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Monday, February 2, 2009
The Cave House is Up For Sale
If you have $1,950,000 lying around.
Here’s your chance to live in a 3-bedroom cave house in Arizona.
.Prank 911 Calls
Prank 911 Calls Send SWAT Teams to Unsuspecting Homes.
Doug Bates and his wife, Stacey, were in bed around 10 p.m., their 2-year-old daughters asleep in a nearby room. Suddenly they were shaken awake by the wail of police sirens and the rumble of a helicopter above their suburban Southern California home. A criminal must be on the loose, they thought.
Doug Bates got up to lock the doors and grabbed a knife. A beam from a flashlight hit him. He peeked into the backyard. A swarm of police, assault rifles drawn, ordered him out of the house. Bates emerged, frightened and with the knife in his hand, as his wife frantically dialed 911. They were handcuffed and ordered to the ground while officers stormed the house.
The scene of mayhem and carnage the officers expected was nowhere to be found. Neither the Bateses nor the officers knew that they were pawns in a dangerous game being played 1,200 miles away by a teenager bent on terrifying a random family of strangers.
They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called "swatting" because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems.
Doug Bates got up to lock the doors and grabbed a knife. A beam from a flashlight hit him. He peeked into the backyard. A swarm of police, assault rifles drawn, ordered him out of the house. Bates emerged, frightened and with the knife in his hand, as his wife frantically dialed 911. They were handcuffed and ordered to the ground while officers stormed the house.
The scene of mayhem and carnage the officers expected was nowhere to be found. Neither the Bateses nor the officers knew that they were pawns in a dangerous game being played 1,200 miles away by a teenager bent on terrifying a random family of strangers.
They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called "swatting" because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems.
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Rubik's Cube inventor is back with Rubik's 360
A new game by Professor Erno Rubik, inventor of the iconic Cube, is tipped to become a best-seller when it goes on sale later this year.The Rubik’s 360 is set to repeat the success of the maddening Cube, which became an overnight sensation almost three decades ago and remains the world’s fastest-selling toy.
Now the reclusive Hungarian inventor hopes to recreate the buzz of Rubik’s Cube with his new game, featuring six balls trapped within three transparent plastic spheres.
The puzzle, shown to the Sunday Telegraph ahead of its unveiling at a toy industry fair in Germany on February 5, confronts users with the same frustrating challenge – a task that is simple to understand, with only one possible solution, yet extremely difficult to execute.
Players must get the colored balls from an inner sphere into matching slots on the outer sphere by shaking them through a middle sphere that has only two holes.
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Sunday, February 1, 2009
Another Baby Born With 12 Functioning Fingers, 12 Toes
A Daly City California couple is beaming after becoming the proud parents of a healthy but incredibly rare baby boy this month.
Baby Kamani Hubbard has six-fully formed and functional fingers and toes on his hands and feet. It's called "polydactyly" -- extra digits -- not an uncommon genetic trait, but Bay Area doctors say they've never seen a case so remarkable.
Born at San Francisco's Saint Luke's Hospital three weeks ago, Hubbarb seemed so perfect at birth no one noticed.
"Nurses and doctors, looked so normal they couldn't tell, they told me he was six pounds in good health, that was all they said," said Miryoki Gross, Hubbard’s mother.
But his dad Kris Hubbard noticed this spectacularly rare case of polydactyly: 6-perfect fingers on each hand and 6-perfect toes on each foot, which went well beyond a general trait that runs in his family.
"Some family member have had six fingers, not completely developed. But not the toes," said Kris Hubbard, 34 and a postal worker.
In fact Kris Hubbard himself had nubs of sixth fingers removed as a child as these non-functional digits routinely are.
But Hubbards case is so vanishingly rare according to doctors, and because the extra digits are functional, it's not a deformity to be discarded.
"It's merely an interesting and beautiful variation rather than a worrisome thing," said Dr. Michael Treece and St. Luke's Hospital Pediatrician. "I would be tempted to leave those fingers in place. I realize children would tease each other over the slightest things, and having extra digits on each hand is more than slight. But imagine what sort of a pianist a 12-fingered person would be imagine what sort of a flamenco guitarist, if nothing else think of their typing skills."
Kamani's mother says she hasn't had time to absorb this; her baby's specialness didn't even show up on prenatal ultrasounds.
