1469 replies to this topic

[TheDR]

This article is very meta. it feels like something the Onion would write.

A particular highlight for me is the serious BBC summary quote that reads.

Quote

Anyone who follows me on Twitter know 99% of the things I tweet is nonsense”

Does no one in this world have common sense any-more? Both the guy and the overreaction is just spooky. It feels like a form of peer pressure to 'feel outrage'.

[Chyros]

Elementary school students get asshole inspection

http://www.khou.com/...ction/22466107/

Quote

GUSTINE, Texas — Here in Gustine, population 457, what happens at the schoolhouse affects nearly everyone. And something happened Monday that is causing a big controversy in this small town.

"I felt uncomfortable, and I didn't want to do it," said 11-year-old Eliza Medina. "I felt like they violated my privacy."

Parents in Gustine, Texas want answers after elementary students were ordered to pull down their pants.

She was one of about two dozen elementary students who were rounded up in the small town 90 miles southwest of Fort Worth.


Eliza's mother, Maria Medina, said boys were taken to one room, girls to another, and they were ordered "To pull down their pants to check them to see if they could find anything."

Eliza's mom explained that educators "have been finding poop on the gym floor." She can imagine the frustration, but said even for feces on the floor you don't partially strip search a group of students to find the culprit.

"I was furious... I mean, I was furious," Medina said. "If you can't do your job or you don't know what you're doing, you need to be fired. You shouldn't be here."

Eliza said she tried to protest. "I said I didn't want to, but I was told I had to because all the kids had to."

Gustine Independent School District Superintendent Ken Baugh acknowledged that making kids drop their drawers goes too far. "That's not appropriate, and we do not condone that. So you would take disciplinary action."

But Baugh said early into the investigation, his understanding is that the children were told to lower their pants just a little.

Eliza Medina insists it was more than that.

"Like... to where your butt is," is how she put it.

And her mother contends that even if it were just a little (which she doesn't think it was), having kids line up and expose their underwear for inspection is simply unacceptable.

"Wrong is wrong," Medina said.

The superintendent is hoping to have his investigation into this incident wrapped up by Wednesday, after he has heard from all parties involved.

He may yet get an earful on Thursday night, though. Some angry parents are already planning to show up at the school board meeting to demand that someone be held accountable.

"Maybe we can find a much better way to solve this," Superintendent Baugh said.

[Slightly Wonky Robob]

Quote

A fourth-grader in west Texas has been suspended, his father says, because he pretended to have a ring like the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings canon, and said it could make a classmate disappear.

Dad Jason Steward said he was told his son's claim amounted to making a terrorist threat.

Steward took his story to the Odessa (Texas) American on Friday, saying the boy had seen The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies the preceding weekend. He brought a ring to class and told another kid it would make him vanish.

When Steward confronted the school principal to ask what was going on, he said he was told that threatening another child's safety — whether the threats are magical or otherwise -—are not tolerated.

Neither the principal nor the district's superintendent would comment on the matter to the Odessa American. The New York Daily News got wind of the story and followed up with the dad.

"I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend's existence," Steward told the News. "If he did, I'm sure he'd bring him right back."

This isn't his son's first scrape with authority; the boy has been suspended three times already, once for calling a black classmate black, the other for bringing a book to school that had a drawing of a pregnant woman. The family moved to the school district six months ago.

http://www.polygon.c...rd-of-the-rings

[Chyros]

Bob, on 01 February 2015 - 21:17, said:

Quote

A fourth-grader in west Texas has been suspended, his father says, because he pretended to have a ring like the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings canon, and said it could make a classmate disappear.

Dad Jason Steward said he was told his son's claim amounted to making a terrorist threat.

Steward took his story to the Odessa (Texas) American on Friday, saying the boy had seen The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies the preceding weekend. He brought a ring to class and told another kid it would make him vanish.

When Steward confronted the school principal to ask what was going on, he said he was told that threatening another child's safety — whether the threats are magical or otherwise -—are not tolerated.

