemed fit enough, always managed to park close to the door in one of the handicapped spots. One day I asked someone why he had Colorado issued handicap plates on his car. "Oh, he is legally blind", I was told. Makes as much sense as baille instructions on the drive up service machines at the bank.
A Pakistani man and woman convicted of drug smuggling were beheaded on Wednesday in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah, the Interior Ministry said. Mohammed Rafiq Miyassid and Abajan Mohammed Rafiq, who appears to be his daughter, were caught bringing heroin into the kingdom in their stomachs, the ministry said in a statement on the official SPA news agency.
The beheadings, carried out with a sword, bring to at least 34 the number of executions in Saudi Arabia this year. At least 83 were put to death in 2005 and 35 the year before. Executions are generally carried out in public in the oil-rich kingdom, which applies a strict form of Islamic law. The death penalty is applied for murder, rape, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/07/2006 00:00 ||
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Hundreds of people were left homeless today after a tornado ripped through residential streets in north London. Dave Bonner, of London Fire Brigade, said about 100 homes had been damaged in "freak weather", injuring six people in Kensal Rise.
Chamberlayne Road, one of the worst-affected areas, was cordoned off for safety checks after roofs were ripped off houses, trees were uprooted, walls collapsed and debris rained on parked cars. One man was taken to hospital with a head injury and five people were treated at the scene for minor injuries and shock.
Eyewitnesses told how the sky went dark and spoke of a terrifying column of debris sweeping through the area. They said the noise was like a jet airliner.
Video footage from a helicopter showed part of the side of a house had collapsed, partially covering a car parked outside. The footage on Sky News also pictured several houses which had lost roof tiles, including one where almost the entire roof had been peeled away.
#1
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said it was too early to estimate the cost of the damage, but the Birmingham tornado in 2005 ran into "tens of millions of pounds".
They have these things regularly over there, and still permit clay tile roofs? They have these things regularly and still think of tornados as a freak event? My goodness.
#8
My first house (a turn of the century fixer upper, upon which I first wielded a hammer and paint brush) had slate roofs, phil_b. Nasty buggers, especially three stories up. One of my cats used to love climbing out the attic window and wandering along the ridges of the top peak.
Frankly, I still think a fully-functional, full-size ED209 would work even better, but that's just me.
A Doctor Who fan has made a Dalek he can sit inside, complete with voicebox, to scare away rowdy students from his street. It rasps: 'I don't like students. You will be exter- min-ated!' at passers-by.
Andrew Simpson, 22, who took eight months to make the Doctor Who creature at a cost of £1,000, claims his tactics have worked and the street is quieter. He said: 'We live right by the university and there's loads of them here but they're no match for the Dalek.' Who is? Or rather, Who is.
Mr Simpson, who has a TV and film memorabilia business, now plans to make it squirt water and smoke, and take it into the centre of his home city of York this time just as a bit of fun. 'The best bit is just sitting in it and waiting for someone to approach. When someone comes up to touch you shout Exterminate! and they jump out of their skin.' "Can't run much after them, though, especially if there's a stair involved."
#1
Mr Simpson, who has a TV and film memorabilia business, now plans to make it squirt water and smoke, and take it into the centre of his home city of York...
If he took it to New Orleans during Mardi Gras who'd notice?
#2
...Cue the complaints from Dalek advocacy groups in three, two, one....
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/07/2006 8:55 Comments ||
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#3
He had better be careful. One of the reasons the Daleks are still such good villains is that the people who own the copyright have for decades refused to allow anyone to make fun of their monster. And this was a damn good idea.
Even the BBC has gotten in trouble with them for trying to put a Dalek in a comedy review show.
But it was a wise decision to not allow "dilution" of their creation. So many monsters have been ruined that way.
Duty on fuel and flights increases in campaign to cut emissions
Air passengers will pay an extra £1 billion a year in tax to help to pay for the environmental cost of their journeys, the Chancellor announced yesterday. Air passenger duty will double on bookings made from February 1, ending a five-year freeze. The rates for flights within Europe will rise from £5 to £10 for economy class and £10 to £20 for business class. On long-haul flights to destinations outside Europe, the tax will rise from £20 to £40 in economy and £40 to £80 in business and first class.
Mr Brown said that the increase would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from aviation by 1.1 million tonnes a year. Motorists will pay the first increase in fuel duty for three years, up in line with inflation by 1.25p a litre from today, pushing the average price of petrol up to 88p a litre.
