Karl's Weird News

Dearest Beloved,

Please accept my apologies for such a long time without blog updates.  I’ve been through a truly crappy Xmas / New Years 2011 season that resulted in the death of my father.  As such I’ve not had time to properly manage my updates here.  However, I finally did figure out how to update things via Twitter, so kindly follow me there as @rotstan , where you will find my most recent posts (albeit sadly without categorization) and updates going forward.  Eventually I hope to figure out how to merge those updates with the blog so everything will be back as it used to be, but for the forseable future it is best if you follow me on Twitter.

Apologies for the inconvenience but deeply grateful for your interest,

karl

Mount Everest ‘death zone’ set for a spring clean up – Yahoo! News:

Twenty Nepali climbers are setting off to Mount Everest this week to try and remove decades-old garbage from the mountain in the world’s highest ever clean-up campaign, organizers said on Monday.

Many foreign and Nepali climbers have cleaned Mount Everest in the past but Namgyal Sherpa, leader of the Extreme Everest Expedition 2010, said no one had dared to clean above 8,000 meters (26,246 feet), an area known as the “death zone” for the lack of oxygen and treacherous terrain.

Sherpa and his team of seasoned climbers, carrying empty rucksacks and special bags, will risk the zone’s thin air and freezing temperatures to pick empty oxygen bottles, gas canisters, torn tents, ropes, and utensils lying between the South Col and the 8,850 meter (29,035 feet) summit.
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More than 4,000 climbers have since scaled the mountain and tourism, including climbing, is a key source of income for Nepal, among the world’s poorest countries. Sherpa’s team hopes to bring down at least 2,000 kg of garbage and the corpse of a climber killed two years ago. “I have seen three corpses lying there for years,” Sherpa said.

French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations.

At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould.

Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit Cursed Bread still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.

On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother.

Another man shouted:  “I am a plane”, before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.

Time magazine wrote at the time: “Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead.”

Eventually, it was determined that the best-known local baker had unwittingly contaminated his flour with ergot, a hallucinogenic mould that infects rye grain. Another theory was the bread had been poisoned with organic mercury.

The scientists who produced both alternative explanations, he writes, worked for the Swiss-based Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, which was then secretly supplying both the Army and CIA with LSD.

However, H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist, claims the outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US Army’s top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Is it too late to stop pythons?

This attempt by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to control the booming Burmese python population in south Florida is amusing.

If you haven’t heard, the commission began a permit program that allows reptile experts to capture and kill Burmese pythons in state-managed lands around the Everglades.

There are likely more than 100,000 pythons in the Everglades, some possibly more than 20 feet long. 

The FWC reported in a news release that as of Friday, permit holders have captured and euthanized 17 pythons. Nice. Only 99,987 to go.

Police: Ex-Cop Snuck In High School:

A 52-year-old former police officer was arrested after police said he tried to pass himself off as a high school student.

Police said Christopher Schildt, 52, a retired police officer, gained access to Waterford High School Thursday morning.

They said Schildt tried to pass himself off as an 18-year-old student and sat in a class. School officials said they thought Schildt, who looks youthful for his age, was a transfer student from Florida.

Schildt told school officials he was registering his 18-year-old nephew, who had the same name and the alleged teen had medical issues and would appear older.

Schildt was arrested Thursday night and charged with forgery, trespassing and breach of peace.

Children played with body for 11 days

Children spent 11 days playing with the remains of what they thought was a crocodile in a creek before a parent discovered that the body was human, it emerged yesterday.

The children had picked up parts of the badly decomposed body in Stanmore Bay on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, just north of Auckland.

Police are investigating whether the remains are those of Alanah Brough, 39, missing since January.

The children play for the Hibiscus Coast Raiders Rugby League Club.

They found the skeleton during a gala day on July 25, said vice-chairman Merve Heka.

Just 9 people tally 2,700 ER visits in Austin:

Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the Austin area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report.

The patients went to hospital emergency rooms 2,678 times from 2003 through 2008, said the report from the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, a group of health care providers who care for low-income and uninsured patients.

