Weird But True

[MalahatTwo7]

Who'da Thunk It?

Hill opens to June skiing

By Rob Shaw, Times Colonist June 11, 2010 2:02 AM

A cool, wet spring has brought an unexpected benefit -- Mount Washington plans to open for summer skiers and snowboarders next weekend, a first in its 32-year history.

"How often can you say you've skied on the Island in June?" said resort spokesman Brent Curtain.

"We're allowing people the opportunity to do it."

The rare chance to hit the slopes in a T-shirt is courtesy of a recent spate of unseasonably wet weather, which means less snow than expected has melted since the resort closed in late April.

As a result, there's enough snow to open the Linton's Loop run on the Eagle Express chair.

At the top, there's as much as two metres of snow, said Curtain.

"There's been no sun, and snow melts a lot quicker when you have some sunshine and warmer temperatures," he said. "Even with rain, if there's cloud cover and rain, it's not going to melt as quick."

The summer ski session caps a banner year for Mount Washington. The resort was blanketed with more than 15 metres of snow from November 2009 to April 2010 -- the second-deepest amount in history.

Mount Washington had a top-five year in terms of business, said Curtain.

Resort officials aren't sure what the turnout will be for the summer ski weekend, or whether Mount Washington will turn a profit, said Curtain.

"This wasn't a venture to make a bunch of money or a weekend to be a cash grab. It's more of a, 'You know, we can do this,' " he said.

"We've joked about it in past years when you've closed the season with a lot of snow and you joke, 'God, imagine summer operations if we had enough snow to ski.'

"We always say that but you get the warm two-week stretch in May and then the snow disappears pretty quick."

The summer ski weekend runs 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 19 and 20. A lift ticket costs $25.

Dads pay only $10 on Father's Day Sunday if they bring their kids. Rentals are available.

Because the weekend is considered a special event, the resort said season's tickets are not being honoured.

[email protected]

© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/to...#ixzz0qY7KJ2rl

[donethat]

[QUOTE=MalahatTwo7;1182033]Hill opens to June skiing

A cool, wet spring has brought an unexpected benefit -- Mount Washington plans to open for summer skiers and snowboarders next weekend, a first in its 32-year history.

"How often can you say you've skied on the Island in June?" said resort spokesman Brent Curtain.


Sounds like all the Global Warming has taken a Holiday. No wonder Tipper Gore is divorcing that fraud!

[MalahatTwo7]

Sounds like all the Global Warming has taken a Holiday. No wonder Tipper Gore is divorcing that fraud!

HAHAHAA. Good think I was only just reaching for my coffee when I read this one!

[MalahatTwo7]

I think I posted the Naked Cowboy thing a while back....?

NYC Naked Cowboy to Naked Cowgirl: Stop copying me

Associated Press June 22, 2010 06:37 AM.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 (06-22) 06:37 PDT New York (AP)

New York City's famous Naked Cowboy wants a bikini-clad woman who calls herself The Naked Cowgirl to stop ripping off his trademark.

The Times Square cowboy, whose real name is Robert Burck, is known for strumming his guitar wearing only briefs and a cowboy hat. He has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sandy Kane, who wears a red, white and blue cowboy hat and matching bikini.

Burck says if Kane's going to make money by posing for photos, he wants her to sign a "Naked Cowboy Franchise Agreement." Most of his licensed franchisees are required to pay $5,000 a year or $500 a month and go through a screening process.

Kane, who is in her 50s, is a former stripper who's now a fixture of the city comedy scene. Her real name is Sandra Brodsky. She says she doesn't owe Burck anything.

Information from: New York Post, www.nypost.com


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...#ixzz0sFFaosnf



Where's the EEK icon!!!!????

[MalahatTwo7]

You Got To Read About It Here, Folks!

Moo-ve over cows, camel milk is coming to Europe

Reuters July 7, 2010

Hard on the hooves of cow's and goat's milk, European grocery shelves may soon be invaded by milk from that proverbial ship of the desert, the camel.

An animal famous for bad breath and ill humour might seem an unlikely source of liquid to lubricate a bowl of breakfast cereal or froth up a latte, but promoters from the United Arab Emirates say it is healthy -- and almost like mother's own.

