Weird News

[Rooster]

I'd attempt to burn the school down to once and for all free all the poor muggles from the shadowy control that wizards have over their lives. And then I'd accept a big fat check from Rowling for giving her fuel for another book.

I'd raid the place with the cops, take back the children that Dumbledore has obviously mind-washed into thinking that they are wizzards (probably with LSD in the Ribena) , and be known as the king of nothing.

Also, do you think that Harry Potter could outrun a sidewinder heat-seeking missile on his broom?

Probably. The broom doesn't produce much heat so its really a question of whether the missile would lock onto a person's heat signature and whether Harry can do that thing that every other person in fiction does, try to make the missile run into somebody else. Perhaps Malfoy.

Yeah, but RAF pilots are great...plus, if Hogwarts is where it's meant to be, it's within the aerial combat training area of RAF Dyce and RAF Banff...

This is the sort of stuff I think about.

[Bocaj Claw]

I'd attempt to burn the school down to once and for all free all the poor muggles from the shadowy control that wizards have over their lives. And then I'd accept a big fat check from Rowling for giving her fuel for another book.

I'd raid the place with the cops, take back the children that Dumbledore has obviously mind-washed into thinking that they are wizzards (probably with LSD in the Ribena) , and be known as the king of nothing.

Also, do you think that Harry Potter could outrun a sidewinder heat-seeking missile on his broom?

Probably. The broom doesn't produce much heat so its really a question of whether the missile would lock onto a person's heat signature and whether Harry can do that thing that every other person in fiction does, try to make the missile run into somebody else. Perhaps Malfoy.

Yeah, but RAF pilots are great...plus, if Hogwarts is where it's meant to be, it's within the aerial combat training area of RAF Dyce and RAF Banff...

This is the sort of stuff I think about.

You and every other right minded person that I know.

[Doc Sigma]

Also, do you think that Harry Potter could outrun a sidewinder heat-seeking missile on his broom?

Dude. Wizard. He could put some sort of coldness-radiating charm on himself. Problem solved.

[Muninn]

Or you know, transform the missile into something harmless, like a libertarian candidate for the American presidency from the Republican party. Or just disapparate to somewhere else. I suppose the missile would have to catch them off guard.

Though it does say in the books that electronic stuff goes haywire around magic.

[Doc Sigma]

Or you know, transform the missile into something harmless, like a libertarian candidate for the American presidency from the Republican party.

My coffee has now been, via my nose, introduced to my desk.

[Bocaj Claw]

Did they hit it off? Make a good first impression?

[Doc Sigma]

Did they hit it off? Make a good first impression?

They went through seven years of marriage in three seconds. So, no.

HEY STOP ME IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE!!!

Colostomy reversal botched, suit says
Dover man claims disfigurement from mistake

A surgery meant to reverse a colostomy on a Dover man went horribly wrong last year, resulting in fecal mater being discharged from his penis and urine passing through his colon, according to a lawsuit filed in Superior Court.

During the procedure, the suit alleges doctors at Kent General Hospital improperly stapled the colon to the bladder instead of the rectal stump. This left the patient with diarrhea, as well as gas and liquid stool passing from his penis.

The man was taken to Christiana Hospital 12 days later to have the procedure corrected, but not until after much suffering and embarrassment as well as "disfigurement and disability," the suit claims. It also affected life at home with his wife, who also is suing the three doctors involved in the allegedly botched procedure, Surgical Associates P.A. and Bayhealth Medical Center Inc.

Bayhealth Medical and Surgical Associates, where the three doctors practice, declined to comment.

Dr. Scott D. Goldstein, director of colon and rectal surgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, said he had not seen the suit and is not familiar with the specific case. He said this type of surgical error has been documented before, "but it should be rare as hen's teeth."

Goldstein said colostomy removals can be difficult and tedious procedures in which the bladder can get in the way. Adding to the difficulty, Goldstein said, are anatomical changes caused by the initial surgery.

"These structures are very close to one another," Goldstein said. "But it shouldn't happen. I can't say more than that."

In a colostomy, part of the colon is brought to the surface of the abdominal wall, leaving the patient with an opening called a stoma. After a colostomy, feces leave the body through the opening and are collected in a bag attached to the person's abdomen.

Not all colostomies are permanent. A temporary colostomy is used when part of the colon needs to heal, usually after surgery or trauma. Once the colon heals, the colostomy is reversed by reconnecting the two ends of the colon. This should return bowel function to normal.

