Fact x Importance = News

[jayseven]

My point is that if you and others vote for BNP in 'protest' then all you're going to do is encourage the other main parties to emulate the BNP.

[Fierce_LiNk]

Just one question: How do the BNP know that the vote they would've got from you would have been a protest vote?

 

Unless you specifically attached a letter or something to it saying "I do not fully agree with your views, this is a protest vote because I do not agree with the other parties" then it gets registered as a genuine vote, surely?

 

As others have said, spoiling your ballet counts as a protest, as it shows that you are purposefully not voting for any of the parties. If you vote for the BNP because you agree with them or you like what they have to offer, then vote for them. But, voting for them as a protest vote just seems quite bizarre, imo.

[Ashley]

On the eve of this Friday's second-season premiere of Fox's Dollhouse comes news that Japan has already taken steps to create its own very real "dollhouse."

 

A growing sector of business in Japan rents out fake spouses, best men, relatives, friends, colleagues, boyfriends and girlfriends so that clients can avoid embarrassment at social functions, the British Guardian newspaper reports.

Best man Ryuichi Ichinokawa took his place before the assembled wedding guests, cleared his throat and for the next few minutes spoke movingly about the bride and groom. But his speech omitted one crucial fact: that he knew the beaming couple only marginally better than the waiters and waitresses serving their wedding breakfast. ...

 

This weekend he adopted yet another guise, as the uncle of a 12-year-old boy and his younger sister at a school sports day. He dutifully cheered them on, recorded their efforts on his handheld video camera and joined in the adult-and-child races.

 

If anyone asked, he would introduce himself as the children's uncle, perhaps engage in small talk, then discreetly slip away. He is unlikely to ever again set eyes on his "nephew" and "niece", or his "sister"—a divorcee whose children were being bullied at school about their absent father.

 

 

The agency is called Hagemashi Tai (I Want to Cheer You Up) ... sound like "Happiness Consultants" from HBO's Hung? ...

 

One agency now employs about 30 people of various ages and both sexes across Japan with the skills and personality to temporarily adopt a new identity: as the father of a boy who is in trouble at school, for instance, or the parents of a woman attending a formal match-making party. And there are 10 across the country, the newspaper reports.

 

One guy even posed as a girl's new beau to make her current boyfriend jealous.

 

What next? Kick-boxing assassins? Blind cult infiltrators with cameras in their heads?

 

Would you hire one of these "dolls"?

 

Dollhouse. Nu-uh! Frescorts me thinks.

 

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

Only the Japanese could think something like that up. Well, no, others could think it up - but only the Japanese would actually make it real!

[Dante]

RED DUST Sydney!

 

Sydneysiders have woken to a red haze unlike anything seen before by residents or weather experts, as the sun struggles to pierce a thick blanket of dust cloaking the city this morning.

 

Callers have flooded talkback radio and scores of emails have been received by smh.com.au by Sydney residents expressing their amazement at this morning's conditions.

 

"The reason for the dust is we had some really strong winds in the inland areas of NSW and in South Australia for a sustained period yesterday," said Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Jane Golding.

 

"That's lifted a whole lot of dust off the ground because it's quite dry out there, many of those areas are still drought affected."

 

The lifted dust was carried by the winds into Sydney.

 

"I've not seen anything like this before."

 

The reddish haze was expected to fade as the sun got higher in the sky, Ms Golding said, but it was not known what would happen to the dust.

 

"This is such an infrequent event ... it's hard to say when the dust will stop."

 

The dust has caused havoc with the city's transport system this morning.

 

All citybound lanes on the M5 East tunnel have been closed because of dust on the tunnel, while flights at Sydney Airport are delayed as a result of the "strong winds and dust haze".

 

Sydney's ferries were also suspended due to poor visibility on harbour.

 

The RTA also issued a warning urging drivers to exercise caution and reduce speed due to "significant dust over the city affecting visibility".

 

The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe weather warning across the state because of widespread damaging winds, which are expected to increase in force across Sydney this morning.

 

"It's been close to 60km/h already this morning ... it's just a matter of time before it gets stronger," Ms Golding said.

 

Wind speeds this morning were expected to average over 65km/h, but there would be gusts in excess of 100 km/h, the Bureau said.

 

The winds would gradually ease over the afternoon and evening, Ms Golding said.

 

The winds were being whipped up by a cold front that passed through the state yesterday, and a deep low pressure trough over Victoria.

