Oddities and Humor

Zack Snyder says his new Superman film will make the Man of Steel relevant to the times.

Building An Army In Somalia, Teaching It To Fight
www.npr.org
Since April, European Union soldiers have been training Somali recruits to fight Islamist insurgents trying to topple their country's beleaguered government. The trainers are finding that the soldiers -- whose salaries are paid by the U.S. -- have a lot to learn about warfare.
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Duh - That should work. It did so well in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. What could possibly go wrong?

Right, edgar, What could possibly go wrong.

More oddities and Humor.



UFO Sightings on the Rise in China, With More Predicted
By Michelle Yu
Epoch Times Staff Created: Oct 4, 2010 Last Updated: Oct 5, 2010


Photo of UFO taken in Hangzhou, China on July 7
UFO sightings have increased in China, according to media reports. In a recent sighting, photography student Gu Peiwen closely examined a photo in his camera and shouted in disbelief: “I just caught aliens on camera!”

It's still rock and roll to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwpKVY3Z3RQ&feature=watch_response

If those flying saucers were the real item, it would be a worldwide sensation. Which is why the X Files theme seems apprpriate, I think.

it has to be real ed.

look how red and eerie everything is.

(where was the goodyear blimp at the time...?)

They look like FUOs to me.

New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with the encouragement of both city and state health commissioners, is seeking to bar the use of food stamps for buying soda and other sweetened drinks.

Bloomberg is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which controls the food stamp program, for permission to institute a two-year ban that would affect the estimated 1.7 million city residents who receive food stamps. That time frame, he said, would permit health officials to study the health impact of such a ban.

The request, according to the mayor's office, would not in any way reduce food stamp eligibility or size of the food stamp benefit received by recipients.

Read this story on www.medpagetoday.com.

"Bravo to Mayor Bloomberg for his efforts," said Ari Brown, MD, a pediatrician in Austin, Texas. "When food options are limited to healthy choices, it can only help in the fight against the obesity problem in our country."

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Once again, the poor are told what they can't do that other persons do at will. - edgarblythe

A set of John Lennon's fingerprints has been seized by the FBI from a New York memorabilia dealer.

Dealer Peter Siegel told the BBC the card was to be auctioned at a $100,000 (£62,621) minimum bid.

The prints were taken at a New York police station in 1976 when Lennon applied for permanent US residence.


An FBI official told the BBC the bureau believed the card was government property and was investigating how it landed in private hands.

Mr Siegel, co-owner of Gotta Have It! in New York City, told the BBC the shop had heard from the FBI when it began publicising an auction of 850 pieces of rock-and-roll memorabilia tied to the 70th anniversary of Lennon's birth on Saturday.

Officials said they wanted to inspect the card.

FBI officials and agents for the Department of Homeland Security did so and on Wednesday, an FBI agent returned with a subpoena demanding the item. After a round of calls and faxes between the government, Mr Siegel and his lawyer, the dealer turned it over.

"This really has nothing to do with John Lennon per se," FBI Agent James Margolin told the BBC. "It has to do with a government document."


Lennon, shown in 1969 with Yoko Ono, was under FBI investigation for his anti-war activities Mr Siegel said the card's owner, a music and trade show promoter, had acquired it at a convention about 20 years ago.

The owner will now have to decide whether to try to get the card back, Mr Siegel said.

Ah, the price of the rich and famous, edgar. Here's another auction.

LONDON — She heard a terrible rumbling noise, then anguished cries for help as her rowboat pulled away from the sinking ocean liner Titanic that dreadful night in 1912.

Now Laura Francatelli's first person account of the disaster, in the form of a signed affidavit that was given to a British board of inquiry, is set to be auctioned.

It is a gripping firsthand account of how she and her two prominent employers — Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon and his socialite wife, Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon — managed to survive, fleeing in a rowboat with a capacity for 40 people even though they only had 12 people on board.

"You see a lot of documents that talk briefly about the incident, but this affidavit goes into strong details, it talks about Lady Duff being sick the whole time, about the lifeboat bobbing up and down, about the screams," said Andrew Aldridge, an auctioneer at Henry Aldridge & Son, which plans to sell the affidavit and other Titanic memorabilia on Oct. 16.

He said the letter will likely fetch between 10,000 pounds ($16,000) and 15,000 pounds in part because of the notoriety of Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff.

"They were two of the most controversial survivors," he said. "Sir Cosmo gave the crewmen who were in the lifeboat with him 5 pounds each, which was a tremendous amount of money at the time, and it was misconstrued at the time that he was paying blood money."

The implication is that the wealthy Sir Cosmo paid the crewmen to get him safely away from the sinking vessel without returning to help those who were drowning. But Aldridge said it is also possible that Sir Cosmo made the payments simply to express his gratitude.