But that's not what happened to the Dover man.

According to the lawsuit, he was admitted to Kent General Hospital on Oct. 19, 2005, complaining of abdominal pain. A few days later, one of the doctors named in the suit performed exploratory surgery and drained a suspected abdominal abscess.

But the patient continued to have pain and returned to the hospital a week after being discharged from the first surgery. Doctors performed a CT scan and diagnosed him with a condition that required a temporary colostomy.

The man returned three months later to have the colostomy reversed, a procedure that was performed by the other two doctors named in the suit and a physician assistant, according to the suit.

This is where the mistake occurred, the suit alleges.

"As a consequence of the error," the suit claims, "fecal matter and urine were mixed and diverted so that fecal matter entered the bladder and was discharged through the urethra and urine was discharged through the colon."

The man was admitted to Christiana Hospital nearly two weeks later, where doctors performed a temporary fix to allow the inflammation to go down. He returned to Christiana Hospital July 28, 2006, and Dec. 11, so that the problems could be permanently fixed.

He continues to suffer weakness, as well as injuries because of the multiple surgeries, according to the suit.

The Dover couple is asking for unspecified damages, as well as costs and interest.

[source]

[Tom Flapwell]

We should have stopped you even if we hadn't heard it before. That's the most TMI news I've heard this year.

[VisibilityMissing]

Nothing says fun like unexploded ordnance!

Landscapers unearth 30 WWII-era shells

Sat Dec 1, 1:07 PM ET

KEY WEST, Fla. - A landscaping crew about to grind a tree stump discovered 30 World War II mortar shells buried on property once owned by the Navy.

A worker hit and broke one of the shells Friday, but it did not detonate. The mortars could have done serious damage had they exploded, Sgt. Bobby Randolph of the Monroe County Sheriff's office said.

As a precaution, about a dozen homes were evacuated and cars were cleared from the area while a bomb squad removed the explosives.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Becky Herrin said authorities will contact Naval officials to "see if they want to destroy them. If not, we will."

*******************************

Hershey is working their way into a new market?

Police: Hershey candy looks like drugs

By MARC LEVY, Associated Press Writer Sat Dec 1, 1:35 AM ET

HARRISBURG, Pa. - New mint packets being sold by The Hershey Co. look nearly identical to the tiny heat-sealed bags used to sell illegal powdered drugs like crack, heroin and cocaine and glorify the drug trade, a Philadelphia police official said.

Ice Breakers Pacs, nickel-sized dissolvable pouches with a powdered sweetener inside, hit store shelves in November. The packets, which come in blue and orange plastic slide-up cases, are similar enough to drug packets that a child familiar with the candy could mistakenly swallow a heat-sealed bag of drugs, Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector William Blackburn told the Philadelphia Daily News for an article published Friday.

"It glorifies the drug trade," he said. "There's really no reason that a product like this should be on the shelf."

A spokesman for the company, based in Hershey, Pa., pointed out that each pouch — made by two dissolvable mint strips — bears the Ice Breakers logo.

"It is not intended to simulate anything," said spokesman Kirk Saville.

Saville would not directly respond to questions about whether Hershey has plans to change the product's appearance or whether anyone in law enforcement or inside the company has previously raised a concern about it.

___

On the Net:

Ice Breakers Pacs: http://www.hersheys.com/icebreakers/pacs

[Tom Flapwell]

And I thought the candy cigarettes I used to enjoy were bad.

[Foxhound]

Why are all these explosive munitions being found in Florida these days?

[Muninn]

College students lose to chimps in memory test.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071203/ap_ ... imp_memory

NEW YORK - Never mind that TV show that asks if you're smarter than a fifth-grader. Is your memory better than a young chimp's?

Maybe not.

Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees — young chimpanzees at the age of 5 — have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

Matsuzawa, a pioneer in studying the mental abilities of chimps, said even he was surprised. He and colleague Sana Inoue report the results in Tuesday's issue of the journal Current Biology.

One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.

They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there.

Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.

One chimp, Ayumu, did the best. Researchers included him and nine college students in a second test.

This time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they were replaced by white squares. The challenge, again, was to touch these squares in the proper sequence.

When the numbers were displayed for about seven-tenths of a second, Ayumu and the college students were both able to do this correctly about 80 percent of the time.

But when the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths of a second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is too short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent.

That indicates Ayumu was better at taking in the whole pattern of numbers at a glance, the researchers wrote.

