Weird News Thread ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Here's Something That Doesn't Happen Every Day...

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/...3.htm&sc=reodd

HOUSTON (Reuters) - An exploding vending machine turned the coolant freon into phosgene, a poisonous gas used as a chemical weapon in World War One, and forced the evacuation of 10 people from a Texas hospital, officials said on Thursday.

A food service employee was working on the refrigerated soft drink machine at the Park Place Medical Center in Port Arthur, Texas, when a small explosion and fire occurred inside it on Wednesday morning, Port Arthur Fire Marshal Mark Mulliner said.

"When freon gas from the cooling system came into contact with the heat from the fire, it changed composition to a phosgene gas," Mulliner said. Phosgene irritates the lungs, eyes, mouth and nose and, in strong enough concentrations, causes fatal amounts of fluid to build up in the lungs.


Ten people on the third floor of the hospital were evacuated for several hours while the area was ventilated, said Heather Ross of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Two firefighters were kept in the hospital overnight for observation, Ross said. "We were fortunate one of our officers who was first on the scene had some familiarity with phosgene and quickly evacuated the area," Mulliner said.


Ross said state Homeland Security officials had to be notified of the incident because of phosphene's possible use as a chemical weapon. Mulliner said the incident appeared to be a "freak accident." "I've been here 27 years and I've never seen anything like this," he said.



06/25/04 07:47

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[Jolie Rouge]

Arctic fox found in ship's trash bin
New home at Seattle zoo
Friday, June 25, 2004 Posted: 6:55 PM EDT (2255 GMT)



The arctic fox's usual habitat is in extreme northern tundra and coastal areas.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science....ap/index.html


SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- An arctic fox that apparently survived on garbage for two weeks after becoming an inadvertent stowaway on a ship will be displayed at a zoo, officials say.

The blueish brown fox is believed to have boarded the ship during a port stop in the Aleutian Islands. An employee found the animal in the vessel's trash bin after it arrived at a shipyard last month. "The first thing I thought was, 'Boy he's been in here awhile,"' said Cooter Whitaker, a Samson Tug and Barge terminal manager.

Woodland Park Zoo curator Dana Payne said the animal will be the zoo's first arctic fox. About 45 of the animals are found in North American zoos, she said.

The stowaway is "not shy about people," appears to be elderly and likely would have difficulty surviving in the wild, Payne said. It has been quarantined to determine if it has rabies, but could make its public debut by Labor Day. The fox has gained weight since its arrival on a diet of frozen mice and quail, and had surgery to remove a lump on his side, zoo officials said.

Adult arctic foxes are about 3 1/2 feet from the nose to the tip of the tail, weigh 6 to 10 pounds and are found in tundra and treeless coastal areas of North America, Iceland, Greenland, Scandinavia and Siberia.

[Jolie Rouge]

Pigeons lead to hidden Renaissance fresco
Friday, June 25, 2004 Posted: 10:09 AM EDT (1409 GMT)



A Renaissance fresco found by an art restoration team while repairing Valencia's cathedral.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science....ap/index.html

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Pigeons fluttering through a hole in the ceiling of a Spanish cathedral led an art restoration team to discover a hidden Renaissance fresco of winged angels that had been covered by a false ceiling for more than 300 years.

The team had been working on the baroque dome of the cathedral in Valencia for more than a month, removing gray paint and fending off birds flying in and out of the hole, Valencia's regional government said Thursday.

Underneath, the experts had been hoping to find Renaissance artwork cited in centuries-old cathedral records, although they feared it might be ruined. Their stroke of serendipity came Tuesday when they were drawn to the hole by the pigeons and their cooing.

One of the team leaders, Javier Catala, stuck a digital camera inside, shot blindly and came back with partial but spectacular images of a well-preserved fresco believed to be more than 26 feet in diameter.

The photos show parts of four winged angels against a starry blue background, all surrounded by gold-leaf trim.

