Did you know?.

[Wanker]

[h=1]Microsoft pays $2.5 billion (U.S.) for Minecraft game maker[/h][h=2]Minecraft is the most popular online game on Xbox and the top paid app.[/h]
https://www.thestar.com/business/pe...pays_25_billion_for_minecraft_game_maker.html

 

[Bustler]

Couldn't believe how they found each other then married. Only positive I get of this is that they cannot reproduce.


SUNBURY, Pa. (AP) — A newlywed couple whose Craigslist ad lured a stranger to his death were sentenced Thursday to life in prison without parole by a judge who said their "permanent removal" from society is appropriate.

Neither 19-year-old Miranda Barbour nor her 22-year-old husband, Elytte, displayed emotion as they sat with their lawyers in the courtroom while some of the victim's relatives described the grief and pain they have experience since the Nov. 11 murder.
"Even if they each serve 50 years, they still will not feel any guilt or sympathy," said Holly LaFerrara, the victim's sister. "They completely lack empathy. They have no conscience, no remorse and no moral compass.

"They lack the most basic element of humanity," she said. "These are two fundamentally flawed people who are rotten to the core."
Elytte Barbour read a written apology in court but said he could not explain his participating in what he acknowledged was "a senseless crime."
"It is not the person who I am," he said. "It's not the person I want to be."
Miranda Barbour didn't address the judge.

The couple pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence, in a plea deal that ruled out the death penalty.
They were married in North Carolina and moved to central Pennsylvania about three weeks before they met up with the victim, Troy LaFerrara, 42, of Port Trevorton, when he responded to an ad offering female companionship.

\On the day LaFerrara was killed, Miranda Barbour picked him up a mall in Selinsgrove and drove to Sunbury while Elytte hid on the back seat under a blanket. Once they parked, Elytte Barbour emerged from his hiding place and held a cord tight against LaFerrara's neck while his petite wife stabbed the 6-foot-2, 278-pound man about 20 times. They dumped his body in an alley.
Miranda Barbour initially denied knowing LaFerrara, but changed her story when police obtained records showing that the last call to his cellphone came from hers, authorities said.
Elytte Barbour told police the couple killed LaFerrara because they wanted to kill someone together.

In April, Miranda Barbour gained some notoriety when she claimed in an interview with the Sunbury newspaper, The Daily Item, that she had killed at least 22 other people inAlaska, Texas, North Carolina and California over six years as part of her involvement in a satanic cult.
Police said they couldn't substantiate her claims. But in a Monday telephone interview with The Daily Item from Muncy State Prison, Miranda Barbour stood by them.
The newspaper published a story about the interview Thursday after sentencing. In it, she also asserted that her husband was supposed to have killed LaFerrara by strangulation but "he messed it up." She said LaFerrara broke free from the cord and was trying to escape from the moving car when she grabbed the knife and began stabbing him.

In separately sentencing the couple, Northumberland County Judge Charles Saylor said he found it difficult to comprehend their indifference to the value of human life.
"Poor Mr. LaFerrara had no idea what was about to happen simply by a Craigslist posting," the judge said.
"Justice is being served with your permanent removal from our community and society," Saylor said in sentencing Elytte Barbour.
LaFerrara's widow, Colleen, tearfully described her life without her husband, an avid outdoorsman who held a degree in civil engineering from Penn State.

"They showed him no mercy. They left him to die in an alley," she said. "He was a sweet and gentle man who would never have hurt anyone."

https://news.msn.com/crime-justice/couple-in-craigslist-slaying-sentenced-to-life

 

[User-E]

2014 Ig Nobel prizes

The full list of winners this year:

PHYSICS: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, of Kitasato University, Japan, and colleagues, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor.

NEUROSCIENCE: Kang Lee, of the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.

PSYCHOLOGY: Peter Jonason, of the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and colleagues for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.

PUBLIC HEALTH: Jaroslav Flegr, of Charles University, Czech Republic, and colleagues for investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat.

BIOLOGY: Vlastimil Hart, of the Czech University of Life Sciences, and colleagues for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines.

ART: Marina de Tommaso, of the University of Bari, Italy, and colleagues for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam.

ECONOMICS: The Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.

MEDICINE: Ian Humphreys, of Michigan State University, US, and colleagues, for treating "uncontrollable" nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork.

ARCTIC SCIENCE: Eigil Reimers, of the University of Oslo, Norway, and colleagues, for testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.