“What we’re really trying to do is find out who’s using our emergency rooms … and find solutions,” said Ann Kitchen, executive director of the group, which presented the report last week to the Travis County Healthcare District board.

The average emergency room visit costs $1,000. Hospitals and taxpayers paid the bill through government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, Kitchen said.

Money for Idiots

Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible.

Over the last few months, we’ve made a hash of all that. The Bush and Obama administrations have compensated foolishness and irresponsibility. The financial bailouts reward bankers who took insane risks. The auto bailouts subsidize companies and unions that made self-indulgent decisions a few decades ago that drove their industry into the ground.

The stimulus package handed tens of billions of dollars to states that spent profligately during the prosperity years. The Obama housing plan will force people who bought sensible homes to subsidize the mortgages of people who bought houses they could not afford. It will almost certainly force people who were honest on their loan forms to subsidize people who were dishonest on theirs.

Jobseekers duped into getting face tattoos

TWO Indonesian jobseekers have been tricked into getting their faces tattooed by a bogus official offering government jobs.

 Village chief Sawiyono – who was helping the men find jobs in Jakarta – claimed he had received a text message from a government official offering them work as intelligence officers but saying they would have to be inked first with a dragon tattoo, Antara state news agency said.

Sawiyono realised he had been tricked after checking with the subdistrict chief of the Bojonegoro district of East Java who told him there was no such requirement.

But by then it was too late and the men had already been tattooed, the report said.

“I am fully responsible for the mistake and I will do my best to help the men remove their tattoos,” Sawiyono said.

US officials may have uncoverd attempted voter fraud less than a month before US Election

US election officials believe they have uncovered massive attempted voter fraud less than a month before the country goes to the polls to choose its new president. Ballot box US authorities are desperate to stop voter fraud Eleven separate investigations have now been launched into a voter registration group called the Association of Community Organisations for Reform ? or Acorn. The authorities believe they may have duplicated voter forms, employed convicts to register people and even stolen the names of the American football team the Dallas Cowboys in order to create fake voters. The suspicions started when authorities in Las Vegas raided the organisation’s offices, removing eight computer hard drives and several boxes of documents.

Hi All,

I will be on vacation in California for the next week.  Blogging will resume next Monday.

All the best,

Karl

HARDCORE MARILYN

Some really like it hot.

In the sordid tradition of peddling raunchy video footage of celebrities a la Paris Hilton, a long-buried sex movie of Marilyn Monroe recently hit the market, a top collector told The Post.

An illicit copy of the steamy, still-FBI-classified reel – 15 minutes of 16mm film footage in which the original blond bombshell performs oral sex on an unidentified man – was just sold to a New York businessman for $1.5 million, said Keya Morgan, the well-known memorabilia collector who discovered the film and brokered its purchase.

The footage appears to have been shot in the 1950s. When it came to light in the mid-’60s, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had his agents spend two weeks futilely trying to prove that Monroe’s sex partner was either John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy, according to declassified agency documents and interviews, Morgan said.

Ice-cream stick ship sails for England

A Viking ship made from ice-cream sticks has set sail for England from the Netherlands.

The 15-metre long ship, named after the Norse god Thor, is made from 15 million recycled ice-cream sticks glued together by US-born stuntman Robert McDonald, his son and more than 5,000 children.

“If you can dream it you can do it … I want to teach children that anything is possible,” McDonald said.

Now they’re taking tacos to Mexico

WHEN Taco Bell first launched in America, its menu of tasty Mexican cuisine was trumpeted with the slogan: “Cross the Border”. The firm’s latest venture requires a swift rewrite. In the latest twist of globalisation, Taco Bell is planning to subdue a new territory with groaning platters of Mexican burritos and tacos – Mexico.

In a daring consumer assault akin to selling sacks of ice to the Eskimos or lugging coal to Newcastle, the American fast-food chain has opened the first in what it hopes will become a chain of 300 restaurants south of the border. Visitors to the Taco Bell in the middle-class suburb of Apodaca in the northern city of Monterrey will be greeted by a word new to both the English and Spanish language: the “tacostadas”.

