Turn fresh urine into...free drinking water

Um. Yeah.

At first glance, it can seem a little crazy, but if you read into it, the idea is interesting. The idea is to have an emergency device like this in drought-stricken areas, etc.

Basically, it converts urine (human or animal pee either one) into drinkable water when the users pee on "activated carbon" inside. That then removes the color and flavor.

(Uh, what about all the stuff inside the pee that the body expelled in the first place? It's not just about color and flavor...is it?)

Either way, you can see more labeled pictures and diagrams of the inner workings on thedesignblog. I wonder if we'll ever see things like this that actually work and are used...

~Edit May 23, 2009~ The first astronaut drank recycled urine! Check it out at the link.

I see pink elephants...do you?

Once upon a time, it was a regular occurrence for me to speak of the pink and purple polka dotted elephants that were climbing in the trees.

Well it isn't purple or polka dotted, but it is most definitely pink!!  And this time, people aren't going to look at me like I'm crazy for it. You can see it yourself!

Here's a bit more information about the little pink guy:

A wildlife cameraman took pictures of the calf when he spotted it among a herd of about 80 elephants in the Okavango Delta.

Experts believe it is probably an albino, which is an extremely rare phenomenon in African elephants.

They are unsure of its chances of long-term survival - the
blazing African sunlight may cause blindness and skin problems for the
calf.

Mike Holding, who spotted the baby while filming
for a BBC wildlife programme, said: "We only saw it for a couple of
minutes as the herd crossed the river.


"This was a really exciting moment for everyone in camp. We knew it was a rare sighting - no-one could believe their eyes."

Documented evidence

Albino elephants are not usually white, but instead they have more of a reddish-brown or pink hue.

While albinism is thought to be fairly common in Asian elephants, it is much less common in the larger African species.

Isn't it cute? And I know I'm not just imagining pink elephants because the news hit internationally, hehe.

Birmingham says no more apostrophes -- Language fanatics outraged!

This is month-old news, but still worth mentioning. I may not be a huge language, grammar, spelling geek, but I do find it silly that Birmingham would remove a key punctuation mark from all the signs, simply because it might "confuse" people.

Sorry, but the entire English language is filled with confusing stuff, but we certainly don't just go dropping it left and right.....at least not from official items! I also don't think it takes a high school diploma to be able to figure out what a word is. *shakes head*

Here's the full article so you know what I'm talking about (yes, blatantly copied/pasted because news articles tend to be removed rather quickly and then I'm left with broken links and posts without full information....no fun)

LONDON - On the streets of Birmingham, the queen's English is now the queens English.

England's second-largest city has decided to drop apostrophes from all its street signs, saying they're confusing and old-fashioned.

But some purists are downright possessive about the punctuation mark.

It seems that Birmingham officials have been taking a hammer to grammar for years, quietly dropping apostrophes from street signs since the 1950s. Through the decades, residents have frequently launched spirited campaigns to restore the missing punctuation to signs denoting such places as "St. Pauls Square" or
"Acocks Green."

This week, the council made it official, saying it was banning the punctuation mark from signs in a bid to end the dispute once and for all.

Councilor Martin Mullaney, who heads the city's transport scrutiny committee,
said he decided to act after yet another interminable debate into whether "Kings Heath," a Birmingham suburb, should be rewritten with an apostrophe.

"I had to make a final decision on this," he said Friday. "We keep debating apostrophes in meetings and we have other things to do."

'They confuse people' Mullaney hopes to stop public campaigns to restore the apostrophe that would tell passers-by that "Kings Heath" was once owned by the monarchy.

"Apostrophes denote possessions that are no longer accurate, and are not needed," he said. "More importantly, they confuse people. If I want to go to a restaurant, I don't want to have an A-level (high school diploma) in English to find it."

But grammarians say apostrophes enrich the English language.

"They are such sweet-looking things that play a crucial role in the English language," said Marie Clair of the Plain English Society, which campaigns for the use of simple English. "It's always worth taking the effort to understand them, instead of ignoring them."

Mullaney claimed apostrophes confuse GPS units, including those used by emergency services. But Jenny Hodge, a spokeswoman for satellite navigation equipment manufacturer TomTom, said most users of their systems navigate through Britain's sometime confusing streets by entering a postal code rather than a street address.

She said that if someone preferred to use a street name — with or without an apostrophe — punctuation wouldn't be an issue. By the time the first few letters of the street were entered, a list of matching choices would pop up and the user would choose the destination.

Grammarians revolt
A test by The Associated Press backed this up. In a search for London street St. Mary's Road, the name popped up before the apostrophe had to be entered.

