Power of the mind

Philippine tourist bus hijacked at least 4 killed

2010-08-23T09:22:00.001-07:00

A 12-hour hostage drama aboard a Philippine bus ended in bloodshed Monday, with at least seven Chinese tourists dead along with the disgruntled ex-policeman who hijacked the vehicle and demanded his job back, officials said.

At least six captives survived, four of whom were seen crawling out the back door of the bus after Philippine police stormed it Monday evening when the hostage-taker started shooting at the 15 Chinese tourists inside, said police Senior Superintendent Nelson Yabut.

He said the hostage-taker was killed with a sniper shot to the head after he wounded a police sharpshooter.

An armed policeman who lost his job last year took a tourist bus hostage on Monday, setting off a daylong standoff that ended after police commandos stormed the bus.

At least 4 of the 15 hostages were killed, and one was critically wounded, a spokesman for the President Benigno S. Aquino III said Monday night. Six others were shown on television crawling out of the bus after police assault teams moved in.

A man shown slumped and apparently lifeless by the main door of the bus was identified on television reports as the gunman, but the authorities did not immediately confirm his fate.

Police and ambulances were lined up next to the vehicle in the pouring rain after the standoff ended. Local hospitals reported seven bodies of hostages were brought in. One other hostage was hospitalized in critical condition, and five others were unharmed.

Officials have yet to disclose the fate of the remaining two hostages.

The crisis began when the dismissed policeman, Rolando Mendoza, 55, armed with a M16 rifle seized the busload of Hong Kong tourists to demand his reinstatement in the force.

According to newspaper reports from 2008, he was among five officers who had been charged with robbery, extortion and grave threats after a Manila hotel chef filed a complaint alleging the policemen falsely accused him of using drugs to extort money.

Mendoza released nine hostages during the afternoon — leaving 15 inside. Those freed included two women, three children, a diabetic man and three Filipinos — including a tour guide and a photographer, police said.

Despite hopes that negotiations could bring the stand-off to a peaceful conclusion, tensions escalated as night closed in.

Police said they stormed the bus after they saw Mendoza open fire on hostages. Crouching outside the vehicle, commandos in flak jackets, used a hammer to bash in side windows, the door and windscreen, although it was some time before they eventually gained entry.

Jet-Mounted Telescope Sees First Light

2010-06-01T20:13:00.000-07:00

A new flying observatory snapped its first pictures of the infrared night sky last week. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, a joint project between NASA and the German Aerospace Center, saw heat escaping from clouds in Jupiter’s atmosphere and the star-forming heart of galaxy M82 on its maiden voyage May 26.

SOFIA is a hacked Boeing 747SP jetliner with a 16-by-23-foot door cut in its side to let a 17-ton, 100-inch diameter telescope take in views of the universe that are impossible to get from the ground. The airborne observatory’s altitude — up to 35,000 feet on the first flight, and possibly as high as 45,000 feet on later flights — takes it above 99 percent of the water vapor in the atmosphere that blocks and scatters light on its way to the surface. And as a mobile telescope, SOFIA can catch transient events like supernovae and comets that grounded telescopes and space telescopes in a fixed orbit might miss.

The first flight took off from NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, California, with a crew of 10 scientists, engineers and technicians from NASA, Universities Space Research Association, the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) and Cornell University. Over the following six hours, the crew used a camera called FORCAST, or Faint Object infraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope, to capture images in a few minutes that would have taken hours from the ground.

“The flight exceed even my most optimistic expectations. FORCAST and the observatory worked virtually flawlessly,” Terry Herter of Cornell University, the principle investigator for FORCAST, told Wired Science. “I hope this is the first step in many successes for SOFIA.”

The telescope is capable of seeing wavelengths from 0.3 micrometers (slightly longer than the human eye can see) to 1600 micrometers, but the team observed Jupiter in just three of those wavelengths: 5.4 micrometers (blue), 24 micrometers (green) and 37 micrometers. The white stripe in the center of the image is an area of relatively transparent clouds, where scientists can see heat that has been trapped since the planet formed leaking out into space.

