Logan Campbell, who finished in the top 16 in the taekwondo featherweight division at the Beijing Olympics, has set up a 'high-class gentleman's club' in Auckland, the Sunday Star Times said.Read more.
Campbell's Beijing campaign cost about $NZ 150,000 ($121,000), most of which came from his parents, and he says he set up the brothel because he was sick of relying on their help.
Licensed prostitution is legal in New Zealand.
Saudi 'genie' sued for harassment
A family in Saudi Arabia is taking a "genie" to court, accusing it of theft and harassment, reports say.
They accuse the spirit of threatening them, throwing stones and stealing mobile phones, Al Watan newspaper said.
The family have lived in the same house near the city of Medina for 15 years but say they only recently became aware of the spirit. They have now moved out.
A local court is investigating. In Islamic theology, genies are spirits that can harass or possess humans.
Click on the game for a link to the rules...The object of the game is to destroy American capitalism by having the government take over everything!
Tokens include a bus, a teleprompter, a sprig of arugula and a waffle iron.
Wanna play? No???
Too bad, you're already playing... And quite frankly, in this game, nobody wins!
More Kudelka here at the Australian.
POLICE are investigating whether a man found shot dead outside a police station is linked to a fatal shooting in inner-city Brisbane which occurred yesterday.More here.
At about 8pm last night police were following a vehicle of interest through Laidley, a town west of Brisbane, before losing sight of it.
Queensland Police Union president Ian Leavers said two officers then arrived at the Spicers St station to find the man next to the car with a firearm, before he took his life.
Mr Foot was killed with a single shot to the face from a high-powered rifle.
Police believe his assassin was a former brother-in-law, who later committed suicide outside a police station in Laidley, west of Ipswich.
Friends say the tragic murder-suicide was motivated by a bitter custody battle with Mr Foot's ex-wife, Amanda Hoolahan, for the couple's 18-month-old son.
Mr Foot and Ms Hoolahan, who was his second wife, were married only briefly. Mr Foot also had two daughters, aged 14 and 18, from his previous marriage.
Fire BrigadeToday I saw this news of an awful tragedy, however, I wonder where the problem is that caused this outcome.
Did you hear about the fire in the five storey apartments in Toronto?
A Muslim family of six lived on the first floor.
They all perished in the fire.
A Pakistani family of eight lived on the second floor.
They also perished.
A Jamaican family (mother & five children) lived on the third floor.
They too perished.
A First Nations family of 8 lived on the fourth floor.
They too perished.
A white couple lived on the fifth floor
They survived.
The local Muslim, Pakistani, Jamaican and Native societies demanded to know why the whites survived when the others didn't.
The fire brigade said the answer was simple.
The white couple was at work when the fire broke out.
Will he be buried in his full stage costume? (Question by Kerrie-Ann K)
Hello? He wore costumes all the time, whether on or off stage. How can anyone see the difference?
Musing about the overload of MJ on all the magazines at the newsagents, I wondered aloud whether to buy one... Then said, "Hmm. No. Don't need that." Then said to the young girl at the counter "Did you hear, Michael Jackson died!" As if I was astonished.
She didn't get my nuanced sarcasm, and asked if I'd seen any news reports. The young fellow at the counter got the picture, as she did when I said I'd seen it all, and was over it.
CANBERRA, Australia — It was a 1,100 pound meat-eating predator with three slashing claws on each of its powerful forelimbs that stalked the Outback 98 million years ago.
Scientists have now confirmed for the first time that the big, fast dinosaur lived in Australia - and they've named it like something from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Meet the Australovenator.
The beast was a 1,100 pound meat-eating predator with three slashing claws on each of its powerful forelimbs that stalked the Outback 98 million years ago, researchers said in a report published Friday.
What idiot thought up that stupid, stupid name? Australovenator?
Can I just correct a something in the report?
The finders nicknamed the 16-foot long carnivore, Australovenator wintonensis, "Banjo," after the poet A.B. "Banjo" Paterson who in 1885 penned Australia's unofficial anthem "Waltzing Matilda" on a sheep ranch near Winton — a cattle town that lies closest to where the dinosaur bones were found. Banjo's Latin name means "Winton's Southern Hunter."