The baroque ceiling turned out to be a false one that masked a fresco completed by Italian painters Francesco Pagano and Paolo de San Leocadio in 1481. They were hired by papal envoy Rodrigo Borja, a Spaniard who went on to become Pope Alexander VI.

The space between the ceiling and the fresco was 32 inches at its widest point, providing plenty of room for a bird's nest.

The duo of Italian artists served as official Vatican painters throughout Alexander VI's papacy and before that when he was archbishop of Valencia, doing other paintings in churches in the southeast Spanish region.

The fresco is important because it's one of the earliest examples of Italian Renaissance art being imported to Spain, said Fernando Lopez, an art historian who works at the Valencia government's main library.

It is also remarkable because the fresco technique -- watercolors painted on wet plaster -- was rare in Spain then and this one is in such good shape, Lopez said.

Normally, baroque artists covering up an existing work would scrape it off. "This time they did not. They left an air pocket," Lopez said. "That is the big surprise, basically."

Covering up one kind of art with another simply reflected shifting tastes over the centuries, not a deliberate snub, said Carmen Perez, another art historian who was in on the find. "The ones who have a reputation for following fashion are women. But art follows fashion more than we do," she said.

Italian art expert, writer and researcher Stefano Sieni said Pagano and de Leocadio were minor figures, but typical of roving Renaissance artists -- "sponges who took in what was around them, the techniques, the artistic and social influences" -- and carried them abroad. "They had their market, their supporters, but were not great masters," Sieni said in Rome.

The baroque work covering the fresco was ordered in 1674 when church officials deemed that smoke from candles had darkened the fresco, the Valencia government said.

Records show that when the Italians finished the fresco, church officials didn't like it and refused to pay the agreed fee of 3,000 gold ducats. The painters appealed to the governor of Valencia and won.

After the restoration team presents a technical report, the Roman Catholic Church and the Valencian regional government will decide whether to strip away the baroque ceiling and display the fresco, Spanish officials said.

The cathedral in Valencia dates back to 1262, but it wasn't completed until the late 18th century.



Associated Press writer Tom Rachman contributed to this report from Rome.

[Jolie Rouge]

Web Posts May Hold Clues to Terrorism
By ANICK JESDANUN

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...90.htm&sc=1700

NEW YORK (AP) - With basic tools and skills, Internet sleuths can learn much from Web sites and online discussion boards beyond what terror groups and their sympathizers may be saying in the open.

All computers on the Internet have a unique identification number known as the Internet Protocol, or IP, address. By determining the IP address for the computer used to post a message, image or video, investigators may be able to track down a suspect.

First, an online gumshoe would go to the company that hosts the forum where a message appears. Records there should show the IP address associated with each request for each Web page, said Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass.

Once investigators figure out the poster's IP address, they can check public databases to determine to whom, usually an Internet service provider, that address had been assigned.


The ISP may know the customer who used the address at a particular time and have credit card, address or phone information on that customer.


If the IP address belongs to a university or a business, officials there may have additional information about its students or employees. If it traces to a cybercafe, its owner may have customer records. At minimum, investigators can narrow the location.


In the case of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, investigators traced e-mails sent by his kidnappers to a service provider in an apartment complex in Karachi.


Investigators then asked each subscriber to retrieve their e-mails, and copies of the kidnappers' messages turned up on the laptop of one subscriber, who was then arrested and later convicted.


Jimmy Doyle, a former computer crimes investigator with the New York Police Department, listed a few tools he considers part of Computer Crime Investigator 101:


Tracerouting, a technique for tracing the path taken by e-mail, Web traffic and other data. Investigators may know the IP address of a Web site; tracerouting helps investigators locate companies providing hosting and other support services. Whois databases, which store records on domain names and IP addresses. These records are generally publicly accessible.


Doyle, now director of professional services for Guidance Software Inc., said his company's product, Encase, can also help recover deleted files. Let's say a posting is traced back to a cybercafe or a university. Encase and competitors' products can help recover bits from computers there for additional clues. Smith said clues can also come from the makeup of Web sites and video posted.

