Today is CrazyNews from around the world;

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Michael Boggan Gets Fingers Blown Off From Bomb Built by Teens

Some australian teenagers thought it would be a hoot to make a grenade and toss it to an autistic kid who was trying to befriend them. Result: the autistic kid now has basically no fingers. Seems to me an appropriate punishment would be to amputate the ringleaders fingers and use the tissues in cloning experiments. a proper judicial system would focus on restitution rather than purely punishment, so having the criminals donate  their own fingers to restore the victim seems perfectly fair to me.

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Road-builder bulldozes one of biggest Maya pyramids in Belize; police open criminal probe

Because 2,300-year-old  ceremonial sites make great quarries.

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Savage Online Videos Fuel Syria’s Descent Into Madness

Remember, the Arab Spring is just awesome. Especially when the rebels cut the hearts out of government soldiers an EAT THEM.

Two wholly unrelated news items:

Rocky road for electric car market

“Sitting around for eight hours waiting for your (Nissan) Leaf to charge up is not exactly a selling point,” he said. “EVs have a sitting-on-your-ass factor that conventional cars do not.”

This has always been a bothersome point for me… minimal electric range (I could not go to the grocery store and back on a full charge with most electric cars) coupled with insanely long recharge times and very high prices seems to equate to a car that not many people would have much use for, IMO.

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Hi grandpa, it’s Mandy – do you still have my car? First words of kidnap victim to her grandfather after being released from Cleveland house of horrors  

In short… before she was kidnapped, Amanda Berry’s grandfather had promised her a 1986 Chevy Monte Carlo SS NASCAR edition if she got her drivers license. She disappeared before getting her license, and that was the first thing she asked her grandfather about in their first post-rescue phone conversation. I thought that was odd… her first question was about a car? But a commenter on Fark actually made it come together for me:

bigbobowski: so is this where Chevrolet is supposed to contact the family to thank them for the product placement and let them know a new Camaro is on the way. (with a truck full of micky d’s). I refuse to believe the thought of a clapped out 86 monte enabled this woman to endure the living hell she went through.

Then you don’t know anything. According to Jaycee Dugard, the one thing that kept her going was seeing the moon and knowing that her mother could also see it. POW’s have commented that it was often one single “little” thing like fishing with a brother or a cone from the local ice cream stand that kept them going. Amanda used to go to car shows with her grandpa and he promised her this car when she could drive. That was a tangible future coupled with a memory of love for her. Of course she would cling to it.

Suddenly it makes a lot of sense. I don’t know whether or not to be disturbed by the fact that wisdom has come from Fark…

And, as it turns out, grandpa DOES still have the car.

This would be a massively wise time for the local Chevy repair shop to offer (free of charge)  to go over the car with a fine toothed comb and repair, restore, make perfect.

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And on the topic of the kidnappings, if you want to ruin your day, READ THIS story about the “forgotten” kidnappee, Michelle Knight. As if a dozen years of torture wasn’t bad enough, this girls life story both before and after reads like a Greek tragedy. “Kicked around by life” doesn’t begin to describe it.

Well, the US FedGuv has finally waded into the debate on 3D printed guns. Wielding the sort of bludgeon that authoritarians like Bloomberg and Schumer can only dream of, the US Department of Defense Trade Controls has shut down Defense Distributed via the dubious power of ITAR. ITAR – International Traffic in Arms Regulations – is supposed to prevent US citizens and corporations from sending overseas technologies and designs for advanced weapons and the like that might aid enemies of the US. But as it’s being used here, it is being used to prevent the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Whatever from being able to build unreliable, expensive zip guns.

Much as it pains me to link to Infowars, they seem to have the details.