"People with lactose intolerance can drink it with no problem, unlike cow's milk, it doesn't cause protein allergies, and it's high in insulin," said Ulrich Wernery, the scientific director of Dubai's Centre for Veterinary Research.

Similar in taste and appearance to cow's milk, he said camel milk is closer in composition to human milk. Camel milk also is high in vitamin C, which Wernery said explains its importance to Bedouins, who historically lacked fruits and vegetables in their diet and have been drinking camel milk for generations.

© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/health/...#ixzz0t044Wusy


You be the judge.

[firecat1]

Ummm, no. Just... no.

[MalahatTwo7]

Perty KUUL Stuff

Spacecraft broadcast long beyond life spans
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

San Francisco Chronicle July 6, 2010 04:00 AM Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Four spacecraft on vastly different missions have broken records for sending fresh discoveries back to Earth while still operating far longer than their ordained life spans.

Two are almost inconceivably far away, nearing the edge of interstellar space, while the other two are busily analyzing the sands and rocks of Mars, finding evidence of ancient water indicating signs of possible life.

Spirit and Opportunity, the rovers originally assigned to work on the Red Planet for three months, are now in their sixth year of diligent activity there. In a recent announcement, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said the rovers had set the longevity record for broadcasting to Earth from a distant planet.

Out in distant space, the two Voyagers, launched 33 years ago on a five-year mission to visit Earth's outer planets - Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus - are still very much alive, flying billions of miles beyond the region of minor planets called the Kuiper Belt, and still sending signals home.

The Voyagers are working farther from Earth than any other man-made object ever has. Voyager 1 is about 10.5 billion miles away, speeding in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus in the northern sky; Voyager 2 is 8.5 billion miles out, heading in the direction of the southern constellation Telescopium. They have been operating two years longer than Pioneer 10, which was last heard from in 2003.

The Voyagers are currently exploring mystery-shrouded realms in what is known as the heliosphere, where the sun's influence wanes and winds of subatomic particles blow from the explosions of far-off stars called supernovas.

Legacy of Pioneer 10
"It's been a remarkable mission of discovery," said Edward C. Stone, a space physicist at Caltech in Pasadena, the Voyager project's chief scientist. "It's just wonderful that the Voyagers are still revealing things from so far away that before now we really couldn't know existed."

Before the Voyagers, Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972 to explore Jupiter's storms and magnetic fields, and when mission controllers at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View heard its last signal in 2003, it held the distance communication record. It was 7.6 billion miles away.

Meanwhile, Spirit and Opportunity in May surpassed the working lifetimes of the two stationary Viking craft that had landed on Mars in 1976 to search for chemical evidence of living molecules. Viking 1 continued to operate until it fell silent six years and 116 days later - two years after the death of Viking 2.

Today on Mars, Spirit has been working and broadcasting for six years and 185 days, even though it is now stuck fast in a sand patch. It can't move, but its instruments continue to analyze the sand around it and monitor the weather.

Opportunity, which landed 21 days after Spirit, is en route to explore a far-off Martian crater named Endeavour, where images from orbiting spacecraft indicate that layers of water-formed clay exist on the surface.

Surpassing the Vikings' record "is truly remarkable, considering these rovers were designed for only a 90-day mission," said physicist John L. Callas, the project's science manager.

NASA approved the Voyager journey to scout the edges of the solar system in 1972, long before the Mars Rovers were ever conceived.

Our solar system is enclosed - as it were - within a huge magnetic bubble created by the "solar wind," a charged stream of highly energetic subnuclear particles that speed from the sun at a million mph.

The heliosphere
The bubble is known as the heliosphere, and it isn't exactly like a bubble.

"It's more like the result of a rock in a stream, with the sun as the rock," said Stone, the physicist.

One end of the bubble has been pushed into a long, wide tail by what he calls the interstellar wind - a stream of particles the Voyagers discovered that were created by blasts of long-vanished supernova explosions.

The Voyagers also discovered that the interstellar wind has swept quantities of neutral helium gas into the heliosphere, but where the helium comes from remains unknown. Stone estimates that Voyager 1 will leave the heliosphere to travel among the stars within five years, while Voyager 2 will follow a few years later. And since the energy for the instruments aboard both spacecraft is generated by radioactive plutonium-238, which decays at a known rate, he expects they will continue transmitting fresh data "beyond 2020."

