Sunday, November 29, 2009

On the moose ...

If you’re going walking in the woods near Loftahammer, Sweden, be on the lookout for moose – especially those who have been eating fermented fallen apples. While moose normally run away from humans, if they’ve been supping on the apples they can become aggressive – and, it seems, aggressive enough to kill. A man who was arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife last September was cleared after police decided she was probably killed by a moose - a decision they made after finding moose hair and saliva on his wife’s clothes. Thank goodness for forensics but it's tragic about the apple-affected moose.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Sky high

A 56-cm (22") high figurine of King Kong, as used in the original movie about the giant ape, recently sold at auction at Christie's in London for $217,450. The figurine was used in the final scene of the movie where the ape attempts to fend off fighter planes as it stands atop the Empire State Building. How could you let something like that go?

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Drawing a conclusion

This is from Sydney's The Daily Telegraph yesterday and highlights the power of drawing .... this "crude" sketch has led to an arrest in a murder case. Details can be found here.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Set phaser to "stun"

New technology news tells of scientists showing off a device that would be more at home on Star Trek - a "phaser". Alas at this point, we're still in trouble if the aliens come - unless they're tiny worms called nematodes - because that's currently the only thing the phaser seems to work on. What are the chances?

Monday, November 16, 2009

Eating it up

It makes you wonder about how different the world would be if everyone had access to the same information. In the news this morning, there's a report from Moscow of three homeless men who killed another man, ate parts of his body and sold some of the meat to a kebab stand. The three men were reportedly acting out of "personal hostility toward the victim". Now, if they'd read the newspapers last week, they may have claimed a different motivation - after a man charged with cannibalism received a reduced sentence, if any (I really do need a mobile internet connection that works well - or to note these things down when I read them) because he said he was "starving". I'm not sure if he murdered his victim ... oh wait, here it is ... in Russia, a judge reduced the sentence of a man who had killed his mother (after she had refused to give him money for drink) and then eaten part of her a couple of days later because he was hungry and had to eat. Mmmm ... or rather, hmmmm, what will they think of next in way of defences?

Saturday, November 14, 2009

2000 and counting

Life seems to get busier at times but we still find time for the important things - which is why I've just hit the 2000 post mark here. More to come.

Why don't they just say so?

A recent JB HiFi Catalogue featured a range of DVDs which boasted covers with lenticular printing. I suspected that meant those where the images changes and looks like 3-D and that seems to be what it is, but why didn't they just say so?

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

A matter of record

French President Nicholas Sarkozy appears to have been caught out in a fib. A photo was posted or Facebook which shows him chipping away at the Berlin Wall on the night it came down. Only problem is, is that from official council records it appears he was in Paris that day and would probably not have reached Berlin until two days later. It's amazing because, if it is true that he wasn't there on the day, why would he want to claim he was? Surely being there at all is enough of a slice of history.

Sign of the times?

The new Limited Collector's Edition DVD of Twilight is "brimming" with special features - one of which is a digital copy so, as was noted in the review in today's The Daily Telegraph "(Twihards) can carry the movie everywhere on an iPod or iPhone". What will they think of next? And are there any types of copy protection on the digital copy so Twihards (I don't like the use of this word because I know some and they are very nice people - but it is an amazing neologism (new-word-combination if that in itself was a word ... which I am sure it is but can't find on the dictionary this morning ... of course it helps if you spell it correctly ... not as neogolism - you have to love spell check) and is kind of fun to say - especially if you say it over and over again quickly.

Tourist tax

What will they think of next? First it's parking fees at Sydney's popular beaches and now there's talk of a tourist tax on visitors to the Blue Mountains - plus more parking meters as well! What happened to the land of the free - oops wrong country.