"It's amazing what this chimpanzee is able to do," said Elizabeth Lonsdorf, director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The center studies the mental abilities of apes, but Lonsdorf didn't participate in the new study.

She admired Ayumu's performance when the numbers flashed only briefly on the screen.

"I just watched the video of that and I can tell you right now, there's no way I can do it," she said. "It's unbelievable. I can't even get the first two (squares)."

What's going on here? Even with six months of training, three students failed to catch up to the three young chimps, Matsuzawa said in an e-mail.

He thinks two factors gave his chimps the edge. For one thing, he believes human ancestors gave up much of this skill over evolutionary time to make room in the brain for gaining language abilities.

The other factor is the youth of Ayumu and his peers. The memory for images that's needed for the tests resembles a skill found in children, but which dissipates with age. In fact, the young chimps performed better than older chimps in the new study. (Ayumu's mom did even worse than the college students).

So the next logical step, Lonsdorf said, is to fix up Ayumu with some real competition on these tests: little kids.

[Steve the Pocket]

Sadly, that sounds about right. I was just saying the other day... um... wait, what are we talking about?

[VisibilityMissing]

The Illinois State Police and the Strange Case of the Skeleton by the Highway

Remains positively identified; deputy coroner believes death may have
occurred 20 years ago

By TESA CULLI

tesa.culli@register-news.com

JEFFERSON COUNTY — Jefferson County Deputy Coroner Eddie Marks has
officially identified skeletal remains discovered on Nov. 18 near
Interstate 57 and Radisson Road.

"In my 18 years as a deputy coroner, this is one of the most
interesting and fascinating cases I've been on," Marks said.

Two walkers found the remains during an afternoon walk on Nov. 18, and
contacted the Illinois State Police. ISP investigators and crime scene
technicians worked to identify the remains as well as determine how
long the body had been left in the area, according to Master Sgt. Stan
Diggs, who led the investigation for the ISP.

Marks said he became involved in the incident because Coroner Dr.
Richard Garretson had been called away from the scene and turned it
over to Marks.

"The remains were pretty well intact, and there had fortunately, been
no animals around which disturbed the body or the bones," Marks said.
"Basically, the whole skeleton was right there. It had settled down in
the dirt, and some pieces of clothing remained. You could tell the
subject was trying to keep warm, he was dressed in layers — three
layers of flannel shirts."

Marks said by looking at the skeleton, it was "easy" to see what had happened.

"The position we found him in, he was leaning back, you could picture
in your mind what happened," Marks said. "He had leaned up against the
fence. We don't know if he had a heart attack and fell over on his
left side or died of hypothermia. We don't have a medical history."

Marks said the ISP located a "vinyl type purse or bag" near the
skeleton, in which they found personal belongings.

"In the case was a billfold," Marks said. "It was in pretty good
shape. Vinyl won't deteriorate like leather or cloth. In his wallet,
in the portion with the cellophane where you would keep pictures or a
driver's license, they found a license. Back then they issued paper
licenses. The CSI people handled this and carefully looked at it and
read his name, date of birth, address and such. But when they tried to
take the paper out of the cellophane, there was nothing there. Time
and the elements it had been subject to made the paper completely
vanish. The ink had stained the cellophane, so it was printed on the
cellophane. You could read all of it very plainly."

The billfold led the ISP to seek information on 86-year-old Edward
Windsor Mathews. Mathews had been known to live in the Chicago area,
Goreville and various places in Missouri.

"They told us the last time anyone had, or that they could find
positively had any dealings with him was in 1986," Marks said. "That's
21 years ago. That's when he died."

Marks said vegetation, briars and small trees had grown among the
skeletal remains of Mathews.

"He was in an area the state mows around a couple times a year, but
don't mow next to the fence," Marks said. "There's a four or five foot
gap between where they mow and the fence. ... No one could have seen
him from the Interstate, and no reason anyone would have seen him.
There probably wasn't a nursery in the area when he died."

According to Diggs, the ISP will be closing the case based on the
coroner's office official information.

[Doc Sigma]

PEOPLE SUCK.

[quote]'Grinches' Trash Home, Steal Presents

FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. -- Vandals in Forsyth
County trashed a house, ruined the Christmas tree,
stole the presents and then spray-painted a signature
on a wall – the Grinch who stole Christmas.

Only two rooms in the home of Penny LeBaron and her
two sons escaped enormous damage.

“We came home about 3:45 and walked into a total
disaster zone,â€