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Tree Nearly Hits Car

A New Zealand motorist was almost crushed as he drove beneath a large tree that was in the process of toppling over.

Police surrounded the tree, which stood outside Liquor King on the intersection of Collingwood and Hardy Streets in the middle of Nelson, as it swayed in high winds for some time before finally coming down with a loud thud just as a red car passed underneath.

Cameraman Dave Finlay said the driver had done a U-turn on Collingworth St about 3.30pm and drove back towards the tree. Police had run towards his vehicle to try and stop him from driving but it was too late.

original source
where I found it

The Trolls Among Us

By MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ
Published: August 3, 2008
One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him, Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from Rochester, Minn., took a .22-caliber rifle down from a shelf in his parents’ bedroom closet and shot himself in the head. The next morning, Mitchell’s school assembled in the gym to begin mourning. His classmates created a virtual memorial on MySpace and garlanded it with remembrances. One wrote that Mitchell was “an hero to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back. . . . ” Someone e-mailed a clipping of Mitchell’s newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that links to the MySpace pages of the dead. From MyDeathSpace, Mitchell’s page came to the attention of an Internet message board known as /b/ and the “trolls,” as they have come to be called, who dwell there.
/b/ is the designated “random” board of 4chan.org, a group of message boards that draws more than 200 million page views a month. A post consists of an image and a few lines of text. Almost everyone posts as “anonymous.” In effect, this makes /b/ a panopticon in reverse — nobody can see anybody, and everybody can claim to speak from the center. The anonymous denizens of 4chan’s other boards — devoted to travel, fitness and several genres of pornography — refer to the /b/-dwellers as “/b/tards.”
Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent. /b/ reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand.
*****
This is a long and in-depth article that you should really go read.
Whoever you are.
Wherever you are.
Whatever you are.
Go.
Here.
Now.

Also, if you're interested, here is weev's response.

Airport Security?

The following from CBS news in Chicago, where there is an equally depressing video of the news report.

In Chicago, people like Robert Perry are subjected to exhaustive security checks. He was patted down, his wheel chair was examined and his hands were swabbed, all in public view in a see-through room at the security checkpoint. Perry, 71, is not alone

read the rest here

Oh shit moment

The Gimli Glider
from the Damn Interesting blog:

Inside the cockpit of the cruising airliner, Captain Bob Pearson was understandably alarmed at the out-of-the-ordinary beeps that were chiming from his flight computer. On the control panel, an amber low fuel pressure warning lamp lit up to punctuate the audio alarm.

First Officer Maurice Quintal, copilot of Air Canada Flight 143, checked the indicator light to determine the cause of the computer's complaints. "Something's wrong with the fuel pump," he reported.

The mustachioed Captain Pearson pulled out the trusty Boeing handbook, his fingers dashing through the pages to find the specifics of the warning. To his relief, the troubleshooting chart indicated that the situation was not as perilous as it might seem: the fuel pump in the left wing tank was signaling a problem, a minor issue considering that gravity would continue to feed the engines even if the pump failed.

"You know," he commented to Copilot Quintal, "I would not take this air…" He trailed off as the computer blurted out another four beeps, and the indicator panel lit up like a Christmas tree decorated with bad news. "Oh fuck," Pearson lamented, "we've got to go to Winnipeg."

click here to read the rest, and it's worth it!

Movie Review: Wanted

I just got to see Wanted, thanks to movie6.net

The cast was great. James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, et al.

It was fast paced.
Cool.
Awesome.

Near the beginning is one of the best chase scenes I've ever seen. Seriously!

I have to say one of my favorite parts is early in the movie when Wesley Gibson (our main character) gives his supervisor a nice, big cup of STFU! I've wanted to do something like that my entire working life, but I don't have the cojones. Guess I'm a pussy, but I'm OK with that.