Sophisticated users try to cover their track. ``The problem is that there are so many little ways you have to cover yourself,'' Smith said, ``you could slip up.''



06/26/04 21:24

[Jolie Rouge]

Close Call for Toddler as Elk Crushes Bed

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...d&idq=/ff/stor y/0002%2F20040621%2F0951046988.htm&sc=reodd

HELSINKI (Reuters) - An elk jumped through a townhouse window and crashed into a toddler's bed, scratching the cheek of a sleeping two-year-old and wreaking havoc in a Finnish family's home at the weekend, police said.

The toddler's mother was shocked to find the beast in her bed and ran to a neighbor for help. "(We) were sitting in the living room and all of a sudden we heard a terrible clamor and clatter, as if an earthquake had begun," Mari Lahti told Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat. "We opened the door and saw an elk in our bed."

The elk then jumped on to her son's bed, crushing it but only scratching the boy's cheek with its hoof. It rampaged through the house and fled through another window.


A spokesman for the Kokkola police in western Finland told Reuters that young elks had been wandering in the residential area, which is close to forests. "These houses have big windows that start low near the ground... It could be that when they see another elk mirrored on the window, the elks go through," inspector Erkki Kerola said.


06/21/04 09:51

[Jolie Rouge]

Monica Finally Speaks: 'He Destroyed Me'


Monica Lewinsky, who likely has much to do with the extraordinary success of Bill Clinton's autobiography, "My Life," has told a British television broadcaster that she feels betrayed by Clinton since he failed to acknowledge in his book how he destroyed her life, reports Reuters.

The infamous former White House intern told Britain's ITV that she was disappointed with how Clinton described their affair in the book. "I really didn't expect him to talk in detail about the relationship," she said. "But what I was hoping and did expect, was for him to acknowledge and correct the inaccurate and false statements that he, his staff, and the Democratic National Committee made about me when they were trying to protect the presidency."

Lewinsky admitted she "was really upset" when she heard Clinton say on "60 Minutes" that he had the affair with her "for the worst possible reason--because I could." Lewinsky, who is now 30 years old, told ITV, "I have spent the past several years working so hard to just move on and to try and build a life for myself." She accuses Clinton of trying to rewrite history. "He says he was proud of the way that he defended the presidency at my expense," she tells ITV. "In the process he destroyed me, and that was the way he was going to have to do that, to get through impeachment. I was a young girl and to hear him saying some of the things he was saying today--it's a shame." She insisted the relationship was mutual "from the way it started all the way through."

Read transcripts from Monica's (racy) video deposition before the U.S. Senate in February 1999. http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/resou.../lewinsky.html





Meanwhile, Clinton's former flame Gennifer Flowers says she might sue the ex-president for lying about her in his new book, reports The New York Post. She hasn't actually read the book yet, but others have told her enough about it so she could issue this statement to the media: "I have learned that Bill Clinton has repeated his lies about me, and I am sickened by his continued disregard for the truth. [He] pretends to be contrite, but he continues to bear false witness against his neighbor. He is a national disgrace." Clinton admits he had an affair with Flowers, but denies her claim that it lasted 12 years.

[Jolie Rouge]

Lost World Thought Buried in Arctic Ice

An international team of scientists led by the University of Alaska will survey the depths of the ice-capped Arctic Ocean and expect to find a lost world of living fossils and exotic new species of fish, reports Reuters. The project leaders called the area the "world's oldest sea water--a vast, still pool unstirred for millennia, walled by steep ridges and lidded with ice."

Robot submarines and sonar will be sent into the depths of the frigid Arctic Ocean to track down mysterious sea life--much of which may be at risk from global warming. The water temperature is 32 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. "This is the world's refrigerator where change has happened far more slowly than in other oceans," researcher Russ Hopcroft of the University of Alaska told Reuters. The underwater census could easily double the number of species known in the Arctic. Funding for the project comes from governments, companies, and private donors.