Hi All – Just a quick note to let you know that I am on vacation for the next few days, so there will be no new posts until I return. Regular blogging will resume on Friday.

Man tries to save $54M pants lawsuit

A customer who sued a dry cleaner for $54 million over a missing pair of pants has asked the judge who threw out the widely mocked case to reconsider, saying she committed a “fundamental legal error.”

Roy L. Pearson, a local administrative law judge, argued Wednesday that District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff failed to address his legal claims. Bartnoff had ruled that the business owners did not violate the city’s consumer protection law by failing to live up to his expectations of a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign once displayed in the store.

Sprint Cuts 1,000+ Customers For Excessive Complaining

Hundreds of cell phone customers are being given the boot, accused of being too high maintenance.

Sprint-Nextel is disconnecting more than 1,000 subscribers on grounds the clients call customer service too often and make “unreasonable requests.”

The 1,200 people getting dropped will have to find a new carrier by the end of the month.

A Sprint representative said the average customer calls customer service less than once a month, but the 1,200 clients getting the boot call 40-50 times as often.

Sprint said whatever the complaint, it has worked to resolve it but due to the volume of calls it’s obvious customers involved are not happy.

In a statement, the company said: “Rather than continue to operate in a situation that was unsatisfactory for Sprint and our subscribers, we chose to terminate our relationship with those customers to allow them to pursue other options.”

People with moles age more slowly than others

People who seem to stay younger for longer are also likely to have more moles, research released yesterday suggests.

A study of twins found a striking correlation between high numbers of moles and a biological marker for slow ageing.

Goldie Hawn, people with moles age more slowly than others
Goldie Hawn: ageing well

As a result, people with a lot of moles might be expected to live longer than those who have very few, despite facing a greater risk of skin cancer.

Dr Veronique Bataille, from the Twin Research Unit at King’s College London, who led the study said: “The results are very exciting as they show, for the first time, that moley people who have a slightly increased risk of melanoma [skin cancer] may, on the other hand, have the benefit of a reduced rate of ageing.

“This could imply susceptibility to fewer age-related diseases such as heart disease or osteoporosis, for example. Further studies are needed.”

‘Humongous fungus’ takes toll on fir forest

Question: What does the world’s largest living organism do all day? Answer: Pretty much whatever it wants. But very slowly.

The U.S. Forest Service has adopted an informal live-and-let-live policy for the enormous tree killer it calls the “humongous fungus.”

The huge root-rot infestation underlies 2,200 acres east of Prairie City in a remote corner of eastern Oregon’s Blue Mountains at an elevation of about 6,500 feet near the Strawberry Mountain and Monument Rock wilderness areas.

The Forest Service plans to publish a brochure about the gigantic fungus, Armillaria ostoyae, this summer. “There is no way to eliminate it,” said Malheur National Forest ecologist and tree expert Mike Tatum of John Day.

Dear friends,

I have just moved to a new home and hence have been unable to report for the last couple of days while I have been boxing and unboxing my life. Rest assured that I will resume once all the boxes are gone, hopefully in a day or two.

Today is Tax Freedom Day®:

The Tax Foundation has announced that today (the 120th day of 2007) is Tax Freedom Day® — Americans will work four months of the year, from January 1 to April 30, before they have earned enough money to pay this year’s tax obligations at the federal, state and local levels.

April 30 is the national average — the Tax Freedom Day® in individual states range from the state with the highest tax burden — Connecticut (May 20) — to the states with the lowest tax burden — Oklahoma and Alabama (April 12).

South Park depicts the Queen’s suicide after plot to conquer US fails

South Park, the cartoon series that has pushed the bounds of taste for a decade, has perhaps produced its most spectacularly offensive episode yet.

Certainly Her Majesty is unlikely to be amused by a programme that shows her blowing her brains out.

The scene begins with a clearly alarmed Queen receiving a call on her mobile telling her that an evil British plot to conquer America has gone awry.

Star Wars stamps unveiled in US

Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are among the characters featured on a set of US stamps marking 30 years of the Star Wars films. A set of 15 stamps is being issued as a poster, and members of the public will be asked to vote for their favourite. The set will go on sale on 25 May, shortly after the basic US postage rate is raised to 41 cents (21p).