 

Temperatures this morning in the low 20s, and were expected to remain that way for the rest of the day, Ms Golding said.

 

Last night, large hailstones fell in parts of Goulburn and Wagga, while wind gusts exceeded 90km/h, the Bureau said.

 

A 109km/h gust was reported at Moss Vale, it said.

 

Despite sunrise being at 5.43am, the city was a dark reddish haze after 6am this morning.

 

"It's just red, red, red as far as you can see," one caller at the Anzac Bridge told 2GB.

 

Beautiful photos can be found here.

[EEVILMURRAY]

Kid dies after falling from a railing at Somerfield.

 

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090922/tuk-boy-four-dies-in-somerfield-supermar-45dbed5.html

 

This story confuses me. The parents say they were "so protective" yet the nearby mum seems to have done nothing to have stopped him playing on the rails. Plus I'd like to know what railing they're talking about. The image shows the outside of the store [with a shitload of railings] but the article says "in" the store. The other thing they don't go into detail over is that:

 

"We say that the railing should not have been there or should not have been in that state."

 

What state are they talking about?

[Dante]

No Total Recall comment from Evilmurray.

 

 

Space!

 

"It was like being on Mars," she told the BBC, "I haven't been there, obviously, but I imagine that's what the sky would look like."

 

BBCNEWS!

[Slaggis]

For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.

 

Rest of the article on Yahoo.

 

Finally a beakthrough. It might not be huge, but it's something.

[Dante]

India’s lunar mission finds evidence of water on the Moon

 

Dreams of establishing a manned Moon base could become reality within two decades after India’s first lunar mission found evidence of large quantities of water on its surface.

 

Data from Chandrayaan-1 also suggests that water is still being formed on the Moon. Scientists said the breakthrough — to be announced by Nasa at a press conference today — would change the face of lunar exploration.

 

The discovery is a significant boost for India in its space race against China. Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, the mission’s project director at the Indian Space Research Organisation in Bangalore, said: “It’s very satisfying.”

 

The search for water was one of the mission’s main objectives, but it was a surprise nonetheless, scientists said.The unmanned craft was equipped with Nasa’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper, designed specifically to search for water by picking up the electromagnetic radiation emitted by minerals. The M3 also made the unexpected discovery that water may still be forming on the surface of the Moon, according to scientists familiar with the mission.

 

“It’s very satisfying,” said Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, the project director of Chandrayaan-1 at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bangalore. “This was one of the main objectives of Chandrayaan-1, to find evidence of water on the Moon,” he told The Times.

 

Dr Annadurai would not provide any further details before a news conference at Nasa today from Dr Carle Pieters, a planetary geologist of Brown University who oversaw the M3.

 

Dr Pieters has not spoken about her results so far and was not available for comment last night, according to colleagues at Brown University. But her results are expected to cause a sensation, and to set the agenda for lunar exploration in the next decade.

 

They will also provide a significant boost for India as it tries to catch up with China in what many see as a 21st-century space race. “This will create a considerable stir. It was wholly unexpected,” said one scientist also involved in Chandrayaan-1. “People thought that Chandrayaan was just lagging behind the rest but the science that’s coming out, it’s going to be agenda-setting.”

 

Scientists have long hoped that astronauts could be based on the Moon and use water found there to drink, extract oxygen to breathe and use hydrogen as fuel.

 

Several studies havesuggested that there could be ice in the craters around the Moon’s poles, but scientists have been unable to confirm the suspicions.

 

The M3, an imaging spectrometer, was designed to search for water by detecting the electromagnetic radiation given off by different minerals on and just below the surface of the Moon. Unlike previous lunar spectrometers, it was sensitive enough to detect the presence of small amounts of water.

 

M3 was one of two Nasa instruments among 11 pieces of equipment from around the world on Chandrayaan-1, which was launched into orbit around the Moon in October last year. ISRO lost control of Chandrayaan-1 last month, and aborted the mission ahead of schedule, but not before M3 and the other instruments had beamed data back to Earth.

 

Another lunar scientist familiar with the findings said: “This is the most exciting breakthrough in at least a decade. And it will probably change the face of lunar exploration for the next decade.”

 

Scientists are eagerly awaiting the results of two American unmanned lunar missions, which were both launched in June, that could also prove the existence of water on the Moon.

 

Early results from Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recorded temperatures as low as -238C (minus 396.4F) in polar craters on the Moon, according to the journal Nature. That makes them the coldest recorded spots in the solar system, even colder than the surface of Pluto, and could mean that ice has been trapped for billions of years, the journal said. The LRO has also detected an abundance of hydrogen, thought to be a key indicator of ice, at the poles.

