Other, strange, interesting or whatever does not fit into my other two favorite subjects.
“I knew Cary Grant very well and he loved … what did they call it? Acid! LSD. He said he liked to take the trip.” – Debbie Reynolds
“I learned many things in the quiet of that room … I learned that everything is or becomes its own opposite … You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. In one LSD dream … I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship.” – Cary Grant
[From Destination Subconscious: Cary Grant and LSD – WFMU’s Beware of the Blog]
According to CBS News, Ozzy Osbourne may help scientists understand how some people’s bodies can endure “excessive substance abuse.”
Osbourne, the former frontman for Black Sabbath and a notorious partier, will allow scientists to study his blood.
The Prince of Darkness, 61, battled alcohol and drug addictions for forty years and calls himself a “medical miracle.”
Scientists hope that mapping Osbourne’s genetic code will provide insight into why some–like Osbourne–can survive “excessive substance abuse.”
[From Scientists Study Ozzy Osbourne’s Blood To Understand Why He’s Still Alive Despite Drug Abuse (VIDEO)]
MONROE, Ohio – A six-story-tall statue of Jesus Christ with his arms raised along a highway was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm Monday night and burned to the ground, police said.
The “King of Kings” statue, one of southwest Ohio’s most familiar landmarks, had stood since 2004 at the evangelical Solid Rock Church along Interstate 75 in Monroe, just north of Cincinnati.
The lightning strike set the statue ablaze around 11:15 p.m., Monroe police dispatchers said.
The sculpture, 62 feet tall and 40 feet wide at the base, showed Jesus from the torso up and was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way the arms were raised, similar to a referee signaling a touchdown. It was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame, which is all that remained early Tuesday.
The fire spread from the statue to an adjacent amphitheater but was confined to the attic area, and no one was injured, police Chief Mark Neu said. The fire department would release a monetary damage estimate Tuesday, he said.
Travelers on Interstate 75 often were startled to come upon the huge statue by the roadside, but many said America needs more symbols like it. So many people stopped at the church campus that church officials had to build a walkway to accommodate them.
The 4,000-member, nondenominational church was founded by former horse trader Lawrence Bishop and his wife. Bishop said in 2004 he was trying to help people, not impress them, with the statue. He said his wife proposed the Jesus figure as a beacon of hope and salvation, and they spent about $250,000 to finance it.[From 6-story Jesus statue in Ohio struck by lightning – Yahoo! News]
Hey there, Americans! I’m sure, by now, many of you have had some time to reflect on the massive, unfolding Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and thought to yourselves, “My, that really is a terrible, apocalyptic cock-up!” But have you gone so far as to think to yourself, “My, that really is a terrible, apocalyptic cock-up, the costs of which I should logically be burdened with, because I am responsible for everything that happened?” No? Well, you should maybe start thinking that way, because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce thinks you should!
WASHINGTON (AP) — Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen has written to BP CEO Tony Hayward demanding “more detail and openness” about how the company is handling mounting damage claims in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill.
Allen reminded Hayward in the letter dated Tuesday that the company “is accountable to the American public for the economic loss caused by the oil spill” and said he recognized Hayward has “accepted responsibility” for it.
[From Thad Allen Letter To Tony Hayward: BP Is Not Being Transparent]
Los Angeles, for example, is infamous for having more medical marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks coffee shops. These are the storefronts that sell medicinal pot, typically offering an assortment of designer varieties with names such as Super Bubba Kush, Granddaddy Purple and Hollywood OG. At Venice Beach, one dispensary has become something of a tourist attraction by using carnival-style pitchmen to lure in customers.
[From ‘The New Marijuana’: Where Do We Blow From Here? : NPR]
The ties that bind. Remember Rahm Emanuel’s rent-free D.C. apartment? The owner: A BP adviser
Louisiana walruses? Seals swimming along the Gulf Coast?
These creatures normally live in the Arctic Ocean, not the Gulf of Mexico, but they’re listed as “sensitive biological resources” that could be affected by an oil spill in the area in a document filed by BP last June with the U.S. Minerals Management Service. More than a month after BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig blew out and sank on April 20, the British oil giant’s regional spill response plan drew some severe criticism from the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
[From Walruses in Louisiana? Eyebrow-raising details of BP’s spill response plan | Analysis & Opinion |]
LONDON – An American cage fighter accused of ripping out the heart of his training partner while he was still alive will be charged with murder and torture, though his lawyer blamed the killing on a psychotic fit.
