[pscates2.0]

I got the lips for it.

[AWR]

Kinda funny how this ^^ fell on to a new page. Just a purty blank canvas now.

[kscherer]

Originally Posted by AWR Kinda funny how this ^^ fell on to a new page. Just a purty blank canvas now.

Makes a feller wonder!

[tomoe]

Badass centenarian sets a new Hour Record.

http://velonews.competitor.com/2012/...-record_206632

[pscates2.0]

Another stupid, senseless school shooting...this time at a high school in Cleveland, Ohio.

One dead, 4-5 others injured.

[PKIDelirium]

Oh for crying out loud, Costa...

ROME (Reuters) - A liner owned by the same company as the Costa Concordia, on which at least 25 people died when it ran aground off Italy last month, was adrift in the Indian Ocean on Monday after a fire in the engine room left it without power, the company said.

[Foj]

It took him long enough to realize this.....

[AWR]

Must See TV

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment...#ixzz1qqwNvZ41

[Frank777]

Gunman opens fire at Christian University

[pscates2.0]

Just once I'd love to see one of these horrible massacre situations go another way...some regular joe, law-abiding, registered/trained/responsible gun owner (with a carry permit) actually be present at one of these events. And cause it to have a different, better ending than the one we're used to hearing.

"Substitute science teacher saves six co-workers and 38 students" or whatever.

Just once.

I can't imagine anything more horrifying than being trapped in a classroom or office cubicle and simply "waiting" for some nutball-on-a-rampage to make his way to your location and find you, and there not be a damn thing you can do to escape, fight back, hide, etc. I think about those students at Virginia Tech holed up in their classrooms, hearing the footsteps and gunfire coming closer. Ugh...

[Foj]

Hey Drew! I found the perfect arcade for you.

[addison]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Just once I'd love to see one of these horrible massacre situations go another way...some regular joe, law-abiding, registered/trained/responsible gun owner (with a carry permit) actually be present at one of these events. And cause it to have a different, better ending than the one we're used to hearing. "Substitute science teacher saves six co-workers and 38 students" or whatever. Just once.

Looks like it just happened out in Utah.

A citizen with a gun stopped a knife wielding man as he began stabbing people Thursday evening at the downtown Salt Lake City Smith's store. Espinoza says, the knife wielding man seriously injured two people. "There is blood all over. One got stabbed in the stomach and got stabbed in the head and held his hands and got stabbed all over the arms." Then, before the suspect could find another victim - a citizen with a gun stopped the madness. "A guy pulled gun on him and told him to drop his weapon or he would shoot him. So, he dropped his weapon and the people from Smith's grabbed him."

I've heard of other episodes over the years. There was a shooting spree at a law school a few years ago that was stopped by a couple of students who had guns in their cars. LOL, you try something like that here in NJ and your ass would be in jail before the shooter! And for longer too probably.

[pscates2.0]

A drunk man and his monkey are pulled over in Florida.

Pretty much all that needs to be said, IMO.

Except...

Largo Police say Eugene Carl Kotelman was speeding when they stopped him Thursday. He was driving on a suspended license and had been previously charged numerous times with driving on a suspended license and DUI.

Some people are just terminally moronic and just quit giving a damn a long time ago, huh?

"I'm speeding, I'm on a suspended license, I've got previous charges of this sort...and I have a monkey on board. Screw it."

[Windswept]

Sorry, I couldn't find an online link for this story. I heard it a few hours ago on National Public Radio, but couldn't find mention of it at their website, or even anywhere at BBC News either. So, I'll just tell you what I heard:

A dog was seen stranded on a small island (near England, I think), and a coast guard type boat went out to rescue him. They got him on board the rescue boat, but he immediately jumped back into the water and dog-paddled back to land - and did this after each of several rescue attempts! Finally, they went to investigate the island and found the dog's owner. It sounded like the man was stranded in the water in some way, alongshore, and was being held up by a pocket of air in his rucksack. Of course, he and the dog were at last rescued together.

I just thought the loyalty of the dog was really remarkable, as he kept diving back in the water and refusing to abandon his stranded master.

I couldn't find the story on their website, but sometimes NPR stories take a while before they are posted online, so it might take four or five days before this one shows up. Good story though, don't you think? I love dogs.

[AWR]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 A drunk man and his monkey are pulled over in Florida. Some people are just terminally moronic and just quit giving a damn a long time ago, huh?

There's a ton of them.

[Dorian Gray]

Canadian diamond thief in custody until the evidence, er, emerges.

"Mr Matthews, 52, was initially being fed fibre-rich foods, but is now eating whatever he wants in order to speed the process, Sgt Brett Corey said."

[pscates2.0]

Good grief, surely there are Taco Bells in Canada?

$2, and 25 minutes later (maybe five, depending on the order placed), the cops will have their diamond. And probably anything else they wanted too...



How would you like to be the low man on the totem pole in that squad house?

"Hey, rookie...go get some gloves. And a loupe. And accompany Thomas Crown here to the facilities...".

I'd retire, second week on the job or not.

[tomoe]

Cops shoot a naked man as he munches someone's face. What the hell, I don't even...

[Brad]

Originally Posted by tomoe Cops shoot a naked man as he munches someone's face. What the hell, I don't even...

Next week in Miami: Zombies. Zombies everywhere.

It starts here, friends. It's time to prepare.