 

The other Nasa mission, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), is due to crash a probe into a polar crater on October 9 in the hope of sending up a plume of ice that can be examined by telescope.

 

“We are on the verge of a renaissance in our thinking about the poles of the Moon, including how water ice gets there,” Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator for LCROSS, said in Nature.

[EEVILMURRAY]

No Total Recall comment from Evilmurray.

I'm not going to lie to you. I made no connection between the shit happening in Australia to Mahrs.

 

 

I just kept thinking how awesome it would be to be out there and experience it first hand. They had vox pops from Aussie people and they had face masks. I envied them.

[Dante]

 

This image of the moon is from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 mission. It is a three-color composite of reflected near-infrared radiation from the sun, and illustrates the extent to which different materials are mapped across the side of the moon that faces Earth.

 

Small amounts of water and hydroxyl (blue) were detected on the surface of the moon at various locations. This image illustrates their distribution at high latitudes toward the poles.

 

Blue shows the signature of water and hydroxyl molecules as seen by a highly diagnostic absorption of infrared light with a wavelength of three micrometers. Green shows the brightness of the surface as measured by reflected infrared radiation from the sun with a wavelength of 2.4 micrometers, and red shows an iron-bearing mineral called pyroxene, detected by absorption of 2.0-micrometer infrared light.

[Dan_Dare]

Awesome!

 

Man, Space is quality

[jayseven]

Yay for space exploration, boo for shelling the moon

[Happenstance]

NJ Cop Robert Melia Taped Having Sex with Cows

 

To paraphrase the late Hunter Thompson, "When the going gets weird, the weird go to New Jersey." That's the only way to explain the case of Moorestown policeman Robert Melia. Last year, he and his former girlfriend, Heather Lewis, were arrested for sexual assaulting three young girls over a five-year period.

 

While this may be depraved enough, detectives found what a true degenerate Melia is after they searched his home. On his computer they found a video of a girl being sexually assaulted. They also found video of Melia -- get this -- having sex with cows.

 

Since beastiality is not technically a crime in New Jersey, investigators charged Melia with animal cruelty. And this, believe it or not, is where our story gets even weirder. Under state law, a prosecutor must prove the animal was tormented to in cruelty cases. Which led to a rather unusual argument in the court room...

 

heather_lewis.jpg

Police say Heather Lewis also molested the three girls

​Burlington County assistant prosecutor Kevin Morgan was left to assert that forcing a cow to give you a blowjob -- especially a young, innocent calve, which is what Melia fancied -- fit the definition of cruelty. "I think any reasonable juror could infer that a man's penis in the mouth of a calf is torment," he told the judge. "It's a crime against nature."

 

But that's when Judge James J. Morley went a little weird on his own. He waxed philosophically about the mental powers of cows, noting that they couldn't actually talk -- a breakthrough observation -- and thus had no way of expressing whether they liked giving degenerate cops blowjobs or not. And given that the jury had no way of reading the five cows' minds -- yes, Melia is a serial cow rapist -- there's no way the prosecution could prove the cows were tormented.

 

Melia walked.

 

He's still facing charges for molesting the three girls, but he's likely beat his biggest legal hurdle. It's bad enough to be sent to the pen as a child rapist. But being a cow rapist would certainly preclude membership invites from the finest Aryan gangs. They do have their tandards.

 

http://www.truecrimereport.com/2009/09/nj_cop_robert_melia_taped_havi.php#

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

Well, if the cows are all right, I don't particularly mind. Whatever floats his boat.

 

Though, of course, he's a fucking jackass for molesting children.

[Ashley]

Dunno why but it reminds me of the Buffy line "I can beat up vampires (or demons, I forget) until the cows come home...then I can beat up the cows".

 

Ah well, maybe we should just get vigilant.

 

[Dante]

Adolf Hitler's Skull Is A Woman's Skull

 

Adolf Hitler's suicide in his Berlin bunker has been called into question after American researchers claimed that a bullet-punctured skull fragment long believed to belong to the Nazi dictator is, in fact, that of an unknown woman.

 

The four-inch skull fragment has a hole where a bullet reportedly passed through Hitler’s left temple when he shot himself and is kept in Russia’s federal archives along with what are said to be his jawbones. Together, they are all that is left of Hitler’s body, the charred remains of which Soviet forces first recovered in 1945. For years, the Russians have held up the artefacts as proof that Soviet troops found Hitler’s body in the ruins of Berlin and that he died on April 30 when he shot himself just after taking cyanide.

