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These are an example of animal-like leg construction called digitigrade legs. Apparently, you can actually order a pair, although there’s currently a two month wait. And now for more:
Here’s these guy’s website.
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A 20-year-old woman in Hannibal, Mo., used her 1-year-old son as a shield against a stun gun during an arrest, police allege.
Hannibal Police Capt. James Hark said Maliea A. Martin attempted to protect a man from possibly being shot with a Taser gun by holding her baby in front of him, The Hannibal (Mo.) Courier-Press reported…
The responding officers said that while talking with Martin, 22-year-old Joshua A. McAtee, who lives in Martin’s apartment complex, approached them and began issuing threats.
The officers said when their attempts to calm the man failed one officer threatened to use his Taser on McAtee.
Martin then held the baby in front of McAtee, the officers said.
Martin was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and McAtee was charged with resisting arrest.
Sometimes, there really is nothing like mother’s love.
cnet news
Many people found Google’s search site was extremely slow or inaccessible Thursday, and other reports pointed to troubles with other properties including YouTube, Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Docs, AdSense, and Blogger.
Judging by a Twitter search for #googlefail, the problem was international in scope, though it wasn’t immediately clear how universal the problems were. Google didn’t immediately comment for this story, though it did confirm an earlier Google News outage that lasted about three and a half hours.
Here’s Googles comment:
I’m sure glad I don’t have to reach the ‘cloud’ for my data.
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Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
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| “NO” – I must drill oil wells next to national parks. |
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked President Obama’s choice to be the number two official at the Department of the Interior.
On a vote of 57 to 39, they sustained a filibuster against David Hayes to be deputy interior secretary. It marked the first time the Senate has voted against one of Obama’s nominees.
Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, is leading the fight against Hayes. He says his opposition is not about Hayes’ qualifications. Rather, Bennett says, the administration has not adequately answered his questions about why oil and gas leases in his state — which were approved in the last days of the Bush administration — were canceled by the Obama administration. He called the actions “political.”
The leases were “approved” by dimwit issuing one of his midnight executive orders before he was shoved out the door.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said the disputed leases are near national parks and the Interior Department did not cancel the leases but pulled them for review.
Reid said, “David Hayes will be confirmed. If I have to wait until Al Franken comes, he is going to be confirmed. … Everyone should understand that,” he said Wednesday. “If we happen to lose this today, I will just move to reconsider until we have the votes.”
Cripes – it took reporters reminding another batch of Republicans that hurricane season was coming before they relented on Craig Fugate as the new head of FEMA. And we all remember what a terrific job the Republicans did with that agency.
 What?!?! |
Cold water on waterboarding | Philadelphia Inquirer — Interesting. FYI
A former FBI interrogator who questioned al-Qaeda prisoners testified yesterday that the Bush administration incorrectly declared success from extreme techniques such as waterboarding, when those methods actually were slow, unreliable, and led an important witness to stop talking.
Ali Soufan, testifying to a Senate panel from behind a screen, said his team’s nonthreatening interrogation approach elicited crucial information from al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, including intelligence on Jose Padilla, who was convicted of supporting an al-Qaeda cell.
Soufan said his team had to step aside when CIA contractors took over. They began using harsh methods that caused Zubaydah to “shut down,” Soufan said, and his team had to be called back.
Comments Off on Cranky Geeks Episode #166 — Now on Cage Match
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Today’s Guests:
- Sebastian Rupley, Co-Crank, PCMagCast.com
- Dan Goodin, Reporter, The Register
- Carlos Rodela, Producer, Mevio
The Topics:
- Is Google a Prime Target for Regulators?
- Cell Phone Call Quality is a Disgrace
- Did Sun Microsystems Violate Bribery Laws?
- Microsoft Asks EU for Support, Or Google Will Rule All
- Intel Braces for Huge Fines
- Intel maximum fine discussed at length. AMD disappointed in news coverage. Intel mystified by how to comply.
- Craigslist confirms erotic services shutdown.
- Clearwire to join forces with Cisco.