The team also observed nearby galaxy M82, sometimes called the Cigar Galaxy, at 20 (blue), 32 (green) and 37 (red) micrometers. The infrared image sees through the gas and dust that chokes the visible light image to the galaxy’s warm core, where stars are being born.

SOFIA is expected to fly for another 20 years, during which time it will help scientists study the composition and origins of stars, planets, comets and biogeneic materials in the interstellar medium.

“A preliminary examination of the first light data shows that the images are in fact sharp enough to enable cutting-edge astronomy,” said Alfred Krabbe, Director and scientific head of DSI in a press release. “Now at last, the fun begins.”

Apple Sells Two Million iPads in Two Months

2010-06-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

In “less than 60 days”, Apple has shifted two million iPads. If you remember, it took just 28 days to sell the first million, so it doesn’t look like sales are slowing down much yet. In fact, it seems like Apple could have offloaded a lot more if only it could make them fast enough.

The announcement, somewhat callously released on memorial day yesterday, comes after the opening weekend of the iPad’s international launch. While there’s no way to tell just how many units made it to Europe, Australia and Japan, one thing is certain: they sold out. Of the few places stocking the iPad in my hometown of Barcelona, Spain, the only iPads to be found were the demo units being pawed and covered in finger-grease by eager crowds.

Accessories, too, remain in short supply. There are plenty of cases and screen protectors, but Apple’s own add-ons – the docks, cables and camera connection kit – are still weeks away.

Two million sounds a lot, but how does it compare to a rather more mature segment, lets say the Mac? In the first quarter of this year, Apple sold 3.36 million Macs. Extrapolate the iPad figures to three months (three million) and you get pretty close to that figure.

And if you compare the sales of portable Macs for that same quarter (2.1 million), the iPad is already outselling the MacBook line. Sure, the entry level iPad is half the price of the cheapest MacBook, but the iPad is also a brand new category of device, not a seasoned – and known – bestseller.

The iPad, then, is a success, and the tablet mass-market is officially here. We can’t wait to see what Google and Palm have got coming.

The Last Generation of Typewriter Repairmen

2010-06-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

It’s easy to forget how much time computer word-processing programs have saved the writing public. Before computers, any typewritten document that needed revision had to be retyped again and again. And that’s hardly the end of it.

Total up all the hours that people spent whiting out errors before the Delete key … how many zeroes would the final figure have?

Combine the surface area of every lumpy smudge of liquid paper: Would it cover the country? The world?

Despite these inefficiencies, there are a few places where typewriters still clack away. New York City police stations, the desks of a few stubborn hangers-on, and, increasingly, the apartments of hip young people who have a fetish for the retro.

Mechanical devices with a lot of moving parts, typewriters require maintenance by technicians with specialized knowledge and years of experience. A surprising number of people still make their living meeting that demand.

We take a look back at these charming machines and visits three Bay Area workshops whose proprietors keep hearse-colored Remingtons and Underwoods from disappearing into the grave.

Typewriters provoke curiosity and nostalgia for many. They are one of the more visually appealing members of the catalog of once-ubiquitous technologies that includes kerosene lamps, land lines and VHS.

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2010-06-01T02:02:00.000-07:00

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The Scary Maze Game

2010-05-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

This is a montage video of the infamous 'Scary Maze Game' - a game that frightens people to their core.

Scary screamers are common on the internet but this game is one of the best. It lures people into trying to complete three levels of a maze - but just as they are concentrating to complete the 3rd level - a loud scream breaks over the speaker and the face of the 'Exorcist Child' pops onto the screen.

If you haven't been scared by this one then it's too late - this video spoils the punch line. But here is the link for the actual game so you can pull the scare on an unsuspecting victim:

* Scary Maze Game
* Scary Home Page

Scary Stories & Legends

2010-05-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

In America there was a mass murder. Policemen went to investigate. Trying not to tread on the bodies, the police took pictures of each one. One policemen saw something on the opposite wall but he couldn't read it. He walks over to it and sees the numbers "7734" in calculator form, written in blood. When taking pictures of this he turned his camera upside-down and told an approaching police officer. When he pointed with the hand that the camera was in, he accidentally took a picture of the upside-down numbers. The policeman was about to delete the picture when he realized something. The numbers were now a word. The word was "hELL."

