BELGRADE, Serbia (Rooters) -- A 23-year old Serb was found dead and half-eaten in the bear cage of Belgrade Zoo at the weekend during the annual beer festival.
The man was found naked, with his clothes lying intact inside the cage. Two adult bears, Masha and Misha, had dragged the body to their feeding corner and reacted angrily when keepers tried to recover it.
"There's a good chance he was drunk or drugged. Only an idiot would jump into the bear cage," zoo director Vuk Bojovic told Reuters.
Local media reported that police found several mobile phones inside the cage, as well as bricks, stones and beer cans. So it was a Legitimate Right To Resistance from the harassed bears, after all, or this guy's drunken pals were not very good at rescue missions...
#4
Binky, the late polar bear at the Anchorage, AK zoo, was a crowd favorite, because not once, but twice, drunks got into his cage with the idea of fighting him.
Binky, remarkably personable for a polar bear, didn't attack and kill either. The first drunk suddenly realized where he was, sobered up and got out of there the way he came. But the second one actually walked up to Binky and punched him in the nose.
This was impolite, so Binky swatted him with his paw, knocking him backwards a good 25 feet. This likewise had a profoundly sobering effect on said drunk, who in his haste to depart, left behind a tennis shoe.
A picture of Binky gnawing on said tennis shoe soon became popular on local t-shirts, with the caption:
#6
...with his clothes lying intact inside the cage TIP: If your drunken buddies dare you to go in the cage and screw a bear, don't count on them to come to your rescue if when things go wrong.
#10
My easy guess is they were last ressort weapons thrown at the bears by the drunk Darwin award nominee, when the big furry critters started chewing on him. I wonder if the bricks and beer cans were thrown then, or before the attack to molest those Moderate bears?
#1
The Pak dictator Yahya Khan was quite fond of his whiskey, as were his opponents...
During the 1971 war, the Indian army commander Sam Manekshaw was admonished by the Indian PM Indira Gandhi when she walked into the operations room and saw a bottle of whiskey and 3 glasses on the table.
"Madam, the brand of the whiskey is Black Dog, the same that General Yahya Khan drinks. I shall outdrink him and I shall outfight him".
Posted by: john frum ||
08/20/2007 12:09 Comments ||
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#3
After he was deposed, Yahya Khan was provided with a bottle of whiskey and a copy of Playboy regularly.
At one base, he was cursed on the tarmac by some PAF airmen... 'What is the matter with them?" he asked. "Did someone take away their she-goat?"
Posted by: john frum ||
08/20/2007 12:52 Comments ||
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#4
When Yahyaa Khan attended the 2500 years of Monarchy in Iran during the rule of the Shah, he
was so drunk on Black dog that he pissed himself right on the dais.
He was also drunk in 1947, and too busy with his mistress, in a safe-house near Srinagar to give orders. Reportedly he let the looting Pashtuns continue on their rampage instead of moving onto Srinagar. The Indians beat him to it.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/20/2007 13:04 Comments ||
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#5
More whiskey tales...
1971
Dictator Yahya Khan, was drunk, sitting in a hole just dug behind the commander in chief's house at army headquarters in Rawalpindi with a couple of sandbags over his head to protect him against Indian bombs.
He had just met the US Ambassador who tried to tell him that he was on his own. Yahya was still hoping that Nixon would save him.
The ambassador was literally pulled away by his military attache, Chuck Yeager. "We've got to get out of here right now," said Yeager.
"Why?" Yeager explained that for some fool reason Khan had ordered a few of his planes to attack airfields in India. Probably Khan thought a few explosions would persuade Nixon to send in the Marines. Now, said Yeager, the Indians are going to send in bombers and the Pakistanis were going to send up their entire air force to dogfight. When the Pakistanis landed to refuel, the Indian bombers would turn for home, but a second Indian wave would arrive and destroy Pakistan's air force while it was all on the ground with empty gas tanks.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/20/2007 13:11 Comments ||
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Well, to be frank, I wouldn't do much better, but then again, I'm a wuss, and not a formidable Lion Of Islam fighting for the Master Religion. Compare to what appears to be contractors training in iraq (?).
Posted by: ed ||
08/20/2007 12:44 Comments ||
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#2
Ed, lol! I guess I don't go to liveleak frequently enuff. From a comment there : I dont normally laugh at people dying but i
couldn't help it.
So true.
#3
Rather unexpected. Was it a media release from Jund al Bloopers?
Posted by: ed ||
08/20/2007 13:29 Comments ||
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#4
In RVN we used to plant altered [booby trapped] munitions, typically grenades, mortars and i forget..
