Moko the friendly dolphin has become so friendly she has
taken to bringing swimmers fish - but she has been receiving some
unfriendly treatment in return.

The three-year-old bottlenose dolphin has made Mahia Beach
her home for more than 18 months, and has become a familiar sight
socialising with swimmers and boaties.

Many a bodyboard, crayfish buoy and rugby ball have been taken out
to sea, never to be seen again, as the cheeky dolphin continues to play
on her own.

Others had been on the receiving end of Moko's generosity, Conservation Department programme manager Jamie Quirk said.

"She has actually been bringing fish to people. People have had
kahawai and gurnard brought to them and some lucky people have had her
bring them seahorses," he said.

Lately, however, some people have been "roughhousing" with Moko,
scarring her skin with scratches caused by jewellery and sharp
fingernails.

"We are a bit concerned that some people are getting into rough play
with her - they jump on her back or grab her dorsal fin," said DoC
Wairoa field officer supervisor Malcolm Smith.

"She can play rough right back - she's a big, powerful animal, she probably weighs 150 kilograms. She could damage someone."

Mr Smith said Moko appeared to be well-fed and healthy, despite all the human attention.

Mahia resident Bill Shortt has been watching Moko's movements since she arrived in the area at Easter 2007.

"Moko is getting tamer than ever," he said. "It's really amusing.
She comes right in to the shore now, into only a few feet of water, to
play with the children."

A man caught near New South Wales's Nobbys Beach with his penis
in a pasta sauce jar led police on a 20kmh car chase, has had his day
in court.

Newcastle police drew their weapons when they suspected Keith Roy Weatherley, 46, was armed.

Instead, they found him partially clothed with his genitals in a jar, a police statement said.

Weatherley attracted attention parked in a no-stopping zone before noon on October 26.

Police believed Weatherley was doing something with his hands in his lap and thought that he might have a weapon.

Weatherley saw the police and drove away, despite them flashing their lights.

The chase lasted five to 10 minutes, with a top speed of just 20
kmh, before Weatherley was stopped at Centenary Drive, Newcastle. He
refused to leave the car.

Four officers used batons and capsicum spray to remove him.

They found a 750-millilitre jar around his penis and noted that
Weatherley attempted to continue "pleasuring himself in between bouts
of wrestling".

A search of his car uncovered pornography, a home-made sex aid, women's stockings and a Jack Russell terrier.

Weatherley pleaded guilty to offensive behaviour, resisting police and disobeying a police direction.

Magistrate Elaine Truscott asked Weatherley, who represented himself, why he behaved the way he did.

He said he resisted police because he was trying to make himself "decent".

He was fined $600 for offensive behaviour and convicted of the other two offences without further action.

 From here

“ When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.

Ever wanted a cast of your intimate internals? Then this is the place to go.
If you want to give it a go yourself I would warn against using concrete (though the ping pong ball was a nice touch).

A bizarre incident on Highway 6 in Hightower County left six cars submerged in Lake Minnekonkatonka. Recovery workers spent three hours removing the vehicles, while local residents comforted the victims. No serious injuries were reported. "It was horrible!" said Marianne Jones, driver of the first car to go into the lake. "I was just driving along, and all of sudden the car is flooding - I'm still not sure exactly what happened."

"I saw all the cars in the water and I thought the road was flooded." said Myron Dillfinger, driver of the sixth car. "I figured if they all thought they could make it - I could, too."

Criminal charges could result from the incident, according to Sgt. Bill Rippleneck of the Highway Patrol: "We're looking into the involvement of the maintenance truck driver, and whether his actions were malicious or not." The maintenance driver, Howard Swansonson, was allegedly restriping the highway and decided to park by the lake for lunch, forgetting to turn off the paint sprayers until he was well off the roadway. The errant striping subsequently diverted the cars into the lake.

"I kind of nodded off after I parked" explained Swansonson. "I kept hearing splashing sounds, but I just figured it was geese." David U. Infinger, owner of D.U.I. Striping, arrived at the scene after hearing of the incident. "I'm glad no one's hurt, but these people drove into that lake voluntarily, if you ask me."

"It was a no passing zone!" replied Arnold Sneevel, driver of the third car. "You can't cross that double yellow, everybody knows that!" All of the victims intend to seek civil action pending the Highway Patrol's investigation.

The subject was a 14-year-old male Indian elephant named Tusko being housed at the Lincoln Park Zoo. As previous research had suggested that high doses to LSD were needed to get perceivable effects in "lower animals," they decided to start with a 0.1 mg/kg dose of LSD for Tusko. That came to about 297 milligrams (in 5 mL of water, injected intramuscularly) of LSD for 7000 pound Tusko. The injection was delivered via a pressurized CO2 dart gun. For comparison, the threshold dosage for an effect in people is around 20-30 micrograms and a recreational 3+ hour dose would be around 100-200 micrograms.

After injection:

"Tusko began trumpeting and rushing around the pen, a reaction not unlike the one he had shown the day before (during the placebo shot). However, this time his restlessness appeared to increase for 3 minutes after the injection; then he stopped running and showed signs of marked incoordination. He began to sway, his hindquarters buckled, and it became increasingly difficult for him to maintain himself upright. Five minutes after the injection he trumpeted, collapsed, fell heavily on his right side, defecated, and went into status epilepticus."