 

But a History Channel documentary programme broadcast in the US called Hitler’s Escape claims the skull fragment belongs to a woman under 40 and not Hitler, who was 56 when he died. It quotes Nick Bellantoni, an archaeologist and bone specialist who took DNA samples from the skull in Moscow and had them tested at the University of Connecticut. He and his colleagues are sceptical that the skull fragment could belong to Eva Braun, Hitler’s long-time companion, since she is thought to have committed suicide by cyanide rather than with a gun.

 

The findings are likely to revive conspiracy theories suggesting that Hitler did not die in 1945 but survived and fled to South America or elsewhere. Proponents of that theory believe Soviet troops found only his body double.

 

However, the Russians have never held up the skull as exhibit one, always insisting that the jawbones — said to be in perfect condition - are confirmation. Soviet forces tracked down an assistant to Hitler’s dentist in 1945 who confirmed their authenticity. The contested skull fragment was found later, in 1946, when the Russians began an investigation after rumours that Hitler was still alive. It was found in the same hole outside Hitler’s bunker where his body was first found.

[Iun]

Adolf Hitler's Skull Is A Woman's Skull

 

 

Or maybe Hitler really was just a woman and this whole this was penis envy.

 

Bloody feminists.

 

 

In other news: Dirty Greebo Soap Dodger Got What She Deserved and Now a Policeman is in Trouble for Doing What We All Would Have Done to the Dirty Greebo Soapdodger.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8279001.stm

Edited September 29, 2009 by Iun

[Paj!]

Adolf Hitler's Skull Is A Woman's Skull

 

I'm possibly lying, but in the summer when I went on a walking tour of Berlin, the guide I think mentioned that there were loads of other people in the bunker at the time of Hitler's suicide/death. He killed himself, a few others might've as well.

[Dante]

Electronic Arts Sues to Cancel Langdell's Trademarks

 

Electronic Arts is asking the United States to cancel five trademarks held by Tim Langdell's Edge Games, saying the marks have been effectively abandoned. In comments to Kotaku, EA portrayed its actions as done on behalf of the development community.

 

Langdell, at the center of many controversies over the years regarding trademark rights to the word "Edge", has been involved in a similar dispute with Electronic Arts since 2007 concerning its title "Mirror's Edge." On Sept. 11, EA filed a petition with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to wipe out five trademarks involved in the case, saying they have been threatened by Langdell for a year over the distribution of Mirror's Edge.

 

"EA has filed a complaint to put an end to legal threats over a trademark issue related to our game, Mirror's Edge," company spokesman Jeff Brown said Tuesday. "While this seems like a small issue for EA, we think that filing the complaint is the right thing to do for the developer community."

 

Langdell, in a statement to Kotaku, called Electronic Arts' petition "a desperate attempt by EA to see if they can win the right to use Mirror's Edge by forcibly removing Edge's legitimate rights to Edge." Langdell pointed to a USPTO ruling in his favor, from August 2008, which found EA's registration of the trademark "Mirror's Edge" had been granted in error, and the company's subsequent abandonment of the mark - made official Sept. 8 - "stands as an acceptance of Edge's rights."

 

The USPTO database does list the trademark "Mirror's Edge" as "abandoned" as of Sept. 8, 2009. When asked about the timing of EA's filing, Brown, the spokesman, said only that the company had been unsuccessful in its yearlong attempt to resolve the dispute, and "we feel it is important to establish the rights of developers in this situation. So we filed the petition to cancel those marks."

 

Brown also declined to comment when asked if the petition was at all related to any upcoming product announcements using the word "Edge." Nor would he specify how negotiations with Langdell broke down.

 

Over the years, Langdell has been accused of heavy-handed behavior against developers who wittingly or unwittingly use the word "Edge", which he trademarked years ago for use in video games, and a slew of other associated products since then. In addition to the disagreement with EA, Langdell has been involved in a bitter dispute with Mobigame, whose iPhone game EDGE has appeared on the iTunes App Store and was later removed when he challenged Mobigame's usage of the title.

 

The notoriety surrounding this action in large part led to a campaign to have Langdell removed from the board of directors of the International Game Developers Association. Langdell voluntarily quit the board last month rather than face a removal vote.