What might they find? Ron D'Or, chief scientist of the Census of Marine Life, thinks they could see living creatures that we have only known as fossils, such as the trilobite that flourished 300 million years ago and looks much like an oversized modern woodlice. If the polar icecap melts, this may be the final opportunity to study the Arctic as more southerly species invade the area. In addition, increased shipping could accidentally introduce new creatures to the Arctic Ocean and disrupt the pristine ecology, noted D'Or.




Here's an unusual clue that the Arctic is dangerously warming.

Shrub census shows Alaskan Arctic losing its cool
May 30, 2001 Posted: 3:30 PM EDT (1930 GMT)

By Richard Stenger -- CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science...rub/index.html

(CNN) -- Aerial pictures show small trees in the Alaskan tundra have bulked up in size and number in recent decades, a find that lends support to the widespread scientific view that the Arctic expanse is steadily warming.

Climate patterns elsewhere could be influenced by the trend in the Alaskan Arctic, which has served as an important sink for global carbon in the past, researchers said Wednesday.

A hinterland of mountains and plains, grass, snow and ice, broken up by the occasional stand of small hardy trees, the remote region has gradually warmed since about 1850, capped with an accelerated rise over the last three decades, scientists have theorized.

Experimental models suggest a burst of shrub growth should have accompanied the temperature rise. Government geophysicists said they now found direct evidence of it, having pored over aerial pictures that document changes in the ground cover over the past 50 years.

"We found distinctive, and in some cases, dramatic increases in the height and diameter of individual shrubs," wrote geophysicist Matthew Sturm and colleagues in the May 31 edition of the journal Nature.

The research team found growth increases in 36 of 66 study locations. In some cases the shrub cover doubled. It stayed the same in 30 places. Nowhere did it retreat. Alder trees lead the growth advance, followed by birch and willow.

The tundra transformation took place in a pristine stretch between the Brooks Range and the Arctic coast, marked by few human or natural disturbances.

"So we attribute much of the increase in the abundance of shrubs to the recent change in climate," wrote Sturm and his associates, who work for the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.

The rising tree population could disrupt the natural processes that cycle snow and energy through the region and increase the amount of carbon it stores, according to the researchers.

Scientists presume that carbon sinks can slow the effects of global warming by trapping the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. But the net effect of the changing Alaskan Arctic on world climate remains unknown.

"When you increase the shrub cover you trap more snow, which keeps the soil warmer," said Sturm, calling by cellphone 70 miles east of Nome, Alaska, in a small village that serves as his base to study seasonal snow changes. "We're not sure how the trend will go."

[Jolie Rouge]

Use ATMs? This Will Make You Queasy

Which has more germs?

Your bank's ATM machine or the doorknob on almost any public restroom?

The surprising answer is the ATM machine, News-Medical.net reports of research from the University of Arizona even though 64 percent of respondents in a survey picked the restroom doorknob. The scariest part is that most of us don't know which objects we and our children commonly touch that harbor germs.

Thanks to Arizona environmental microbiologist Charles Gerba, a.k.a. Dr. Germ, you'll want to wear gloves everywhere you go.

The items that have the most germs are:

--Playground equipment

--Picnic tables

--ATMs

--Kitchen sinks

--Office desks

--Computer keyboards

--Escalator handrails


Dr. Germ says the kitchen sink is more contaminated with bacteria than the toilet bowl and garbage can. Your office desk, computer keyboard, and office building's elevator buttons have more germs than the toilet seats in the office. Here's the most surprising finding of all: Outdoor port-o-potties are actually cleaner than picnic tables, shopping cart handles, escalator handles, and playground equipment.


"This survey shows that people have a false sense of security when it comes to germs," said Gerba. "This lack of knowledge about where germs lurk is a real health problem, because people touch these objects and 80 percent of infections are spread through hand contact. The solution is to practice proper hand hygiene by washing with soap and water or by using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer such as Purell." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agrees. Washing your hands will help prevent the spread of germs that can make us sick.