The researchers were understandable quite surprised and distressed by the elephants seriously bad reaction to the LSD (they theorized that elephants were actually quite resistant to psychotropic substances). They tried to alleviate the seizures by administering promazine hydrochloride (Thorazine, 2800 mg!), which had a modest effect in reducing the spasms but did nothing for Tusko's overall state. A last ditch effort to save the animal by injection of pentobarbitol sodium was also unsuccessful, and Tusko died 1 hour and 40 minutes after the LSD dose.

Read more about it here

A Cambridge man is relishing the sound of silence after years of living with a mass of mites on his eardrum.

Paul Balvert's "noisy nightmare" went undiagnosed for two years, the New Zealand Herald reported today.

The infestation has stunned ear therapists and a clinical microbiologist who are unaware of any other documented cases of mites thriving and reproducing in a human ear.

Entomologists believe the eight-legged inhabitants were flour or grain mites known as Acarus siro.

Mr Balvert is jubilant and "forever grateful" a Hamilton ear nurse made the creepy discovery and eradicated the mites – ending what he had considered an inescapable nightmare.

He believed one or more of the mites got into his ear the day a chicken feed pan emptied over his head. He owns a business specialising in cleaning large chicken sheds.

"For years I had no idea what was wrong. I had been hearing continual bubble and squeak noises in my ears and it was worse at night. Sometimes I would get up in the morning and think I would be lucky if I had got any sleep.

"And there was movement. That was the worst – the itch. Many times during the day and night I would stick my fingers and cotton buds in my ears to try and relieve the itch. It was unreachable."

His doctor twice flushed his ears with warm water with no respite.

He got short-term relief when a nurse suctioned his ear out but then read an article on tinnitus – noises in ears – and thought that was what he had as he grew older.

Last year he visited Tolbecs Ear Centre in Hamilton.

"A nurse there took one look and called in her boss and others. Then the microbiologist got called in. They were all quite excited," Mr Balvert said.

Centre director Theresa O'Leary said she was amazed to see an infestation of "very active, tiny, bulbous, semi-transparent mites moving around in a moist layer and white eggs present all over the canal and eardrum.

"There were about a 100 of them. It was a well-stocked breeding ground."

Suction removed visible mites and eggs but hidden eggs soon hatched and the problem began again.

More suction followed and Waikato Hospital clinical microbiologist Dr Chris Mansell was asked to help identify the mites and help find an anti-mite agent. They settled on a liquid used for scabies and headlice.

Soaking the ear with the liquid and more suctioning worked.

Last week Mr Balvert returned for a final checkup after celebrating undisturbed sleep.

Don't drink milk while watching this video or it will come out your nose.

As far as planning disputes go, it is a far cry from letters of complaint to the council over an unsightly conservatory.

After a row with developers, this family's home has been left perched 12m (40ft) up on its own concrete island.

It all started when they refused to accept compensation to move and, while the row rumbled on, the bulldozers excavated the site around them.

Rumoured to have government connections, the family is not expected to be forced out.

But popping to the shops might be a bit difficult. And as for getting the car out of the garage – well, who knows?

The house is in Chongqing, central China – the fastest growing urban centre in the world, with more than 4million residents.

The boom is fuelled by strong economic growth and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But behind the scenes is a debate, that has been raging for ten years, over the need for a law giving legal protection to private property in a Communist state.

US immigration officials insisted the sufferer of an anal infection remove a small piece of medical thread which was being used by doctors to treat the condition. The man required treatment under general anaesthetic as a result.

The man had an anal fistula, which is a painful channel that can develop deep into the anus, caused by infection or digestive conditions such as Crohn's disease.

Arriving on holiday in New York in August last year, the unnamed 48-year-old was interrogated and searched by immigration officers, according to a letter appearing in medical journal The Lancet. The rectal examination discovered a device called a seton, which doctors in the UK had inserted into the fistula to help control long-term infection.

The seton was made of a blue braided medical suture material knotted and passed into the hole where the fistula surfaced. After one baffled immigration officer pulled "very hard" on the seton, the patient was given the choice by the baffled immigration officers of either getting on the next plane home, or submitting himself to a procedure to have it removed.

Happily, as The Lancet's correspondent notes, the curious immigration officer yanking the seton did not damage "the anal sphincter muscles encircled by it".

The seton was duly removed by an airport doctor, who claimed to have no idea what it was. The man now requires treatment under general anaesthetic to have a replacement inserted.

The letter writer concludes by advising seton patients to carry a letter from their doctor when travelling "to the USA or any other country where they are likely to be searched in this manner".

From The Register

An east German pensioner who breeds rabbits the size of dogs has been asked by North Korea to help set up a big bunny farm to alleviate food shortages in the communist country.

One of these rabbits can easily feed eight people.

Copy and paste the following code into the address bar of your web browser:

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Shopping Bag Bra in an effort to cut down on the use of plastic bags during those frenzied shopping sprees. This unique, lacy red bra comes with removable padded cups that transform into shopping bags on the fly.
No word yet on what the panties transform into.