BREAKING: 3D printable gun ordered to shut down by government

GUNSGUNSGUNS

Here’s one of many things to consider: if the exact same files had been created by, say, a Canadian, and were hosted on a Canadian website, the US FedGuv would have neither the power nor the interest to shut them down. Why would they? Printed guns are, and will be for some time, substantially crappy devices compared to properly manufactured firearms. However, as printing technology evolves, and as design capabilities and experience progress, printed guns will become substantially better, potentially eventually becoming competitive or even superior in some ways. So what the government is doing, in effect, is turning over the future of not only weapons development but advanced manufacturing systems and basic entrepreneurship itself to foreign powers.

Interesting news:

A ‘Fifth Force’ May Alter Gravity at Cosmic Scales

Seems a bit like Q adjusting the universal constant of gravitation…

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And truly sad, awful, head-shaking news out of Louisiana:

Senators again reject repeal of Louisiana Science Education Act

In short, this was a bill supported by Republicans that served as a back-door for pseudo-science to be taught in science classrooms. But Republicans pushing Christian Creationism aren’t the only ones. There are Democrats…

Sen. Elbert Guillory, D-Opelousas, said he had reservations with repealing the act after a spiritual healer correctly diagnosed a specific medical ailment he had. He said he thought repealing the act could “lock the door on being able to view ideas from many places, concepts from many cultures.”

“Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man – in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed — if I had closed him off and just said, ‘That’s not science. I’m not going to see this doctor,’ I would have shut off a very good experience for myself,” Guillory said.

Just… gah. Fricken’ voodoo??? Well, if there’s anything that will cause conservative Christian Republicans to vote to repeal the law, finding that the law supports the teaching of voodoo aughtta do it.

Remember the Chinese NASA spy? The one whose arrest caused the NASA Tech Report Server to go belly up? The one with all the classified data he was trying to sneak out? Yeah… not so much.

Bo Jiang Had Porn – Not Secrets – on His Laptop

Remember, kids, this is the same Federal Government that wants to not only register all firearms transfers, it also wants to control healthcare. And they can’t tell the difference between classified spy satellite design drawings and nekkid chix.

The 747 was reportedly carrying armored vehicles. It looks likely that one of them broke loose in the hold, and rolled aft, sending the CG of the aircraft unrecoverably far aft. The 747 pitches almost straight up, wallows drunkenly, then pitches forward and rolls. Presumably the loose armored vehicle rolled forward, which allow the pilot to regain some measure of control… far too late to do anything. There is one NSFW utterance… and *only* one. I would have used more, but that’s just me.

Cargo cutting loose on takeoff is pretty much a cargomasters worst nightmare. This video points out why.

embedded by Embedded Video

YouTube Direkt

Here’s the kind of news story we need to see more of:

US sailor thwarts Dubai bus driver rapist after putting him in strangehold with her thighs and then beating him into submission

Short form: a 28-year-old female US Navy sailor on leave in Dubai boarded what turned out to be the wrong bus. The 21-year-old Pakistani driver drove her to a secluded spot and used a knife to try to rape her; she took it from him, snapped it in half and locked the guy between her thighs.

Let’s hope that:

1) The shame of it all breaks him

2) The story spreads throughout the Middle East: American women will snap you in two.

Snopes tentatively says that this is for real, a “science” test from a private religious school in South Carolina. Way to defeat those stereotypes, guys.

sciencetest1

sciencetest2

Well, the world still needs ditch diggers…

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2013/04/nasas-silence-o.html#comments

 

Nearly the entire operational staff of the Center for Aerospace Information (CASI) has been sacked. CASI are the folks that create and maintain the NTRS (NASA Technical Reports Server) and the NA&SD (NASA Aeronautics and Space Database). What were they thinking! Mark my words, this does not bode well for those of us who rely on the accessibility of NASA technical information.

It’s a comment, not a press release, so… who knows.

Example:

#Freejahar Hashtag Rallies Emerging Cult of Boston Bomb Suspect

As if it wasn’t bad enough that there are idiots out there who think that Joker is being framed, there are some who think that the victims are *actors.*

I can dream that the b/tards and Anonymous will be able to chase these jackholes own and shame them.

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