Bizarre News

[asandir]

I like to watch the occasional movie at the cinema, but it's too damn hard to get out with the kids, so I watch it on the small screen, a longer wait but so much cheaper and more convenient

[Kalah]

Aaah, so that's why you're here so much - you can't get out?

[asandir]

maybe

[asandir]

'Big Brother' restaurant opens to monitor diners

A new university research centre dubbed the "restaurant of the future" in the Netherlands is tracking diners with dozens of unobtrusive cameras to monitor their eating habits.

"We want to find out what influences people - colours, taste, personnel. We try to focus on one stimulus, like light," the University of Wageningen's Centre for Innovative Consumer Studies spokesman Rene Koster said, as overhead bulbs switched through green, red, orange and blue.

"This restaurant is a playground of possibilities. We can ask the staff to be less friendly and visible, or the reverse.

"The changes must be small. If you were making changes every day it would be too disruptive. People wouldn't like it."

The stylish new facility has glass walls, black marble countertops, a polished bamboo floor and self-service tills which allow diners to scan their lunch while they and their trays are weighed by a set of scales built into the floor.

From a control room, researchers can direct cameras built into the ceiling of the restaurant to zoom in on individual diners and their plates.

They watch how people walk through the restaurant, what food catches their eye, whether they always sit at the same table and how much food they throw away.

"You're already watched by cameras everywhere like Big Brother, so what difference does it make here?" plant scientist Bert Visser said, while eating a chicken sandwich.

"Presentation really influences what you choose."

Patricia van der Souven, a research assistant eating pumpkin soup and a salad, agreed.

"One day they had blue lights and I didn't come in because the food didn't look nice. Blue light isn't warm, it's too business-like," she said.

[ThunderTitan]

Netherlanders are nuts.... thanks 4 confirmation.

[Elvin]

That alone would be a reason for me not to go there. To feel watched while eating? Give me a break.

[asandir]

I feel I can say with some authority that the dutch are odd

Bury me with my phone, just in case

Bury me naked. Put a mobile phone in the coffin. Cremate me with my pet's ashes. Bury me with my teeth in. And do make sure I'm actually dead.

Those were some of the most popular requests by people planning their funerals, according to research by the British charity Age Concern, which promotes the interests of elderly people.

Britain is known for being a nation of animal lovers and it seems Britons cannot bear to be separated from their beloved pets - even when both parties are dead.

Age Concern Funeral Plans polled more than 100,000 of its customers and found that being buried with their pet's ashes was the most common funeral rite request.

But several top requests suggested many were worried about being buried alive, with those planning their funerals asking to be certified dead, a mirror to be held over their faces to check for vapour signs of breathing, and a mobile phone left in the coffin.

Others were related to appearance, such as being buried naked "as they came into the world" or with their false teeth in.

Top eight most common requests:

1. To be cremated with their pet's ashes;

2. To have a mobile phone in the coffin;

3. To ensure they are dead;

4. For a mirror to be held over the face to check for signs of breathing;

5. To be cremated naked;

6. To be buried in their own garden;

7. To be buried with their teeth in;

8. To be buried with all their savings.

[Elvin]

The phone was funny As for ensuring they are dead

[asandir]

Orton toilet memorial plan raises a stink

A trader proposing a new set of public toilets in a popular north London entertainment district has come up with a novel way to sell the idea - name them after gay playwright Joe Orton.

But Mike Weedon's suggestion has its critics.

One told the local newspaper it would be an "insult" to Orton's memory, while the council said it did not think it was appropriate.

Orton, celebrated in the 1987 film Prick Up Your Ears, wrote a series of popular but controversial plays including Loot, What the Butler Saw and Entertaining Mr Sloane.

In the era of "Swinging London", he was also know for his clandestine gay trysts in public toilets in and around his home in Islington. At the time, homosexuality was still illegal in Britain.

"I think having a toilet with a blue plaque dedicated to him would suit his personality," said Mr Weedon, who belongs to a local traders group.

"He did what he did because it was the only place he could do it in those days and I think it would show how attitudes have changed," he told the weekly Islington Gazette.

"We wouldn't be celebrating cottaging [gay sex in public toilets] - we would be celebrating how much more liberal we are these days," he added.

Islington Council's deputy leader Terry Stacy admitted more public conveniences were needed as the area was popular with pub and club-goers.

But he said naming them after Orton was a step too far.

"I would only support a blue plaque on a toilet if something worth commemorating happened there, and I doubt there is a toilet in the country that can lay claim to that," he said.

[ThunderTitan]

Phones? There was a time when real men made do with only a bell... if you can't ring a bell loud enough for your life you don't deserve to live.

[asandir]

German cheese thief nabbed in cement mixer getaway

A thief caught shoplifting a packet of cheese from a supermarket in Germany tried to make his getaway in a cement mixer, but he was quickly nabbed by police.