[Jolie Rouge]

Budslinging
How beer commercials ape political ads (and why they shouldn't).
By Seth Stevenson
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:53 PM PT

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102722/




The spot: A familiar-looking talking lizard, while shooting the breeze with another talking lizard, mentions that Miller was bought by South African Breweries. Thus, he notes, Miller is not eligible to hold elective office in the United States, and can't run for "President of Beers." "Oh, that's too bad," his lizard buddy replies. "Miller ran all those commercials for nothing." In a separate, related spot, a donkey consults with the Budweiser Clydesdales. They, too, are surprisingly well-informed about Miller's corporate parentage.

Last week, at an industry gala I went to (oh, the swanky hobnobbing I endure in the name of research), a veteran ad director mentioned his work on a Budweiser campaign. He said it was wonderful to deal with a client that's so "confident" in its own image. By contrast, he said, when a company is "skittish," that shows up in the ads it makes, too. Consumers can smell fear.

It's an interesting thought, given the surprisingly nasty ad war going on now between Bud and Miller. Miller started it, but I was a tad shocked when Bud responded. It seemed beneath them. Almost ... insecure.


It began when Miller launched its "President of Beers" campaign. In these mock political ads, a Miller spokesman debates a (mute) Budweiser Clydesdale. He argues, using politician-y, clenched-thumb hand gestures, that America needs a "President"—and not a "King"—of beers. It's a shot at Budweiser's well-known (and carefully nurtured) nickname.

Something about these ads must have struck a nerve over at Anheuser-Busch. It seems the Bud guys could not stomach this bold attack on the heart of their brand—not only the "King of Beers" slogan but even the beloved, majestic Clydesdale.

So they replied with disproportionate force. Some reports say that A-B execs gave an order to "unleash the dawgs." They ran print ads calling Miller the "Queen of Carbs." And in three separate television spots, Bud notes that Miller is South African-owned, and thus by law not eligible to run for president of beers.

(This assumes, of course, that beer-president campaigns use electoral guidelines akin to those of standard, non-beer, U.S. presidential campaigns, and that corporate parentage determines beer-citizenship status. But I'm OK with that assumption—electoral beer law is hazy on the matter, and the beer constitution offers no clear answers.)

Bud's dirty work gets carried out by an assortment of talking animals. The swamp chameleons,* Louie and Frank, have been exhumed after several years' absence. And who better, when you need to get nasty, than cold-blooded, highly sarcastic reptiles? I did, however, feel it was an error to enlist the Budweiser donkey in the fight. The donkey was nothing but sweetness and light when it made its debut in a Super Bowl ad this year. Now it's down in the ditch with the lizards, and a promising new character has been tainted forever. Worse still, the Clydesdales make cameo appearances in the donkey spots. No way should the Clydesdales go negative. They're far too important to the brand; their appeal stems entirely from their wholesomeness and majesty; and so they should be held above the fray at all costs. Badly done, Bud.

In fact, I'd argue the entire Bud response is a big mistake.

Yes, in one sense, Bud's counterstrike is brilliant. Miller was set to milk this President of Beers conceit all the way into November (paralleling the real election), and no doubt had sundry plans for developing it over weeks and months. Now Bud, with this utter deluge of lizard and donkey spots (I think I've seen more of them than I've seen of the original Miller ads), has strangled the campaign in its infancy. There's no way for Miller to just ignore the South Africa thing—they've been put on the defensive. And your average domestic swill drinker might actually be swayed by Bud's classic pander to beer nationalism. (Funny how beer-campaign candidates, just like the real ones, so quickly resort to calling their opponents un-American.)

But just because Bud could castrate the Miller campaign with a casual flick of its wrist, should it have? There's a chance Miller will find some clever way to turn this around. (After all, the President of Beers campaign came from Weiden+Kennedy—Nike's ad agency. W+K is more than capable of whipping up a great response.) If that happens, suddenly Bud is mud wrestling with a competitor it shouldn't even acknowledge. Bud's got a massive market share lead, and it gains nothing by trading blows with the distant No. 2.