You really need to go to movie6.net and see this before it gets taken down and you have to go pay for it at the theater! Unfortunately, movies don't stay there long. You have to put up with this being filmed off the screen in Asia, and ignore the Asian sub-titles.

I must say here that this reminds me of the directing in Fight Club. Another must see, of course. It also reminds me of the scene in The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King where Roland kills everyone in Tull. Also a must read!

N is Here!

Master storyteller Stephen King presents a revolutionary new form of entertainment: his short story “N.” brought to vibrant life through a series of 25 graphic video episodes. The original series tells the story of a psychiatrist who falls victim to the same deadly obsession as his patient—an obsession that just might save the world!

Drawn by award-wining comic book artist Alex Maleev, and colored by famed comic book colorist José Villarrubia, the episodes were adapted by Marc Guggenheim, co-creator of the ABC-TV series “Eli Stone” with creative oversight from Stephen King.

Watch here!

For Geeks & Nerds!

Periodic Table of Videos here

New Site Found!

I found a new site that I've been looking at for hours now!
Here's one of my favorites with the artist's quote below it.
Arrested Liberty by RandomAssembly

"you have no rights, so remain silent... anything you do say will be deemed unpatriotic and used against you in a court of law."

Here's another of my favorites, Susanna from The Wolves of the Calla


And the site? Worth1000.com So, go check it out!

Super Mountain Bike

If I tried even one of these things, I'd break every bone in my body! It's cool to watch, though!

Trippy!

These are some really cool web artworks!

First, the Zoomquilt 2

Click on the link and you can either watch it in flash (takes a minute or so to download, but SO worth it!) or download it as a screensaver. It's an infinite loop, so put on some trippy music and sit back to an infinite surreality!

Second, the Way of the Sheep

If you count sheep, you'll be freaked. OK, you'll probably be freaked anyway, but this post is all about surrealism. You can click on the picture and move it back and forth, but it will repeat, so just keep your music on and enjoy (shudder).

Diamonds May Have Jumpstarted Life on Earth

Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
LiveScience.com
Sat Jul 26, 12:05 PM ET



One of the greatest mysteries in science is how life began. Now one group of researchers says diamonds may have been life's best friend.

Scientists have long theorized that life on Earth got going in a primordial soup of precursor chemicals. But nobody knows how these simple amino acids, known to be the building blocks of life, were assembled into complex polymers needed as a platform for genesis.

Diamonds are crystallized forms of carbon that predate the oldest known life on the planet. In lab experiments aimed to confirm work done more than three decades ago, researchers found that when treated with hydrogen, natural diamonds formed crystalline layers of water on the surface. Water is essential for life as we know it. Also, the tests found electrical conductivity that could have been key to forcing chemical reactions needed to generate the first birth.

When primitive molecules landed on the surface of these hydrogenated diamonds in the atmosphere of early Earth, a few billion years ago, the resulting reaction may have been sufficient enough to generate more complex organic molecules that eventually gave rise to life, the researchers say.

The research, by German scientists Andrei Sommer, Dan Zhu, and Hans-Joerg Fecht at the University of Ulm, is detailed in the Aug. 6 issue of the American Chemical Society's journal Crystal Growth & Design. Funding was provided by the Landesstiftung Baden-Wurttemberg Bionics Network.

Another theory, called panspermia, holds that life on Earth arrived from space, as organisms rained down inside tiny meteors or giant comets.

The new research does not conclusively determine how life began, but it lends support to one possible way.

"Hydrogenated diamond advances to the best of all possible origin-of-life platforms," the researchers contend.

The Drake Equations

N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L

N = technical civilisations in the galaxy
R* = mean rate of star formation in the milky way, our local galaxy.
fp = the fraction of those stars which form planetary systems.
ne = the number of planets in those systems which are ecologically suitable for lifeforms to evolve
fl = the number of those planets on which lifeforms actually develop
fi = the number of those which evolve to an intelligent form.
fc = the number of advanced intelligent lifeforms which develop the capability of interstellar radio communication
L = the lifetime of those advanced technically advanced civilisations

This is why I believe!