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There is an urban legend in the town of Kokomo, Indiana. We have many urban legends in fact, but there's one in particular. The story is set on Old Sycamore Road which an old road in the farmland, and open field area of my town. There's a small bridge off Old Sycamore Road that takes you onto another road, and it takes you to the next town. The story goes a man, or a boy fell off the bridge, and died once hitting their head on the rocks underneath the bridge, and if you were to drive on Old Sycamore Road at night, and you were to cross that bridge, then the "ghost" of the man, or boy appear next to your car once you pass the exact spot they had fallen from until you exit the bridge. My friends and I have tested this urban legend many times, and we have yet to see anything. We don't even know if anyone really died there, but true or false, it's an interesting, and eerie story, and visual.

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There's a bridge called "Covert's Crossing" or "Covert's Bridge" up in New Castle. A young couple had gotten married on Halloween. Around midnight, they were riding in a horse drawn carriage across the bridge at the same time a car was. The bridge was only one lane, so by the time they saw each other it was too late. Story has it that they crashed and the hubcap of the car flew off, decapitating the bride. The police never found her head or the body of the groom. Its been said that if you sit on the bridge on Halloween night around midnight, you can see the headless bride standing on some rocks in the river. However they don't know if she is looking for her head or her lost love.

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The legend is that if you sit in three of the graveyard chairs from midnight until one minute after midnight, you will have the ability to see ghosts -- but you will pay with your life. This, however did not apply to three high-school football players on Halloween Night in 1976. They pulled into the graveyard, in the middle of a large, open area. They had heard the legend and decided to try it, but one of them refused to try it. The friend sat down and watched the other boys run from one chair to the other. Then he sensed that something was wrong. They were leaning over to the side with their eyes rolled back, rasping. The boy began frantically screaming for help as his friends kneeled over and grabbed his leg. It is said that the boy also saw spirits for an instant. The boys died and the survivor never spoke a word. Of course, there were people mourning their loved ones nearby. They witnessed the event and filed a police report detailing what happened. No one really knows what those chairs are, except that they have been there since the town was founded.

Weird Things You Would Never Know

2010-05-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

Butterflies taste with their feet.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than
all the world's nuclear weapons combined.
On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.
On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
It's possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
A snail can sleep for three years.
No word in the English language rhymes with "MONTH".
Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
All polar bears are left handed.
In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
"Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Google celebrates Pac-Man's 30th anniversary with playable logo

2010-05-21T08:57:00.000-07:00

PAC-MAN is a cultural icon whose popularity has crossed the globe for 30 years. His journey through the maze of gaming infamy is far from over!

A playable ... logo? That's exactly what web giant Google has today, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man's Japanese release. The doodle (Google's term for its event and holiday-specific logos) is accessible on its main page and is a full 255-level game complete with a 256th level "kill screen," just like the original coin-op.

The interactive doodle -- a first for Google -- is the brainchild of senior user experience designer Marcin Wichary, whose earliest exposure to Pac-Man came at age five while traveling across his native Poland with his father, a game technician, to repair arcade machines. Wichary worked with Google doodler (yes, it's a real job) Ryan Germick to create the finished design.

So, for today at least, you can tell your boss: "I may be browsing the web and playing a game, but I'm also being part of something historic."

Mugging Victim Saved by Ninjas

2010-05-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

It's night in the city. A lone student walks down a dimly lit alleyway. Suddenly, he is attacked by nefarious thieves bent on taking his possessions and causing him grievous bodily harm.

He's overpowered, outmatched and facing certain doom. He's lost hope and possibly all he is carrying with him, when suddenly he is saved by masked heroes! And not just any masked heroes -- he was rescued by freakin' ninjas!