There is no national body responsible for regulating place names in Britain. Its main mapping agency, Ordnance Survey, which provides data for emergency services, takes its information from local governments and each one is free to decide how it uses punctuation.

"If councils decide to add or drop an apostrophe to a place name, we just update our data," said Ordnance Survey spokesman Paul Beauchamp. "We've never heard of any confusion arising from their existence."

To sticklers, a missing or misplaced apostrophe can be a major offense.

British grammarians have railed for decades against storekeepers' signs advertising the sale of "apple's and pear's," or pubs offering "chip's and pea's."

In her best-selling book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves," Lynne Truss recorded her fury at the title of the Hugh Grant-Sandra Bullock comedy "Two Weeks Notice," insisting it should be "Two Weeks' Notice."

"Those spineless types who talk about abolishing the apostrophe are missing the point, and the pun is very much intended," she wrote.

How to save gas and ultimately money (The extreme hypermiling guide)

Who doesn't want to save money on gas nowadays? There are tons of tricks and tips out there on how to "hypermile" or get the most out of a gallon of gas. This guide does a great job at bringing 450 tips together into one place, though. Here are some sample tricks...just check out the site for more:

1. Roll Up Your Windows
2. Inflate Your Tires (to the proper psi according to the
3. manual, or just slightly more; too much more and you can be asking for trouble)
4. Don’t Brake If You Don’t Have To
5. Leave Room in Front of Your Car (to allow for braking slowly)
6. Use Cruise Control (almost all the time)
7. Don’t Accelerate (too quickly)Multitask and Plan Your Route (make sure your route is efficient and you’re not backtracking)
8. Empty the Trunk
9. Drive Less
10. Avoid Drive-Throughs (lots of idling in a drive-through)
11. Drive Shoeless (to have a better feel of the accelerator/break; if your windows are up and your air conditioning is off this will also help keep you cool!)
12. Use Overdrive
13. Drive the Speed Limit (or even a little slower on the highway)
14. Watch the Crosswalk Signs (to know if the light is going to change soon)

And there are even some tips that they recommend you *don't* use. For example:

Place cardboard over the radiator

One guy I read about does this and says that a cold
engine reduces fuel-efficiency. He uses Office Depot’s silver-colored
cardboard to warm up the engine faster. He covers his radiator with
cardboard to block the wind, thus retaining heat and keeping the engine
running at a warmer temperature. Knowing that this could cause his
engine to overheat, he says, “I’ll take off the piece of cardboard if I
know that I’ll be driving a long distance, say 100 miles, but it’s fine
for my daily commute.”

Not worth it - what if you forget about it and your engine overheats?

Can you blow up a balloon?

How about with your nose? Yeah, didn't think so.

This 13-year-old can, though, and has claimed the world record for doing so at 213 balloons within one hour. Geez.

BLAINE, Wash. (AP) - A 13-year-old boy in Blaine is claiming the world record for blowing balloons with his nose.

Using
one nostril at a time, Andrew Dahl inflated 213 balloons within an hour
Friday in the town's public library. His feat has been submitted for
review by Guinness World Records.

His father, Doug Dahl,
measured the balloons to make sure each was at least 20 centimeters,
about 8 inches, the minimum diameter, and his mother, Wendy Dahl, kept
the tally.

At one point he asked, "Does this count as practicing
my trumpet?" His mother replied, "Only if you can play that with your
nose."

It was his second try. In February he sent a videotape of
himself inflating 184 balloons, only to learn that it didn't count
because he handed them to his father to tie. This time he tied them off
himself.

Arrested for taking a picture of a cop

Article here

Nearly everyone carries a cell phone and it’s hard to find one without that camera feature. It’s convenient when you want to take that impromptu photo, but a Tri-Cities area man ended up behind bars after snapping a shot of a Johnson County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop.

The cell phone photographer says the arrest was intimidation, but the deputy says he feared for his life.

“Here’s a guy who takes me out of the car and arrests me in front of my kids. For what? To take a picture of a police officer?” said Scott Conover.

A Johnson County sheriff’s deputy arrested Scott Conover for unlawful photography.

“He says you took a picture of me. It’s illegal to take a picture of a law enforcement officer,” said Conover.

Conover took a picture of a sheriff’s deputy on the side of the road on a traffic stop. Conover was stunned by the charge.

“This is a public highway,” said Conover.

And it was not a place where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy as Tennessee code states. The deputy also asked Conover to delete the picture three times.

“He said if you don’t give it to me, you’re going to jail,” said Conover.

Under the advice of the Johnson County attorney, the sheriff would not comment and the arresting deputy said he didn’t want to incriminate himself by talking to us.