NUTRITION: Raquel Rubio, of IRTA, Spain, and colleagues, for their study titled "Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29253796

 

[Lobby]

CDC: 90% of kids who died last flu season didn't get vaccine

https://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=3...ds-who-died-last-flu-season-didnt-get-vaccine

 

[VivaLV]

RANDOM FACTS

RANDOM FACTS

 

[Boing]

Horses can sleep standing......I knew that Funky & Music

 

[Boing]

CDC: 90% of kids who died last flu season didn't get vaccine

https://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=3...ds-who-died-last-flu-season-didnt-get-vaccine

And they say taking your flue shot is not a necessity.

 

[Oilcan]

 

[Leo]

Fun post LV.

 

[Anto]

[h=1]Boys Wear Skirts to Class in Protest After School Fines Trans Girl for Wearing Skirt[/h]
https://www.advocate.com/politics/t...protest-after-school-fines-trans-girl-wearing

 

[VivaLV]

[h=1]The Duck Is The Superior Animal[/h]

 

[50cents]

 

[Roberto]

F.B.I. Confirms a Sharp Rise in Mass Shootings Since 2000


WASHINGTON — A report released by the F.B.I. on Wednesday confirmed what many Americans had feared but law enforcement officials had never documented: Mass shootings have risen drastically in the past half-dozen years.

There were, on average, 16.4 such shootings a year from 2007 to 2013, compared with an average of 6.4 shootings annually from 2000 to 2006. In the past 13 years, 486 people have been killed in such shootings, with 366 of the deaths in the past seven years. In all, the study looked at 160 shootings since 2000. (Shootings tied to domestic violence and gangs were not included.)
Many of the sprees ended before the police arrived, the report said. In 44 of the 64 cases in which the F.B.I. was able to determine the length of the shooting, the gunfire lasted less than five minutes.

Twenty-three shootings ended in less than two minutes. In 64 of the 160 total cases, the gunmen committed suicide.
The report was prompted by the spate of mass shootings in recent years, like those at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.

Continue: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/us/25shooters.html?_r=1

 

[Oilcan]

Florida mom hid infant in car trunk to avoid ticket for not having a car seat: deputies

The 5-month-old was found crying on top of cutting shears and a large rusted tire iron while in the trunk of Breona Synclair Watkins' sedan Tuesday, said the Broward County Sheriff's Office. Watkins allegedly didn't want to get ticketed for failing to have a car seat so she stuffed the baby in the trunk.


A brainless Florida mom stuffed her 5-month-old baby in the trunk of her car on top of cutting shears and a tire iron because she didn't have a car seat, authorities said.
The infant was heard crying in the trunk of Breona Synclair Watkins' sedan Tuesday morning following an early morning traffic stop, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

When the trunk was opened, the infant was found lying on top of the metal shears, a rusty metal clothes hanger, a plastic CD case and a large rusted tire iron. Also nearby was a used gas can, a used fuel pump, plastic bags and other materials determined to be hazardous,CBS Miami reported.

Deputies determined that Watkins had instructed a 14-year-old girl riding in the passenger seat to hide the infant in the trunk through an opening in the backseat after being signaled to pull over for a missing headlight and running half-way through a red light.

Watkins apparently didn't want to get ticketed for failing to have a car seat for the child. The baby had been riding on the girl's lap.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/na...-car-seat-citation-deputies-article-1.1951444

 

[User-E]

A fund has been started to help legendary hacker John Draper, aka Captain Crunch, recover after a long stay in hospital. Mr Draper was in hospital getting treatment for a variety of age-related medical conditions.

Now 71, he was one of the first "phone phreaks" who hacked US phone networks. Most famously, Mr Draper told Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs about phone hacking which helped them generate cash to found Apple.

Mr Draper got the name of Captain Crunch because he found out that a toy whistle given away with the cereal of the same name generated a tone at a frequency that controlled some functions on AT&T's phone network.

Experimenting with the whistle led Mr Draper to develop an electronic "blue box" that could generate other tones which, when played down a phone line, gave owners limited control over the US phone networks. Many people used the boxes to get free phone calls. Mr Wozniak and Mr Jobs learned the secrets of "phone phreaking" from Mr Draper and started a business selling blue boxes to college students.

Once Apple was founded, Mr Draper was regularly used as a software programmer and worked on ways to connect early Apple machines to phones and on the EasyWriter word processing program. After leaving Apple's employ, he spent many years working in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in California at a variety of established tech firms and start-ups.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29381279

 

[Pietro]

A fund has been started to help legendary hacker John Draper, aka Captain Crunch, recover after a long stay in hospital. Mr Draper was in hospital getting treatment for a variety of age-related medical conditions.

