Sorta makes me think of Wonder Woman and her magic bracelets but police say a man’s wedding band deflected a bullet and likely saved his life. Police Sgt. Jeffrey Scott says two men walked into Register’s shop at The Antique Market on Saturday and asked to see a coin collection.
When Register retrieved the collection, one of the men pulled a gun and demanded money. A shot was fired as Register threw up his left hand, and his wedding ring deflected the bullet, police said. His wife Darlene Register says the bullet managed to go through two of his fingers without severing the bone.
A part of the bullet broke off and is in his middle finger - the other part is in his neck, lodged in the muscle tissue. She said she gives God all the credit. Police were searching for the robbers, who Scott said “stole a substantial amount of cash.” The whole thing still sounds quite messy.
There are rumors floating around the net that, Robert Hawkins, age 20 actually blogged about his desire to go out with a bang! What a sick way to gain notoriety. The current update is the 8 are dead and 2 are in critical condition, with three others injured. This gutless murderer was dead on the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A competitive eater who has already triumphed at a famous hot dog eating contest swallowed 103 small hamburgers in 8 minutes Sunday to take home $10,000. Joey Chestnut, 23, of San Jose, Calif., surpassed the previous record of 97 Krystal burgers — 21/2 inches square — held by Japan’s Takeru Kobayashi, set at last year’s Krystal Square Off.
Chestnut beat 12 other contestants. Kobayashi, who won all previous Krystal Hamburger Eating Championships, didn’t compete this year because of lingering jaw pain from having a wisdom tooth extracted in June. The 29-year-old Kobayashi received chiropractic treatment before losing his hot-dog-eating belt in the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July tussle in New York. None of these competitive eaters are fat, go figure?
Here is the holiday beverage you have all been waiting for, latke flavored pop to tempt your tastebuds, yuk! It will even be kosher, the company making it says.
Jones Soda Co., the Seattle-based purveyor of offbeat fizzy water, is selling holiday-themed limited-edition packs of flavored sodas. The Christmas pack will feature such flavors as Sugar Plum, Christmas Tree, Egg Nog and Christmas Ham. The Hanukkah pack will have Jelly Doughnut, Apple Sauce, Chocolate Coins and Latkes sodas.
“As always, both packs are kosher and contain zero caffeine,” Jones said in a statement. The packs will go on sale Sunday, with a portion of the proceeds to be given to charity, the company said. Jones’ products feature original label art and frequently odd flavors. Last year’s seasonal pack was Thanksgiving-themed, with Green Pea, Sweet Potato, Dinner Roll, Turkey and Gravy, and Antacid sodas.
For its contract to supply soda to Qwest Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks, Jones came up with Perspiration, Dirt, Sports Cream and Natural Field Turf. The company — fortunately or unfortunately — prides itself on the accuracy of the taste. Jones also makes more traditional flavors, including root beer, cherry and strawberry sodas. My predictions are that these will sell quite well, then fizzle!
I recently came across a couple of disturbing accounts of weird experiments performed on animals at the museum of hoaxes website.
-What would happens if you give an elephant LSD?
On Friday August 3, 1962, a group of Oklahoma City researchers decided to find out. Warren Thomas, Director of the City Zoo, fired a cartridge-syringe containing 297 milligrams of LSD into Tusko the Elephant’s rump. With Thomas were two scientific colleagues from the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, Louis Jolyon West and Chester M. Pierce. 297 milligrams is a lot of LSD — about 3000 times the level of a typical human dose. In fact, it remains the largest dose of LSD ever given to a living creature. The researchers figured that, if they were going to give an elephant LSD, they better not give him too little.
Thomas, West, and Pierce later explained that the experiment was designed to find out if LSD would induce musth in an elephant — musth being a kind of temporary madness male elephants sometimes experience during which they become highly aggressive and secrete a sticky fluid from their temporal glands. But one suspects a small element of ghoulish curiosity might also have been involved. Whatever the reason for the experiment, it almost immediately went awry. Tusko reacted to the shot as if a bee had stung him. He trumpeted around his pen for a few minutes, and then keeled over on his side. Horrified, the researchers tried to revive him, but about an hour later he was dead. The three scientists sheepishly concluded that, “It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD.”
In the years that followed controversy lingered over whether it was the LSD that killed Tusko, or the drugs used to revive him. So twenty years later, Ronald Siegel of UCLA decided to settle the debate by giving two elephants a dose similar to what Tusko received. Reportedly he had to sign an agreement promising to replace the animals in the event of their deaths. Instead of injecting the elephants with LSD, Siegel mixed the drug into their water, and when it was administered in this way, the elephants not only survived but didn’t seem too upset at all. They acted sluggish, rocked back and forth, and made some strange vocalizations such as chirping and squeaking, but within a few hours they were back to normal. However, Siegel noted that the dosage Tusko received may have exceeded some threshold of toxicity, so he couldn’t rule out that LSD was the cause of his death. I know this was back in the early 60’s but I am sure there are some sick experiments going on nowadays all around the world.
