Imagine a soldier who can fire a machine gun with deadly accuracy at 300 yards, doesn’t complain about heat or cold and can go forever without food or water.
Meet the "Robo-Soldier."
The idea for the Robo-Soldier started in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops wanted help clearing the entrances of caves.
Excerpts:
Imagine a soldier who can fire a machine gun with deadly accuracy at 300 yards, doesn’t complain about heat or cold and can go forever without food or water.
Meet the "Robo-Soldier."
The idea for the Robo-Soldier started in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops wanted help clearing the entrances of caves.
Excerpts:
A large black ball, originally designed by Swedish scientists for use on Mars, could be the latest weapon in the war against burglars.
The device, developed at the University of Uppsala, acts as a high-tech security guard capable of detecting an intruder thanks to either radar or infra-red sensors. Once alerted, it can summon help, sound an alarm or pursue the intruders, taking pictures.
It is capable of travelling at 20mph, somewhat faster than a human being. Even worse for intruders, the robot ball can still give chase over mud, snow and water.
While the current version can only raise the alarm, it could be adapted to corner an intruder if the customer wanted, Mr Hulth added.
Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP who is campaigning to give people greater rights to defend their property against burglars, thought the robot ball could have potential: "It would be interesting to see whether the ball had used grossly disproportionate force or whether it would be deemed reasonable.
"But I would much rather a burglar be terrified of householders and shopkeepers, rather than some sort of futuristic device."
Excerpts:
A large black ball, originally designed by Swedish scientists for use on Mars, could be the latest weapon in the war against burglars.
The device, developed at the University of Uppsala, acts as a high-tech security guard capable of detecting an intruder thanks to either radar or infra-red sensors. Once alerted, it can summon help, sound an alarm or pursue the intruders, taking pictures.
It is capable of travelling at 20mph, somewhat faster than a human being. Even worse for intruders, the robot ball can still give chase over mud, snow and water.
While the current version can only raise the alarm, it could be adapted to corner an intruder if the customer wanted, Mr Hulth added.
Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP who is campaigning to give people greater rights to defend their property against burglars, thought the robot ball could have potential: "It would be interesting to see whether the ball had used grossly disproportionate force or whether it would be deemed reasonable.
"But I would much rather a burglar be terrified of householders and shopkeepers, rather than some sort of futuristic device."
The rush of people with guns discovering chupacabra-like creatures continues . . . this time in New Mexico.
On Albuquerque’s West Mesa a gentleman was out shooting when he "kicked [a chupacabra-like creature] out of the dirt." (Not word on whether it was kicked out with a foot or a bullet.)
Pictures of the creature ran on a local TV channel, whose story (including video) is
The dessicated (but apparently not fossilized) creature appears to have wings, a tail, a long snout that some have compared to a horn, and lips that are described as "sponge-like."
It was taken to the New Mexico Game & Fish Commission for identification, and the TV channel promised to annouce what they concluded it was, but so far as I can tell they haven’t posted a follow-up report on their site.
They did say in general terms that the game & fish officials thought this was a creature that lived under the sea a long time ago.
This raises a question, though: If it’s old enough to date from when New Mexico was underwater, why ain’t it fossilized?
If it’s more recent, how did it get there? Did it survive in a lake that dried up? Did someone or some animal catch it elsewhere and transport it? Are any of these things still alive?
Maybe . . . someday . . . the answers will surface.
(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent this in!)
A Florida hog hunter downed a 1,140 lb. wild hog last August.
This hog, dubbed "Hog Kong," was larger than the behemoth "Hogzilla" killed in Georgia.
The hunter, Larry Earley, downed the beast with a .44 magnum.
He later said: "I didn’t realize he was that big or I would have gotten a different gun."
No, duh!
He’s lucky to have brought down a 1,140-lb. hog with a handgun of any caliber!
Hog Kong has inspired a number of tall tales on the Internet, but
IN THIS STORY EARLEY SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED.
DAILY PLANET — Just before being shot by Earley, Hog Kong was distracted by a beautiful woman resembling Faye Ray, leading one local rustic to remark, "Shazam! T’was beauty kilt the beast!"
In a related development, Toho Studios announce a porcine remake of its classic monsterbash King Kong vs. Godzilla as Hog Kong vs. Hogzilla. Plans are for the film to have two endings. The first, to be shown in Georgia, will have Hogzilla win the climactic battle, while the second, to be shown in Florida, will have Hog Kong as the victor.
