October 14, 2005
What do you get when you take Duck Hunt and turn it into a 3D cube sculpture. Super awesome, is what.
Blockbuster declined an opportunity to buy NetFlix for $50 million. Netflix is now worth $1.4 billion and Blockbuster is worth about $850 million.
University of Delaware researchers are opening a new front in the war on cancer, bringing to bear new nanotechnologies for cancer detection and treatment and introducing a unique nanobomb that can literally blow up breast cancer tumors.
A Japanese Internet whiz is tipped to become the world's fourth space tourist -- and he wants to orbit the earth dressed as an ace pilot from the hit Japanese animation series Gundam.
October 12, 2005
The body of a baby girl was found in a trash can in a women's restroom at the airport, authorities said. The baby's umbilical cord was still attached but police did not believe that the child was born in the restroom, police spokesman Detective Tony Morales said.
The creator of a meat-scented dog condom had high hopes for his invention, until the pooch product was recalled. Phillip Laxis, product developer for dogcondoms.com, admits, "I'm not going to lie to you. It's a disappointment," but says the extensive test market studies that resulted in 102 unwanted pooch pregnancies and 15 near- choking incidents justified the recall.
Tucked deep inside a massive bill designed to track sex offenders and prevent children from being victimized by sex crimes is language that could put many Hollywood movies in the same category as hard-core, X-rated films.
If Manhattan cops find someone on the street with the right look, they will pay him or her $10 to participate in a lineup.
A 31-year-old Bridgeport man is facing burglary charges after being caught inside the Bridge Academy charter school in his underwear downloading pornography on an office computer.
A red-faced sheriff has apologized to city police, who joined deputies in a phony car chase that a sheriff's spokesman called "horseplay that has gone seriously awry." The Oct. 3 chase ended when police used a spike strip to disable the fleeing car and drew their weapons on the driver, who turned out to be an undercover deputy being chased by another deputy on the way to the Public Safety Building to end their shifts.
A Chinese man who raised bears to tap them for their bile, prized as a traditional medicine in Asia, has been killed and eaten by his animals.
China's Li Liyin set a weightlifting world record Wednesday in the 152-pound snatch division with a lift of 275.5 pounds. She is the third female weightlifter to break a record this week at her country's national games.
October 11, 2005
In a scene more reminiscent of the Wild West than modern railways, police shot and wounded a man who allegedly took over a freight train with a bow and arrow.
A compilation clip put together by Media Matters featuring a couple rants on Canada. Both clips are old, but you can never get enough Canada bashing. Especially when it's done on "respected" national news networks. Plus there's really no better quote than "They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent." That's about as good as it gets, folks.
The Queensland state government has said it would investigate allegations that a forensic laboratory worker stole parts from human brains so they could be injected into racehorses to make them run faster.
Authorities have arrested a Lakeland, Fla., man on obscenity charges after investigating his adult Web site, which has gained international attention for allegedly allowing U.S. soldiers to post pictures of war dead on the Internet.
Six drinks that changed history.
A retired Washington firefighter won the annual Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off on Monday, presenting a gigantic pumpkin that weighed 1,229 pounds. In Rhode Island, a welder won a similar contest with an entry weighing 1,443 pounds. Joel Holland said the pumpkin could make roughly 600 pumpkin pies but instead will be displayed in a parade in Half Moon Bay this coming weekend, then carved into a jack-o'-lantern for Halloween.
A 9-year-old boy swam the precarious waters between Alcatraz island and the San Francisco shoreline Monday, raising $30,000 in donations for Hurricane Katrina victims. Johnny Wilson, a fourth grader from Hillsborough, called the swim in the 53-degree San Francisco Bay "tiring" but said he kept telling himself, "I'm almost there, I'm almost there."
The smartest state in the union for the second consecutive year is Massachusetts. The dumbest, for the third year in a row, is New Mexico.
Almost 90 years after Einstein postulated his general theory of relativity scientists have finally finished collecting the data that will put this theory to an experimental test. For the past 17 months, NASA's Gravity Probe-B (GP-B) satellite has been orbiting the Earth using four ultra-precise gyroscopes, about a million times better than the finest navigational gyroscopes, to generate the data required for this unprecedented test.
October 10, 2005
A local San Diego police sergeant is under investigation Thursday, accused of attacking a subordinate in front of a group of sixth graders after a practical joke.
Tips for applying to a job from Craigslist.
Two New Orleans police officers have been charged with battery after repeatedly punching a 64-year-old man accused of public intoxication outside a bar near Bourbon Street on Saturday night. A third officer has been charged with battery after assaulting an Associated Press Television News producer as a cameraman taped the confrontations. [with video]
Stanley and the Stanford Racing Team were awarded 2 million dollars for being the first team to complete the 132 mile DARPA Grand Challenge course. Stanley finished in just under 6 hours 54 minutes and averaged over 19 miles per hours on the course.
Yuma County sheriff's deputies will now be patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border in a surplus British military armored personnel carrier. The $18,000, nine-ton, six-wheeled vehicle is needed because of increased attacks against deputies and U.S. Border Patrol agents by drug and migrant smugglers, sheriff's and patrol officials said. The agencies frequently work together.
Thieves have stolen one of Britain's rarest trees from Kew's country garden in West Sussex. Botanists said that the southern beech tree, Nothofagus gunnii, which disappeared last week, would probably die because of the damage caused to the roots and lack of the care needed to make it grow.
Gold may extend its longest rally of the year, topping the highest prices since 1988, as investors stock up on bullion as a hedge against accelerating inflation.