Grade: C+. A huge part of Bud's strength as a brand is that confidence the ad director talked about. Bud knows exactly who it is, what it stands for, and what people want from it. It's the alpha-beer. It should have simply ignored Miller's nips at its heels. By reacting, so quickly and so disproportionately, Bud shows fear. Consumers hate that.



Correction, June 26, 2004: This piece initially called the Budweiser lizards "swamp iguanas." They're actually chameleons.

[Jolie Rouge]

Friendly Dog Prevents Killing Spree?

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/...=20040616NY835

TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian man, driving a car packed with weapons and ammunition, was intent on killing as many people as possible in a Toronto neighborhood but gave up the plan at the last minute when he encountered a friendly dog, police said on Thursday.

The middle-aged man, who police said was mentally disturbed, had planned to carry out the shooting spree on Wednesday to ensure he would be put in jail permanently, Toronto police said. He had set himself up in an east-end park to load his weapons and then planned to drive around shooting. He later told police that a dog then approached and started playing with him.

The encounter melted the man's heart, and he then went in search of police to give himself up, police said. "He happens to be a pet lover, and decided that since there was such a nice dog in the area, that people were too nice and he wasn't going to carry out his plan," Detective Nick Ashley told reporters.

Police found 6,000 rounds of ammunition, two rifles, a shotgun, a semi-automatic pistol, a revolver and an air rifle in the man's car, along with a machete and a hunting knife. The car also contained a throwing knife, a camouflage mask and netting.

He had recently arrived in Toronto from New Brunswick.

James Paul Stanson, 43, has been charged with a variety of weapons-related offenses and appeared in court for a bail hearing on Thursday.



06/25/04 07:56

[Jolie Rouge]

Alien Abduction Tales Offer Clues on Memory

Study: Distress Doesn't Necessarily Validate Traumatic Memories

By Jennifer Warner -- WebMD Medical News
Reviewed By Michael Smith, MD
on Friday, June 25, 2004
http://webcenter.health.webmd.netsca.../89/100279.htm

Recalling a traumatic memory may provoke severe distress in people, even if the memory may be a product of their own imagination, according to a new study.


The study showed that people who claim to have been abducted by aliens show the same signs of distress, such as increased heart rate, sweating, and muscle tension, shown by people recalling more plausible traumatic events, such as wartime experiences.


Researchers say these signs of distress are often viewed as a testament to authenticity of a person's memory of a traumatic event, such as childhood abuse. But the researchers say these results show that physiological responses should not be used to verify traumatic memories in the evaluation of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).


Alien Memories Provoke Distress

In the study, researchers recruited people who said they had been abducted by aliens and had them describe their alien encounter as well as other stressful, happy, or neutral memories.


The researchers converted those recollections into 30-second narratives and played them back to the "abductees" while measuring their heart rate, sweat production, and facial muscle tension. For comparison, researchers also played the tapes to a group of people who had no memories of alien abductions.


The study showed that people who said they had been abducted by aliens had strong distressful reactions to the stressful and alien abduction narratives and weaker reactions to the others. The comparison group had little reaction to any of the stories.


The study also showed that people who said they were abducted by aliens also scored higher on measures of psychological traits that make them more likely to experience alterations in consciousness, to have a rich fantasy life, and to endorse unconventional beliefs.


Researchers say that for people who believe they have been abducted by aliens, recalling their abduction can provoke physiological reactions similar to those evoked by more verifiable stressful memories. Therefore, they say physiological responses are not a valid indicator of whether a memory is real or not.


"Although improbable traumatic memories (e.g. being sexually probed on a spaceship) provoke physiological reactions comparable to those provoked by more conventional and verifiable traumatic memories (e.g. a firefight in Vietnam), one should not conclude that PTSD patients are reporting false memories of trauma," write researcher Richard McNally of Harvard University and colleagues in the July issue of Psychological Science. "Conversely, the physiological markers of emotion that accompany recollection of a memory cannot be taken as evidence of the memory's authenticity," they conclude.


SOURCES: McNally, R. Psychological Science, July 2004; vol 15: pp 493-497. News release, American Psychological Society.