In an affidavit, the deputy said he saw something black with a red light which he thought was a threat. Conover was also arrested for pointing a laser at a law enforcement officer.

“At no time did I have a laser. I had an iPhone,” said Conover.

When you take a picture in the dark with Conover’s Apple iPhone, there is no flash or any light that comes from the phone that could be mistaken for a laser.

In a witness statement by a Mountain City officer, is says the deputy asked about the picture rather than looking for a laser.

“If you arrested me, wouldn’t you take the laser? If you arrested me, wouldn’t you take the camera?” said Conover.

He expects these charges to be dismissed.

“This guy maliciously arrested me, charging me with phony charges that he don’t even understand himself,” Conover said.

The American Civil Liberties Union would not comment on Conover’s case without fully reviewing the allegations, but told us there is no law that prohibits anyone from taking photographs in public areas, even of police. Taking photos is protected by the First Amendment. Conover is ordered to appear in a Johnson County court on August 6th.

Is it just me or was this a bit excessive?

59 MPGs....in a plain ol' Acord

Link

I really, really hope this site keeps their articles up so this doesn't become a dead link. It's a fairly long article, so I'm not going to paste the whole thing. Basically, his driving techniques, although incredibly crazy on some of them, allow him to get 59 miles per gallon.....which with rising gas prices, is something just about everyone could enjoy.

I do 'not' recommend some of his techniques -- like shutting off the engine while going 50mph on a 25mph turn. Other things he talks about make sense, though, and you can learn a lot that might help curb some of your own bad driving habits. Guzzling gas is not something most of us can afford as prices climb even higher.

Got Milk? Oreos Spilled Everywhere!

Craziness!

(May 19, 2008)
MORRIS, Ill. (AP) - Got milk?

Police say a trailer loaded with 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreos has overturned, spilling the cookies still in their plastic sleeves into the median and roadway.

Illinois State Police Sgt. Brian Mahoney says the truck's driver was traveling from Chicago to Morris on Interstate 80 around 4 a.m. Monday when he fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into the median.

"The boxes came out of the trailer and boxes were ripped open," he said.

The crash about 50 miles southwest of Chicago remains under investigation.

Mahoney says no charges have been filed but both lanes of traffic remain closed while authorities remove the cookies.

(Stolen and republished because every news source I've come across so far deletes their content after a short amount of time, which ends up breaking links I send people to and then I have no where to send them to read the stories I want them to know about.)

Popeye Chicken Founder Al Copeland Dies

Al Copeland, the founder of Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits, has died. He was 64 years old. In his native New Orleans, he was known as much for his flamboyant lifestyle as for his chain's spicy chicken.

At the age of 18, Copeland sold his car to fund his first restaurant: a doughnut shop. When a successful Kentucky Fried Chicken moved into his neighborhood, Copeland started tinkering with recipes and opened a restaurant of his own. But it struggled: The chicken was too bland. So, he returned to his Louisiana roots and made it spicy.

Under Copeland's leadership, Popeyes opened more than 700 restaurants worldwide. At a Popeyes in New Orleans, restaurant manager Herschel Epps says Copeland was true to his roots.

"The same way that he was today, he was yesterday. He was always consistent, a caring person, and his loss will be felt heavy around here because he was a great guy."

In 1989, Popeyes acquired rival Church's Chicken, which later forced Copeland's company into bankruptcy. Through good times and bad, Copeland led an extravagant lifestyle: sports cars, speed boats — and garish Christmas light displays at his suburban New Orleans home that were so popular that authorities had to direct traffic and neighbors filed lawsuits. There were lavish weddings and bitter divorces that were the talk of the town.

Copeland died in Germany, where he was getting treatment for a rare form of salivary gland cancer.

Story

If you look around, there are some other awesome articles about him, including this snippet about his wedding:

The wedding had a fairy-tale beginning, with the newlyweds arriving for the reception at Mr. Copeland's house in a horse-drawn pumpkin coach and walking beneath a line of crossed sabers held aloft by people dressed like wooden soldiers.

Story

And he went out in style, too, with his casket being carried by a horse-drawn carriage:

Copeland's casket was borne to the mausoleum on a horse-drawn carriage and accompanied by a brass band playing the tune "My Way." In honor of his favorite number, 11, 111 balloons and 11 doves were released.

"Al's going out big. He's got all his toys here," said Eric Paulson, a morning television news anchor and the master of ceremonies.

Story

PJC--Google Has Turned the Lights Out!

http://www.google.com/intl/en/earthhour/

For Earth Hour awareness, they've turned their screen black for "lights out." On Saturday, March 29th, turn your lights out from 8pm-9pm local time. Check out the link above for more details about what's going on.