Neither the principal nor the district's superintendent would comment on the matter to the Odessa American. The New York Daily News got wind of the story and followed up with the dad.

"I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend's existence," Steward told the News. "If he did, I'm sure he'd bring him right back."

This isn't his son's first scrape with authority; the boy has been suspended three times already, once for calling a black classmate black, the other for bringing a book to school that had a drawing of a pregnant woman. The family moved to the school district six months ago.

http://www.polygon.c...rd-of-the-rings

Jesus Christ WAT

Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, anyone?

[TheDR]

This was the haircut I was talking about.

[Chyros]

TheDR, on 02 February 2015 - 01:46, said:

This was the haircut I was talking about.

Fucking rubbish. TRuly a sad moment .

[General]

Bob, on 01 February 2015 - 21:17, said:

Quote

A fourth-grader in west Texas has been suspended, his father says, because he pretended to have a ring like the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings canon, and said it could make a classmate disappear.

Dad Jason Steward said he was told his son's claim amounted to making a terrorist threat.

Steward took his story to the Odessa (Texas) American on Friday, saying the boy had seen The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies the preceding weekend. He brought a ring to class and told another kid it would make him vanish.

When Steward confronted the school principal to ask what was going on, he said he was told that threatening another child's safety — whether the threats are magical or otherwise -—are not tolerated.

Neither the principal nor the district's superintendent would comment on the matter to the Odessa American. The New York Daily News got wind of the story and followed up with the dad.

"I assure you my son lacks the magical powers necessary to threaten his friend's existence," Steward told the News. "If he did, I'm sure he'd bring him right back."

This isn't his son's first scrape with authority; the boy has been suspended three times already, once for calling a black classmate black, the other for bringing a book to school that had a drawing of a pregnant woman. The family moved to the school district six months ago.

http://www.polygon.c...rd-of-the-rings

Suspended three times, once for "calling a black classmate black"... alright, that made me lol but wtf about the other one: "bringing a book to school that had a drawing of a pregnant woman"... so what?

[Alias]

This is 'MURICA, can't have no people teaching my kids about sex! But sawn off limbs, disembowelment and letting three year olds hold loaded guns, go right ahead...

[General]

It is all about religion really. It is same shit here, sex, which is among the most basic instinct of any animal including humans, considered as taboo.

[Krieger22]

Cornish town embroiled in row over plan to rename beauty spot 'Hitler's Walk'

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The most infamous dictator of the 20th century is not – you might think – the sort of figure that any place would readily wish to associate itself with.

Least of all a pretty village on the south coast of Cornwall.

But the small Cornish port of Mevagissey has found itself embroiled in a row over insensitivity and bad taste after deciding to rename a local beauty spot ‘Hitler’s Walk’.

The controversy dates back a full eight decades, to the Thirties, when a local councillor – one Wright Harris – earned a reputation for authoritarianism in his self-appointed role as overseer of harbour fees.

[Slightly Wonky Robob]

Quote

An antivirus program labelled itself as malware, causing some computers it was running on to stop working.

After an update, essential components in two Panda Security antivirus programs became corrupted, leading them to be mistakenly identified as malign and quarantined.

Panda said a fix had been released and warned that rebooting affected systems could exacerbate the issue.

It asked those affected to get in touch so it could help fix their machines.

One security expert noted the irony. "People's first response is to turn [their computer] off and back on again, but in this case it seems like the wrong thing to do," said Prof Alan Woodward, of Surrey University.

The "last thing" people would expect to cause their computers to break down was its security software, he said.

Corrupted files

Panda Security said that the signature file in both its PCOP and its Retail 2015 packages became corrupted.

"The signature file was repaired immediately. Additionally, a solution for all affected products has been automatically deployed. However, in certain environments it is possible for the incident to persist."

It added a list of steps that affected users could take to ensure that their system was clear of the issue.

Prof Woodward said the episode was "not a great advert for Panda". He said he had heard of some companies losing the use of multiple computers to the issue. He added that data loss was a risk if machines were rebooted.

But Panda Security said it was helping people whose machines had stopped working to restore them and that it had no evidence anyone had experienced permanent data loss as a result of the issue.