He said it is not surprising that Francatelli's account is sympathetic to her employers and makes it sound as if Sir Cosmo paid the men "out of the goodness of his heart."

In her written statement, Francatelli, Lady Duff's personal secretary, described a scene of utter terror as they tried to get as far as possible from the Titanic.

"We kept on rowing and stopping and rowing again," she wrote. "I heard some talk going on all about the suction if the ship went down. I do not know who joined in the conversation. We were a long way off when we saw the Titanic go right up at the back and plunge down. There was an awful rumbling when she went. Then came the screams and cries. I do not know how long they lasted. We had hardly any talk. The men spoke about God and prayers and wives. We were all in the darkness."

Francatelli was 31 when the Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912. Her signed account was given as evidence to the first official British board of inquiry into the disaster.

She died in 1967. The affidavit has been in private collections since shortly after her death.

The Titanic saga allowed many to live up to their nature, whether noble or crass. I often wonder how I might have fared, were I a passenger on it.

Yep, edgar. Don't know what I would have done either.

Another oddity.



MGM announces bankruptcy.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/145782.html

They have the James Bond franchise, so ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii1tc493bZM

Bye Sean

I knew MGM was working on it. Bond. James Bond won't help them now.

The non-technical word for a biofilm is gunk.

Biofilms — communities of bacteria that band together for protection — gum up pipes, accumulate on ship's hulls and slime the ice machine.

And if you listen to your dentist, you try to brush them off your teeth at night, too.

Because some biofilms cause real problems by blocking the flow of water or oil through pipes and force ships to use more fuel, scientists are interested in understanding how bacteria form in and on them.

What they found surprised them. When most bacteria encounter a hard surface upon which they might form a biofilm, the bacteria stand up. And "walk" across the surface.

"It was totally shocking," said Jacinta Conrad, a chemical and biomolecular engineer at the University of Houston.

Conrad and colleagues describe the phenomenon in a paper published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Using advanced microscopes they essentially captured movies of more than 1,000 bacteria as they went from water to encountering a hard surface, and then tracked the individual motions of each bacteria over time.

Bacteria are tiny organisms that live in every habitat on Earth, from the Arctic to extremely hot subsea vents. By cell count, the human body is about 90 percent bacteria.

The bacteria studied in Conrad's experiment were about 1 micron wide and 3 or 4 microns long. A human hair is about 100 microns across.

To find nutrients bacteria must be able to move efficiently.

Scientists have long understood how the microorganisms do this in water. And on surfaces scientists believed the bacteria would lay, lengthwise, and pull themselves along with grappling-hook-like tentacles called pili. And indeed some of the bacteria did this as it was an efficient way of moving in a straight direction.

But that's not a good way of covering a lot of ground, or searching a wide area for food, Conrad said. What is an efficient way, apparently, is the standing up and walking observed by the scientists. This walking on a few pili allowed the bacteria to randomly cover much more space.

The scientists also found differences in how biofilms form depending on the ability of a species of bacteria to walk upright, or not.

This kind of information, ultimately, should help scientists prevent unwanted biofilms from forming.

"I'm really interested in trying to design surfaces that shed bacteria," Conrad said.

The type of surfaces, one supposes, that bacteria would turn around and walk away from.

CLEVELAND – A tape recording of the shooting deaths of four Kent State University students by Ohio National Guardsmen in 1970 reveals the sound of pistol shots 70 seconds earlier, a newspaper reported Friday, citing the work of a forensic audio expert.

If the pistol fire is authenticated, it could prove a theory that the Guardsmen thought they were being shot at during a campus Vietnam War protest and also could back up witnesses who said an FBI informant monitoring the protest fired warning shots because he felt threatened.

The National Guard opened fire on student protesters on May 4, 1970, killing four and injuring nine others. Eight Guardsmen were acquitted of federal civil rights charges four years later.

Many believe the events contributed to the change in the public's attitude toward the war, which ended with U.S. withdrawal in 1975, but the events of that chaotic day in Kent, Ohio, are still not fully understood.

Forensic audio expert Stuart Allen has conducted an extensive review of the tape recording and detected four shots matching the acoustic signature of a .38-caliber revolver firing, The Plain Dealer reported.

Alan Canfora, a protester wounded by the Guard gunfire, found a copy of the audio tape in a library archive in 2007.

"I think it's premature to make any conclusions at this point," said Canfora, who nevertheless believes questions posed by the analysis add pressure on government officials to open a new investigation.

Terry Norman, a Kent State student who was photographing protesters that day for the FBI, was carrying a loaded .38-caliber revolver under his coat, the newspaper said.

Witnesses have previously reported a confrontation involving angry students and Norman. Some say he fired several warning shots because he felt threatened.

In an interview with an Akron Beacon Journal reporter on the day of the shootings, Norman said he was carrying the pistol for protection because protesters threatened his life when he photographed earlier sit-ins. He has denied firing it, and the presidential commission that investigated the shootings determined that Norman played no role in them.