Because of the complete control of information the NVA Political Officers and Brass had the rank and file the effect on the morale of the NVA soldiers and Main Force Cadres in the South was unknown but to a few *guessers at MACV*.
heh..
In Iraq:
With the Internet I would think that a careful program of doctoring munitions [booby trapped] for the terrorist in Iraq would have a more measurable effect on their morale.
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
08/20/2007 20:07 Comments ||
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A DWARF performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry.
Daniel Blackner, or Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf, was due to perform at the Circus of Horrors at the festival known for its oddball, offbeat performances.
The main part of his act was for him to appear on stage with a vacuum cleaner attached to his member with a special apparatus.
The attachment broke before the performance and Mr Blackner tried to fix it using extra-strong glue, but unfortunately only let it dry for 20 seconds instead of the 20 minutes required.
He then joined it directly to his organ. The end result? A solid attachment, laughter, mortification and ... hospitalisation.
"It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed A&E with a vacuum attached to me," Mr Blackner said.
"I just wished the ground could swallow me up. Luckily, they saw me quickly so the embarrassment was short-lived."
THREE Villawood detainees awaiting deportation were this morning refusing to come off the roof of the Sydney immigration detention facility where they had spent last night, demanding reinstatement of their visiting rights.
Van Nguyen, from Vietnam, and New Zealand nationals Montana Kelly and Bruce Ngaromo, all of whom were recently released from prison, forced their way onto the roof early yesterday evening.
A spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said Villawood management had so far failed to persuade the men to end their protest.
"The situation will be assessed this morning. Obviously they are being encouraged to come down voluntarily," the spokeswoman said.
"There are significant safety risks to them and to other persons with any effort to remove a person from a roof, so we'll just see how we go."
It was too early to say what disciplinary action the men, who used force to gain access to the roof, would face, she said.
The three protesters had recently been released from prison after serving lengthy sentences, the spokeswoman said yesterday.
Their protest was sparked by a ban on home visits.
The minister's spokeswoman said detainees whose visas had been cancelled on character grounds were banned from home visits for four weeks, except in exceptional circumstances, while a security review took place.
"In light of a detainee absconding on an excursion we have introduced this measure," she said.
All detainees in stage one of the detention centre were on a hunger strike in support of the three men and were also demanding the resumption of visits, Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Jamal Daoud said last night.
#1
All detainees in stage one of the detention centre were on a hunger strike in support of the three men and were also demanding the resumption of visits, Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Jamal Daoud said last night.
So don't feed these guys and let the other three stay up on the roof.
Let's see who caves first.
#2
I still hope that Iraq gets ambitious enough to become the nucleus of a Middle East Common Market.
Ironically, the only other group in the ME I've read who sees the logic of doing this, is of all people, Iran. Trouble is, such a common market is dependent on its members being real democracies with transparent government, at least to some degree. Which of course, leaves Iran, in its current form, out of the picture.
But if such a common market would ever evolve, with perhaps Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Qatar, and a few others, it would easily challenge the EU on an economic level.
To double the irony, Iran might be to a MECM in the same position as Russia is to the EU--too large to join.
#3
Get all your sand needs fulfilled there. The finest sand north of Riyadh.
Posted by: ed ||
08/20/2007 13:27 Comments ||
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#4
This more or less fits. IIRC 'anbar' means something akin to 'storage depot' or 'caravan truckstop' in Persian. The province was named when the area was under Persian control centuries ago.
A NEW children's computer video game that enables youngsters to re-enact last year's Hizbollah-Israeli war, is being sold in Bahrain, it emerged yesterday. Special Force 2 is being sold in Bahrain for BD6 and can also reportedly be purchased at stores in Lebanon, Syria and the UAE for around $10 (BD3.78).
The GDN phoned around 12 stores yesterday and found Al Mustafa Bookshop in Jidhafs to be the only one in possession of the game.
Shop salesman Ebrahim Al A'ali said they were the main suppliers of the game.
He said the shop received the game on Saturday and yesterday obtained a licence from the Information Ministry to sell it at the store and to other shops in the country.
The bookshop will be selling the game to other shops from today, he added.
Release of the game in Bahrain has sparked mixed reactions, with some people rushing to the shops to purchase a copy and others criticising the promotion of violence to children.
The new 3-D war game, designed by Hizbollah computer experts and lauched last week, is a sequel to 2003's Special Force, which also featured conflicts between Hizbollah and Israeli forces.
Special Force 2 is based on the key events of last year's 34-day conflict.