-Have you ever seen a dog with two heads?
In 1954 Vladimir Demikhov rocked the scientific world by unveiling a surgically created monstrosity: A two-headed dog. He created the creature in a lab on the outskirts of Moscow by grafting the head, shoulders, and front legs of a puppy onto the neck of a mature German shepherd.
Demikhov paraded the dog before reporters from around the world. Journalists gasped as both heads simultaneously lapped at bowls of milk, and then cringed as the milk from the puppy’s head dribbled out the unconnected stump of its esophageal tube. The Soviet Union proudly boasted that the dog was proof of their nation’s medical preeminence. Over the course of the next fifteen years, Demikhov created a total of twenty of his two-headed dogs. None of them lived very long, as they inevitably succumbed to problems of tissue rejection. The record was a month.
Demikhov explained that the dogs were part of a continuing series of experiments in surgical techniques, with his ultimate goal being to learn how to perform a human heart and lung transplant. Another surgeon beat him to this goal — Dr. Christian Baarnard in 1967 — but Demikhov is widely credited with paving the way for it. I guess this story makes you wonder about “the end justifying the means’. The “greater good” and all that.
It turns out Mr. Yuk, the scary green poison control symbol, has lawyers and they are not very happy about what’s happening in St. Paul. Local City Council member Paul Bakken has put Mr. Yuk-like faces on lawn signs opposing an upcoming vote to amend the city charter. Attorneys for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which holds the copyright on Mr. Yuk, weren’t amused.
“It’s just that this guy is using Mr. Yuk inappropriately and illegally. He’s broken copyright laws. … It’s clearly a violation,” said Dr. Edward Krenzelok, director of the Pittsburgh Poison Center, which is affiliated with the medical center. He said Mr. Yuk was created more than 30 years ago to warn children away from dangerous substances. He said he has asked the medical center’s lawyers to straighten things out.
“It doesn’t hurt us,” Krenzelok acknowledged. “It’s just inappropriate use, and we have to control the use to maintain our copyright.” Bakken, a lawyer, defended his use of Mr. Yuk. He said federal law allows some use of copyrighted material for satire or academic criticism. He said he found Yuk-like images spread across the Internet.
“It appeared to be in the public domain,” he said. “If this is genuinely harming the good work that they do, I sincerely apologize.” In my opinion lawn poison is still poison so I am not sure what the problem is, watch the vintage commercial from 1971 to see Mr. Yuk in action.
In France a woman who planted a lipstick-laden kiss on an all-white painting by the American artist Cy Twombly went on trial Tuesday, telling the court she had committed an “act of love” - not a crime.
Rindy Sam, a 30-year-old French artist, faced charges of “voluntarily damaging a work of art.” The painting is worth an estimated $2,830,000 and restorers have tried to remove the lipstick smudge from the bone-white canvas using nearly 30 products - to no avail.
Prosecutors, want Sam to pay a $6,400 fine and take a class on good citizenship. The verdict was set for Nov. 16. Sam was taken into custody after she kissed the painting July 19. It was part of a travelling exhibition on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon. The painting is owned by collector Yvon Lambert. He was asking for $2,878,000 in damages, which included the value of the painting and the $47,000 restoration cost.
Twombly is known for his abstract paintings combining painting and drawing techniques, repetitive lines and the use of graffiti, letters and words. Born in Lexington, Va., in 1928, Twombly has lived in Italy for nearly a half-century. He won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 2001.
Tuesday’s trial came as police in Paris jailed five people in connection with the weekend vandalism of a noted painting by French Impressionist Claude Monet, “Le Pont d’Argenteuil.” Intruders, apparently drunk, broke into Paris’ Orsay Museum early Sunday and punched the renowned work, leaving a nearly 10 centimetre tear. The five were tracked by evidence from museum security cameras, police said. One person admitted to putting a fist in the painting under the influence of alcohol.
The intruders had entered by a back door. Culture Minister Christine Albanel said that apparently one in the group had information about access to the museum for professional reasons and used this information to enter. The minister did not say if any of those detained worked for the museum. Why am I not surprised this happened in France, the land of love!
There are rumors floating around the net that, Robert Hawkins, age 20 actually blogged about his desire to go out with a bang! What a sick way to gain notoriety. The current update is the 8 are dead and 2 are in critical condition, with three others injured. This gutless murderer was dead on the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.