Mr Brown said that both tax increases were designed to reduce harmful emissions from transport, but the Treasury refused to give details of how they would affect demand for travel. Airlines and motoring groups said that the extra taxes were revenue-raising measures that would do little to reduce demand and have minimal impact on the environment.
#1
Q. How does increasing a Tax help?
A. It doesn't, if anything it makes it worse.
Taxation is redistribution. The money will be transferred to someone else, and without market pressure they will on average use the money less efficiently, and thus create MORE pollution.
#3
Are they going to use the funds to plant trees in an expanded Sherwood Forest? Perhaps replace the endless hectares of evergreens dying in the Schwarzwald from the effects of acid rain? How exactly will this surtax impact emissions? When we lived in Germany, the local branch of the American Women's Club purchased saplings, then spent a Saturday planting them out on a recently capped landfill, much to the shock of the neighbors -- nobody'd ever done such a thing before, apparently. I don't recall worrying about CO2-caused global warming then, but rather of food and shelter for wildlife and walks through the woods for the children.
#4
TW, I once lived in a very small village called Loxley (of Robin Hood fame) on the edge of the Pennine moors. In those days, Sherwood forest extended into the Pennine uplands.
#5
When did you live there, phil_b? When we drove through in 1987 or thereabouts, I was shocked by how small it was, although conceivably we only crossed a corner of it. But I remember being told, when we stopped at a pub for lunch, that a good deal of it had been sold off and cleared. Perhaps the time frame was "since the Middle Ages" rather than recently...
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Much like his bloody epic about the death of Christ, a new Mel Gibson production about the collapse of the Mayan civilization is angering members of the culture it depicts even before it hits the screen. The "Passion of Christ" was accused by some of being anti-Semitic -- long before Gibson's career-damaging outbursts against a Jewish policeman in Malibu this year.
Now indigenous activists in Guatemala, once home to a large part of the Mayan empire that built elaborate jungle cities in southern Mexico and northern Central America centuries ago, say his film "Apocalypto" is racist.
Gibson's representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Only trailers for "Apocalypto," which will be released on Friday, have been shown in Guatemala, but leaders say scenes of scary-looking Mayans with bone piercings and scarred faces hurling spears and sacrificing humans promote stereotypes about their culture. "Gibson replays, in glorious big budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue," said Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation that promotes Mayan culture.
At their height, the Maya built monumental cities in the Peten region of Guatemala, but the civilization went into decline after the 8th century, some say because of overuse of natural resources. The culture is not thought to have been as blood-thirsty as the neighboring Aztec empire, but some archeologists say human sacrifice was common in the final years before the Spanish conquest.
More than half of Guatemala's population is descended from the original Maya. They face frequent discrimination and most live in poverty with little access to education and social services.
Over 200,000 people, mostly Mayan, were killed during Guatemala's 36-year civil war that ended a decade ago. Some rights groups say the army tried to wipe out the Maya.
Lucio Yaxon, a 23-year-old Mayan human rights activist, said Apocalypto's heart-pounding trailer was unrealistic. "Basically the director is saying the Mayans are savages," said Yaxon, who speaks Kaqchikel, one of 22 Guatemalan Mayan languages, as well as Spanish.
But Richard Hansen, an archeologist who Gibson consulted on the making of the film, says the director took pains to ensure authenticity and historical accuracy.
The entire script is spoken in Yucatec Maya and the star is a Native American dancer named Rudy Youngblood. Gibson's use of indigenous actors has won praise from Latino and Native American groups in the United States.
"I am a little apprehensive about how the Maya themselves are going to perceive it," said Hansen, who directs an archeological project at the Mirador Basin in northern Guatemala, "but Gibson is trying to make a social statement."
Boy Scouts they weren't. Let them sink back into the muck of history if they prefer.
Well, welcome to the tribe buddy. We've been putting up with the same image assassination for a half century. To paraphrase a Greek moralist, it all depends upon who's ox is being gored doesn't it. Guess Hollywood is running out of the white European Nazis to flog as the boggy man in order to turn a profit.
So were my ancestors. Gettin' nekkid, painted blue and waving swords about does not sound civilized to me, and I wouldn't get all whiny if somebody made a movie about them.
In fact, it would be pretty cool.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
12/07/2006 9:26 Comments ||
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#5
When I see the word "indigenous" in a story, I consider it my personal signal to move along, as I already know what will follow....