Sounds like a story from a comic book, but it was a real-life situation. The alleyway that the student was walking down was adjacent to an actual ninja training school. I, for one, am completely stoked about it, mostly because, like, freakin' ninjas, you guys! What's not awesome about that?

Well, maybe the fact that these particular ninjas couldn't actually catch the bad guys. But still, freakin' ninjas are cool.

Passion for Vintage Clothing

2010-05-21T03:52:00.000-07:00

Vintage clothing, by it's very definition, is by no means new. But the concept of vintage fashion is fast gathering momentum and settling nicely into it's guided place on the high street and internet. So what is it that we love so much about vintage clothes? What are the reasons behind the worldwide vintage epidemic?

1) Celebrity Culture

Whether we like to admit it or not, we are living in a world where celebrities are king, with more influence and status than most royals! Be it actors, singers, models or TV personalities, our screens and the magazines we read are filled with our icon's latest look.

In the past few years our favourite celebrities have been turning to vintage clothes more and more and boy oh boy have we been following suit... Whether it's vintage dresses, vintage knitwear, vintage jackets, vintage shoes, vintage skirts, vintage tops or vintage accessories, if we see it in the glossies then we will do our best to find something similar. It's also made vintage clothing more accessible, more mainstream and more acceptable than it ever has been before.

2) Individuality

You know the feeling. You've spent weeks preparing for the party of the year. Carefully and lovingly choosing what to wear, how to style your hair, what make up and scent to wear... The night finally arrives and feeling a million dollars you arrive - only to find your worst nightmare. Another girl is wearing exactly the same dress as you! It's a horrible feeling and one we all dread, but a perfectly realistic side effect of 'fast fashion' on the high street.

So how can you assure you will be the only girl in THAT outfit - vintage clothing of course! When you buy a piece of vintage clothing you are buying an item that has one very important factor - individuality. Sure you can buy pieces that follow key trends but it's highly unlikely that any other girl will have the same vintage item as you. Your vintage clothing can come from any corner of the globe and from any era of time so it's bound to be super special.

3) Global Awareness

From the way we power our homes to the way in which our rubbish is collected, we have all become much more environmentally aware in recent years. We've managed to adapt to splitting our rubbish into different boxes and invested in energy saving light bulbs. We've even stopped leaving our TV's on standby when we go to bed! But being greener doesn't end there... vintage clothing is a fantastic way to recycle.

Image how much quality vintage clothing is out there, thousands and thousands of pieces just waiting for new homes. You can even sell your own collection on - whether it's your too-short sixties minis or your dodgy eighties batwings, vintage clothing companies love to hear from you. We can all do our bit to help each other and the planet!

4) Money Matters

You know the old saying - look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves! If you're financially savvy then you are probably buying vintage already. To buy good quality fashion on the high street can cost enough, but designer labels can really break the bank.

Buying vintage clothing is an excellent way to get the look you want at the fraction of the normal price. Not only that, but you actually making an investment. Like a fine wine or piece of antique furniture, as your vintage clothing grows older it increases in value.

So there we have it - save money, look super stylish AND individual, keep the planet happy and follow as many trends as your heart desires - it may sound too good to be true but vintage clothes really can offer the perfect fashion and lifestyle solution. So the only question is - if you're not buying vintage clothing already - why not?

Many People Having Sex With Dogs

2010-05-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

This has to be the most disgusting trend I've seen in 15 years walking the weird news beat: Once again, someone is accused of having sex with a dog. This time, a pit bull.

Oregon police have charged 20-year-old Brandon Vongthongthrip to 200 counts of aggravated animal abuse and 200 counts of sexual assault of an animal after he allegedly admitted to having sex with his pet more than 400 times over a five-year period.

"Authorities first learned of Mr. Vongthongthrip's criminal activity when an anonymous caller contacted investigators at the Oregon Humane Society," Special Agent Austin Wallace told Salem-News.com.

The 20-year-old man -- the latest inductee to the Weird News Mug Shot Hall of Shame -- had no prior arrests and has no history of mental illness. And yet investigators say they found pictures of him posted on the Internet of him sexually abusing his eight-year-old Red Nose American Pit Bull named Rocky.