Now 71, he was one of the first "phone phreaks" who hacked US phone networks. Most famously, Mr Draper told Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs about phone hacking which helped them generate cash to found Apple.

Mr Draper got the name of Captain Crunch because he found out that a toy whistle given away with the cereal of the same name generated a tone at a frequency that controlled some functions on AT&T's phone network.

Experimenting with the whistle led Mr Draper to develop an electronic "blue box" that could generate other tones which, when played down a phone line, gave owners limited control over the US phone networks. Many people used the boxes to get free phone calls. Mr Wozniak and Mr Jobs learned the secrets of "phone phreaking" from Mr Draper and started a business selling blue boxes to college students.

Once Apple was founded, Mr Draper was regularly used as a software programmer and worked on ways to connect early Apple machines to phones and on the EasyWriter word processing program. After leaving Apple's employ, he spent many years working in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in California at a variety of established tech firms and start-ups.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29381279

Thanks Ms. Sarah, never knew that.

 

[Wino]

MIAMI (AP) — Why so many minors were present at a nightclub during a pre-dawn shooting is among several mysteries Miami Police are trying to solve as they interview dozens of witnesses to the weekend chaos that left 15 people wounded.
Among those hit by gunfire early Sunday morning at The Spot were five girls ranging in age from 11 to 17, Miami Fire Rescue Capt. Ignatius Carroll said.

"What was very surprising to the responders was that these were kids that were out at 1 o'clock in the morning in a club and this type of violence took place where a bunch of kids were gathering," Carroll said. "It's very disturbing to see that."
Investigators were interviewing the owner to determine what type of club The Spot is and why so many underage children were there, said police spokeswoman Frederica Burden, who noted that she had never heard of the venue despite having worked in the neighborhood for years.

"Was it a private party? Was it open to the public? That's what we're trying to figure out," she said.
Fire Rescue officials also will check on what kind of gatherings the club is licensed for, if any, Carroll said.
A phone number for the club was out of service Sunday.
Of the 15 wounded, one was reported in critical but stable condition and the other victims remaining in the hospital were in good condition Sunday, Burden said. Some victims had also been released, but Burden said she did not know how many.

The shooting sent terrified patrons scrambling into the street. When Miami police and rescue crews arrived at the club around 1 a.m., they found wounded people inside and outside the club, some too hurt to flee, Carroll said.
He told The Associated Press that the first emergency crews arriving on the scene were warned to use caution "because there was still active shooting taking place in the area."
Some people were running, "people were screaming, people were saying they were shot," Carroll said, adding others were yelling for help for friends who had been shot.

One male was found unresponsive and not breathing when emergency responders arrived.
Burden said it was not immediately clear how many shooters were involved or what prompted the violence. Police had not made any arrests as of Sunday, and had not publicly identified any suspects.
Shortly after the shootings, police and other emergency officials cordoned off the outside of the club with yellow crime scene tape and emergency vehicles blocked the street in front of the site.

 

[Wise Guy]

[h=1]The incredible map that shows Marco Polo may have discovered America in the the 13th century - 200 years before Christopher Columbus[/h]

• The map was reportedly drawn up by Marco Polo after he 'sailed across the Bering Straight' in the 1200s
• Comes from a trove of documents that are claimed to have been compiled by the Italian explorer's daughter
• Polo describes people who wore seal skins, ate only fish and lived in homes 'under the earth'
• Some claim he made it as far down the coast as modern day Seattle
• Authenticity has yet to be determined

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...h-century-200-years-Christopher-Columbus.html

 

[User-E]

Why no one wants to host the 2022 Olympics

Bidding for the 2022 Winter Games is now down to just two cities. The final vote comes next summer. There's Beijing, China, which doesn't actually sit within 120 miles of a usable ski mountain, and there's Almaty, Kazakhstan, which in its bid touted itself as "the world's largest landlocked nation."

It's down to these two cities not because the IOC narrowed the field, but because every other city in the entire world said no.

Seriously, every other city said no.

https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/why-no-one-wants-to-host-the-2022-olympics-225450509.html

 

[User-E]

The Olympic sites in Russia are already abandoned and falling into disrepair. I've seen many pics of old venues that cost millions to build and no one uses them once the games are over.