Eideard

Neil Parry fought in court for 17 months for justice

An Australian man has been paid thousands of dollars in compensation after being wrongly accused of smuggling ecstasy in shampoo bottles.

Neil Parry of Darwin spent three days in jail after being arrested at the city’s airport last year. But his bottles were found to contain shampoo and conditioner, not 1.6kg of liquid ecstasy as alleged.

Mr Parry said the AUS$100,000 payout from customs “was not worth it”.

He told ABC radio he had spent 17 months in a legal battle with the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, and that most of the compensation would go towards his legal costs.

In a statement, the customs service said “mistakes were made during the presumptive testing of Mr Parry’s goods” and additional drug-testing procedures had been introduced.

Mr Parry’s boat and the homes of two friends were searched during the customs investigation.

I know we all tire of asking these questions. Why does it take 17 months for governments to admit they’ve screwed up? It’s bad enough they’ve messed with the life of an innocent citizen – but, they care so much about protecting their pimply-ass bureaucratic turf that someone like Mr. Parry has to hire a lawyer and sue to get any compensation for being locked-up and his home, his friends, being tossed by the coppers. They are the criminals.

They let me go; but, required I had to exit the UK within 30 days. They had to apply some sort of sanction to cover their stupidity.

The world’s oldest scientific academy, the Royal Society, has made its historical journal, which includes over 8000 scientific papers, permanently free to access online.

The plague, the Great Fire of London and even the imprisonment of its editor – just a few of the early setbacks that hit the Royal Society’s early editions of the Philosophical Transactions. But against the odds the publication, which first appeared in 1665, survived. Its archives offer a fascinating window on the history of scientific progress over the last few centuries.

Nestling amongst illustrious papers by Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin are some undiscovered gems from the dawn of the scientific revolution, including gruesome tales of students being struck by lightning and experimental blood transfusions.

RTFA – more important, visit the site. Enjoy wandering through the history of many minds in the quest for knowledge.

A man was electrocuted and died as he and a female partner tried to steal copper wire from an electrical vault in South Gate on Saturday afternoon, police said.

The woman tried to pull him away from the vault when it caught fire and exploded, but the electricity traveled through her body and she received severe burns, South Gate police spokesman Lt. Keith Huff said…

Two small children were found in a truck 15 feet from the accident but were not injured. They were being held by childrens’ services workers, Huff said.

The electrical vault was on a lot at 3064 Firestone Blvd., at the corner of South Gate Avenue. The lot was the former site of Liberty Cable Company but has been unoccupied for more than a year, Huff said.

No one ever said thieves had to be smart. Or live long productive lives.

Police investigators entering Potvin’s home

A man who rigged a booby trap in his home to protect himself from intruders killed himself this week when he triggered it by accident.

Surete du Quebec officers said 75-year-old Jos Lawrence Potvin of Levis, a suburb south of Quebec City, died when he accidentally pulled a string running along the floor of the entrance to his bedroom that was attached to the trigger of a rifle.

Police found his body inside his trailer home Thursday morning. Suicide was ruled out.

A hunter, Potvin lived alone and had complained to police in the past that people were trying to rob him, although police could not find any proof. His valuables were kept in his bedroom.

Ayuh.

A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin’s best-kept secret.

Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice. Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical “cloud forest”.

What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem…

The tiny tropical island of Ascension is not easy to find. It is incredibly remote, located 1,600km from the coast of Africa and 2,250km from South America…

Back in 1836, the young Charles Darwin was coming to the end of his five-year mission to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no naturalist had gone before.

Aboard HMS Beagle, he called in at Ascension. En route from another remote volcanic island, St Helena, Darwin wasn’t expecting much.

“We know we live on a rock, but the poor people of Ascension live on a cinder,” the residents of St Helena had joked before his departure…

Amid this wild desolation, Darwin began to hatch a plot.

Out of the ashes of the volcano, he would create a green oasis – a “Little England”.

RTFA and have a glimpse of how Darwin and his close friend Joseph Hooker began the task of terra-forming this little cinder of an active volcanic island into a tropical paradise.

