Some of you may remember a couple of posts from last year (here and here, with a follow-up here) about a woman who sued her ear-candler for allegedly injuring her during an ear-candling, ear-candling being a procedure where somebody sticks…
There are various software tools available that will let you determine the "grade level" and/or complexity of a particular piece of text. The Sunlight Foundation ran a couple of decades' worth of the Congressional Record through one of them, and the…
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a Pennsylvania man accused of harboring a wallaby has pleaded no contest to that charge, and was sentenced last week to one year of probation. Now comes the part where I go learn something about…
From "The Proof of Innocence," a paper by Dimitri Krioukov, a physicist at the University of California (San Diego): According to this post at Physics Central (via Neatorama), Krioukov got a ticket for running a stop sign, and submitted the paper to support…
If so, please contact the British Transport Police, who are looking for two hibernating tortoises that were in the trunk of a green Mazda 325 that was stolen on Saturday. “As well as being valuable,” said Constable Kristene Mikkonen, “the…
Departure from: MOON Arrival at: HONOLULU, HAWAII, U.S.A. Flight No.: APOLLO 11 Cargo: MOON ROCK AND MOON DUST SAMPLES Nothing else to declare, I guess. Except that they had just Walked on the F*#%ing Moon! Probably…
Here's some free advice. If you find yourself telling someone that you are "invisible" and "unstoppable," and the person you are telling that to is a police officer, you are neither one of those things. I guess that's really all there…
"The following is not a joke patent," says the priority claim of U.S. Patent No. 8,011,991 B2. "Its [sic] completely serious and is a serious undertaking to obtain a patent." That may be (and it was successful), but it's also…
I want to end this week with one more follow-up on last week’s revelation that the new set of federal insurance billing codes has some real gems in it, the most puzzling to me being the code for “struck by…
A while back I noticed, but didn't post about, the fact that several Italian scientists had been charged with manslaughter for failing to predict a 6.3 earthquake that devastated the town of L'Aquila in 2009 and killed dozens of people….