[pscates2.0]

Henry Hill, who was portrayed by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, has died at 69.

No, he wasn't whacked.

[Ryan]

Asshole vandalizes Picasso painting at Houston museum.

KPRC (Channel 2) interviewed a man who said he captured the vandalism on his phone camera. The witness told Channel 2 the man identified himself as an up-and-coming Mexican-American artist looking to honor Picasso's work.

The good news: The Menil Collection's art restorer managed to salvage the painting.

Even better news: Said asshole bragged about it on Facebook.



The county DA also stated that he could be on the hook for as much as $200,000 in fines and five years to life in prison ()!

[turbulentfurball]

I think there's a general sports thread, but I can't find it. Did anyone else see the Nadal/Rosol match at Wimbledon? Wow. The biggest upset I've seen and one of the most exciting too. Amazing.

[pscates2.0]

Originally Posted by Ryan Asshole vandalizes Picasso painting at Houston museum.

How could you tell?

[Frank777]

Originally Posted by turbulentfurball I think there's a general sports thread, but I can't find it. Did anyone else see the Nadal/Rosol match at Wimbledon? Wow. The biggest upset I've seen and one of the most exciting too. Amazing.

No, we were all too busy watching mighty Germany get manhandled by one of their [bankrupt] fellow Euro countries.

[Dorian Gray]

Correct. I think we'll hear a little more about Rosol now, though! (Who???)

Originally Posted by Ryan Asshole vandalizes Picasso painting at Houston museum.

I'm afraid to play that video, for fear of the warned-about GRAPHIC LANGUAGE.

[AWR]

Yes, Russia, under the circumstances, giving Syrians a choice is an unsupportable idea.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...s-talks-geneva

Area lock down well underway.

Syrian opposition groups warned that Assad would have to step down and leave the country before they would negotiate future political arrangements. Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said in Moscow: "We will not support and cannot support any meddling from outside or any imposition of recipes. This also concerns the fate of the president of the country, Bashar al-Assad." Lavrov was due to meet Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, to discuss Saturday's Geneva conference, called in an attempt to agree broad support for a transitional national unity government in Damascus that could include anti-Assad forces. ... Reports from Syria depicted another day of violence. Deir Ezzor, in the east, came under tank and artillery fire for the seventh consecutive day in an apparent attempt to take back the only city under almost complete rebel control. Gunfire and arrests were reported from several parts of Damascus. Casualty levels this month have hit an average of 100 dead a day, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

[AWR]

More grim, but important news:

"Italy and Spain stunned Germany by blocking progress until they obtained softer bailout rules in 14 hours of bad-tempered talks"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...ut-spain-italy

I'm not sure 'stunned' is the right word. I think Merkel and the Germans were given their marching orders by Obama (and the Brits perhaps to a lesser extent) that this had to happen. Everyone's at fault here, and the bankers as usual get off, typically with golden parachutes, responsible politicians deny any responsibility or go silent, profligate citizens cry fowl or retreat to beach house.... Average Miquel and Maria get shafted with higher taxes on basic foodstuffs and utilities.

[Brad]

Tempted to put this in its own thread...

CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/

The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN today presented their latest results in the search for the long-sought Higgs boson. Both experiments see strong indications for the presence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs boson, in the mass region around 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). The experiments found hints of the new particle by analysing trillions of proton-proton collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2011 and 2012. The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that a Higgs boson would decay into different particles – which the LHC experiments then detect. Both ATLAS and CMS gave the level of significance of the result as 5 sigma on the scale that particle physicists use to describe the certainty of a discovery. One sigma means the results could be random fluctuations in the data, 3 sigma counts as an observation and a 5-sigma result is a discovery. The results presented today are preliminary, as the data from 2012 is still under analysis. The complete analysis is expected to be published around the end of July.

https://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1459565

We have observed a new boson with a mass of 125.3 ± 0.6 GeV at 4.9 σ significance!

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/Press.../PR17.12E.html

"The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks." ... The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe. Are its properties as expected for the long-sought Higgs boson, the final missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics? Or is it something more exotic? The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4% of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96% of the universe that remains obscure.

It looks like we've observed a particle at the right mass from the right interaction of particles, but that's only part of the definition we need to see before we can really be sure this is the SM Higgs. The next steps include observing/verifying that it has no spin and other bits that are beyond my understanding of the physics.

For a very brief non-technical explanation of the Higgs, watch this: The Higgs Boson Explained

(The video leaves out the other force bosons when it shows the standard model, and it doesn't mention that several previously-unseen particles theorized by the SM have since actually been observed, lending more confidence to the correctness of the SM.)

And for the non-physics types who are wondering what the big deal is, replace "trapped antimatter" with "observed the Higgs Boson":

[Dorian Gray]

The strangest thing about this Higgs boson business is that no-one can tell us why it's important. I thought the worst explanation was the following, from this BBC article:

"A confirmation that this is the Higgs boson would be one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the century; the hunt for the Higgs has been compared by some physicists to the Apollo programme that reached the Moon in the 1960s."

How can the hunt for Higgs boson and the Apollo programme be compared in any way, beyond perhaps their huge and controversial cost?

I'm all for pure science, by the way, but if this is strictly pure science, just say so! (Like the scientist in Brad's comic does.)

[!Marc!]

I am visiting CERN next week. There is going to be a great atmosphere there Im sure. Cant wait...