You Can't Make This Stuff Up

[Polish_Silver]

SA going soft!

...Executions in Saudi Arabia, which applies a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, are generally carried out by beheading but media reports said authorities were considering using firing squads due to lack of swordsmen...

Maybe they need to offer higher salaries. Or maybe the culture is getting "soft".

One Pakistani I knew, who had traveled in SA, was glad to brag up the good things about this culture. For example, you could leave a camera in a car with the window rolled down and nobody would steal it.

I didn't think to ask the obvious question, what if they convicted the wrong person, who had to spend the rest of his life with one hand?

Another person who had travelled there (30 years ago) told me it was routine for well off men to have have a concubine.

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed...

Tennessee police search for man ejected from plane

Published March 30, 2013

Authorities in southeastern Tennessee are searching for a man who was thrown from an experimental aircraft while he was learning to fly from an instructor...

...Collegedale Municipal Airport employee Lowell Sterchi said the man was being trained by an instructor in his Zodiac 601 aircraft at about 2,500 feet when the canopy came off.

The man's seat belt was not fastened and he was thrown out from the plane over the East Brainerd and Apison areas of the county...

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Forget about The Squid...now even the Easter Bunny thinks he's above the law...

Motorcycle-riding Easter Bunny encounters CHP on the freeway

March 31, 2013, 1:26 p.m.

LA MESA, Calif. -- And there he was: the Easter Bunny riding a shiny red motorcycle westbound on Interstate 8 along this San Diego suburb.






California Highway Patrol Officer Adam Griffiths spotted the bunny on Saturday. White furry suit: good. Pink ears: good. Floppy white feet: good. White gloves: good. No helmet: not good.

Griffiths flicked on his red light and ordered the motorcyle rider to pull over.


The bunny had an explanation: I'm on my way to an Easter charitable event and this is my costume, he said.

Griffiths nodded. Charitable event? OK. A warning this time, no ticket. But next time, wear a helmet and make sure your vision is not obstructed by your costume. Obstructed vision is dangerous on a freeway.

"If you ride a motorcycle, you have to be aware of your total surroundings," explained CHP spokesman Brian Pennings.

[Polish_Silver]

abandon cockpit!

I suspect he was used to driving a car. People drive them for years without ever needing the safety belt.

A great curiosity for me has always been the opposition of many motorcyclists to helmet laws, and the related question of why you would need a law to get people to wear a helmet while driving a motorcycle.

Many people did not wear seat belts until it was required by law, my father among them. In spite of his many accomplishments, he never figured out that even if he was the world's greatest driver, the guy coming almost straight at him at 130 mph might be the world's worst.

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Washington state woman may be charged with killing boyfriend with her breasts

A 50-year-old woman from Everett, Wash., is facing possible manslaughter charges after police say she smothered and killed her boyfriend with her breasts...

...The incident is similar to a November case in which a German lawyer claimed his girlfriend tried to kill him by holding his head between her 38DD breasts...

...He claimed his girlfriend later admitted on the phone that she'd been trying to smother him — saying she wanted his death "to be as pleasurable as possible."

And Britain's National Health Service will fund the installation costs of these lethal weapons.
Only 36DD though...evidently limited by austerity?

Larger breasts on NHS for would-be model

A woman aged 22 has been allowed a Ł4,800 breast augmentation operation on the NHS so that she can become a glamour model.

Josie Cunningham argued that her flat chest left her emotionally distressed and that she needed the operation on mental health grounds.

Miss Cunningham, of Leeds, who works in telesales said she wanted to be “the next Katie Price” a reference to the former glamour model also known as Jordan.

She had implant surgery at St James’s Hospital, Leeds, in January after telling her doctor that being flat-chested was causing her distress.

“My GP referred me for the operation because I wasn’t just flat-chested — I didn’t have any boobs whatsoever," she told The Sun newspaper.

“I could never go on holiday as I lived in terror of ever being seen in a bikini and could never set foot outside without a padded bra.

“The doctors said they’d never seen anything like it and believed me when I burst into tears and told them it was ruining my life.”

Miss Cunningham has had her breasts enlarged from 32A to 36DD and claimed doctors told her she actually had zero breast tissue.

“I want the world to see the new me and want money and fame just like Katie — and my new boobs can make it all happen.”...

[Polish_Silver]

Polite Kidnappers of the Sinai

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...apping/309078/

Travel to egypt and you may have the good fortune to be kidnapped by polite Bedouin tribesmen.


