Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Laptop

Prankster dupes Fidel Castro's son into web romance


The Sydney Morning Herald
Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:16 UTC
Cuban leader Fidel Castro's son was reportedly duped into an eight-month internet romance with a man posing as an attractive Colombian woman.

Antonio Castro revealed no state secrets during the passionate internet liaison, but revealed to "Claudia Valencia" his home phone number and address, details of expensive shopping trips, and that he had no personal bodyguards.

The online romance blossomed over eight months, each exchange in chat rooms or via email becoming more sexually charged, London's The Telegraph said.
Read More...
Padlock

Prairie dogs immediately escape from $500k escape-proof habitat

Jacques Kelly
The Baltimore Sun
Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:14 UTC
It took just 10 minutes for a dozen prairie dogs to outwit the creators of the Maryland Zoo's new $500,000 habitat.

Aircraft wire, poured concrete and slick plastic walls proved no match for the fast-footed rodents, the stars of a new exhibit that opens today.

As officials were promoting the return of the zoo's 28 prairie dogs - their former digs had been out of sight in a closed section of the animal preserve for more than four years - some of the critters found ways to jump, climb and get over the walls of their prairie paradise, a centerpiece exhibit just inside the zoo's main entrance.
Read More...
Cloud Lightning

Lightning strikes Amazon cloud (honest)

Cade Metz
The Register
Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:56 UTC
The dangers of sky-high computing

Amazon's cloud was struck by lightning earlier this week. And that's the truth.

On Wednesday evening at about 6:30pm Pacific time, some Amazon cloud sitters saw their floating servers disappear - and yes, the company blamed the temporary outage on a lightning strike.

According to a web post from the company, the strike zapped a power distribution unit in one of its data centers, taking out server instances in one - and only one - Availability Zone. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) serves up on-demand processing power from two separate geographic locations - the US and Europe - and each geographic region is split into multiple zones designed never to vanish at the same time.

"A lightning storm caused damage to a single Power Distribution Unit (PDU) in a single Availability Zone," the company said in a web post at 7:33pm. "While most instances were unaffected, a set of racks does not currently have power, so the instances on those racks are down."
Read More...
Smiley

Goats Enjoy Living In Their Own Tower

Mark Frauenfelder
Boing Boing
Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:31 UTC
Image
Jim Leftwich says:

"I'm thinking the next step beyond raising chickens in the backyard is to have your own Goat Tower!

"Currently there are only three Goat Towers in the world (which I think you'll agree is not nearly enough!). The original Goat Tower was built in 1981 by Charles Back at the Fairview Wine and Cheese Estate in Paarl, South Africa. The estate has 750 Saanen goats and some of these are allowed access to the tower.

"The other two Goat Towers are the "Tower of Baaa" in Findlay, Illinois and one built in 2006 in Ekeby, Norway, both of which are modeled on the original.
Read More...
Laptop

How a Cornell professor became prime suspect in a murder

Natasha Mozgovaya
Haaretz
Sun, 31 May 2009 05:13 UTC
For weeks, Stephen L. Morgan, Director of the Center for the Study of Inequality and a professor in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University, has scoured the Internet in order to remove his picture from the news sites, search engine caches and blogs, where it was mistakenly used to represent another Stephen Morgan - the alleged killer of the Jewish Wesleyan University student Johanna Justin-Jinich.

On the day on which the police announced a national manhunt for 29-year-old Morgan, who escaped after fatally shooting Justin-Jinich in Connecticut, Prof. Morgan of Ithaca, NY, was shocked to discover that an old picture taken for his driver's license in Massachusetts in 1998 appeared almost everywhere, used in the story of the fugitive suspect who shares his name.
Read More...
Footprints

Blessings and pressings: Virgin Mary Appears on... Press Pad!

Ian P. Murphy
American Drycleaner
Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:14 UTC
virgin mary on press pad
© Janie GuerraPress operator Janie Guerra discovered a likeness of the Virgin Mary on a press pad at Comet Cleaners in Harlingen, Texas
Harlingen, Texas - Over the last several years, likenesses of the Virgin Mary have been sighted in a highway underpass, on a tortilla and even on a grilled-cheese sandwich. But two weeks ago, the Blessed Virgin made her first appearance at a drycleaning plant.

Janie Guerra, a pants presser at Comet Cleaners in Harlingen, Texas, had just finished her lunchtime prayers when she returned to the press. Soon after lifting the press head and hangering another pair of pants, she noticed a distinctive silhouette on the pad.

"I pick up the pants, and I see the Virgin Mary," Guerra says. "I wasn't sure, so I asked Emma [Martinez, puff operator] if she saw the Virgin, too, and she said yes. I felt like I wanted to cry and felt a cold sweat. It was a surprise to everyone."
Read More...
Black Cat

Piano-playing cat takes centre stage

Jane Bennett-Powell
BBC News
Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:28 UTC
Cat who enjoys piano
A cat that enjoys playing the piano has had a piece of chamber music written for her by acclaimed Lithuanian conductor.

Nora's musical skills have made her a Youtube sensation, US media star, and also the object of a video on animal behaviour.

Mindaugas Piecaitis's four-minute piece for the Klaipeda chamber orchestra had its premiere on Friday, with a video of the six-year-old feline soloist in the background.

You can view the BBC video here.
Read More...
Smiley

US family turned into advertising


BBC News
Thu, 11 Jun 2009 04:18 UTC
christmas card photo
© Associated PressFrom this family photo in St Louis...
A couple from the United States got a shock when they learned their family photo was being used, unauthorised, on an advertising poster in Prague.

Danielle and Jeff Smith used the photo as their Christmas card, and also posted it on an internet blog.

A friend travelling in the Czech capital alerted them when he spotted the Smiths smiling at him, life-size, from a poster in a supermarket.

The owner of the shop has promised to remove the image.
Read More...
Info

Israeli woman throws out mattress with $1m inside


The Telegraph
Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:09 UTC
A woman in Tel Aviv, Israel, mistakenly threw out a mattress with $1 million hidden inside, setting off a frantic search through tons of garbage at a number of landfill sites.

The woman told Army Radio that she bought her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise on Monday and threw out the old one, only to discover that her mother had hidden her life savings inside. She was identified only as Anat.

When she went to look for the mattress it had already been taken by garbage men, she said. Subsequent searches at three different landfill sites turned up nothing.
Read More...
Smiley

World record for most people dressed as Smurfs in Welsh town


The Telegraph
Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:55 UTC
Welsh Smurfs
© SWNS The city of Swansea was turned blue as a group of 2,510 people crammed into the Oceana nightclub
The world record for the largest number of people dressed as Smurfs has been smashed in Swansea.

The Welsh city was turned blue as a group of 2,510 people, the majority of whom were students from the local university, crammed into the Oceana nightclub to almost double the previous record.

The event was organised by UK fancy dress costume seller Jokers' Masquerade and was not verified until 1am as every "Smurf" had to be checked to make sure no natural skin was showing.
Read More...