Jarrod Wyatt (picture), also cut out his friend’s tongue and tore off most of his face in a brutal assault in Klamath, California, that police said looked like a scene from a horror film.
They found the 26 year old standing naked over his friend’s body with body parts, including an eyeball, strewn around the blood splattered room.
Wyatt told police he had drunk a cup of tea spiked with hallucinogenic mushrooms and became convinced his close friend Taylor Powell was possessed.
According to an autopsy, Mr Powell, 21, bled to death after his heart was ripped out. The coroner said he was still alive when his chest was sliced open with a knife.
Wyatt told the police he had thrown the heart into a fire along with other organs that he had removed from the body. He told investigators he cooked the body parts because he was fearful Mr Powell was still alive and he “needed to stop the devil”.
Police had been called to the grisly scene after a third friend had witnessed a sudden mood change in Wyatt after they had all ingested the wild mushroom tea.
Mr Justin Davis told police he returned to the flat to find Wyatt naked and covered from head to toe in blood. He also saw Mr Powell’s mutilated body.
Lawyer James Fallman, who represents Wyatt, has claimed the wild mushrooms caused his client to act in such a violent way and he had no control over his actions.
“My client was trying to silence the devil,” he said. “I think he was having a psychotic fit based on the mushrooms he had.”
In an attempt to get the charges lowered, the lawyer also tried to argue that Wyatt believed Mr Powell was threatening his ex-girlfriend and overreacted trying to defend her. AGENCIES
[From TODAYonline | World | Cage fighter who ripped out partner’s heart charged]
LSDs inventor Albert Hofmann called it “medicine for the soul.” The Beatles wrote songs about it. Secret military mind control experiments exploited its hallucinogenic powers. Outlawed in 1966, LSD became a street drug and developed a reputation as the dangerous toy of the counterculture, capable of inspiring either moments of genius, or a descent into madness. Now science is taking a fresh look at LSD, including the first human trials in over 35 years. Using enhanced brain imaging, non-hallucinogenic versions of the drug and information from an underground network of test subjects who suffer from an agonizing condition for which there is no cure, researchers are finding that this “trippy” drug could become the pharmaceutical of the future. Can it enhance our brain power, expand our creativity and cure disease? To find out, Explorer puts LSD under the microscope.
Researchers at the space agency believe they have discovered vital clues that appeared to indicate that primitive aliens could be living on the planet.
Data from Nasa’s Cassini probe has analysed the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan, which experts say is the only moon around the planet to have a dense atmosphere.
[From Titan: Nasa scientists discover evidence ‘that alien life exists on Saturn’s moon’ – Telegraph]
Getting arrested sucks, but the unpleasantness of it all doesn’t stop thousands of people from being apprehended every day — and, to be fair, not everyone who gets nabbed is even close to what most would consider a criminal. Mugshots can tell us a lot; some spice up their gloomy trip by maintaining a cheerful attitude through the booking process, the results of which are funny and sometimes endearing mugshots.
No, this is not a belated April Fool’s prank. They look as if they may have been pinned there by an over enthusiastic gardener to impress the neighbors but the fruit of the Jabuticaba really does grow off the trunk of the tree.
[From Kuriositas: Jabuticaba – The Tree that Fruits on its Trunk]
An American woman claims she became pregant after watching a 3D porno.
US military man Erick Jhonson came home from a stint in Iraq to find that his wife was pregnant. Clearly he assumed she had an affair, but his wife Jennifer claims the “other man” was actually someone a little less physical.
It seems he actually buys her story, however. “I see it as suspicious. The films in 3D are very real. With today’s technology, anything is possible,” he said.
[From Woman says 3D porno made her pregnant – Husband claims “anything is possible” | TechEye]
Gary Coleman is dead. He was taken off life support on Friday morning and passed away, Radaronline.com reports. His wife Shannon Price and her father were at the hospital.
Coleman, 42, was best known for his role as Arnold Jackson on “Diff’rent Strokes.” Word got out that he was hospitalized Thursday and in critical condition.
This is breaking news, more to come.
[From Gary Coleman DEAD: ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ Actor Dies In Utah Hospital]
[From YouTube – fiat.mp4]
Smoke a Joint, Get Arrested for Drugged Driving a Week Later
[From Smoke a Joint, Get Arrested for Drugged Driving a Week Later – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine]
Pop quiz: Which is longer, the United States Constitution or Facebook’s Privacy Policy?