PJC--Guitar Hero Goes Travel Size on the DS

Guitar Hero for Nintendo DS

If you're not familiar with Guitar Hero, it's a video game that involves using a console that is the size and shape of a real guitar. Players follow prompts on the screen and "play" by matching up sequences on the screen to what's on their guitar. And of course, it's all to music and swept the nation in the last few years, leading to bizarre stories about how much parents were paying to get certain games and one parent who sold a hard-to-get Guitar Hero III game for $9100 after catching his son smoking pot.

I told you....craziness. It's like Tickle Me Elmo all over again, but involving adults who want it just as bad as teens and younger kids.....and are willing to do more than simply plow over other anxious parents in the mall.

Anywho, Nintendo has brought out a version for the DS...a small, compact handheld console....an upgrade to the Gameboy, if you're familiar with those (I've noticed a huge variety in my audience nowadays...if I mention something you don't know about, tell me, and I'll be sure to explain more!).

There's no huge life-size guitar this time, but rather, an attachment that you can put on your travel-size game player and have at it! The link below the picture up there has a rather cool video animation on how it's played. Beware, there's sound, so if you want to listen, make sure you have other things turned down and your volume at a tolerable level so you're not bombarded.

Should Japan Be Our Role Model? (Ban ISPs and Old Drivers)

Sometimes, I don't think we should follow in Japan's footsteps....like banning people from the internet for file sharing:

Copyright holders would use “special detection software” to sniff out online pirates and then notify the ISPs. Punishment is reminiscent of high school with ISPs first emailing a warning, then interrupting service if that doesn’t work, and finally, chronic violators would get expelled from the service. The ISPs are convening in April to figure out exactly how the new policy would operate.

(Yes, file sharing is bad when abused and heavy, repeat offenders would deserve punishment like this, but this isn't so great for the causal net user.)

And other Japanese activities, I wholeheartedly support....like this one:

TOKYO (Reuters) - Tokyo businesses are to start offering benefits to elderly people who give up their drivers' licences, backing a police effort to cut back on the ballooning number of traffic accidents caused by drivers over 65.

Among more than 30 special offers, one small bank will give higher interest rates, while Mitsukoshi department store chain plans to provide free delivery from its Tokyo stores and a hotel will offer a 10 percent discount on meals in a program starting next month, Tokyo police said on their Web site.

"Have the courage to give up your licence," the police say on the site. "If you have lost confidence in your driving ... if your family says they are worried about you driving ... please think about handing in your licence."

Japan has the largest proportion of over-65s in the world and faces a growing problem with elderly drivers, who caused 100,000 traffic accidents last year, about twice the figure 10 years earlier, broadcaster NHK said.

I have no problem with people who are getting up there in age and can still drive and do things like a youngin' (actually, it amazes me and I hope to be that way someday!), but sometimes, elderly drivers are as bad as fresh teenage drivers and it 'can' get dangerous. Some people just don't know when to stop, and enticements like these making handing over your pride (as some people see it....I don't personally) not so bad after all.

What do you think about these new policies? Should other countries follow suit on both of these?

White Bengal Tigers

Cute animal picture time!

It's been a while since I've posted a cute picture for no apparent reason at all, so here ya go.

Three 39 days-old white tigers are presented at the Metropolitan Zoo in Santiago, Monday, Feb. 4, 2008. Luna, a captive tiger not pictured, gave birth to two males and one female last Dec. 28, 2007

I have a special connection to white tigers as I've done research on them since I was in elementary school and have always held them close to my heart. I even wrote to the Guinness Book of World Records one year because they listed them as "the most endangered" and I didn't appreciate how they were showing it off like that when it was horrible and didn't include the appropriate facts. To come up with three cubs at once like this is absolutely amazing (and for those of you who know anything about them, yes, I know about the inbreeding and such....just meant that it's really rare for three to pop up like this).

Mail is as Slow as Snails....Literally!

I've been having tons of issues with the postal service later and this is just confirmation. Mail erally is as slow as snails. Brings new/old meaning to "snail mail."

WARSAW (Reuters) - It's official. Postal delivery is as slow as snails, at least in Poland.

Daily Gazeta Wyborcza said Michal Szybalski calculated that it took 294 hours for the letter to arrive at his home. He also said the distance between his home and the sender was 11.1 kilometers.

Given the distance and the time, the speed of the letter was 0.03775 kilometers per hour. Szybalski calculated that a garden snail travels at around 0.048 kilometers per hour.

Why I Post Full Yahoo Articles

It's a copyright problem to copy a full article here....regardless of whether I credit them or not.

I know this.

I respect this.

I'm a journalist, so I even *understand* this.

