Weird News

[glatt]

Vegetarian catches anthrax while eating salad at drum circle.

Here's how it happened. An anthrax infected goat in Africa was skinned and made into a drum head. The drum was brought to New Hampshire, and played in a basement multipurpose room drum circle. Hitting the dried drum head aerosolized the anthrax bacteria, which then floated across the room and onto the salad. She ate the salad.

You just never freakin' know.

[Lamplighter]

Aerialized spores from the drums is likely, but this article doesn't
really incriminate the lettuce. But so be it, CDC may have good evidence for it.

It does remind me of my first (1960's) and worst (potentially) career mistake.

As a graduate teaching assistance for a course in Medical Microbiology,
one of my first assignments was to set up a class exercise to demonstrate "virulence".
That is, how one strain of a pathogenic microorganism can
produce severe disease while another strain does not.

So I wrote a letter on university stationery to Fort Detrick, MD,
the US Army's Center for Biological Warfare, asking for
one culture of virulent- and one of avirulent- B.anthrasus.
Within a few days, the cultures arrived, along with a letter giving the LD50 .
This is the dose (number of cells/spores) it takes to kill 50% of the animals infected.

The LD50 for avirulent strain was something like billions.
In other words, you could not inject enough to kill 50% of the mice.
The LD50 for that virulent strain of anthrax was 1.

This so scared the bejesus out of me and I immediately
autoclaved the entire package for several hours.

It also gave me a lifelong fear of what the military was capable of
doing to "prevent and protect" the US from biological warfare.

[glatt]

Funny how times change. They just mailed that shit to you.

My dad as a physics prof had an underground closet in his old lab that was full of radioactive samples. Dangerously radioactive samples. About 20 years ago, as various regulation were getting tighter, he started worrying about the stuff and worked really hard to get rid of all of it through quickly disappearing appropriate channels. If he had waited any longer, he would have had to devote the entire department budget to paying to get rid of the stuff. He had pulled one sample out of there once to show me, and the sample actually glowed in the dark. Very cool. Actually, now that I think about it, he took my grandmother's radium clock up there to get rid of it. That clock was cool. Its hands would glow in the dark too.

[Lamplighter]

I hope the hackers were also smart enough to get
the movie rights to this scheme.
It smacks of George Clooney and Julia Roberts

NY Times
MARC SANTORA
Published: May 9, 2013
In Hours, Thieves Took $45 Million in A.T.M. Scheme

It was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which
the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault.

In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen
countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision,
thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.’s in a matter of hours.

In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals
struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million.
<snip>
The hackers, who are not named in the indictment, then raised the withdrawal limits
on prepaid MasterCard debit accounts issued by the National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah,
also known as RakBank, which is in United Arab Emirates.
<snip>
With five account numbers in hand, the hackers distributed the information
to individuals in 20 countries who then encoded the information on magnetic-stripe cards.
On Dec. 21, the cashing crews made 4,500 A.T.M. transactions worldwide,
stealing $5 million, according to the indictment.

While the street crews were taking money out of bank machines, the computer experts
were watching the financial transactions from afar, ensuring that they would
not be shortchanged on their cut, according to court documents.
<snip>

[Flint]

Sounds he like he was complying with the explicit purpose of the entire procedure--albeit more thoroughly and willingly than was requested. I would rather he ditch the 'free speech' argument and argue directly that this is what they wanted, so this is what they got. What is it--jump this high, but no further? No, goddamnit, if you want to pry into a man's privacy you will pry all the way or not at all--you don't get to pick and choose.

[footfootfoot]

"We only want to look into your anal cavity, we have no desire to look into your pee pee hole, sir."

People need to start defecating and urinating during these searches with an apology of "I was nervous" speaking as someone who has really cleaned up more than enough poop and pee accidents I'm fairly certain that they'll decide they'd cleaned up enough poo and pee.

Or not.

[glatt]

Problem is the people in power aren't the ones cleaning up the poo. So they will just helpfully say "make sure to wear gloves."

[BigV]

Originally Posted by glatt

Problem is the people in power aren't the ones cleaning up the poo. So they will just helpfully say "make sure to wear gloves."

waaaitaminit.

Aren't *WE* the "people in power"? I know we're not the people who directly write the rules (or pick up the poo). I like the strategy of making this onerous policy even more onerous in the hopes that it will be abandoned, but I agree that this is applying leverage at the wrong place. I think the right place to apply leverage would be where changes in the policy could be made--those people who make the rules--lawmakers, administrators, etc. If *they* were subjected to the same indignities and hassles and costs (and for the same justification, namely none), I think the likelihood of having some reasonable changes made would improve.

The question then becomes "how can we make those people eat their own dog food?" That, I don't know. I imagine such people are exempted from the searches (and the lines!) and therefore don't really get it. Right now, it works out that the people that benefit (and decide) from the rules are not the people paying the costs. That disconnect is a recipe for trouble everywhere it occurs.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by BigV

waaaitaminit.

Aren't *WE* the "people in power"?

Have you been paying any attention at all for the last thirty years???

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by glatt

Problem is the people in power aren't the ones cleaning up the poo. So they will just helpfully say "make sure to wear gloves."

Explosive diarrhea?

[infinite monkey]

ouija people
in order to form...

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by infinite monkey

ouija people
in order to form...

haggii

[Ocean's Edge]

Ok.. well only a little bit 'Weird' but, the organization I volunteer with was instrumental in making this 'Med-evac flight for a turtle' happen..

http://www.cbc.ca/ontariomorning/epi...peterborough/#

[xoxoxoBruce]

OMG, imagine waiting for this woman to pick out an outfit.

Newcastle University neuroscientist Dr. Gabriele Jordan, recently announced that she has identified a woman who is a "tetrachromat," that is, a woman with the ability to see much greater color depth than the ordinary person.
~snip~
Most people have three types of cones, and are said to be "trichromats." Color blind individuals have only two types of cones and they are said to be "dichromats." Almost all animals, including dogs and New World Monkeys are dichromats.
However, scientists have long believed that there are people with four cones who can see a wider range of colors than most of us can detect. These persons are called "tetrachromats," and can see a hundred million colors.

link

[Clodfobble]

Well that's cool. I wonder if her ability to see infrared and ultraviolet are enhanced as well.