It enables players to take on the role of a Hizbollah fighter, or Mujahid and collect points and weapons by killing Israeli soldiers.
Hizbollah reportedly killed 158 Israelis, mainly soldiers and 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Lebanon.
"This game presents the culture of the Resistance to children: that occupation must be resisted and that land and the nation must be guarded," Hizbollah media official Sheikh Ali Daher is quoted by Reuters as saying.
"Through this game the child can build an idea of some of ... the most prominent battles and the idea that this enemy can be defeated.
"The features which are the secret of Resistance's victory in the south, have moved to this game so that the child can understand that fighting the enemy does not only require the gun.
Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) president Mohammed Al Maskati disagreed with the game being sold in Bahrain, saying, it was teaching children that violence was an acceptable way to solve a situation.
"Fighting and war equals violence - this game is teaching children how to be violent, whether they are Israeli or Hezbollah," he told the GDN.
"It is a problem if it is sold in Bahrain, children especially between 12 and 18, behaving violently is equal to drugs.
"Why sell these games to the youth and family? We have more problems from all these wars in Iraq, Palestine, Israel and Lebanon."
Mr Al Maskati said the game was also against human rights because such violations had happened in Lebanon and Israel.
"This tells people we can't make peace in the world. It is telling them you must stay in the war," he explained.
"If there is no peace, then there is no democracy or freedom."
Mr Al Maskati said he was against any game that promoted violence and war, because it wasn't teaching anything positive.
"Only you will fight or do war with someone," he said.
"If we give our children this game we shouldn't be surprised if they get into fights at school."
Although Mr Al Maskati is against children playing Special Force 2, he said it was important for the younger generation to be aware of the rights and wrongs of the conflict in Israel and Lebanon.
Bahrain Society Against Normalisation with the Zionist Enemy member and former chairman Mohammed Hassan Al Aradi praised Hizbollah for designing the game, saying he would be buying a copy for his family.
He said for a long time children had been playing war games in which the winners were always Americans or Europeans and the losers were Arabs and Asians - and it was about time this changed.
"This move from Hizbollah is changing the picture and giving us different victims," Mr Al Aradi told the GDN.
"It (the game) will help change a lot of public opinion in kids and they will play games they like."
In other games, for example some featuring western forces fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, Arabs are the victims, said Mr Al Aradi.
He said Arab children played this games and in order to win, had to "kill" other Arabs.
"Now it's changing and I'm very happy about it. You can choose the name of the person you want to be (from last year's conflict), you can see them, know them and see the places of war, it keeps you in the war and the issue alive," said Mr Al Aradi.
He said children in Bahrain watched the war last year on the news and therefore seeing violence was nothing new for them.
"It's a good programme for us. You will see places you have heard about and you will keep the picture in your mind, it's also good for adults.
"It's (the conflict) a part of life that children should understand and kids have seen it on satellite, minute by minute, you can't keep them away from it.
"They watched what was happening in Palestine, Israel and Lebanon when they were eating, it's not something new.
"And this game shows what actually happened, it's not spreading lies."
Information Ministry publications and Press director Jamal Daoud said he was unaware of the game being sold in Bahrain, but would look into it.
#1
Air drop millions of copies of this game all through the MME (Muslim Middle East). Just be sure to have a disk drive and FAT munching virus embedded on the CD.
Cool stuff. Ultralight. Just a few mm makes good IED armor, coat/house/spacesuit insulation, filter, oil & heavy metal contaminant sucker-upper, hydrogen catalyst, comet dust catcher, etc. Liberals up in arms because scientists haven't figured out how to get it to do dishes yet. Invented in 1931 . . . .
A MIRACLE material for the 21st century could protect your home against bomb blasts, mop up oil spillages and even help man to fly to Mars. Aerogel, one of the worlds lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.
Scientists are working to discover new applications for the substance, ranging from the next generation of tennis rackets to super-insulated space suits for a manned mission to Mars.
It is expected to rank alongside wonder products from previous generations such as Bakelite in the 1930s, carbon fibre in the 1980s and silicone in the 1990s. Mercouri Kanatzidis, a chemistry professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, said: It is an amazing material. It has the lowest density of any product known to man, yet at the same time it can do so much. I can see aerogel being used for everything from filtering polluted water to insulating against extreme temperatures and even for jewellery.
Aerogel is nicknamed frozen smoke and is made by extracting water from a silica gel, then replacing it with gas such as carbon dioxide. The result is a substance that is capable of insulating against extreme temperatures and of absorbing pollutants such as crude oil. It was invented by an American chemist for a bet in 1931, but early versions were so brittle and costly that it was largely consigned to laboratories. It was not until a decade ago that Nasa started taking an interest in the substance and putting it to a more practical use.
