Day: June 23, 2010

Trapped drunk driver opens another beer awaiting rescue

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“When you’re lonely…you cling to the things that bring you comfort”

A drunk driver trapped after overturning his car cracked open another can of beer while he waited for emergency crews to rescue him, a New Zealand court was told.

Paul Nigel Sneddon, 47, pleaded guilty to careless driving and drunken driving after being nearly three times over the legal alcohol limit in a district court in the city of Palmerston North.

Police found Sneddon, a former baker, trapped in his overturned Ford Laser on June 1, drinking a can of beer after he failed to take a corner properly and crashed through a wooden barrier, flipping his vehicle.

Defense lawyer Peter Young said that when Sneddon found he could not open the doors, “he had nothing else to do at that point, so he had another beer.”

When asked by police how much he had consumed, Sneddon replied: “Plenty, I’ve been drinking for four days straight.”

Judge Gregory Ross fined him $780 and disqualified him from driving for 10 months. It was his first offence.

Anyone taking bets on whether or not it will be his last offence?

Morality police issue ‘badly veiled’ warnings to 62,000 women

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It feels good to catch a little breeze in summertime

Iranian police have issued warnings to 62,000 women who were “badly veiled” in the Shiite holy province of Qom as part of a crackdown on dress and behaviour.

Colonel Mehdi Khorasani, the provincial police chief, said police had also confiscated around 100 cars for carrying improperly dressed women and said that “encouraging such relaxations are among the objectives of the enemy.”

The population of Qom is more than one million, with most of them concentrated in the city itself which is Shiite Iran’s clerical nerve-centre.

By law, women in the Islamic republic must be covered from head to foot, with their hair completely veiled and social interaction is banned between men and women who are not related.

Iran is known particularly for summertime crackdowns on improperly dressed women but the issue has sparked debate after the hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he “firmly” opposed the crackdown…

His remarks have drawn the wrath of fellow hardliners and several top clerics who have criticised him for opposing the police crackdown…

Meanwhile, like any theocracy, individual sects and their ideological pimps leaders joust to assume the mantle of living prophet.

Oil Industry’s latest favorite Louisiana judge

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The judge who overturned deepwater drilling bans allowing BP to resume oil extraction in the Gulf of Mexico, had shares in Transocean and other firms in the industry, it was revealed.

A Louisiana-based judge Martin Feldman ruled that Barack Obama’s six-month drilling moratorium in the Gulf was unjustified because it assumed that all deepwater drilling was as dangerous as BP’s…

Feldman’s most recent financial disclosure forms show that he was paid dividends from his shares in Transocean, the firm that owned the Deepwater oil rig that exploded in April killing 11 oil workers, prompting America’s worst environmental disaster.

The forms, which relate to the calendar year 2008, also show that he sold shares in Halliburton, which was also involved in the disaster.

Feldman’s other interests included Ocean Energy, Quicksilver Resources, Prospect Energy, Peabody Energy, Pengrowth Energy Trust, Atlas Energy Resources, and Parker Drilling…

Feldman has yet to respond to the disclosures. He is one of many federal judges across the Gulf Coast region with money in oil and gas. Several have disqualified themselves from hearing spill-related claims, while others have sold their holdings so they can preside over many cases being filed.

Sounds like business as usual in Louisiana – and in the Oil industry. A pretense at objectivity may be affected in some American courtrooms; but, not especially for cases involving corporate wealth and power.

It’s the American Way.

Shootout – Australian style

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Two Australian men have been treated in hospital after they decided to shoot each other with an air rifle “to see if it would hurt”.

The men, both aged 34, underwent surgery to remove slug pellets from their bums and legs.

They had been drinking for several hours when they hit upon the plan to shoot each other for fun. They then took turns firing the air rifle at each others’ body parts.

The following day, both men found themselves in severe pain, and went to hospital, where doctors had to remove several slug pellets from their buttocks and thighs…

”They have admitted that it was just stupidity and they wanted to see if it was painful or not.” The friends could face criminal charges over the incident and one of the men involved has had his firearms license confiscated.

Australian men have a habit of doing dangerous things in the name of having a good time.

Earlier this year an Australian man was admitted to hospital after he contracted a rare and deadly disease from eating two slugs as part of a dare.

There’s a comment in here somewhere about maturity, growing up vs. stupidity and inebriation.

I don’t think Aussies have the market cornered on this sort of silliness. But, it gives me a chance to bust balls on one of my fellow blog editors down in Melbourne.

Super-complex organic molecules found in deep space

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Hobby-Eberly telescope

A team of scientists from the Instituto Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of Texas has succeeded in identifying one of the most complex organic molecules yet found in the material between the stars, the so-called interstellar medium. The discovery of anthracene could help resolve a decades-old astrophysical mystery concerning the production of organic molecules in space…

‘We have detected the presence of anthracene molecules in a dense cloud in the direction of the star Cernis 52 in Perseus, about 700 light years from the Sun,’ explains Susana Iglesias Groth, the IAC researcher heading the study.

In her opinion, the next step is to investigate the presence of amino acids. Molecules like anthracene are prebiotic, so when they are subjected to ultraviolet radiation and combined with water and ammonia, they could produce amino acids and other compounds essential for the development of life…

The new finding suggests that a good part of the key components in terrestrial prebiotic chemistry could be present in interstellar matter.

This will freak out the space geeks who believe organic molecules that may have seeded the start of life on Earth could only have originated on other planets. Turns out we may be dealing with complex substances that developed in space.

Holland supplying submarine to hunt pirates

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The Netherlands has agreed to a Nato request to deploy a submarine off the coast of Somalia to combat piracy…

It will be used for reconnaissance in the vast area from the Gulf of Aden deep into the Indian Ocean where Somali pirates have been hijacking commercial vessels for ransom…

The EU has an anti-piracy mission in the same region, Navfor, which is also tasked with protecting World Food Programme ships carrying food aid to Somalia.

Pirates have in the past succeeded in collecting multi-million-dollar ransoms and the head of the Navfor says there has been an upsurge in attacks recently after a period of relative calm…

With warships patrolling along the Somali coast, the pirates have started to operate further away and have even staged some attacks across the Indian Ocean, closer to India than Somalia.

Efforts to fight piracy are complicated by the lack of a functioning central government in Somalia and the lack of an international legal system for people accused of piracy. It is up to individual governments to put suspected pirates on trial if they are captured.

Last week a Dutch court sentenced five Somali men to five years in prison for attacking a Dutch Antilles-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden last year, in the first such case to come to trial in Europe.

I know they wouldn’t waste anything as expensive as a torpedo on gangbangers like this; but, I’m confident that what passes for small arms on a modern submarine will be used – if needed.

Hopefully, surrender will be the order of the day and pirate skiffs will be scuttled, RPGs and long guns confiscated.

These clowns are dumb enough to attack a military vessel every now and then. I wonder if anyone ever told them about submarines?