This comes just week after a Florida woman was charged with making dog sex videos, prompting state lawmakers to propose new anti-bestiality laws.

A few months earlier, we reported on the legal proceedings against Diane Sue Whalen, accused of making and trying to sell videos of herself with two dog.

Living With the World's Largest Penis

2010-05-21T03:20:00.000-07:00

"Do you want to see it?"

When Jonah Falcon, the man with the world's largest penis, asked me this question on the phone, I had no right to be shocked.

After all, I've been a weird news reporter for more than a decade, and I'm the one who called him up asking for an interview. Still, I couldn't help but feel just a little queasy.

The last time I interviewed a man about his pecker, it was John Wayne Bobbitt, the man who had his junk sliced off by his wife, whom he allegedly abused.

Poor Lorena chucked that penis out a car window. It was found and surgically reattached. A jury acquitted Lorena at the infamous "weenie whacking trial" months later, and John turned himself into a national joke.

I caught up with the man just after he'd undergone penis lengthening surgery because he underwhelmed audiences in his first porno flick, John Wayne Bobbitt: Uncut.

The medical procedure did little to make his next effort, Frankenpenis, a bigger success. But at the time, Bobbitt was ecstatic over his artificial enhancement.

"I'm as big and wide as a can of Foster's beer," he bragged.

"Congratulations, John," I told him. "Your penis is now completely useless."

This loser would go on to work as a $50,000-a-year greeter at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, Nevada's largest house of prostitution. He'd then get fired for being a general screw-up, and face further charges for beating other women who made the mistake of dating him.

As Bunny Ranch owner Dennis Hof told me, Bobbitt is "a nice, pleasant person with absolutely no brain."
A Big Man With Big Plans

Like Bobbitt, Jonah Falcon is famous for his penis. But the comparison ends there. Bobbitt became a walking, talking punch line with zero self-respect.

Falcon is a 38-year-old New Yorker who is doing his best to become a serious actor and filmmaker -- something more than a guy renowned for his bulge.

When he greeted me at the door, I was struck at how normal he looked. He's five-foot-nine, with an average build and a boyish face.

You'd never guess that the man standing before me is the same one who was measured on HBO's Private Dicks: Men Exposed at 13.5 inches -- longer than your average wine bottle.

And it's just as thick, I'm told.

The attention Falcon really craves, however, is as an actor. And up to this point, much of his work has been as an uncredited extra.

If you watch The Sopranos episode in which Paulie finds out that his mother is really his aunt, you'll see him as a hospital orderly. This is work that's called "paying your dues." Falcon has been a juror on Law & Order (and it must have been a hung jury). He was a mental patient in the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind and a barfly on Ed.

His scene from Sex and the City was cut, but how could Samantha not have dated him?

"I've had bigger roles in indie films," he tells me, "the kind that don't get listed on IMDB."

"Porn?" I ask him.

"Of course not," he tells me. "I'm a SAG actor. If I did porn, nobody would take me seriously. Nobody. And Nobody would care about the size of my penis."

"Why?"

"Because porn actors all lie about the size of their penis," he says. "I've been measured on TV."

Body Painting in Australia

2010-05-21T03:09:00.000-07:00

It doesn't take much to transform yourself into a living work of fantasy: Jut a lot of paint... and even more patience.

And it would help if you don't mind being nude or barely dressed, since you'll be wearing nothing but paint.

The Australian Body Art Carnivale 2010 brought together naked people and gallon after gallon of paint, transforming their skin into walking, breathing -- and incredibly temporary -- works of art.

In fact, it can take up to eight hours to turn a person into a fully painted portrait -- and all that effort can wash away in just a few short hours, as you can see.

If you're ready to strip down and cover yourself in water-based paints, be prepared to shell out up to $1,200 for the transformation. But hey, if you don't like it, at least it's temporary.

Some people make far more permanent changes to their bodies... and have to live with those transformations for the rest of their lives.

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2010-01-01T08:32:00.000-08:00

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