Man Who Developed Fortran Language Dies

John Backus, whose development of the Fortran programming language in the 1950s changed how people interacted with computers and paved the way for modern software, has died. He was 82.

Backus died Saturday in Ashland, Ore., according to IBM Corp., where he spent his career.

Prior to Fortran, computers had to be meticulously “hand-coded” – programmed in the raw strings of digits that triggered actions inside the machine. Fortran was a “high-level” programming language because it abstracted that work – it let programmers enter commands in a more intuitive system, which the computer would translate into machine code on its own.

Stripper-hairstylist wins in court

An Ames hairstylist who was fired because she moonlighted as an exotic dancer is entitled to unemployment benefits, a judge has ruled.

Mary B. Messner, 29, worked for Hair Mechanix in Ames from June until shortly after Christmas, when her boss, Diana Tegeler, fired her.

Tegeler testified at a public hearing that while Messner is an “awesome” hair stylist and person, her part-time job made it impossible for her to stay at Hair Mechanix.

My apologies, but I am away on a business trip and probably won’t have much time to blog until Wednesday. Things should go back to normal then.

‘Hepburn dress’ school opens up:

The first of more than a dozen schools to be built with the cash earned from the sale of Audrey Hepburn’s iconic black dress has opened in India.

The Givenchy dress, made specifically for Hepburn’s role in the 1961 classic movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s, was auctioned at Christie’s in December.

 It was sold to an anonymous bidder for £467,200 ($916,461). The money raised is to fund 15 new educational centres. Proceeds from the sale have gone to Calcutta-based charity City of Joy Aid.

N.D. tries to break snow angel record

Among the thousands of people frantically flapping in the snow Saturday in an attempt to set the record for the most snow angels ever made were parents, children, even snowplow drivers.

And then there was Pauline Jaeger — who on her 99th birthday, was making her very first angel. “It’s fun,” Jaeger said. “I feel just like a kid.” More than 8,900 people flapped their arms and legs on the state Capitol grounds Saturday in an attempt to reclaim the record, which was snatched away about a year ago in Michigan.

Study: Women’s Desks Four Times More Dirty Than Men’s

Women have three to four times the number of bacteria in, on and around their desks, phones, computers, keyboards, drawers and personal items as men do, the study by University of Arizona professor Charles Gerba showed.

The windmill that produces water out of air:

Inspired by a desert beetle and self-sufficient ancient tribes, Max Whisson is adamant he has found a way that will once and for all end humankind’s dependence on rain for life’s most essential element.

The retired public health official is used to the Don Quixote jibes, but friends say Max is anything but mad. Working prototypes – built from scrap metal at a shed next to his home in suburban Perth – have already proved the theory.

It revolves around the little appreciated fact that water, billions of gallons of the stuff, is literally floating all around us

Fridges could save power for a rainy day – Turning off cold storage could buffer the electricity grid.:

Refrigerated warehouses might soon be used to store not just food, but gigawatts of electricity. A plan dreamt up in the Netherlands could see the giant fridges acting as massive batteries. They would buffer swings in supply and demand from electricity created from renewable sources.

The idea seems simple. Say you lowered the temperature of all large coldstores in Europe by just 1°C during the night when electricity demand is low, then let it rise 1°C by switching them off during the day when demand is at peak. The net effect would be that the warehouses would act as as batteries — potentially storing 50,000 megawatt-hours of energy — and the food wouldn’t melt

Old Family Painting Sells for $600,000

A woman who auctioned a painting that belonged to her grandmother, hoping to get a few thousand dollars to pay for her daughter’s college tuition, was stunned when the picture fetched $600,000.

The painting, sold Sunday by Clars Auction Gallery in Oakland to an unnamed New York dealer, has no title or signature, and the gallery couldn’t determine its origins. But Redge Martin, gallery president, said Thursday that the buzz in the art world is that someone thinks it’s the lost work of 17th-century Italian master Pier Francesco Mola.