 

"A lot of small developers who are faced with this situation settle claims because they don't know how, or can't afford to fight for their rights," said Brown, the EA spokesman. "We hope that as a result of this action, other developers will be less intimidated by unwarranted legal threats."

 

But Langdell counters that EA is trying to poison sentiment against his company, and that its accusations "sound like comments intended to sway indie game news reporters' opinion and deflect you away from the obvious fact that it is EA [that] indie developers need to be protected from."

 

In the filing, Electronic Arts alleges that Langdell has effectively abandoned these trademarks through disuse. While Langdell vigorously states his company is actively involved in the development of games, both Mobygames and this analysis say the last game published by Edge Games was in 1990.

 

Edge Games' Web site says it is developing four multiplatform titles, one of which "Racers," was released on Sept. 9. "Clearly, Edge has not abandoned its trademark and that allegation is obviously destined to fail," Langdell told Kotaku. Langdell's statement says Edge's games "are on general sale at this time as they have been at all times over the past many years."

 

Significantly, EA also alleges that Langdell fraudulently obtained the trademark registrations, filing out-of-date and even falsified specimens to obtain them. EA alleges two registrations, dated 1996 and 2006, used box covers from games published in 1989 and 1990 and were not examples of a mark used in commerce, especially as the 1990 game was developed for the since-discontinued Commodore Amiga. Another 2009 registration submitted an Edge mark used on the 1986 game Bobby Bearing, saying that game had been in use "continuously over the past five years," on mobile phones. EA claims that is false.

 

EA says two other registrations, in 2004 and 2005, were obtained by submitting a nonexistent magazine cover in one case, and a Hulk comic book published in the 1990s in another. (Langdell claims to have licensed trademarks to the two publications.)

 

Langdell flatly denied that Edge ever committed fraud in applying for its U.S. trademarks.

 

Langdell has also said that Mobigame told him, in an email published here, that it and Electronic Arts had formed some sort of partnership, to what end he did not say. In a lengthy public statement published last August, Langdeel seems to imply that EA and Mobigame might be working together "to seek to undermine our rights in EDGE," to get out of an agreement Langdell says Edge and EA had reached earlier.

 

Brown, the EA spokesman, said that to his knowledge EA has no formal relationship with Mobigame. A request for comment left with Mobigame was not answered as of publication time.

 

According to a notice sent by the USPTO, Langdell has until Oct. 27 to respond to EA's petition. Should the matter proceed to trial, that will begin in the summer of 2010.

 

Electronic Arts' filing may be downloaded here, in .pdf form.

 

Langdell, for his part, accuses EA of playing the bully in this matter.

 

"The key dispute for the past two to three years ... has always been between the multinational conglomerate EA and Edge fighting for its rights as a relatively small indie developer up against the giant corporate bully, EA," Langdell wrote. "It is a great pity that another fellow indie developer, Mobigame, got caught in the crossfire, but at least EA are now out in the open with their fight, now openly trying to stifle the legitimate rights of indie developers."

[Goafer]

Anyone who has seen the news recently will have seen this: Peadonanny (I meant it to sound like a peado nanny, but it sounds more like a peado festival).

 

I have one query. If it was as horrible as everything suggests, wouldn't there be a shit tonne of marks on the child? Surely one parent would think "Why is my son/daughter covered in bruises" etc?

[Iun]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8286240.stm

 

Unelected, Unlawful, Unacceptable. Several appropriate words to describe the Burmese military Junta.

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8286240.stm

 

Unelected, Unlawful, Unacceptable. Several appropriate words to describe the Burmese military Junta.

Disgraceful, disappointing, and disgusting are several others.

[Gizmo]

DASTARDLY is another!

 

[Dante]

20,000+ Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL Accounts Compromised

 

Yesterday, it was revealed that 10,000+ Hotmail accounts were compromised and all of the usernames and passwords of these accounts were posted online. It was a major security and scam issue, but it was thought to only affect Hotmail users.

 

Unfortunately, Hotmail was only the beginning. Google has now confirmed that thousands of Gmail accounts were compromised by an “industry-wide phishing scheme.” According to the BBC, the login data of over 30,000 Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast, and Earthlink accounts have been posted online.

 

Google’s already taken action on the list, forcing password resets on the affected accounts. They also stress that it’s not a breach of security, but the result of certain users falling for phishing scams. The lists of emails have been removed from the web, but many scammers have surely downloaded these compromised lists by now.

 

Remember to protect your email accounts: change passwords frequently, check for any odd behavior, and never use the same password on multiple web apps.