May 24, 2006
Six Feet Under meets The Sopranos
Ok, this blog is supposed to be about innovation. But I have a very dark humour streak, as evidenced by previous postings about chickens, pigeons, shop signs and bad editing.
This latest one is no different, and I got a good chuckle over it. From the New York Times today:
A week of digging by investigators at the Hidden Dreams Farm outside town has turned up no evidence of the remains of the former Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, but it has unearthed a cavalcade of colorful characters and stirred a morbid sense of humor in residents of this village of 6,300 people....
The dig on the farm, about 30 miles northwest of Detroit, is the most extensive search for Mr. Hoffa's remains since he disappeared 31 years ago from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant 17 miles east of the farm...
For the full article click the link below, but here's a pic of what they mean by morbid:
The most popular items on the menu at the Milford Baking Company these days are the 95-cent "Hoffa cupcakes" featuring a green plastic hand reaching up through chocolate icing and candy sprinkles designed to resemble dirt.
Oh, and sure there could be no end to other The Hoff parodies going around.
No Sign Yet of Hoffa's Body, but F.B.I. Cites 'Credible' Tip (May 19, 2006)
Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times
Shopkeepers' signs and T-shirts in Milford, Mich., playing off the F.B.I. search for James R. Hoffa's remains.
Down the street, customers are lining up at Leslie Watson's art store to buy $15 T-shirts reading, "The F.B.I. Digs Milford, Do You?"
A week of digging by investigators at the Hidden Dreams Farm outside town has turned up no evidence of the remains of the former Teamster boss James R. Hoffa, but it has unearthed a cavalcade of colorful characters and stirred a morbid sense of humor in residents of this village of 6,300 people.
"All the extra buzz around Milford has been a lot of fun," Ms. Watson said Tuesday. The city's chief of police evidently agreed, buying a half-dozen cupcakes to take to F.B.I. agents as an afternoon snack.
In fact, agents are preparing to begin the next phase of their search for Mr. Hoffa, which commenced a week ago. Workers from a local demolition company said they were asked to arrive Wednesday to start tearing down a 100-foot horse barn.
The barn stands over the spot where an F.B.I. informant, now in prison, claims he saw Mr. Hoffa buried in 1975, rolled up in a rug. A large tent was erected on Monday to house the horses that will be displaced by the excavation.
The dig on the farm, about 30 miles northwest of Detroit, is the most extensive search for Mr. Hoffa's remains since he disappeared 31 years ago from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant 17 miles east of the farm.
Agents are said to be acting on information from Donovan Wells, who lived on the farm when Mr. Hoffa vanished.
At that time, the farm was owned by Rolland McMaster, a former Teamster official and protégé of Mr. Hoffa who union experts say turned against the labor leader shortly before his disappearance.
Now an ailing 75-year-old prisoner in Kentucky, Mr. Wells hopes to shorten his 10-year sentence on marijuana smuggling charges by helping the F.B.I. find Mr. Hoffa's remains.
Mr. Wells claims he witnessed a grave being dug with a stolen front-end loader or backhoe on July 31, 1975, the day after Mr. Hoffa was last seen, said James Elsman, a lawyer who defended Mr. Wells against theft charges several months later.
As what appeared to be a rolled-up carpet was dropped into the hole, Mr. McMaster remarked, "There goes Jimmy," Mr. Elsman recounted Mr. Wells as telling him.
Mr. McMaster's lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, disputed that account this week, saying Mr. McMaster, now 93, was in Gary, Ind., on union business the entire week that Mr. Hoffa disappeared.
Mr. Morganroth, who has also defended Dr. Jack Kevorkian and John Z. DeLorean, the late automotive executive, said he had several telephone conversations with Mr. McMaster on the day in question, reaching him by calling an Indiana-based phone number. "The Hoffa Wars," the 1978 book by the biographer Dan Moldea, also puts Mr. McMaster in Indiana that week.
Even so, F.B.I. officials have called the information from Mr. Wells the most credible lead they have received in years. About 40 to 50 agents have been scouring the farm since last week, bringing in archaeologists and anthropologists to assist.
"For them to go to all of this effort, there's got to be something to it," said a retired F.B.I. agent, Robert Garrity, one of the original investigators assigned to investigate Mr. Hoffa's disappearance.
Mr. Garrity did not recall whether the Milford Township farm was searched in the 1970's but said the F.B.I. considered Mr. McMaster as a "person of interest" in the inquiry.
Mr. Elsman, who sported a tan cowboy hat as he welcomed guests at his law offices this week, said he told the F.B.I. that Mr. Wells had information about Mr. Hoffa's disappearance in 1975 but that agents did not follow up on the tip.
Mr. Elsman said he could pinpoint the location where his former client said he saw the grave being dug. During a meeting Monday with an F.B.I. agent and a local police detective, Mr. Elsman said, he offered to go out to the farm but officials rejected the suggestion.
Special Agent Dawn Clenney, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Detroit, would not comment on Mr. Elsman's claims. She said the search has yielded no evidence of Mr. Hoffa's remains.
Still, the scene outside the horse farm bustles with news media activity. Detroit television reporters have stood watch near an F.B.I. checkpoint at the farm's entrance since the arrival of federal agents. Businesses in the nearby village are taking advantage of the attention.