And long after that time, well more than 12 billion miles away from Earth, the Voyagers will still be flying somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy - something inconceivable when the Space Age began with Sputnik, barely more than 50 years ago.

E-mail David Perlman at [email protected].

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...#ixzz0t0mItoXf
====

Can't help but think of "Ve-ger" from Star Trek.......

[MalahatTwo7]

Minn. police stop driver armed with squirt guns

Associated Press July 6, 2010 10:09 AM

Tuesday, July 6, 2010 (07-06) 10:09 PDT Duluth, Minn. (AP)

Police responding to a report of a driver brandishing a gun in southeastern Minnesota found themselves in extreme danger — of getting wet.

When police pulled over and searched the vehicle in the port city of Duluth on Monday, they found only several "Super Soaker" squirt guns on the back seat

The Duluth News Tribune reports that no arrests were made.

Information from: Duluth News Tribune, www.duluthsuperior.com

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...#ixzz0t7PpIbeT

[MalahatTwo7]

Nudge Nudge. Wink Wink. Say No More

Space sex a no-no, says NASA commander

By QMI Agency Last Updated: June 28, 2010 8:44pm

There's no sex in space for astronauts at the International Space Station, says a NASA commander.

When pressed on the topic of zero-gravity intimacy, NASA commander Alan Poindexter told a press conference in Tokyo Monday that sex and relationships at the International Space Station are frowned upon.

"We are a group of professionals," Poindexter told reporters. "We treat each other with respect and we have a great working relationship. Personal relationships are not an issue. We don't have them and we won't."

Poindexter and six crew members recently returned from a two-week resupply mission at the International Space Station. It was the first time four women were in orbit at the same time.

The topic of sex in space has prompted speculation over the years.

{'Round here "Poindexter" is usually a name that is used in a deragatory manner, to indicate some brainiac type person with little or no people skills. The word has mostly gone out of use, but everytime I read it, I gotta wonder.}

[E40FDNYL35]

July 21, 2010 --- I will be in Baltimore for FH Expo. Look for big dumb white guy, I will be standing next to him. PM or email me....you can buy me a drink somewhere. LOL

[RspctFrmCalgary]

July 21, 2010 --- I will be in Baltimore for FH Expo. Look for big dumb white guy, I will be standing next to him. PM or email me....you can buy me a drink somewhere. LOL

Don't forget to take pics when there are "Crusty" meet-ups! Have fun!

[MalahatTwo7]

Homeless man calls 911 from hot tub, seeks cocoa

Associated Press September 1, 2010 10:30 PM Copyright Associated Press.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010 (09-01) 22:30 PDT Beaverton, Ore. (AP)

A homeless man who called 911 from the hot tub of a suburban Portland home and asked for towels, hot chocolate and a hug got arrested for trespassing instead.

Beaverton police say Mark Eskelsen called 911 from his cell phone, identified himself as "the sheriff of Washington County," and asked for medical help. He later admitted he wasn't the sheriff but informed the dispatcher he'd been "yelling for about an hour and a half."

The man said in his Sunday morning call that he'd been in the water about 10 hours and his towels had gotten wet. As he put it, "I just need a hug and a warm cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows in it."

The Oregonian newspaper says arriving officers arrested Eskelsen for investigation of second-degree criminal trespass and improper use of 911.

Information from: The Oregonian, www.oregonlive.com


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...#ixzz0yP3WtfMN

[MalahatTwo7]

WOW! Who'da thunk it? Steven Hawking getting more than 6 pages of attention. WOW WEE!

Anyhow, on to bigger and better things; meanwhile back at the Ranch.....

Nanaimo man barred from further lawsuits

By Jenn McGarrigle - Nanaimo News Bulletin Published: September 01, 2010 4:00 PM

A technicality in the court system enabled a Nanaimo man ordered not to start any more legal proceedings in B.C. to file another lawsuit over alleged mind control.