[From The Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking – NYTimes.com]
Rumor: MobileMe may soon be free by Chris Rawson (RSS feed) on May 11th, 2010 MacDailyNews reports an unconfirmed rumor that Apple may soon make MobileMe’s services free to all users. MobileMe currently costs US$99 per year for a subscription; it provides cloud storage, email, photo galleries, and syncing of contacts/calendars/bookmarks across Macs, PCs, iPhones, and iPads (not to mention Find My iPhone). While the service has many useful features (some implemented better than others: I’m aiming my stinkeye at you, iDisk), many have balked at the price tag. Similar storage and email services from competitors like Google and Microsoft come either free of charge or at reduced cost compared to MobileMe; even MobileMe’s distant ancestor, iTools, was a free offering back in the day. Of course, MobileMe delivers more iPhone & Mac-friendly syncing than Google does, but at $99 per year, it’s a fair bet that few people are taking advantage of everything MobileMe has to offer. MacDailyNews’ source says MobileMe will become free of charge “sooner than later… depends on certain facilities going operational.” This almost certainly refers to Apple’s new server farm in North Carolina. Aerial footage of Apple’s server farm, released in February, showed that the complex’s buildings were either mostly or entirely constructed, so the facility may be ready to go online at any time. I hope this rumor is true, especially the “sooner than later” part — my MobileMe subscription is due for renewal at the end of this month
link: TUAW — The Unofficial Apple Weblog
A sweet collection of carefully handpicked high quality free fonts, which are all suitable to be used for creating attractive typography headlines which will attract people’s attention. A collection of amazing fonts which are suitable and perfect for web design projects as well print based projects. There is a misconception by designers that free fonts are usually cheap looking and cannot be used in order to create a good design, but what designers don’t realise is that there is the odd good free font it just takes time in order to find the perfects ones. This is the exact purpose of this article to be bookmarked by designers and to referred to in the future when working on a design projects where money may be tight and the client can’t afford to splash out on big expensive fonts. This post will be a handy resource for designers searching high quality good free fonts.
link: 40 Beautiful Free Fonts For Creating Attractive Typography Headlines | Creative Nerds
Maggie asked me about any dietary/cultural/American food restrictions that I might have. I told her that there were none at all and I would like to try all kinds of Chinese food. Maggie took this as a challenge! The picture below is one of our first meals. Starting from the 1:00 position and working clockwise: A salad – not that much different than an American salad. Then at 4:00 there’s Choudoufu. This translates as “Stinky Tofu” but I think a better name would be “cowpie surprise”. Basically it looks and smells like something you could find in a cattle field and it tastes just like it smells. In between the choudoufu and the salad is a dish of hot pepper that you can dip the Choudoufu in to take the edge off. At the 6:00 position is pig lung in hot oil. In the 8:00 position is the internal organs of sparrows. This has a relatively normal kind of taste but with strange shapes and textures. In the 10:00 position is something Maggie described only as “beef”. I had some and said that this and the salad are the only things on the table that most Americans eat. Then I ate one of the vegetables with the beef and made a face and Maggie smiled. The Chinese name for the vegetable translates as “Bitter Vegetable”. Later we found that the American name is Balsam. I told Maggie that as far as I know, Americans only use Balsam in shampoo.
link: The Food
A Brave New World On This stupendous Lp Aldous Huxley Narrates his eerily prophetic Brave New World Brave_new_world_cover_1 Download brave_new_world_side_1.mp3
link: RecordBrother: A Brave New World
A SWAT team raided Jonathan Whitworth’s house in Februrary looking for a “large amount of marijuana.” They shot his two dogs, killing one. All they found was a pipe, a grinder, and a “small amount” of weed. Now there’s video. With an almost admirable efficiency, the Columbia, Missouri SWAT team knocked down the Whitworth family’s door, shot both dogs, and handcuffed Jonathan against the floor while hustling his wife and kid out the door. They were acting on information that Whitworth had a significant amount of marijuana he intended to sell. What they found instead was some stoner paraphernalia—a pipe and a grinder—and a “small” (i.e. misdemeanor) amount of the drug. This unfortunate (and unfortunately common) experience with the war on drugs—one that was shared by the entire Whitworth family, including the seven-year-old son—made the internet rounds when it happened in February, but without some kind of audiovisual stimulation it’s hard to communicate the sheer terror of a dozen heavily armed men breaking into your house at night and shooting your dogs. Now we have video. Via Radley Balko, here’s what it’s like to be raided by the police:
link: SWAT Team Raids House, Shoots Dogs over ‘Small Amount of Marijuana’ – Police – Gawker