Reflect upon what is needed, what must be done in similar vein to recapture much of the life and beauty of this planet – already sacrificed to profit and greed. Good sense, science and economic success needn’t be mutually exclusive – especially in an age where greater knowledge allows us greater opportunities for combinations of all of the above.

Spidey he ain’t. Or wasn’t.

New York police said a man fell 11 stories to his death while trying to climb down to his girlfriend’s apartment from the top of her building.

Investigators said Steven Wright tried to climb from the roof of the building to his girlfriend’s 13th floor apartment at about 5:30 a.m. because he was locked out after an argument, the New York Daily News reported.

Police said Wright tied his shoelaces and belt to a pipe and tried to inch down to the top-floor window of the apartment belonging to his girlfriend, Lanecca Austin, 31, but he instead fell to a second-floor patio roof.

Officers said they do not suspect foul play in the incident and Austin, who was asleep with the TV on, was not aware of Wright’s fall until police knocked on her door.

Cops woke her up and told her what happened.

Not the best part of the gig.

A 20-year-old Romanian man had a lucky escape after stowing away on a plane flying from Vienna to London.

The man hid himself in the rear wheel compartment of the plane which landed at Heathrow Airport on Sunday. He was taken into police custody in London but later released without charge.

He had bruises and hypothermia from outside temperatures as low as -41C.

He survived because the plane flew at a low altitude to avoid stormy weather.

The man apparently got under a fence at Schwechat airport in Vienna and climbed into the undercarriage of the first plane he saw without knowing its destination…

It flew without passengers to Heathrow, where the Romanian was picked up by police and arrested for stowing away…

A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said the stowaway was “very lucky” to be alive.

“If they don’t find the right part to stow away, they can be crushed when the undercarriage comes up,” he said.

He added: “Because of the altitude and temperatures during the flight, there is a severe risk to them through exposure and lack of oxygen.

“If that doesn’t kill them, then they could be unconscious when the aircraft descends, and that can mean that when the undercarriage opens again, they will fall out.”

Dummy.

Well, he almost made it to a Darwin Award post.

An auction house says it is selling a rare first edition of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” found in a family’s guest lavatory in southern England.

Christie’s auction house said Sunday the book — one of around 1,250 copies first printed in 1859 — had been on a toilet bookshelf at a family’s home in Oxford.

The book will be auctioned on Tuesday — the 150th anniversary of the publication of the famous work. Christie’s said the book is likely to sell for 60,000 pounds ($99,000).

Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” outlined his theory of natural selection — the foundation for the modern understanding of evolution.

Finding such a work in England is no surprise, of course – nor is the value.

It just occurred to me that a couple hundred years from now people will be turning up antique copies of “Going Rogue” found in some Bible Belt crapper. Do you think it will be worth more than toilet paper?

Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin’s “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution…

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

I’m not. Understand we are “led” by politicians who in general will fall to their knees in fear of religious claptrap in order to stay in office. Clinton did it when his surgeon-general acknowledged that masturbation was normal – and fired her. Obama has discovered that “God bless the United States of America” is the best way to end every speech. The Talibaptist Republicans? – well, they’re in a league of their own.

“The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it’s because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they’ve seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.

“It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There’s still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It’s quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules…”

No doubt, cable TV and the satellite networks will move beyond the cowardice of the theatrical distribution mafia. I expect I’ll get to see the film either downloaded to my DVR – or from iTunes – and circumvent the mob of peasants and villagers with torches.

Thanks, Cinaedh

A woman may have been distracted by talking on her cellphone when she walked into the side of a truck and was crushed to death under its wheels on Front Street in downtown Toronto, police said.

According to investigators, a delivery truck was making a turn from Blue Jays Way onto Front Street just as the 28-year-old woman started across Front Street. Because she was on her cellphone at the time, police said, she didn’t notice the truck, and walked right into the side of it. She fell to the street and was run over by the truck’s rear wheels, police said.

“There’s no way to say definitively yes or no, but it certainly didn’t help that she was talking on the phone while trying to cross a relatively busy street,” said police Sgt. Steve Burrows.

She was pronounced dead at the scene. Police have not released her name.

Police have not announced any charges against the driver of the truck.

She certainly qualified.