Waiting Doom

How hospitals are killing E.R. patients.
By Zachary F. Meisel and Jesse M. Pines
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008, at 6:54 AM ET

Last month, Esmin Green, a 49-year-old mother of six, tumbled off her chair and onto the floor of the Kings County psychiatric E.R. waiting room in New York City. Members of the hospital staff saw her lying there but did nothing for about an hour. When Green was finally brought into the E.R., she was dead. An autopsy revealed that she died from a pulmonary embolism, which occurs when a blood clot forms in the leg, breaks off, and travels to one or both lungs. This can also kill long-haul airplane passengers who sit in one spot for hours: The blood sits stagnant in their legs for so long that it clots. You could say that Green, too, had been on a plane ride of sorts. She'd waited for a psychiatric-unit bed to open up for more than 24 hours, roughly the same time as a trip from New York to Tanzania.

The surveillance video of Green collapsing and lying untended, as hospital staff at Kings County fail to respond to her collapse, is inexcusable by any stretch. And so Nancy Grace, for one, focused on the negligence. But what's largely missing from this story is the likely cause of Green's pulmonary embolism. The answer lies in a far more systematic and widespread danger in hospital care: E.R. waits. Why was Green sitting and waiting while blood pooled in her legs? Despite increasing evidence that crowded E.R.s can be hazardous to your health, hospitals have incentives to keep their E.R. patients waiting. As a result, there has been an explosion in E.R. wait times over the past few years, even for those who are the sickest.

A major cause for E.R. crowding is the hospital practice of boarding inpatients in emergency departments. This happens when patients who come to the E.R. need to be admitted overnight. If there are no inpatient beds in the hospital (or no extra inpatient nurses on duty that day) then the patient stays in the E.R. long past the completion of the initial emergency work. This is what happened to Green, and it has become widespread and common. The problem is that boarding shifts E.R. resources away from the new patients in the waiting room. While E.R. patients wait for inpatient beds, new patients wait longer to see a doctor. As more new patients come, the waits grow. And an E.R. filled with boarding patients and a full waiting room is an unhappy E.R.: The atmosphere is at once static and chaotic. If you or a loved one has waited for hours in an E.R., you know what we mean. The environment can be unsafe and even deadly. A recent study found that critically ill patients who board for more than six hours in the E.R. are 4 percent more likely to die.

What hospital would promote such a practice? Potentially, those that profit more from boarding, particularly in poorer communities with high numbers of uninsured and Medicaid patients. Imagine you run a hospital. There are two competing sources for inpatient beds. The first source is patients who come in through direct and transfer admissions. They are more likely to come with private insurance and need procedural care, both of which maximize profits. The second source is E.R. patients, who are more likely to be uninsured or have pittance-paying Medicaid and less likely to need high-margin procedures. Do the math: If you fill your hospital with the direct and transfer admissions and maroon the E.R. patients for long periods, you make more money.

In effect, then, E.R. boarding allows hospitals to insulate themselves from the burgeoning needs of the poor. E.R.s are safety nets: By law, we who work in them see any and all patients, regardless of their ability to pay. But as more E.R. beds are devoted to boarders, the E.R. has less space for new patients, which keeps a lid on the number of un- and underinsured. So unless you are having a heart attack and can jump the line, your emergency—though it may still be serious—may wait for so long that you give up and go home. Bad for you, good for the hospital's bottom line. E.R. boarding also tamps down nursing costs, again not to your benefit. Hospitals generally maintain strict patient-to-nurse ratios for inpatients. But many hospitals don't apply the same rules to the E.R. because they can't control the number of patients who come in that way. Sometimes the nursing ratio in the E.R. can be as high as 8-to-1. That's unacceptable in inpatient units, but just stack 'em in the E.R. hallways and suddenly it's OK.

