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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jun 15, 2004 11:53:44 GMT -5
AP Wire - Blind Man Crashes Golf Cart on Ga. Street PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. - A blind man drove a golf cart for two miles through the winding streets of Peachtree City, accompanied by his guide dog — and an inebriated friend giving instructions — before running into a parked car, police said. Nobody was hurt, but Samuel McClain, 35, of Stockbridge and Michael Johnston, 47, of Peachtree City were charged with reckless conduct "due to the blatant disregard for public safety," a police report said. The report said McClain was driving the cart Saturday while Johnston gave directions after having six or seven beers and "admittedly under the influence of alcoholic beverage." Also on the cart was McClain's golden retriever guide dog. The city of 34,000 about 25 miles south of Atlanta has about 80 miles of paved cart paths and 9,000 registered carts that residents use for daily tasks like going to the grocery or taking children to school. Comments from the Peanut Gallery: You have got to be kidding me?! This is like putting Stevie Wonder behind the wheel of a new Mercedes. So tell me Mr. McClain... how did your dog fare after your DUI incident? Maybe since they can't take your license away, you should have your dog suspended for two years, and then you must go to a 8 week course on how to care for your dog properly. Jackass!
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Post by [Elmo]69er on Jun 15, 2004 20:37:34 GMT -5
Lol, you asked where i found the link to that tigger deal. Now i ask, where do you find stuff like this? Although, i have a confession, I am blind. My seeing eye dog is pretty damn good at battlefield wouldn't you say?
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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jun 15, 2004 23:15:35 GMT -5
Seriously, I found this under the Associated Press headlines on Yahoo this morning. It must have been a slow news day! ;D
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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jun 17, 2004 15:54:35 GMT -5
AP Wire - Lobster Found Guarding Watch Off England LONDON - Lobsters have long been known as solitary and territorial crustaceans — but timely and fashion conscious? Divers in northeast England were recently surprised to come across a giant lobster standing guard over a barnacle-encrusted watch at the bottom of a harbor. Maybe the lobster just knew a bargain: The watch was still ticking. The watch and its 2-foot-long guardian were found by divers doing maintenance work in Blyth harbor, officials said Thursday. "We're all highly experienced divers, and none of us has seen anything like this before," said Graham McDonnar, a member of the Lady Francis Dive Team. "Not only is this the biggest lobster any of us have ever come across under water, but it's also the first sea creature we've encountered that can tell the time," he joked. The lobster, estimated to be about 30 years old, was taken to the Blue Reef Aquarium in Tynemouth, where it is settling in well in the harbor tank display. "Lobsters are well known for being extremely territorial," especially regarding their habitats, said one Blue Reef official, Zahra d'Aronville. "Perhaps it identified the watch as part of its territory and has been standing guard over it ever since." Whatever the motive, the lobster has nothing to worry about. If the aquarium isn't allowed to keep the watch, it will buy the lobster a waterproof replacement, "as he's clearly very keen on being on time," d'Aronville said. My comments: Two words: Steak & Lobstertail! Two feet long?! Wow! I wonder who the manufacturer of the watch was? This incident could help spark a great advertising campaign. Hey... hand me over the butter sauce please...
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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jun 18, 2004 11:34:10 GMT -5
AP Wire - N.J. Assembly OKs Ladies Nights at Bars
TRENTON, N.J. - It's unanimous: Women deserve a cheap drink, at least in New Jersey bars and restaurants. Despite an administrative ruling that says the ladies' night at a Cherry Hill bar and restaurant violated state civil rights rules, Assembly members Thursday said there ought to be a law protecting the practice.
The Assembly voted 78-0 to approve a bill making it legal for bar owners and others to offer special promotions such as charging women different prices for drinks. The measure was designed to specifically overturn that June 1 ruling.
"It defies common sense to view Ladies Night as anything other than a way for a bar or restaurant owner to stay competitive and successful," said the measure's sponsor, Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, a Democrat.
Earlier this month, the director of the state Division on Civil Rights ruled in favor of a man who said it wasn't fair for women to get into the Coastline bar and restaurant in Cherry Hill for free and enjoy discounted drinks while men paid $5 and full price for beverages.