Some users claimed that the fault had caused their computers to stop working if rebooted

A Panda Security spokeswoman said: "We have solved 90% of the incidents, and support is being given in real time to the ones that still have some issues."

The company said that only 8% of the "millions" of PCOP and Retail 2015 customers were affected by the issue. A spokeswoman refused to be more precise about the figures.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-31851125

[Chyros]

Incredifail!

[Krieger22]

Ireland has mistakenly legalised ecstasy and ketamine for one day

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Ireland has accidentally legalised ecstasy, crystal meth and ketamine.
A legal loophole means that you cannot be arrested for possession until the new legislation is passed.
It does not affect existing laws regarding the supply, possession or the sale of older, more established drugs such as heroin or cocaine, just newer ones.
The Irish minister for health is introducing emergency legislation on Tuesday night to close the loophole.
A government spokesperson said: "It is now important from both a public health and criminal justice perspective that the legislation be enacted as soon as possible."
Ireland's 1977 Misuse of Drugs Act was found unconstitutional by the Irish Court of Appeal on Tuesday morning because both houses of Irish parliament had not agreed to the new additions, meaning that the drugs currently prohibited by the Act are legal.
This includes up to 100 drugs, including "legal highs". Health Minister Leo Varadkar said: "All carry health risks... and can lead to death."

[Chyros]

Damn, and here I was thinking they'd gotten enlightened .

[Krieger22]

China would like people to stop hiring funeral strippers

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The practice of hiring strippers to perform at funerals in China is nothing new. However, last month, pictures of a funeral strip tease performance in Handan, China circulated on the internet. The fact that the stripper in the photos was seen removing her bra in front of children caused a bit of pearl-clutching, both on the internet and within the Chinese government. Now, the Ministry of Culture is hoping to shut down the practice entirely. According to the Wall Street Journal, the government agency is working with police to crack down on the funeral peep shows hired to draw more mourners to memorial events.

[Chyros]

<the ultimate nightmare>

As you'd expect, this happened in Australia .

Quote

It rained spiders in a town in Australia, with millions of baby spiders falling from the sky during a phenomenon called Angel Hair.

The town of Goulburn in New South Wales witnessed the occurrence last week, with a blanket of spiders coming down from the Southern Tablelands sky, the Goulburn Post reports.

Keith Basterfield, who has been researching Angel Hair for over 10 years, said the spider rain is a natural migration phenomenon.

"What happens is that during a particular time of the year, particularly in May and August, young spiders in the Outback somewhere throw these threads of spiderwebs up in the air and use them as a parachute to detach themselves from the ground and move in large colonies through the sky," he said.

"They fly through the sky and then we see these falls of spider webs that look almost as if it's snowing. We see these vast areas of baby spiders, all coming down at once in the late morning or early afternoon.

"You can know this has happened by either seeing it or spotting what looks like long threads of cotton telegraph poles, power lines and houses. It tends to happen a couple of times per year, usually on clear days with slight winds." He said the conditions were just right in Goulburn for the rain of spiders to take place.

Locals took to the town's community Facebook page to report events: "Anyone else experiencing this Angel Hair or maybe aka millions of spiders falling from the sky right now? I'm 10 minutes out of town and you can clearly see hundreds of little spiders floating along with their webs and my home is covered in them," resident Ian Watson said.

"If you look toward the sun there are millions of them and really high up here, like over 100m or more up, there is also a cotton like substance coming down that is kinda like spider web but not exactly."

Another woman said she saw what looked like silk thread floating through the sky for half an hour: "It was quite amazing," she said.

Australia Museum Naturalist Martyn Robinson told the Sydney Morning Herald that two migration techniques explain why it appears to rain spiders.

A dispersal technique called ballooning is often used by baby spiders, where they climb to the top of vegetation then releases a stream of silk that catches in the wind, carrying the spider away.