" I heard nothing before I gave birth so I'm still in shock, kinda," said Gross.
"I just want him to see what greatness will be in store for him," said Kris Hubbard.
The Florida Marlins’s pitcher Antonio Alfonseca, blues guitarist Hound Dog Taylor and several remarkable figures in history have had polydactyly.
This little guy may, at the very least, help others grasp the importance of embracing difference.
.
Baby Kamani Hubbard has six-fully formed and functional fingers and toes on his hands and feet. It's called "polydactyly" -- extra digits -- not an uncommon genetic trait, but Bay Area doctors say they've never seen a case so remarkable.
Born at San Francisco's Saint Luke's Hospital three weeks ago, Hubbarb seemed so perfect at birth no one noticed.
"Nurses and doctors, looked so normal they couldn't tell, they told me he was six pounds in good health, that was all they said," said Miryoki Gross, Hubbard’s mother.
But his dad Kris Hubbard noticed this spectacularly rare case of polydactyly: 6-perfect fingers on each hand and 6-perfect toes on each foot, which went well beyond a general trait that runs in his family.
"Some family member have had six fingers, not completely developed. But not the toes," said Kris Hubbard, 34 and a postal worker.
In fact Kris Hubbard himself had nubs of sixth fingers removed as a child as these non-functional digits routinely are.
But Hubbards case is so vanishingly rare according to doctors, and because the extra digits are functional, it's not a deformity to be discarded.
"It's merely an interesting and beautiful variation rather than a worrisome thing," said Dr. Michael Treece and St. Luke's Hospital Pediatrician. "I would be tempted to leave those fingers in place. I realize children would tease each other over the slightest things, and having extra digits on each hand is more than slight. But imagine what sort of a pianist a 12-fingered person would be imagine what sort of a flamenco guitarist, if nothing else think of their typing skills."
Kamani's mother says she hasn't had time to absorb this; her baby's specialness didn't even show up on prenatal ultrasounds.
" I heard nothing before I gave birth so I'm still in shock, kinda," said Gross.
"I just want him to see what greatness will be in store for him," said Kris Hubbard.
The Florida Marlins’s pitcher Antonio Alfonseca, blues guitarist Hound Dog Taylor and several remarkable figures in history have had polydactyly.
This little guy may, at the very least, help others grasp the importance of embracing difference.
.
Child Born With 12 Fingers and 12 Toes
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Saturday, January 31, 2009
News Pictures of 2008
Feb. 4, 2008: U.S. Army Staff Sgt. William Lambert, 30, from Plainview, Ark. shares his rations with an Iraqi boy in Beijia village in Arab Jabour, south of Baghdad, Iraq.
Aug. 3, 2008: U.S. Army Capt. Charles Ford plays a video game with seven-year-old Wa'ad, who lost an arm and a leg to an improvised bomb, during a visit to the child's home near Muqdadiyah, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad in Iraq's volatile Diyala province.
A Pug puppy is held by an animal rights activist during a press conference on illegal puppy trafficking, in Rome, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008.
March 2, 2008: Three-month-old African lion cub Chibi lays on a box at Safari Zoo in Gianyar, Bali, Indonesia.
March 2, 2008: One of Tim Osmar's sled dogs looks out of its pen before the start of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Willow, Alaska.
A four-month-old puppy called "Machu Picchu" is seen in Lima, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2008. The owners of the animal, a Peruvian Hairless Dog, have offered it to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama. Obama has promised his daughters a new pet for the White House but one of them is allergic to most breeds. The owners of the Peruvian Hairless Dog say it is perfect for kids who are sensitive to dogs.
May 24, 2008: Belarusian Tatiana Litvinchuk holds her cat at an international cat exhibition in Minsk, Belarus.
July 10, 2008: A polar bear stands on a ice flow in Baffin Bay above the arctic circle as seen from the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent. The Louis S. St-Laurent is on its annual voyage through Canada's Arctic that includes patrols through the Northwest Passage. In addition to serving the people of Canada's North the ship is carrying a team of scientists studying climate change and the health of Canada's three oceans.
July 10, 2008: The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent makes its way through the ice in Baffin Bay,. The Louis S. St-Laurent is on its annual voyage through Canada's Arctic that includes patrols through the Northwest Passage. In addition to serving the people of Canada's North the ship is carrying a team of scientists studying climate change and the health of Canada's three oceans..
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