What about the staff upstairs, who take care of the admitted patients once they leave the E.R.? Their incentives are misaligned, too. Put yourself in an inpatient nurse's shoes. You are overworked, and your current patients need attention. You get a call from the E.R., saying that a patient like Green is ready to come upstairs. The bed is clean and ready. But you have 20 more things to do before your shift ends in two hours, and you won't get paid an extra cent if you accept Green to the empty bed. Can't she wait just a bit more in the E.R.? When the next nurse comes on fresh, you tell yourself, she can admit the new patient. You won't get in trouble for stalling because no one really measures how long patients stay in the E.R.. So you tell the E.R. nurse that the bed isn't ready yet. This practice of "bed-hiding" is more common than you think.

What can be done about all this? We think the answer is that hospitals should have to disclose and take responsibility for how long E.R. patients—that is, you—wait for beds. But, not surprisingly, hospitals have lobbied hard to not be held accountable for E.R. crowding and boarding. If they won't measure and eliminate E.R. boarding on their own, then the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which pays many hospital patients' bills, or the Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals, should take this on.

And let's also hold congressional hearings on E.R. boarding. In England, the National Health System now has a rule that 98 percent of patients have to spend less than four hours in the E.R.. Apparently, the son of a member of parliament spent too long in an E.R., we've heard. Esmin Green wasn't well-connected. But her death should serve as a similar prompt to fix the problem of endless waiting.

Meanwhile, if you have to go the E.R., you can vote with your feet. When you are really sick, of course, go to the closest E.R. or call an ambulance. But if you can wait long enough to choose, go to the E.R. where they don't make patients wait or board for long periods. Yes, we know—since hospitals don't publicize E.R. waits or boarding, you'll have to go by word of mouth. If, despite your efforts, you or your grandmother is forced to lie in the E.R. all night, complain directly to the hospital administrators who actually have the power to fix the problem. But don't count on any major changes. As long as hospitals profit more from boarding and aren't forced to admit to doing it, your trip to the E.R. will be as long as a flight to Africa—but without the in-flight movie and far more risky.

wait for it...

Drew Carey Show was COOL!

and this was one of the BEST moments in the show's history.

I mean, what's better than dueling cult classics?

Babies a-z

OMG! They're so cute! These are Cotton Topped Tamarins (actually adults) and they're just one example of the cuteness found here!

Weird Cat

Stunned & Frozen Cat ! - video powered by Metacafe

From Neatorama "This is one strange cat. It looks like it’s in some sort of trance or seizure but it reacts to physical touch. I also noticed that it doesn’t blink either. Then, all of a sudden, up it goes as if nothing was. Weird."

Standing Ovation Needed

This scene took place on a British Airways flight between Johannesburg, South Africa & London.

This is a true story.

A White woman, about 50 years old, was seated next to a Black man. Obviously disturbed by this, she called the air Hostess.

“Madam, what is the matter?” - the Hostess asked.

“You obviously do not see it then?” - she responded, - “You placed me next to a Black man. I do not agree to sit next to someone from such a repugnant group. Give me an alternative seat!.”

“Be calm please, ” - The Hostess replied. - “Almost all the places on this flight are taken. I will go to see if another seat is available.”

The Hostess went away and then came back a few minutes later.

“Madam, just as I thought, there are no other available seats in the Economy class. I spoke to the Captain and he informed me that there is also no seats in the Business class. All the same, we still have one seat in the First class.”

Before the woman could say anything, the Hostess continued:

“It is not usual for our company to permit someone from the Economy class to sit in the First class. However, given the circumstances, the Captain feels that it would be scandalous to make someone sit next to someone so disgusting.”

She turned to the Black guy, and said:

“Therefore, Sir, if you would like to, please collect your hand luggage, a seat awaits you in First class.”

At that moment, the other passengers who were shocked by what they had just witnessed stood up and applauded.


from here

Simon Tofield & His Cat

Part One

Part Two

Part Three