Air Force Academy Probes Allegations of Student Cheating

The Air Force Academy is investigating allegations of cheating by 28 freshmen and has restricted all 4,300 cadets to campus over the weekend, asking them to meet in small groups to consider “their self-image and the image of the institution,” Air Force officials said. In addition to the cheating, the academy’s superintendent, Lt. Gen. John F. Regni, cited other recent disciplinary problems in a stern speech this week to the entire student body, faculty and staff.

Final Footage of Anna Nicole Smith Sells for Over $500,000, Turns Up on German TV, Web Site

Dramatic video of EMTs struggling to save the life of former Playmate Anna Nicole Smith surfaced Friday on the Web, hours after the paparazzi outlet Splash News & Picture Agency reported that rights to the graphic video sold for more than $500,000.

 ’Pimped Out’ Toilet Has Laptop, Fridge and TV

Think you deserve a throne? A U.S. plumbing firm has created a luxury toilet equipped with laptop computer and flat-screen TV which it plans to give away in an online sweepstake.

Ohio-based Roto-Rooter says its “Pimped Out John” is designed to “fulfill all your wildest bathroom dreams.” Special features include an iPod music player and speakers, an Xbox video game console, a refrigerator filled with drinks and snacks and a cycling exercise machine.

Navy seeks new owner for San Diego sub

Free to a good home: vintage submarine, recently restored. One prior owner.

 That’s not quite how the notice is worded, but that’s the message from the Navy, which is looking for someone to take over the USS Dolphin, one of the oldest submarines in its fleet.

The Dolphin, a one-of-a-kind research vessel, was commissioned in 1968. In a notice published in this week’s Federal Register, the Navy said it will accept offers from government agencies, nonprofit groups or other institutions willing to make the submarine into a museum.

Fla. storms killed all 18 whooping cranes led south by ultralight:

All 18 young whooping cranes led south from Wisconsin by ultralight aircraft last fall were killed in storms that hit Florida, dealing a devastating blow to a project to create a second migratory flock of the endangered birds in North American, a spokesman said.

The cranes were being kept in an enclosure at the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge near Crystal River, Fla., when the storms moved in and intensified Thursday night, said Joe Duff, senior pilot and co-founder of Operation Migration, a nonprofit organization coordinating the project. “The birds were checked in late afternoon the day before, and they were fine,” Duff said.

Film calls Nanjing massacre “hoax”

A Japanese filmmaker has announced plans to make a documentary saying that the “rape of Nanjing” in 1937, in which China says 300,000 civilians were killed by Japanese soldiers, never happened. Satoru Mizushima said his film to “correct the errors of history” will be based on documents showing that Chinese accounts of the killings were a hoax.

Tiny London Apartment on Sale for $335K:

Almost anywhere else, the tiny dilapidated studio wouldn’t attract much more than mice. But this is London and the 77-square-foot former storage room slightly bigger than a prison cell and without electricity is going for $335,000. The closet-sized space in the exclusive Knightsbridge neighborhood may be only “about the size of a ship’s galley, said real estate agent Andrew Scott, who’s handling the sale. “But it’s permanently anchored to one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world.”

Blue Monday: The unhappiest day of the year

If you are feeling a little down then you can take solace in the thought that things are unlikely to get any worse. Today, say experts, is the unhappiest day in the entire year. Unpaid Christmas bills, nasty weather, and failed New Year’s resolutions combine to make January 22 the gloomiest in the calendar.

Stalin’s architectural ‘gift’ to Poland to become historic monument

Critics called for it to be razed when Poland threw off communism, but the towering Palace of Culture, which was built in central Warsaw on the orders of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, was poised to become a historic monument.

Conservation officials in the Polish capital declared that the 230 metre (700 foot) tall building with a surface area equivalent to 16 soccer pitches should be given the status to protect its “socialist realist” architecture from any arbitrary changes

Having been to Warsaw many a time for work, I can assure all of you that this is an utterly hideous monstrosity that should have been razed long ago.  One can only hope that this decision will be reversed.