"Forget Waldo! Where's Hoffa?" asked the sign outside the Bakers of Milford restaurant. Across the street, Milford's Dairy Queen has posted rotating messages. Tuesday's read, "F.B.I. You R Out Standing in Your Field." That was more tasteful than an earlier sign, "To Find Hoffa, Look in the Yellow Pages Under Cement."
The town's business association is encouraging stores on Main Street to decorate with a Hoffa theme on Thursday so shoppers can "hunt for hidden treasures," according to fliers distributed to shop owners.
The hoopla is causing a few second thoughts, however. Elaine Aittama, a co-owner of the bakery selling Hoffa cupcakes, took a hand-printed sign boasting "Hoffa ate here" out of her window on Tuesday.
"I don't want to offend anybody," she said. "We're just trying to have a little fun with all the attention."
Nick Bunkley reported from Milford for this article, and Micheline Maynard from Detroit.
Posted by sdehaast at 1:27 PM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2005
Chicken-powered nukes
More tales from weird military science along the lines of Project Pigeon.
From Defence Tech comes the answer to this obscure question: "Did the Brits ever make plans for a nuclear landmine, powered by chickens?"
"Conceived during the Cold War, the seven tonne device was the size of small truck and was designed to be buried or submerged by a British Army retreating from Soviet forces. The landmine had a plutonium core surrounded by high explosive and would have been detonated by remote control or timer, causing mass destruction and contamination over a wide area to prevent subsequent enemy occupation.Scientists working on the project realised that the bomb could fail in winter if vital components become too cold, so they explored ways of keeping the inner workings warm.
One proposal put forward consisted of filling the casing of the nuke with live chickens, who would give off sufficient heat, prior to suffocating or starving to death, to keep the delicate explosive mechanism from freezing. Despite the potential importance of chickens to the project, the mine was codenamed 'Blue Peacock'.
The mines were to be left buried or submerged by the British Army of the Rhine. They would then have been detonated by wire from up to five kilometres away or by an eight-day clockwork time."
In the end, the risk from radioactive fallout would have been "unacceptable", and hiding nuclear weapons in an allied country was deemed "politically flawed". As a result, the Ministry of Defence cancelled Blue Peacock in February 1958.
What were they thinking?
Posted by sdehaast at 8:35 AM
January 28, 2005
EULA's gone crazy
Software licensing agreement gone overboard:
HIGH RISK ACTIVITIES. The Software is not fault-tolerant and is not designed, manufactured or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which the failure of the Software could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.Sigh.Accordingly, Licensor and its suppliers specifically disclaim any express or implied warranty of fitness for High Risk Activities.
This, by the way, is for a demo version of an real estate agency software app for managing properties and customer data. I have the feeling this EULA was written explicitly for a version promoted by one of SA's Sunday papers. A case of old media lawyers applying a generic catch all to all things digital. Hope the software company that wrote the app didn't have to pay for this EULA.
Posted by sdehaast at 10:51 PM
December 1, 2004
25 killed as plane skids into cemetery
How bizarre. Not sure if the copy editor meant for it to come out that way.
Reminds me a "Not the 9 o'clock news" skit...
Posted by sdehaast at 10:34 PM
November 27, 2004
Project pigeon
I kid you not.
I came across this while reading a book on design, of all things, and further information from here.
"During World War II, behavorial psychologist B.F. Skinner demonstrated an automatic homing system which would guide a bomb directly to its target.
Skinner's control system used a lens in the nose of the bomb to throw an image of the approaching target on a ground-glass screen. Inside, a pigeon trained to recognize the desired target packed at it with its beak. If the target's image moved off center, the pigeon's pecking tilted the screen, which moved the bomb's tail surfaces, which corrected the bomb's course. To improve accuracy, Skinner used three pigeons to control the bomb's direction by majority rule. According to him, the system was resistant to jamming, simply built, and needed no materials in short supply.
Despite these advantages, the military review board would not let the idea get off the ground."
Posted by sdehaast at 3:08 PM
November 25, 2004
New hobby
I have a new hobby. Collecting linguistic gems from the multitude of 419 scam emails that I get.
Here's today's from Burkina Faso (ja right):
"I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch-free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer."
I am truly amazed how many times a year this poor family that has all these unclaimed funds keep crashing into mountains and dying.
Old news but still very funny is scam-the-scammer story.
Posted by sdehaast at 12:39 PM
November 24, 2004
deadpeoplesretrogoods
Saw this today driving past through town. Had such a laugh I had to do a U-Turn and take a photo!
Excuse image quality but taken from phonecam through a dirty windscreen.
Posted by sdehaast at 8:33 AM
November 23, 2004
eBay: Virgin Mary image for sale. Includes free cheese.
UPDATE: Now Jesus in a dental X-Ray
News24 amongst others, reports: A 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich whose maker says bears the image of the Virgin Mary, was sold for $28 000 after one of the most bizarre bidding wars on the auction website eBay.
"I would like all people to know that I do believe that this is the Virgin Mary, Mother of God," Ms Duyser, a work-from-home jewellery designer.
Ms Duyser said she took a bite after making the sandwich 10 years ago and saw a face staring back at her. She put the sandwich in a clear plastic box with cotton balls and kept it on her night stand. She said the sandwich had never sprouted a spore of mold.
...Amazing. So tell me again how we know what the VM looks like?
Can you see the face? Wait and the animation will show you.
UPDATE: Fark.com had a "What if the Mac really was a cult?" photoshop contest. Someone got clever.
Posted by sdehaast at 3:00 PM