- Steve Jobs not showing up at Apple Development conference. Jobs gets OK to rip down old house.
- Xbox 360 to challenge Wii.
- Win7 compatibility to be awesome.
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
Bloomberg– The World Health Organization is investigating a claim by an Australian researcher that the swine flu virus circling the globe may have been created as a result of human error.
Adrian Gibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Roche Holding AG’s Tamiflu drug, said in an interview that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus’s origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint.
“One of the simplest explanations is that it’s a laboratory escape,” Gibbs said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. “But there are lots of others.” The World Health Organization received the study last weekend and is reviewing it, Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s assistant director-general of health security and environment, said in an interview May 11. Gibbs, who has studied germ evolution for four decades, is one of the first scientists to analyze the genetic makeup of the virus that was identified three weeks ago in Mexico and threatens to touch off the first flu pandemic since 1968.
Some GIs Forced To Steal Water In Iraq – CBS News — Geez, what next?
Stories of short supplies for American forces in Iraq, such as inadequate body armor or unshielded Hummers, have been around since the war began. CBS affiliate KHOU-TV in Houston has discovered that some soldiers were forced to ration water,
perhaps as little as 2-3 liters per day, because there was never enough.
It is less than the one gallon minimum a day that an Army manual says is necessary just to survive in a desert environment. In fact, an Army training document on preventing heat casualties states that water losses in the desert can reach 15 liters about four gallons a day per soldier.
Found by William Taylor.
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
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Many people suffering from swine influenza, even those who are severely ill, do not have fever, an odd feature of the new virus that could increase the difficulty of controlling the epidemic, said a leading American infectious-disease expert who examined cases in Mexico last week.
Fever is a hallmark of influenza, often rising abruptly to 104 degrees at the onset of illness. Because many infectious-disease experts consider fever the most important sign of the disease, the presence of fever is a critical part of screening patients.
But about a third of the patients at two hospitals in Mexico City where the American expert, Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, consulted for four days last week had no fever when screened, he said.
“It surprised me and my Mexican colleagues, because the textbooks say that in an influenza outbreak the predictive value of fever and cough is 90 percent,” said Dr. Wenzel. While many people with severe cases went on to develop fever after they were admitted, about half of the milder cases did not; nearly all patients had coughing and malaise…
RTFA. Understand there will likely be a second wave of the Mexican Flu this autumn. Dunces who didn’t get sick the first time around will presume their God is protecting them and do nothing preventative.
Student hoaxes world’s media on Wikipedia | Stuff.co.nz HAR! The ironies abound, especially since the newspapers blame the Internet for everything bad happening to them.
When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalised, increasingly internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.
His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.
The sociology major’s obituary-friendly quote – which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer’s death on March 28 – flew straight on to dozens of US blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia twice caught the quote’s lack of attribution and removed it.
A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they’d swallowed his baloney whole.
“I was really shocked at the results from the experiment,” Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.
“I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn’t come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up,” he said. “It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact.”
Found by Allister Jenks.
 Their marriage struck down, their children illegitimate |
A 49-year-old New York man says he is hopeful his marital dispute with his first wife will help reform the state’s current divorce laws.
The New York Post said Sunday Matthew Gerber and his second wife, Mari, are hopeful Gerber’s ongoing legal dispute with his first wife, Ingrid, will shed light on possible problems in New York’s divorce laws.
Gerber’s divorce from his first wife was overturned after Ingrid, 54, won a successful appeal of the divorce and effectively made the former couple legally married once again. The appeal also voided Gerber’s second marriage.
New York is currently the only U.S. state without a so-called no-fault law, meaning an individual can only be granted a divorce if they prove their spouse either had an affair, been cruel to them or withheld sex for a year.
Retired judge Sondra Miller told the Post cases like Gerber’s indicate New York needs to implement a no-fault law, which allows divorces to take place without proof of wrongdoing from either side.
No Fault divorce exists throughout the country. I hadn’t realized they still live in the 1950’s world of Father Knows Best – in New York – but, obviously they do.
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