"They can literally travel for kilometres... which is why every continent has spiders. Even in Antarctica they regularly turn up but just die," he explained. "That's also why the first land animals to arrive on new islands formed by volcanic activity are usually spiders. You can have entire fields and paddocks and trees festooned with this gossamer or Angel Hair, as some people call it."

A second phenomena that can occur at the same time as ballooning normally happens after heavy rain or floods: "When the ground gets waterlogged, the spiders that live either on the surface of the ground or in burrows in the ground, come up into the foliage to avoid drowning."

The spiders will also throw silk lines up into the air to haul themselves from the ground: "Everywhere a spider goes it leaves a trail of silk, so if it falls off it can get back to where it started. If they use somebody else's silk line, they put their silk line over that. You end up with thick silk roads -- criss-crossing finer silk lines to produce this interwoven shroud. It's all very practical but to our eyes it looks quite beautiful."

http://www.ibtimes.c...ia-town-1501267

[Krieger22]

An American Airlines flight in Texas was delayed by swarming bees

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An American Airlines flight was delayed for more than hour by bees that were swarming under a plane wing when it was parked at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the company said on Thursday.

There were no bees on the plane in the Wednesday incident, which was spotted by a service crew who saw the bees buzzing under the wing.

The airline called in a local beekeeper to handle the bees so the plane from Las Vegas could turn around as a flight to Frankfort, Germany.

"Unfortunately, not long after the beekeeper left, another swarm decided to visit the same aircraft," American Airlines spokeswoman Andrea Huguely said.

The beekeeper was called again to remove the second swarm of bees. No one was stung.

"This was not our first encounter with bees," Huguely said.

[Slightly Wonky Robob]

Quote

Man takes dead cat to animal shelter...turns out to be hand puppet


A man took what he thought was a dead cat to Guernsey's animal shelter on Monday evening, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a muddy, wet hand puppet.

The finder was 'very upset' when he arrived at the GSPCA and was greeted by the shelter's manager Steve Byrne.

Steve looked at the toy and at first thought it was a 'very muddy, wet, insect covered, cold, collapsed small dog with an injured nose'.

After a full check over, which didn't reveal any identification, the man was informed it was in fact a cuddly dog hand puppet.

The pair were soon rolling round with laughter and the GSPCA can now say the hand puppet has been washed and takes pride of place in Steve's office.

The shelter say they're often called about what people think are animals, which end up being something very different...

Here are some highlights:

• A call to a sick seal on a beach was in fact a duvet
  
• A stray pug was called in which was actually a frog
  
• An injured bird was a blonde wig
  
• A hedgehog rescue turned out to be a pine cone
  
• A dead gull hanging from a fence was a carrier bag
  
• An injured crow was a black bag
  
• A turtle on Vazon which was seemingly unbelievable...turned out to be Olivia the turtle, you can donate to her here.

http://www.itv.com/n...be-hand-puppet/


EDIT: Apparently it's a slow news day.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...ernsey-36646100

Edited by Bob, 29 June 2016 - 15:05.

[Krieger22]

French man buys guillotine at auction for 8000 euros, isn't totally sure what to do with it

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What type of person buys a guillotine? Mr. Février said his purchase had nothing to do with any kind of fetish — “I’m not into that scene at all” — and that he was just interested in collecting unique objects, such as “rare pieces of art and racecars with exceptional track records.”

“Aside from work, I like art, traveling, races, being surprised and surprising others,” he replied when asked to describe himself.

He said he had yet to decide where to put his new purchase. “As a father of four, I don’t want to exhibit it in a family setting,” he added.




“Friends and colleagues were mostly surprised and intrigued when I bought it,” Mr. Février said, adding that they had soon conceded that the purchase suited his personality and that many had said they were looking forward to seeing it.

“I think it’s an amusing acquisition,” he said.

[Krieger22]

Dutch man gets arrested for shooting at Apache attack helicopter

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A Marechaussee spokesperson told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that the Apache pilot had reported that he had been shot at while in flight late Thursday morning. The helicopter was able to safely land at Gilze-Rijen Air Base after the incident, with the suspect arrested following Marechaussee consultation with the Netherlands Public Prosecution Service.