Since December 2008, Cedar resident Jerry Rose has filed six civil suits against the RCMP, the province, the federal government and numerous others, with the list of defendants changing slightly in some of the suits, alleging that he is a victim of mind tampering.

Each suit repeats allegations that he had electriconic chips surgically implanted in his body, which are used by the RCMP and others to monitor, record and control his thoughts and actions and communicate with him.

Past suits were dismissed and an order was issued on Dec. 18, 2009 prohibiting Rose from filing any more lawsuits. Despite that order he filed another claim on July 30.

The claim was accepted at the Nanaimo court registry because Rose had refused to sign the court order barring further legal action, said Linda Mueller, communications manager for the Ministry of Attorney General.

Since the order was not signed, the next step was for the matter to go before a judge, who would then sign the court order on Rose’s behalf, she said. That did not happen because it was the responsibility of one of the parties named to approach the judge.

None of the parties – including the province – had done so by the time the new suit was filed earlier this summer.

Mueller said once the problem was recognized, court staff added Rose to the vexatious litigant registry.

The latest suit was dismissed on Monday in Nanaimo provincial court and an application by the Attorney General of Canada to have the Dec. 18 court order entered without Rose’s signature was granted.

Rose was also ordered to pay court costs of $500.

[firecat1]

If this baby skwirlie starts meowing, I'm gonna put on a fur suit and start gathering acorns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBb7gdF2Gf4

[firecat1]

This kinda makes you think twice. Both times for "how/why could/would someone NOT remove something hot from their lap?"

p.s. Male readers, ya might wanna pay attention to the paragraph in red.

No laps for warm laptops; skin damage is possible

Mon Oct 4, 12:33 PM
By Lindsey Tanner, The Associated Press

CHICAGO - People who work with a laptop computer sitting on their lap might want to rethink that habit.

Doing it a lot can lead to "toasted skin syndrome," an unusual-looking mottled skin condition caused by long-term heat exposure, according to medical reports.

In one recent case, a 12-year-old boy developed a sponge-patterned skin discoloration on his left thigh after playing computer games a few hours every day for several months.

"He recognized that the laptop got hot on the left side; however, regardless of that, he did not change its position," Swiss researchers reported in an article published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Another case involved a Virginia law student who sought treatment for the mottled discoloration on her leg.

Dr. Kimberley Salkey, who treated the young woman, was stumped until she learned the student spent about six hours a day working with her computer propped on her lap. The temperature underneath registered 125 degrees (52 degrees Celsius).

That case, from 2007, is one of 10 laptop-related cases reported in medical journals in the past six years.

The condition also can be caused by overuse of heating pads and other heat sources that usually aren't hot enough to cause burns. It's generally harmless but can cause permanent skin darkening. In very rare cases, it can cause damage leading to skin cancers, said the Swiss researchers, Drs. Andreas Arnold and Peter Itin from University Hospital Basel. They do not cite any skin cancer cases linked to laptop use, but suggest, to be safe, placing a carrying case or other heat shield under the laptop if you have to hold it in your lap.

Salkey, an assistant dermatology professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said that under the microscope, the affected skin resembles skin damaged by long-term sun exposure.

Major manufacturers including Apple, Hewlett Packard and Dell warn in user manuals against placing laptops on laps or exposed skin for extended periods of time because of the risk for burns.

A medical report several years ago found that men who used laptops on their laps had elevated scrotum temperatures. If prolonged, that kind of heat can decrease sperm production, which can potentially lead to infertility. Whether laptop use itself can cause that kind of harm hasn't been confirmed.

In the past, "toasted skin syndrome" has occurred in workers whose jobs require being close to a heat source, including bakers and glass blowers, and, before central heating, in people who huddled near potbellied stoves to stay warm.

Dr. Anthony J. Mancini, dermatology chief at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said he'd treated a boy who developed the condition from using a heating pad "hours at a time" to soothe a thigh injured in soccer. Mancini said he'd also seen a case caused by a hot water bottle.

He noted that chronic, prolonged skin inflammation can potentially increase chances for squamous cell skin cancer, which is more aggressive than the most common skin cancer. But Mancini said it's unlikely computer use would lead to cancer since it's so easy to avoid prolonged close skin contact with laptops.