Gov. James E. McGreevey led the charge in denouncing the decision, calling it "bureaucratic nonsense."
The bill now heads to the Senate.
Comments: It appears that all the ugly men in Jersey may still get a chance to get laid after a night on the town. It's too bad that Gov. McGreevey is married... ;D
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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jun 22, 2004 11:33:28 GMT -5
AP Wire - Man Goes for Guinness Longest Hair Record
HANOI, Vietnam - A Vietnamese man who hasn't been to a barber in 31 years is vying to get in the Guinness World Records for having the longest hair, state-controlled media reported Monday.
Tran Van Hay's hair is 20 feet long, Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper said.
Normally tied up and covered by a scarf, his hair has grown four feet in the past seven years. He last had it washed six years ago, the paper said.
Hay, 67, is a traditional medicine practitioner from southern Kien Giang province, some 220 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City. He provides free treatment to villagers in the region.
The Guinness Web site says the current record for long hair, set in 1997, is held by Hoo Sateow of Chiang Mai, Thailand, at 16 feet 11 inches.
Comments: This poor dude hasn't washed his hair in 6 YEARS!? Holy cow... I can't even imagine the scalp irritation that he experiences. I suppose if he ever had to, he could tie his hair to a bedpost and scale out of a second story window of a burning building. I suppose that puts him up one above me! ;D
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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jun 24, 2004 3:45:57 GMT -5
AP Wire - Mutation Found in 'Muscle Man' Toddler By LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat. DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth. The discovery, reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine (news - web sites), represents the first documented human case of such a mutation. Many scientists believe the find could eventually lead to drugs for treating people with muscular dystrophy and other muscle-destroying conditions. And athletes would almost surely want to get their hands on such a drug and use it like steroids to bulk up. The boy's mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth. The news comes seven years after researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created buff "mighty mice" by "turning off" the gene that directs cells to produce myostatin. "Now we can say that myostatin acts the same way in humans as in animals," said the boy's physician, Dr. Markus Schuelke, a professor in the child neurology department at Charite/University Medical Center Berlin. "We can apply that knowledge to humans, including trial therapies for muscular dystrophy." Given the huge potential market for such drugs, researchers at universities and pharmaceutical companies already are trying to find a way to limit the amount and activity of myostatin in the body. Wyeth has just begun human tests of a genetically engineered antibody designed to neutralize myostatin. Dr. Lou Kunkel, director of the genomics program at Boston Children's Hospital and professor of pediatrics and genetics at Harvard Medical School (news - web sites), said success is possible within several years. "Just decreasing this protein by 20, 30, 50 percent can have a profound effect on muscle bulk," said Kunkel, who is among the doctors participating in the Wyeth research. Muscular dystrophy is the world's most common genetic disease. There is no cure and the most common form, Duchenne's, usually kills before adulthood. The few treatments being tried to slow its progression have serious side effects. Muscle wasting also is common in the elderly and patients with diseases such as cancer and AIDS (news - web sites). "If you could find a way to block myostatin activity, you might slow the wasting process," said Dr. Se-Jin Lee, the Johns Hopkins professor whose team created the "mighty mice." Lee said he believes a myostatin blocker also could suppress fat accumulation and thus thwart the development of diabetes. Lee and Johns Hopkins would receive royalties for any myostatin-blocking drug made by Wyeth. Dr. Eric Hoffman, director of Children's National Medical Center's Research Center for Genetic Medicine, said he believes a muscular dystrophy cure will be found, but he is unsure whether it will be a myostatin-blocking drug, another treatment or a combination, because about a dozen genes have some effect on muscles. He said a mystotatin-blocking drug could help other groups of people, including astronauts and others who lose muscle mass during long stints in zero gravity or when immobilized by illness or a broken limb. Researchers would not disclose the German boy's identity but said he was born to a somewhat muscular mother, a 24-year-old former professional sprinter. Her brother and three other close male relatives all were unusually strong, with one of them a construction worker able to unload heavy curbstones by hand. In the mother, one copy of the gene is mutated and the other is normal; the boy has two mutated copies. One almost definitely came from his father, but no information about him has been disclosed. The mutation is very rare in people. The boy is healthy now, but doctors worry he could eventually suffer heart or other health problems. In the past few years, scientists have seen great potential in myostatin-blocking strategies. Internet marketers have been hawking "myostatin-blocking" supplements to bodybuilders, though doctors say the products are useless and perhaps dangerous. Some researchers are trying to turn off the myostatin gene in chickens to produce more meat per bird. And several breeds of cattle have natural variations in the gene that, aided by selective breeding, give them far more muscle and less fat than other steer. Comments: A four year old child with the ability to beat many six graders up? Wow! If the smart doctors can control it, we will have cloned superhumans leading a World Army before the middle of the 21st century. I'm picturing a military full of soldiers the size of Arnold "the Governator" Schwarzenegger! God help us all!