#11
I heard that he once portrayed the Scots as savages and the English and the Irish. Gosh I think that just about EVERY culture was savage at one time. Welcome to the savage world my mayan friends. If someone knows a culture that at one time didn't act savage please point them out to me.
#12
Except for that Revolution thingy, I wuz gonna say DA FRENCH, CS!
Posted by: BA ||
12/07/2006 14:03 Comments ||
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#13
I like to point out that the Conquistadores were mercenaries who had fought in some of the bloodiest, nastiest and most merciless combat Europe had seen for quite a while. But when they arrived in the new world, what they saw was so utterly horrifying, so unabashedly murderous, and carnage on such scale that the clear and unambiguous feeling among them was "This must be destroyed."
It is rare that a soldier sees something so repugnant, so evil, that they are willing to sacrifice their very lives so that it might be destroyed. But this was one of those times.
#14
Yer all amateur pikers. Oh, and all this land, all of it, belongs to me 'n my tribe. You can have the swampy bits of Der Nederlands and the crusty bits created by Kilaueia, that shit's new.
/Alley Oop
#15
I prefer to be called a noble savage, thank you very much. All kidding a side. Now-a-days everyone looks to be offended. These people have got to be running low on I.Q. - unless their still performing human sacrifices to Quatzylcatyl or whatever then the moccasin fits, either way they need to lighten up....it's called a period piece morons!
#16
I like to point out that the Conquistadores were mercenaries who had fought in some of the bloodiest, nastiest and most merciless combat Europe had seen for quite a while. But when they arrived in the new world, what they saw was so utterly horrifying, so unabashedly murderous, and carnage on such scale that the clear and unambiguous feeling among them was "This must be destroyed."
I do believe that at one point Cortez and his men had ~40,000 native soldiers from other city states who helped them against the Aztecs.
The Aztecs were not well liked by their neighbors.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
12/07/2006 15:15 Comments ||
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According to the CIA World Factbook estimate, Russia's overall fertility rate is 1.28 children per woman, far below what is needed to maintain the country's population of about 143 million. Muslim Russians, meanwhile, are bucking the trend, with some communities averaging as many as 10 children per woman. The Central Asian states that traditionally send large numbers of immigrant workers to Russia also have much higher birth rates. Given that a Muslim male may have 4 wives for breeding stock, 40 children could result from these marriages. I doubt that many will stay in Russia; most will go to the US or Europe, to breed even more Abdullahs.
No reference to infant mortality rates...
Since 1989, Russia's Muslim population has increased by 40 per cent to about 25 million. By 2015, Muslims could make up a majority of Russia's conscript army and they could account for one-fifth of the country's population by 2020. If trends continue for the next 30 years, people of Muslim descent will outnumber ethnic Russians, says Paul Goble, an expert on Islam in Russia and research associate at the University of Tartu in Estonia.
#1
I think it was Mark Steyn that made a depressing point recently: by mid century, all things being equal, 3/5 of the UNSC could be muslim, to wit: Russia, GB, and France.
Sleep well tonight...
Posted by: Mark Z ||
12/07/2006 17:53 Comments ||
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AUSTRALIAN navy vessels have been granted extraordinary new powers to fire directly at illegal foreign fishermen caught in Top End waters.
Under the new rules of engagement approved by Defence Minister Brendan Nelson this week, navy personnel will be permitted to fire directly to disable a vessel seeking to escape apprehension and threatening sailors in Australian waters.
The navy will also be permitted to use tear gas, distraction and long-range acoustic explosives.
Sailors can also use capsicum spray to temporarily disable illegal fishermen.
Dr Nelson told Parliament on Wednesday he had approved the new rules of engagement to strengthen the Australia's border protection powers.
"It is extremely important that anybody who comes to this country seeking to steal our fish and breach our sovereignty knows that they will be met with a very strong, disciplined Royal Australian Navy," he said.
"The foreign fishing vessels that are coming to our country are increasingly sophisticated.
"They are engaging in activities, which are very dangerous to our personnel and, indeed, to our patrol boats, including using very large sharpened poles, the throwing of missiles and a variety of things that endanger our people."
Dr Nelson cited the example of a sailor on HMAS Geelong last year, who was left hanging on to the stern of an illegal fishing vessel after it ignored orders and tried to escape, as being influential in his decision to strengthen the navy's powers.
In addition to the strengthened rules of engagement, Dr Nelson told Parliament that a RAAF Orion surveillance aircraft was supporting Australia's border protection efforts.