A reader writes:
Hey Jimmy – I pretty regularly frequent your blog (and
voted for it as well), but I must get something
cleared up right now: I hope I wasn’t just being
gullible when I accepted your chupacabra blog as a
real story. I took it as fact, but now am not sure if
that was one of your tongue-in-cheek articles. I
forwarded that link to some of my friends who are
laughing at me. They say it’s like something out of
those zany tabloids that doctored up the pictures with
computer modifications. Am I this naive? Please tell
me if that whole thing was a hoax. I told them I got
it from a credible source.
FIRST, HERE’S THE LINK TO THE ORIGINAL POST.
This was definitely not a hoax, at least not on my part. Whenever I do a tongue-in-cheek post, I try to signal what I’m doing by dragging the (fictional) newspaper The Daily Planet into it. If I attribute something to the Daily Planet, that’s the signal that I’m doing humor. Thus, for example, I may run a real press story at the top of a post and then have a Daily Planet comment on it at the bottom.
If there is a hoax in this case, it’s on me, too, but I don’t have evidence at this point that there is a hoax. I always do due diligence to try to verify what I’m reporting from multiple sources. I don’t usually link all the sources I check, but check several of several different types.
In this case, the first page I linked was to a story hosted on the web page of the San Antonio NBC affiliate WOAI (Channel 4) (and its sister radio station of the same name), which is a real station listed in the yellow pages.
That story contained these pictures:
These images are confirmatory to the other images linked.
The second page I linked was to Linda Moulton Howe’s web page. Linda Moulton Howe is a reporter who has reported on the weird for years and who spoke to some of the individuals who were involved in one of the incidents. She also provides copious (graphic) pictures that seem excessive if someone was doing a hoax and that certainly look like a real creature.
Others are also taking this seriously.
So while I can’t tell you that I’ve seen the thing with my own eyes, I can say that I’ve done my best to verify that the things are real live dead critters that got shot in a couple of towns in Texas.
Whether it’s the basis of the chupacabra legend, I couldn’t tell you, but it is weird looking.
Y’know about that controversy over the president of Harvard being asked why there are fewer women in certain scientific fields and he conjectured that cognitive differences between the genders, as men score better on certain measures of cognitive ability (e.g., mathematical reasoning) while women score better on others (e.g., verbal reasoning).
Well, it touched off a firestorm of political correctness.
Soon as I heard about it, I wondered what Steven Pinker would say.
Pinker is a linguist and a cognitive scientist who has written a book attacking the regnant idea in much of academia that humans are blank slates whose behavior is exhaustively determined by environment (nurture) rather than genetics (nature). As more and more studies have shown, humans behavior is genetic in far greater degree than many would like to acknowledge.
One chapter in Pinker’s book is on the cognitive differences between men and women.
It’s rather brave of him to take on the subject as, from what I can tell, he is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and a secular humanist, but he’s a smart guy (one can learn a lot from his books) and willing to follow the facts even when they are contrary to the politically correct viewpoint.
So when I heard about the Harvard president controversy, I wondered what his reaction would be.
Now I know.
The monster proceeded, ever so carefully, to crawl out of its carefully-constructed and benighted burrow.
Its many-clawed hands, one claw to a finger, stretched forward and pullled the black dirt back toward its fur-covered body.
As this happened, its many-tendriled snout probed further into the darkness that was soon to become light.
As it did so, it encountered a bit of its standard food-prey and sucked it up in an instant–quicker than the humsn eye could follow!
Fully twenty-two tentacles reached forward from its nose, forming a hideous moustache that could only be possessed by a blind, elder-horror envisioned first by the kind of mind possessed by a demented, soul-shattered, day-gaunt such as the Master of weird horror, H. P. Lovecraft himself!
Even the name of the horrible abnormality itself conveyed the nature of its blasphemous, crawling chaos:
It was the Star-Nosed Mole!
Tremble, worlds of sanity! Tremble! For here is its deadly, maddening visage!
THIS IS NOT A DREAM!!!
THIS IS NOT A HOAX!!!
THIS IS THE TRUE FACE OF ELDER-COSMIC MADNESS STARING YOU IN THE FACE!!!
How to avoid the cold & flu . . . and how to treat them once you’ve got them.
Myths vs. facts.
Courtesy of the folks at Kleenex.
Be sure and tell Mr. Monk.