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Post by [XL]69er™ on Jun 24, 2004 4:50:43 GMT -5
Hey, I know who the parents are. . . Barney and Betty Rubble! The kid is Bam Bam!
Haha, bet those parents were doing too much of the "juice" and it messed up their dna. What I really want to know is, how big is his wanker? I mean, we need to study what lessing myostatin does to the main member.
Better get Professor X and the X-Men on the line. . . ;D
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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jun 25, 2004 18:32:50 GMT -5
Scientist Sees Space Elevator in 15 Years By CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) wants to return to the moon and put a man on Mars. But scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that's really out of this world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space. Edwards thinks an initial version could be operating in 15 years, a year earlier than Bush's 2020 timetable for a return to the moon. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with other space endeavors. "It's not new physics — nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has to be invented from scratch," he says. "If there are delays in budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a realistic estimate for when we could have one up." Edwards is not just some guy with an idea. He's head of the space elevator project at the Institute for Scientific Research in Fairmont, W.Va. NASA (news - web sites) already has given it more than $500,000 to study the idea, and Congress has earmarked $2.5 million more. "A lot of people at NASA are excited about the idea," said Robert Casanova, director of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts in Atlanta. Edwards believes a space elevator offers a cheaper, safer form of space travel that eventually could be used to carry explorers to the planets. Edwards' elevator would climb on a cable made of nanotubes — tiny bundles of carbon atoms many times stronger than steel. The cable would be about three feet wide and thinner than a piece of paper, but capable of supporting a payload up to 13 tons. The cable would be attached to a platform on the equator, off the Pacific coast of South America where winds are calm, weather is good and commercial airplane flights are few. The platform would be mobile so the cable could be moved to get out of the path of orbiting satellites. David Brin, a science-fiction writer who formerly taught physics at San Diego State University, believes the concept is solid but doubts such an elevator could be operating by 2019. "I have no doubt that our great-grandchildren will routinely use space elevators," he said. "But it will take another generation to gather the technologies needed." Edwards' institute is holding a third annual conference on space elevators in Washington starting Monday. A keynote speaker at the three-day meeting will be John Mankins, NASA's manager of human and robotics technology. Organizers say it will discuss technical challenges and solutions and the economic feasibility of the elevator proposal. The space elevator is not a new idea. A Russian scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, envisioned it a century ago. And Arthur C. Clarke's novel "The Foundations of Paradise," published in 1979, talks of a space elevator 24,000 miles high, and permanent colonies on the moon, Mercury and Mars. The difference now, Edwards said, is "we have a material that we can use to actually build it." He envisions launching sections of cable into space on rockets. A "climber" — his version of an elevator car — would then be attached to the cable and used to add more lengths of cable until eventually it stretches down to the Earth. A counterweight would be attached to the end in space. Edwards likens the design to "spinning a ball on a string around your head." The string is the cable and the ball on the end is a counterweight. The Earth's rotation would keep the cable taut. The elevator would be powered by photo cells that convert light into electricity. A laser attached to the platform could be aimed at the elevator to deliver the light, Edwards said. Edwards said he probably needs about two more years of development on the carbon nanotubes to obtain the strength needed. After that, he believes work on the project can begin. "The major obstacle is probably just politics or funding and those two are the same thing," he said. "The technical, I don't think that's really an issue anymore." My comments: Sign me up!! It sounds like an affordable option to get into the heavens. Maybe when I retire, I'll take a trip to the Moon. Better yet, maybe there will be an elevator from the Moon to Mars! The possibilities are endless. I think I'll keep an eye on this one...