Here's why:

The Sinai was occupied by Israel for 15 years. During that time, Israel would drop food and medicine on the Bedouins. They thought Israel was OK. Some of the Bedouins are Christian.


Now the Sinai is part of Egypt, and because the Bedouins lived under the Israeli government for so long, nobody trusts them. They cannot get jobs in the military or public service, which eliminates a huge fraction of the Egyptian job market.

What they can do is kidnap you, demand concessions from the Cairo government, and release you when the concessions are met. Not to worry. You will be treated well by this ancient culture which values hospitality to strangers.

Cairo grants concessions because they need the tourist money. So missing tourists need to be recovered quickly.

Here's why you should visit Egypt:

1) top flight ancient ruins, and not only pyramids. They have the oldest surviving residences in the world. (things are far apart, though!)

2) Awesome coral reef, with very warm water, and huge, colorful fish. Some of best snorkeling and scuba diving I've had anywhere. Just watch out for the venomous ones with long spines.

3) Marijuana is legal. So mad I never tried it.

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Lululemon watch out...

Behind the scenes at a naked yoga class in Edmonton

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/...rticle7619159/

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

From the "Some People Never Learn" file:

Five tonnes of Nutella stolen from German trailer

BERLIN — The Associated Press

Published Monday, Apr. 08 2013, 7:21 AM EDT
Last updated Monday, Apr. 08 2013, 7:24 AM EDT

These thieves might really have sticky fingers.

Police said Monday an unknown number of culprits made off with 5 tonnes of Nutella chocolate-hazelnut spread from a parked trailer in the central German town of Bad Hersfeld over the weekend.

The gooey loot is worth an estimated 16,000 euros ($21,000 Canadian).

German news agency dpa reported that thieves have previously stolen a load of energy drinks from the same location.

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

From the "Look Ma, No Hands..." file. Ranks right up there with Eastern Airlines 401:

Texting While Flying Linked to Commercial Crash

Apr 8, 2013 10:00 PM MT

The pilot of an emergency medical helicopter flying over Missouri was sending and receiving text messages before a 2011 crash, the first time such distractions have been implicated in a fatal commercial aviation accident.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which meets today to assign a cause for the accident that killed four people including a patient, documented seven texts sent and received by the pilot, according to agency records.

The Air Methods Corp. (AIRM) helicopter crashed in a field after running out of fuel, according to preliminary NTSB reports. Use of electronic devices by pilots during flight was prohibited by company rules, according to the reports...

...The crash on Aug. 26, 2011, in Mosby, Missouri, killed Terry Tacoronte, a patient who was being flown from one hospital to another. Pilot James Freudenbert, Randy Bever, a flight nurse, and Chris Frakes, a paramedic, also died. The helicopter was being operated under the name LifeNet...

...Freudenbert, 34, who told the coworker he hadn’t slept well the night before, failed to refuel the helicopter before flying to a hospital in Bethany, Missouri, to pick up Tacorente, according to NTSB records.

He realized his mistake after landing at the hospital and discussed where to get more fuel with a company dispatcher. He was headed to Midwest National Air Center Airport in Mosby when the helicopter went down...

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass- a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience- by experience."
--Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist--

Canadian killer in U.S. jail sues victim’s wife over transfer bid

Postmedia News April 11, 2013 6:47 PM

A Canadian man serving a 31-year sentence for an “execution-style” murder in the U.S. has sued his victim’s widow after she effectively blocked the inmate’s bid to be transferred from a Washington State jail to a prison in Canada.

The lawsuit, filed in December by convicted killer Larry Shandola, has been described as not only legally “frivolous” but also as a ploy to harass and torment the grieving woman, Paula Henry.

The case has prompted calls from her lawyer, John Ladenburg — and from two state legislators in Washington — to curb prisoners’ rights to launch such lawsuits from behind bars.

“(Shandola) had somebody track her down, and had papers served on her at her apartment, and she called me that night – terrified and crying – saying that friends were coming over, and that she’s moving out right away,” Ladenburg told Postmedia News. “She couldn’t stand the thought that he might know where she lives – that he might be able to find her, or that his friends on the outside might be able to find her.”...

...Shandola’s arrest in January 2001 came after five years of unrelenting effort by Paula Henry, who raised $50,000 to help keep the investigation alive and pushed police to probe Shandola — Robert Henry’s former friend and business partner — as the prime suspect.