In 1999 the space agency fitted its Stardust space probe with a mitt packed full of aerogel to catch the dust from a comets tail. It returned with a rich collection of samples last year.
In 2002 Aspen Aerogel, a company created by Nasa, produced a stronger and more flexible version of the gel. It is now being used to develop an insulated lining in space suits for the first manned mission to Mars, scheduled for 2018. Mark Krajewski, a senior scientist at the company, believes that an 18mm layer of aerogel will be sufficient to protect astronauts from temperatures as low as -130C. It is the greatest insulator weve ever seen, he said.
Aerogel is also being tested for future bombproof housing and armour for military vehicles. In the laboratory, a metal plate coated in 6mm of aerogel was left almost unscathed by a direct dynamite blast. Humvee/tank/helmet/personal armor?
It also has green credentials. Aerogel is described by scientists as the ultimate sponge, with millions of tiny pores on its surface making it ideal for absorbing pollutants in water.
Kanatzidis has created a new version of aerogel designed to mop up lead and mercury from water. Other versions are designed to absorb oil spills. He is optimistic that it could be used to deal with environmental catastrophes such as the Sea Empress spillage in 1996, when 72,000 tons of crude oil were released off the coast of Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire.
Aerogel is also being used for everyday applications. Dunlop, the sports equipment company, has developed a range of squash and tennis rackets strengthened with aerogel, which are said to deliver more power. Will it help my golf stroke?
Earlier this year Bob Stoker, 66, from Nottingham, became the first Briton to have his property insulated with aerogel. The heating has improved significantly. I turned the thermostat down five degrees. Its been a remarkable transformation, he said. So it's good for the GWOT too!
Mountain climbers are also converts. Last year Anne Parmenter, a British mountaineer, climbed Everest using boots that had aerogel insoles, as well as sleeping bags padded with the material. She said at the time: The only problem I had was that my feet were too hot, which is a great problem to have as a mountaineer.
However, it has failed to convince the fashion world. Hugo Boss created a line of winter jackets out of the material but had to withdraw them after complaints that they were too hot.
Although aerogel is classed as a solid, 99% of the substance is made up of gas, which gives it a cloudy appearance. Scientists say that because it has so many millions of pores and ridges, if one cubic centimetre of aerogel were unravelled it would fill an area the size of a football field.
Its nano-sized pores can not only collect pollutants like a sponge but they also act as air pockets. Ah, no wonder liberals are so worried about this stuff. They are afraid they will come into contact with it! :-)
Researchers believe that some versions of aerogel which are made from platinum can be used to speed up the production of hydrogen. As a result, aerogel can be used to make hydrogen-based fuels.
#1
I've seen pics of aerogel floating on nitrogen. It's roughly the same density as air, so it's actually lighter than pure nitrogen.
Very cool stuff, particularly if it can be made cheap and strong.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
08/20/2007 9:30 Comments ||
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Posted by: Boss Craising2882 ||
08/20/2007 9:33 Comments ||
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#3
They have samples of this stuff to play with at the local tech museum. It's really odd to place something in the palm of your hand and barely be able to detect its presence. As is so often the case with new technology, it is no longer a matter of design improvements but the evolution of novel materials and their applications.
I'd love to see if they can push this stuff to optical clarity. Imagine ultra-lightweight giant lenses for portable telescopes and photographic purposes.
#4
One killer app for this could be in home construction. That is, in the extreme, a foundation, a metal frame, the equivalent of thin advanced ceramic modular floor, walls and roof with a layer of aerogel in them, with solar panels on the roof to power cooling and heating.
Advanced ceramic is far lighter, stronger and harder than concrete, and the aerogel would act both as insulation and soundproofing.
#8
I wonder if it could be used in vehicle or aircraft applications. Minimal weight combined with strength is a great combination.
Dontcha love how technology introduces major paradigm shifts such that the prevailing wisdom of the day (yes, I'm talking about your idiot ass AlGore) becomes even more irrelevant. Any future prediction that is based on straight line projection should be dismissed out of hand every time.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A NEW children's computer video game that enables youngsters to re-enact last year's Hizbollah-Israeli war, is being sold in Bahrain, it emerged yesterday. Special Force 2 is being sold in Bahrain for BD6 and can also reportedly be purchased at stores in Lebanon, Syria and the UAE for around $10 (BD3.78).
Its nano-sized pores can not only collect pollutants like a sponge but they also act as air pockets.