"There is no more important task that is done by the Royal Australian Navy than the protection of Australia's borders," Dr Nelson said.
The new rules of engagement are effective immediately.
Hundreds of wildfires swept across southern and eastern Australia on Thursday, as firefighters scrambled to protect homes and farmland amid heavy winds and soaring temperatures.
Fire crews in the states of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales struggled against the weather to contain about 300 fires on hundreds of hectares (acres) of forest and scrubland.
Around 260 fires were burning across Victoria by Thursday afternoon, as temperatures hit 36 degrees Celsius (96.8 Fahrenheit) - the state's hottest October day in 100 years.
"It's really unseasonal weather, and is causing us considerable difficulty," said a state Country Fire Authority spokesman, Geoff Evans.
No houses were under threat and no one has been injured, Evans said.
Meanwhile, in neighboring South Australia, firefighters battled in 40-degree Celsius (104-degree Fahrenheit) heat to contain three separate, out-of-control on Kangaroo Island.
One fire had already destroyed around 600 hectares (1,480 acres) of scrubland and was moving toward a popular national park, according to a state fire official, Euan Ferguson.
Firefighters were fighting exhaustion after putting out 38 fires across the state on Wednesday.
"It is unprecedented to have weather conditions such as we are having today in October," Fergusen said. "This is not a normal year."
In the southern island state of Tasmania, two helicopters and about 25 fire crews were trying to stop a blaze from reaching a suburban housing estate near the capital, Hobart, said Tasmania Fire Service spokesman Danny Reid.
It was one of 18 fires burning in Tasmania, and officials are treating it as a possible arson.
In New South Wales, fire crews succeeded in containing a fire that had threatened dozens of homes in the wine-growing Hunter Valley district northeast of Sydney, the Rural Fire Service said.
More high temperatures have been predicted for the weekend, prompting officials to ban the lighting of any fires across large sections of the country.
Wildfires are a regular feature of Australia's hot summers, raging across thousands of hectares (acres) of forests and scrubland, and sometimes cities and towns.
Although sometimes sparked by lightning, the fires are more often caused by human activities, such as vehicle sparks, the burning of agricultural land, accidents and arson.
In 2003, hundreds of houses were destroyed and four people died when a huge blaze tore into the national capital, Canberra. Last January, nine people died in fires on South Australia state's Eyre Peninsula.
After a year of controversy and debate, My Name Is Rachel Corrie is closing. The one-woman play was put together by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner from the writings of an American-born terrorist sympathizer Palestinian-rights advocate who was killed in 2003 after she was dumb enough to stand in front of by an Israeli Army bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. After its final performance on Dec. 17, Rachel Corrie will have played 9 previews and 71 regular performances at the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village.
Insert bulldozer or pancake joke here.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/07/2006 14:30 ||
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#2
Guess it didn't steam ahead like a bulldozer, eh?
Posted by: BA ||
12/07/2006 15:39 Comments ||
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#3
It's hard to find many stages strong enough to support a D-9 for the final, climactic scene. And in the few such venues that could support it, the diesel fumes nearly asphixiated the crowd.
Not that that's a bad thing...
Posted by: Dar ||
12/07/2006 16:22 Comments ||
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#4
What do you call Batman and Robin after they have been run over by a steam roller?
Flatman and Ribbon.
For some reason, stories of Rachel Corrie always bring this joke to mind.
Posted by: Tibor ||
12/07/2006 17:09 Comments ||
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#5
I'm sorry to see you are all crushed by the news....
Hard Rock Café, one of the most recognisable brands in the world, is to be sold to a Native American tribe in a deal that values the restaurant chain owned by Rank at about $960m.
Seminole Hard Rock Hotels and Casinos, a collaboration between the Seminole tribe of Florida and Hard Rock International, has been in exclusive negotiations with Rank for more than two weeks.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A Pakistani man and woman convicted of drug smuggling were beheaded on Wednesday in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah, the Interior Ministry said. Mohammed Rafiq Miyassid and Abajan Mohammed Rafiq, who appears to be his daughter, were caught bringing heroin into the kingdom in their stomachs, the ministry said in a statement on the official SPA news agency.
Hundreds of people were left homeless today after a tornado ripped through residential streets in north London. Dave Bonner, of London Fire Brigade, said about 100 homes had been damaged in "freak weather", injuring six people in Kensal Rise.
Duty on fuel and flights increases in campaign to cut emissions