She also claimed to have been stalked by Shandola in the years following her husband’s murder...

...Tacoma police detective Bob Yerbury finally unlocked the murder case when, in 1998, a shotgun was found dumped in bushes near the place where Henry had been killed. The gun was eventually traced through a series of former owners to Shandola, who had purchased the weapon at a firearms show shortly before Henry’s death...

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

French scientist bemused by buzz over bra research

Reuters : Paris, Sat Apr 13 2013, 17:20 hrs

A little-known French sports doctor who spent 16 years studying the busts of about 300 women sent a scare through a country known for its love of lingerie this week when he suggested bras were useless.

Jean-Denis Rouillon, 62, was thrust into the limelight after he told a student radio station that his work suggested wearing a bra weakened the natural muscles that hold up breasts and women should consider going bra-less.

National radio picked up the story and Rouillon, based at the small University of Franche-Comte in the eastern town of Besançon, was soon being hounded by newspapers and TV.

France Info radio interviewed a 28-year-old volunteer in the study, Capucine, who said abandoning her bra had liberated her in more ways than one, improving her breathing and posture.

"You breathe better, you stand up straighter, you have less back pain," she told the national news station.

Even the highbrow daily Le Monde weighed in, offering an historical insight into the origins of the bra dating back to the 14th century.

Rouillon told Reuters that his unpublished work is still in the early stages and he is hesitant about giving one-size-fits-all advice to women, despite the media circus.

His preliminary results on 330 women aged 18 to 35 suggested that wearing a bra from an early age does nothing to help a wearer's breasts and going without could improve firmness.

"The suspension system of the breasts degenerates," Rouillon said, explaining that bras also unnaturally hamper circulation.

"But a middle-aged women, overweight, with 2.4 children? I'm not at all sure she'd benefit from abandoning bras," he added.

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Don't know what to do with your money in this ZIRP world??? Here's an idea from Boston (I wonder if an F150 will fit?):

Tandem parking spots sell for $560,000

06/13/2013 4:05 PM

Sold for $560,000: Rarely available tandem parking spots in Back Bay. Sweeping alley views in exclusive neighborhood, just steps from high-end Newbury Street shops. Amenities include fully lined asphalt spaces, stains included. Second space ideal for growing one-car family.

In the end, it came down to a bidding war between two neighbors, who took the price of two parking spots behind 298 Commonwealth Ave. from $42,000 to more than half a million dollars -- nearly double the $313,000 median sales price for a single family home in Massachusetts -- in less than 15 minutes.

The neighborhood is home to the most valuable parking spots in the city. A space behind 48 Commonwealth Ave. set the record for a single spot at $300,000 in 2009. Two tandem spots a block from the Public Garden on Commonwealth Avenue sold for $200,000 last summer, and a single spot on Marlborough Street went for $250,000 in December.

Dozens of local residents, business owners, real estate agents, and lawyers turned out Thursday afternoon for the auction at the parking spaces, which the Internal Revenue Service seized from a man who owed more than $600,000 in back taxes.

A common complaint of those in attendance: difficulty finding a place to park.

Auctioneer Tim Smith, an IRS liquidation specialist, started the bidding in a light rain shortly after noon, calling the property the “two prettiest parking spaces I’ve ever seen.”

[jk]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Don't know what to do with your money in this ZIRP world??? Here's an idea from Boston (I wonder if an F150 will fit?):

Tandem parking spots sell for $560,000

06/13/2013 4:05 PM

Sold for $560,000: Rarely available tandem parking spots in Back Bay. Sweeping alley views in exclusive neighborhood, just steps from high-end Newbury Street shops. Amenities include fully lined asphalt spaces, stains included. Second space ideal for growing one-car family.

In the end, it came down to a bidding war between two neighbors, who took the price of two parking spots behind 298 Commonwealth Ave. from $42,000 to more than half a million dollars -- nearly double the $313,000 median sales price for a single family home in Massachusetts -- in less than 15 minutes.

The neighborhood is home to the most valuable parking spots in the city. A space behind 48 Commonwealth Ave. set the record for a single spot at $300,000 in 2009. Two tandem spots a block from the Public Garden on Commonwealth Avenue sold for $200,000 last summer, and a single spot on Marlborough Street went for $250,000 in December.

Dozens of local residents, business owners, real estate agents, and lawyers turned out Thursday afternoon for the auction at the parking spaces, which the Internal Revenue Service seized from a man who owed more than $600,000 in back taxes.