And I try to follow the rules, but looking through the last few article links I have bookmarked, I'm disappointed to see that they've already been removed. The articles have been purged and are gone. I checked. I searched. I hunted.

The same with their pictures. I always upload borrowed pictures to my own account anyway to spare bandwidth theft issues from other people, but geez.....this was just a few weeks ago. We're not talking years here, people, or even months.

Yes, news moves fast...but where are the archives (the links 'look' like they'd be archived, but nope)? Going back into my own archives, I can see a few links right off that I can guarantee are broken. And if I searched for those articles or those pictures again, they wouldn't be there. That's rather disappointing because the whole point of linking is so that people can follow the link and get to the original source or find more information.

So while I'd much rather post snippets of this or that and then send you off to someone else's credited work, I can't always do that with Yahoo, I've discovered. In a year, when someone comes across my site via some random search that leads them to a yahoo article post here, I want them to have access to the full story....not just the quote I happened to pull. :(

It Rained Iguanas! Literally!

No, really. This article is from the 4th and it got so cold that the iguanas went into a deep sleep and started falling out of trees. Here's part of the story:

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. - How cold was it in South Florida this week? So cold the iguanas fell from the trees.

The cold-blooded reptiles go into a deep sleep when the temperature falls into the 40s. Experts said their bodies basically shut off and they lose their grip on the tree.

But it isn't sudden death: Experts said the reptiles perk up when the temperatures rises. The iguanas turn a gray hue in the meantime.

Miami Metrozoo officials said the night cold causes the most drops.

"The worst part of the cold comes in the evening, and they literally just shut off," said Ron Magill, communications director for Miami Metrozoo. "Their bodies shut off and they lose their grip on the tree, and they start falling."

More of the story.

In Prison, Toddlers Serve Time with Mom

The article I have excerpted below discusses how in Mexico, children born in prison stay with their mothers until the age of 6. Some people think it's ridiculous while others think it's beneficial to everyone involved, even though it's not typical of what most of us are used to or would expect. What do you think about this?

Fifty-three children under the age of 6 live inside the prison with their mothers, who are serving sentences for crimes from drug dealing to kidnapping to homicide. Mothers dressed in prison blue, many with tattoos, carry babies on their hips around the exercise yard. Others lead toddlers and kindergartners by the hand, play with them in the dust or bounce them on their knees on prison benches.

Karina Rendón, a 23-year-old serving time for drug dealing, said her 2-year-old daughter thought of the 144-square-foot cell she shared with two other mothers and their children as home. “She doesn’t know it is a prison,” she said, smiling sadly. “She thinks it’s her house.”

While a prison may seem an unhealthy place for a child, in the early 1990s the Mexico City government decided it was better for children born in prison to stay with their mothers until they were 6 rather than to be turned over to relatives or foster parents. The children are allowed to leave on weekends and holidays to visit relatives.

A debate continues among Mexican academics over whether spending one’s early years in a jail causes mental problems later in life, but for the moment the law says babies must stay with their mothers. So the prison has a school with three teachers.

The warden, Margarita Malo, said the children had a calming effect on the rest of the inmates. The presence of children also inspires the mothers to learn skills or, in many cases, to kick drug habits that landed them in trouble in the first place.

And even though the prison is full of women capable of violence, the children usually walk safely among them, as if protected by an invisible shield. It is as though they tap the collective maternal instinct of the 1,680 women locked up here.

Read the rest of the article here.

Cat on Cocaine is Creepy---But Recovers

A cat hissing at the camara, in a pet shop. When a pet cat was taken to a veterinary clinic in Australia with dilated pupils, a racing heart and agitated movements, it turned out to be high on cocaine and other drugs left around after a party. It recovered.

Ah, the things that can be found on Yahoo News. Geez.

Fluorescent Cats Glow in the Dark

This picture taken through a special filter in a dark room shows, a cat, left, possessing a red fluorescent protein that makes the animal glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet rays, appearing next to a normal cloned cat, right, at Gyeongsang National University in Jinju, south of Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007. South Korean scientists have cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays, an achievement that could help develop cures for human genetic diseases, the Science and Technology Ministry said.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? At first glance, the picture looks cool, but I just assumed it was some fancy lighting or creative photoshop. I had no idea that the cat was actually glowing because a fluorescent protein it was exposed to.....nor did I have any idea that the cats were cloned.

A Letter That is Slower than Christmas---or 93 Christmases!!

Here's a cute news story about a letter that was sent in 1914....but just now was found. The person it was to be delivered to has since passed away, but they delivered the Christmas card to a relative anyway. No one is quite sure where it has been for the last 93 years.