A crew from Cleveland's WKYC-TV filmed Norman running toward Guardsmen and police the day of the shooting and being chased by two men. One of the men yelled: "Hey, stop that man! I saw him shoot someone!"

The crew recorded Norman reaching under his jacket and handing a gun to a police officer, saying "the guy tried to kill me." Norman later repeatedly said he was referring to an assault that happened after the Guard shootings.

Former WKYC television reporter Fred DeBrine and sound man Joe Butano have said repeatedly that they heard a Kent State police detective open the cylinder of Norman's gun and say: "Oh my god, he fired four times."

The police detective later denied making the remark, and a campus patrolman's report said the gun was fully loaded with no smell of burnt powder.

Debrine and Joe Butano repeated their assertion this week, The Plain Dealer reported. Butano also has said he heard the four shots and the Guard's rifle volley soon afterward. The pistol fire on the audio would verify "what I heard and have been thinking about all these years," Butano told the newspaper.

Went grocery shopping today. Noticed a big hole where cans of corned beef usually squat. There was a sign, telling us that corned beef comes from Brazil. I went to a Detroit news site and found this:

• About 258,000 pounds of various cooked beef products, imported from Brazil and recalled by Sampco Inc. of Chicago, because the Brazilian manufacturer does not meet Agriculture Department standards. The recall includes some 12-ounce cans of Libby corned beef, 7-ounce and 10-ounce pouches of Brushy Creek shredded beef and 12-ounce cans of Kroger corned beef. Detail: by phone at (800) 685-6328; online at http://tinyurl.com/2kybk6.

• About 13,500 Giant Starbuilder and Giant Stars building sets, manufactured in China and distributed by Edushape Ltd. of Deer Park, N.Y., because the plastic knobs on the stars can break off and pose a choking risk. There have been three reports of knobs breaking off of stars, but no reports of injuries. The toys were sold by small retail stores nationwide, as well as online by Target, Toys "R" Us and CSN through Walmart Marketplace, between January 2007 and May 2010. Details: by phone at (800) 404-4744; online at www.cpsc.gov.

• KiloSports Inc. of Phoenix, Ariz., is recalling 60-count bottles of Clomed supplements because they could contain aromatase inhibitors. Aromatase inhibitors are associated with the following adverse reactions: decreased rate of bone maturation and growth, decreased sperm production, infertility, aggressive behavior, adrenal insufficiency, kidney failure and liver dysfunction. Those with liver, kidney, adrenal or prostate abnormalities are at higher risk for these reactions. No incidents have been reported. Clomed was available in stores nationwide, through mail order and online. Details may be obtained by phone at (480) 545-3489.



From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20100920/BIZ01/9200307/Brazilian-corned-beef-fails-U.S.-standard#ixzz11spr5prE

funny, tsar.

edgar, always check before eating cornbeef and cabbage.: That was odd.

Never smile at a crocodile.



Chito and Poco are friends. Amazing, because he saved the crocodile after it had been shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdw5LMdmYSQ

When I see humans and wild animals bonding this way, I always recall the tales of trained bears killing their trainers - Orcas, elephants, tigers - I think I prefer to have them in the wild, or at least caged.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A man who was 14 when he killed his father, stepmother and stepsister at newsman Sam Donaldson's southern New Mexico ranch has been freed from detention.

Cody Posey recently was released from a state juvenile detention facility and was freed from court jurisdiction on Friday, the day before his 21st birthday, according to a report from KOB-TV in Albuquerque.

Posey was convicted in 2006 of first-degree murder in the death of his 13-year-old stepsister Marilea Schmid, second-degree murder in the death of his stepmother Tryrone Posey, and voluntary manslaughter in the death of his father Delbert Posey, who was the ranch foreman. Posey testified that he snapped on July 5, 2004, after years of verbal and physical abuse, but prosecutors described him as a ruthless killer.

The teen, who buried the bodies in a manure pile, was sentenced as a juvenile to remain in state custody until age 21. The court's jurisdiction then ended and he is not on probation.

His lawyer, Gary Mitchell, said he doesn't believe Posey is a threat. Neither Mitchell nor state officials will say where he is staying.

Posey will probably stay in New Mexico for at least the next few weeks and may consider moving out of state, Mitchell said.

Posey earned college credits while serving his sentence and wants to attend college, according to Mitchell, who said he knows Posey could have problems living in New Mexico and has suggested his client change his name.

A judge awarded $87 million to the victims' relatives earlier this year. The family's attorney said at the time that the award was largely symbolic and he did not expect his clients to ever collect. It would be available if Posey tries to profit from the murders, attorney Steven Sanders said.

Wow!!!!! Are all those judge's awards we have read about over the years just pie in the sky and not intended to be taken seriously.