A common complaint of those in attendance: difficulty finding a place to park.

Auctioneer Tim Smith, an IRS liquidation specialist, started the bidding in a light rain shortly after noon, calling the property the “two prettiest parking spaces I’ve ever seen.”

i wonder what kind of car is worthy of such a space.

[jpatter666]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

i wonder what kind of car is worthy of such a space.

Probably a pair of overpriced Teslas.

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Hard to believe this site needs yet another thread, but I came across the following, figured it would take the edge off the sometimes serious tone we get into around here, couldn't figure out where to put it, so I started this thread thinking others could just add anything similar - amusing, incredulous, revealing, impossible to be true, whatever...

What follows is dead serious. You can't make this stuff up...

Saudi divorces wife for watching male TV host:
Date: 9/29/2007 4:25:00 PM

A Saudi man divorced his wife for watching alone a television programme presented by a male, an act he deemed immoral, the Al Shams newspaper reported on Saturday.

The man, whom the paper did not identify, ended his marriage on the grounds his wife was effectively alone with an unrelated man, which is forbidden under the strict Islamic law enforced in the ultra-conservative kingdom, the paper said.

Men in Saudi Arabia have the authority to divorce their wives without resort to the courts.

Turkey Cracks Down on Cleavage

Oct 9, 2013 9:29 AM MT

How do you know whether a regime that frees women to wear Islamic headscarves at work is liberal and furthering democracy, or Islamist and restricting it?

The question concerns Turkey's government, which in the space of a few days has ended a headscarf ban for civil servants (except in the judiciary and security services), but also caused a female TV music-show presenter to be fired for showing too much cleavage.

The headscarf ban was a piece of unabashed social engineering introduced in the 1920s to make Turkey, the rump of the former Ottoman Empire and Islamic Caliphate, secular. If you are liberal and not Islamophobic, ending the ban is a good thing: Women should not be excluded from the workplace just because they are devout and believe this requires covering their hair, period.

But what if the change -- which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced as part of a broad "democratization" package -- is part of a wider plan of social re-engineering, this time designed to impinge on the liberties of non-religious conservatives? If so, the numerous cases in which women were discriminated against, fired or passed over for promotion for wearing a headscarf even outside of work would now be repeated in reverse: Women who don't wear headscarves to work, and men whose wives don't cover their hair, will be discriminated against, fired and passed over for promotion.

Turkey's secularists say this is already happening to men whose wives show their locks. That's hard to prove, but the real issue is trust -- secularists believe the worst of Erdogan's intentions. Are they right?

The firing of a TV presenter, Gozde Kansu, this week is indicative. Huseyin Celik, spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party attacked Kansu (without actually naming her) for wearing a dress with a plunging neckline while on the air. A few days later, she was fired. There are a few points to make.



First, Celik should watch more Italian TV -- he would then understand that Kansu is a model of shy decorum. Second, Celik's words were as follows: “We don’t intervene against anyone, but this is too much. It is unacceptable,” according to Hurriyet Daily News. He later complained that it wasn't his fault that she was fired, and he had a right to express his opinions.

None of this is credible. Celik knows what "unacceptable" means; he knew that Kansu was on ATV television, which belongs to a company called Calik Holding; and he knew that Calik's chief executive officer is Erdogan's son-in-law, Berat Albayrak. There is no coincidence or unintended consequence here. Celik wants to re-engineer Turkish TV.

There are plenty of other pointers about the depth of the government's commitment to "democratization," such as the repeated tightening of restrictions on the sale of alcohol, frowned upon by devout Muslims; the routine prosecuting and jailing of journalists; and the crushing of dissent in the Gezi Park protests earlier this year.

One last piece of evidence: A Turkish appeals court today upheld the convictions 237 Turkish military officers convicted of plotting a coup against the government in 2003. The case, called Sledgehammer, has been thoroughly discredited. Forensic examination showed that the evidence on which the conviction rested was forged: The documents involved were on a CD-ROM date-stamped 2003, yet were written using a 2007 Microsoft program.

Again, a case first hailed abroad as good for democracy -- an effort to hold the country's generals accountable after decades of impunity -- turns out to be something else. The Sledgehammer case shows only continuity in Turkish governments' use of politicized courts against their enemies: In the old days the military and secularists abused the law to suppress Islamists; now the Islamists are returning the favor.