NY couple build wall through home:

A bickering New York couple have had a dividing wall constructed inside their home as part of an acrimonious divorce. Chana and Simon Taub, both 57, have endured two years of divorce negotiations, but neither is prepared to give up their Brooklyn home. Now a white partition wall has been built through the heart of the house to keep the pair apart.

Customer sends bailiffs in to seize bank’s computers

A man who was fed up with paying massive bank charges decided to give one of the high street giants a taste of its own medicine. When Royal Bank of Scotland refused to refund £3,400 charges that Declan Purcell believed he was owed, he sent in the bailiffs. Stunned customers at his branch of RBS watched as debt collectors seized four computers, two fax machines and a till filled with cash. The branch manager was told that the items would be sold unless RBS came up with the money owed to Mr Purcell.

Fiance of Memphis Judge Accused of Paying Woman for Sex With 8-Year-Old Daughter

A sheriff’s department employee is charged with paying a woman for sex with her 8-year-old daughter, and a special judge was called from out of town for a bond hearing Wednesday because the accused is engaged to a Memphis judge.

Man shoots cows that wandered onto his property:

State police are investigating whether animal cruelty charges should be filed against a man who shot several cows, two of which later died, because they wandered onto his property. “I shot them because it’s my legal right to shoot them because they were destroying my property,” Dennis McElwain of Perry Township told the New Castle News.
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Mr. McElwain said he fired a .357 caliber handgun at the cattle, which had damaged his yard several times over the past few years.

Hat tip to Kara!

It’s time to kill the pit bulls:

The Dane County Humane Society says it is spending nearly $6,000 a week to care for 47 pit bulls authorities believe were bred for fighting. Half the available space in the humane society shelter is devoted to the dangerous dogs. The organization has cut back on its efforts to protect other animals because of the costs incurred by the pit bulls. In addition, the humane society has to hire guards to protect the shelter during off hours because unknown terrorists have threatened to harm society employees should they harm the pit bulls.

Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe. It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

 Do make a hasty decision if you want to get it right:

TRUSTING in your instincts really can work better than pausing for thought, researchers have shown. Psychologists found the performance of volunteers given a computer-generated task improved when they had no time to think.

Telemarketers ring mayor’s ‘bat phone’

Senate committee on Tuesday that he’s vexed by pesky dinner-time phone calls from sales people — ringing him on his secure line. Much like the Gotham police commissioner’s secure line to the “bat phone” in the 1960s “Batman” television show, the kitchen of Bloomberg’s Upper East Side townhouse has been outfitted for emergency top-secret communications.

Scooby-Doo’s creator dies aged 81:

Iwao Takamoto, the US animator who created cartoon dogs Scooby-Doo and Muttley, has died aged 81. He was responsible for characters from The Flintstones and The Jetsons when he worked for the Hanna-Barbera studio.

Wonderbra stops .45 caliber bullet

“The bullet was halfway inside of my bra, and the other half right on the tip of my skin.”

A tale of two cities for confused tourist

A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometres away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site.

How to Quit Your Job and Live Like a King

Think you could never leave everything behind and start a completely new life on a tropical island? Well, you’re wrong. Here are six different amazing spots 1,000 miles from any rat race where you can decompress for a year or more, whether you’ve got a ton of money, a little, or next to nothing.

So, what’s your sign? You crash here often?

Never mind how careful you are behind the wheel or how long you’ve been driving, the signs of the zodiac may be bigger factors behind your ability to avoid car crashes — or why you have too many. According to a study by InsuranceHotline.com, a Web site that quotes drivers on insurance rates, astrological signs are a significant factor in predicting car accidents.

Dear Friends,

My apologies for the delay in blogging. As you may be aware, I have had grievous problems since Blogger decided to “upgrade” their systems. The net result is that I’ve been unable to blog anything for the last week. I am therefore bailing out and switching to WordPress. Unfortunately, I am unable to migrate all my old postings to the new blog (despite multiple attempts), so please go here to see all the 4000+ previous weird news stories that I’ve posted this year.

Thanks for all your patience! I will now resume blogging as usual, once I figure out this WordPress thing.
karl