"He was out on the job and suddenly got hungry, as honest workers sometimes do," said a police spokesman in the eastern city of Chemnitz.

Police say that when a shop detective in the town of Limbach-Oberfrohna caught the man stealing a 2.79 euro packet of processed cheese, the 55-year-old broke free and leapt into his cement mixing truck outside.

The shop alerted police, who arrested the man when he stopped his getaway vehicle at a red light a few hundred meters away.

[Omega_Destroyer]

Researchers prove MMORPGs disrupt social lives, consume time

Science is a beautiful thing. After all, without its continual push to explore every facet of the human experience, the world may have never discovered that massively multiplayer online role-playing online games are time consuming. Thankfully, Joshua Smyth, a professor of psychology at the prestigious Syracuse University in New York, has definitively proven this phenomenon in a recent research study, reports the Associated Press.


As for his methods, Smyth drafted 100 student volunteers and divided them into four groups. He then tasked each group with a different style of gaming--arcade, console gaming with Gauntlet: Dark Legacy on the PlayStation 2, PC gaming with Diablo II, and MMORPG gaming with Dark Age of Camelot. His findings indicated that those playing DAOC averaged 14.4 hours of playtime a week, more than twice as much as the second-highest group, Diablo II.

Smyth's results indicated that the MMORPG players reported "significantly lower overall health and poorer sleep and were more likely to find the games interfered with their studies and social lives." However, the MMORPGers also enjoyed their gaming time more and said made more friends, "presumably online."

Smyth chalks up the results to MMOGs creating the most "enthrallment" among gamers. He went on to note that said "enthrallment" could be both positive and negative, but did not go as far as to call MMORPGs addictive. His full paper will be published in the October issue of the psychiatric journal Cyberpsychology & Behavior.

This deserves a big ol' DUH stamp.

[ThunderTitan]

I want money to research the obvious too... grant me baby.



Also, Skynet makes it's first victims:

Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14

We're not used to thinking of them this way. But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic -- picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force "is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday."

SA National Defence Force spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction is not yet known...

Media reports say the shooting exercise, using live ammunition, took place at the SA Army's Combat Training Centre, at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape, as part of an annual force preparation endeavour.

Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have," he said. "It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers."

Other reports have suggested a computer error might have been to blame. Defence pundit Helmoed-Römer Heitman told the Weekend Argus that if “the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found."

The anti-aircraft weapon, an Oerlikon GDF-005, is designed to use passive and active radar, as well as laser target designators range finders, to lock on to "high-speed, low-flying aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and cruise missiles." In "automatic mode," the weapon feeds targeting data from the fire control unit straight to the pair of 35mm guns, and reloads on its own when its emptied its magazine.

Electronics engineer and defence company CEO Richard Young says he can't believe the incident was purely a mechanical fault. He says his company, C2I2, in the mid 1990s, was involved in two air defence artillery upgrade programmes, dubbed Projects Catchy and Dart.

During the shooting trials at Armscor's Alkantpan shooting range, “I personally saw a gun go out of control several times,” Young says. “They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging. The weapon eventually knocked the pol[e]s down.”

According to The Star, "a female artillery officer risked her life... in a desperate bid " to save members of her battery from the gun."

But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.

By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.

[asandir]

Depardieu imposter fools hotel staff in Rome

A look-alike pretending to be French actor Gerard Depardieu walked into a luxury hotel in Rome and walked out with a gift basket weighed down with freebies, local media reports said.

Depardieu is scheduled to attend the RomaCinemaFest, which got under way Thursday (local time), to promote his film La Abbuffata, in which he plays himself.

Police said that the Depardieu doppelganger looked and sounded enough like the real thing that staff members at the Hotel de Russie allowed him into the gift suite, where he reportedly took a purse, a bikini, a pair of sunglasses, a cashmere sweater and a designer bra.

The error was discovered a short time later, but by then the look-alike was long gone.

"We're on the lookout for someone who looks like Gerard Depardieu but who is not Gerard Depardieu," a spokesman for the Rome-based Carabinieri police said.

The actor has not yet arrived in Rome, and festival officials said that when he did arrive he would have his own chance to take a few gifts from the suite.

The festival concludes October 27.

poor b@stard deserves at least this much

[ThunderTitan]

yeah, i've seen Ocean's 12 too...

Flaming squirrel ignites car in Bayonne

It's Rocky the Frying Squirrel!

A kamikaze squirrel fell from the sky and detonated a Bayonne woman's car yesterday, police said today.

Lindsey Millar, 23, and her brother, Tony, 22, were both home Wednesday at about 12:45 p.m. when Lindsey's car suddenly started burning outside their 42nd Street home.

Tony Millar said firefighters told them it was the work of a buck-toothed saboteur that had been gnawing on overhead power lines connected to a transformer directly above the 2006 Toyota Camry.