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Post by [Maxen]69er™ on Jun 26, 2004 2:42:11 GMT -5
Jeeze, wonder what kinda elevator music they'll play on that long ride.
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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jun 26, 2004 3:31:35 GMT -5
I hope Pink Floyd... that would be hella cool!!
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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jun 29, 2004 3:50:14 GMT -5
"911, this is David Lee Roth, what is your emergency?" The New York Daily News reports: Legendary rocker David Lee Roth, the famed front man for the '80s megaband Van Halen, is apparently reinventing himself as an emergency medical technician. The other night at the Four Seasons restaurant, the 48-year-old millionaire musician revealed to dinner companions that he has been living in a modest apartment on the lower East Side and showing up most days for EMT training. "I used to be a surgical orderly in South Central L.A.," he told me yesterday. "I started that when I got out of junior college in the early '70s, and that led to a variety of things in the outdoor medical fire force and training with the Green Berets. ... My father was a surgeon and uncles and my cousins were also in the medical community, so I come by it natural." Roth, who said he has relocated to New York from his estate in Pasadena, Calif., specifically to train as an EMT, said he hopes to obtain his certification in November and work as a volunteer one weekend per month. "I want to be working in the outer boroughs. This city promises great color and insight in each and every neighborhood," Roth said. "On the upper East Side, it's gonna be heart attacks and stomach aches. But in other neighborhoods, it's all trauma." Presumably Roth won't be singing "Jump!" to a distraught person on a ledge. He said he started his EMT training last Friday under the auspices of New York safety consultant Linda Reissman. "She's got a résumé as long as your femur," Roth said. "That's a medical joke." Speaking of jokes, fellow diner Lawrence Robins asked Roth at the table: "What would happen if you ended up having to work a rock concert and deal with somebody who had overdosed? Can you imagine the reaction when they saw you putting the oxygen mask on them?" Roth, according to Robins, replied, "You know, it's funny, we've actually discussed what would happen if I rescued a Van Halen fan." Yesterday Roth - who has been very low key about his new pursuit - demurred, "You're getting way off on a tangent, my friend. My dream would be to save a Scandinavian hikerette." Comments: So... at least now we know that the dude has a back-up career plan outside his desire to be the frontman to one of the world's biggest rock bands.
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Post by [LZ]69er™ on Jun 29, 2004 6:01:21 GMT -5
That elevator idea is pretty interesting. But how do you get from the elevator to the moon? Jump?
Not to pop anyones bubble, but it sounds like its right in-line with studying cow farts. ;D
LZ
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Post by [SHEEP]69er™ on Jun 29, 2004 8:50:05 GMT -5
That elevator article must have been a joke. Was it written on April 1? There's no way you could make it to the moon on an elevator because the moon circles the earth pretty damn fast. And what purpose would it serve to go into space on an elevator? To get a better tan? Great articles though Red. Keep em comin!
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Post by [Red_Voodoo]69er™ on Jul 2, 2004 11:57:35 GMT -5
Town Boasts World's Largest Bratwurst
CAMPELLSPORT, Wis. - Residents of Campbellsport, Wis., are going for a world record this weekend. They hope to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records with a bratwurst nearly 40 feet long.
Loehr's Meat Service made the brat, which will be placed in a 40-foot bun made by another business. A supermarket is supplying the condiments.
They're doing it in honor of Campbellsport Fire Department's 100th anniversary celebration tomorrow.
The Campbellsport Area Chamber of Commerce will be serving about 120 portions, each costing $10. The cost includes a T-shirt boasting "Campbellsport-Home of the World's Largest Brat."
The current Guinness record for a sausage is just over 34 feet long.
Comments: Where's my beer?? Hello? Who the f*ck stole my suds? Sauerkraut, anyone? Shiet. That is one big weenie! ;D
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