In Australia we don't have "ranches", they're called Stations, it's a Sheep Station. Read more here.
I've been to Winton in Qld, the ex was born there and we had a trip there in about 1994 via many other interesting towns and sights on our way to the sister in law's wedding in Townsville. We also visited the Venus Battery, a gold mine in Charters Towers. I quite liked Charters Towers.
Unfortunately we didn't get to see the site of the plane crash (QANTAS, 03 Oct 1934, near Winton, Australia, de Havilland DH-50A) near Winton, nor did we see the birthplace of QANTAS*, and we didn't get to Lark Quarry, it was a side trip we didn't have time for. Lark Quarry is where a lakeside has been fossilised and you can still see the footprints of the animals which came to drink and walked across the mud flat.
About/Where Is Winton, Queensland? Don't bother with the pictures, they're woeful after the statue and windmill.
Many years ago, as a young teenager, I visited a place called Chillagoe in North Queensland. There are caves at Chillagoe, both limestone and closeby** there are lava tubes (Undara Lava Tubes, I have never been there but I would love to look - though I have been to Hawaii in 1991). In Chillagoe the family and others were caving, mapping caves, searching for new caves, and on one trip there a few paeleontologically inclined speleologists recovered a rare fossilised crocodile skull from Fossil Cave. A stinking, hot, humid, horrible close-to-the-surface tunnel reached from a small hole in the ground. (Memory's not fantastic, I was only 13 and it was 37 years ago.)
*Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service (Qantas) was formed in Winton in November 1920 and its first board meeting held in the Winton Club on February 21, 1921.
** closeby in this case is within a day's drive.
A handful of unstable, "malignant" plastics are responsible for most of the carnage. Cellulose nitrate was the first widely used plastic (it dates to the early 1830s); it was used to make the film in reel-to-reels. It's remembered today for being a notorious fire hazard: Billiard balls made of cellulose nitrate would occasionally explode on contact, and the plastic was responsible for the destruction of many early movie theaters, as hot projection booths caused the film to catch fire. For safety reasons, cellulose acetate, the material Gabo used, began to replace cellulose nitrate in many applications in the 1930s, though it wasn't any more durable. Because both plastics were based on readily available plant matter (cellulose is the main component of a plant's cell walls), they found widespread use until the 1970s, despite their flaws.Myself, I'm quite taken with the exploding billiard balls, it would sure make a game of pool at the pub interesting!
More recently, manufacturers and artists have turned to latex and wholly synthetic plastics like PVC or polyurethane. But these plastics have also proved feeble over the long term. At a molecular level, plastics are long chains of a single molecule repeated over and over. Such long chains would be uselessly brittle on their own, but chemists realized they could add chemicals, called "plasticizers," whose molecules work their way between the chains and soften the plastics up. This greatly increased malleability, and virtually all plastics today employ plasticizers. Unfortunately, plastics will squeeze the plasticizers out over time. This process pushes the chemicals to the surface of the object, leaving the underlying plastic fragile. Different plastics deteriorate in different ways under different conditions, depending on what plasticizers or dyes were added. But the end result tends to be forms of matter rarely seen outside the reject piles of industrial chemistry labs. You can recognize "bleeding" or "weeping" plastics by the slimy plasticizers pooling on their surfaces. Other plastics push powder to their surfaces and feel sugary to the touch.
Worst of all, when plastics weep and bleed they can corrupt everything around them. Chemicals evaporate from their surface and acidify any moisture inside a display case. This causes mini bouts of acid rain that in turn eat away at the plastic in nearby objects—as well as any cloth, metal, or paper in those objects. Curators can lay down special carbon cloths beneath a plastic object to absorb some acid, but some plastics have to be quarantined immediately. Museums have also used plastics to coat nonplastic objects like silver (to prevent tarnishing) and paintings (to prevent flaking). But plastic coatings often "bloom" and turn opaque or "crizzle" (i.e., wrinkle) like dried rubber cement, changes that can damage the very object the coating was meant to preserve.Read more.