"The squirrel chewed through the wire, was set on fire, fell down directly to where the car was," Tony Millar said. "The squirrel, on fire, slid into the engine compartment and blew up the car.
"They're always coming around here, chewing through the garbage," he added.

Tony Millar says his sister was fully insured.

"It's something to laugh about once she has a new car," he said. "It's not funny yet."
Police said there were no injuries -- except for the squirrel, that is, which is dead.

The Millars' home is decorated for Halloween, complete with a tiny plastic tombstone on their front lawn. Tony Millar said the family will consider dedicating the tombstone to the squirrel, who was not named.

[asandir]

cool a flaming squirrel, sounds like a cocktail

[ThunderTitan]

yeah, a real recipe for disasters.


Justice blog style... also, idiot cop. You never ever put images of your crime on the internet unless the statute expired. And you don't actually need to give the porn star the footage you took or ask permission to brag about it either...

Porn Star's Blog Has Tennessee Trooper in Hot Water

State Trooper Suspended After Allegedly Receiving Sexual Favor for Ignoring Driver's Drug Possession

The Tennessee Highway Patrol has suspended a trooper who allegedly received a sexual favor from a porn star and recorded the act with a camera from his cruiser in return for ignoring her possession of illegal painkillers.

The woman, who goes by the stage name Barbie Cummings, said that at a traffic stop on May 7, trooper James Randy Moss found illegal painkillers in her car, but decided not to bust the Knoxville woman in return for a sexual favor.

Now Moss is on paid administrative leave pending an investigation by the Tennessee Department of Safety.

The incident came to the attention of officials when someone filed an internal complaint against the veteran trooper, according to Tennessee Highway Patrol spokesman Mike Browning.

Browning told ABC News that he could add few details beyond a press release issued Friday that announced Moss' indefinite suspension.

But a blog maintained by the woman, which recounts sordid details of the alleged escapade, has drawn additional attention to the case, and the department is investigating whether Moss may have violated the law while on duty.

Crying Over 'Happy Pills'

The woman, who in an interview with ABC News would only reveal her actual first name, Justis, posted the entry on May 7, the date of the alleged offense. She said she was pulled over around 1 a.m. on a Tennessee highway for driving 92 mph in a 70 mph zone.

In the blog, Justis writes that after pulling her over, the trooper found her "happy pills" -- painkillers -- while searching her car. Justis does not specifically name Moss.

The trooper explained that the punishment for the narcotics possession would likely prevent her from leaving the state, at which point Justis said she became upset and started to cry.

"He wanted to know why," Justis told ABC News.

She said she told him that as a porn star under contract, she must travel from Knoxville to Los Angeles once a month to shoot scenes.

She said the two then moved inside Moss' cruiser where she said he asked about Web sites on which she might be featured. She gave him the domain name for her blog, and the two of them watched clips from two of her movies on the laptop in his cruiser, she wrote on the blog.

Then the trooper took "the hand full (sic) of pills and scatters them in the brush next to the interstate," she wrote in the blog. After that, she claims he asked her to follow him to a secluded place, where she performed oral sex while he allegedly took photographs and short video clips using a hand-held camera from his cruiser.

Justis said she didn't want to get Moss into trouble and suspects he incriminated himself by talking about the incident. She said he called her the day after the traffic stop to ask if he could share the tale with his co-workers.

She said the trooper also e-mailed her the photos and video, which she promptly posted on her blog.

Justis said she has few regrets about what she did. And as for Moss, who could not be reached for comment, she said she feels some sympathy, but insisted that he brought the situation upon himself.

"He's not necessarily being punished for the act itself, but he did go to the adult Web site on a computer that was assigned to him, and he did do this on duty," Justis said. "He made all these decisions as a grown-up, there was no coercing or nothing."

There's a chance the two may meet again when Justis attends her court date next month. Despite the alleged tryst, she still received a $180 speeding ticket from Moss.

[ScarlettP]

One from down under...

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian barmaid has been fined for crushing beer cans between her bare breasts while an off-duty colleague has been fined for hanging spoons from her friend's nipples, police said Wednesday.

Police in Western Australia said the 31-year old barmaid pleaded guilty in the local magistrate's court to twice exposing her breasts to patrons at the Premier Hotel in Pinjarra, south of the state capital, Perth.

The woman "is alleged to have also crushed beer cans between her breasts during one of the offences," in breach of hotel licensing laws, police from the Peel district of Western Australia said in a statement.

The barmaid and the hotel manager were both fined A$1,000 ($900), while an off-duty barmaid was fined A$500 for helping to hang spoons from the woman's nipples, police said.

[ThunderTitan]

barmaids are as freaky as advertised... but only down under...

[asandir]

BAH! there's places here where it's frowned upon if you can't do those things