Printable View
Yes!!!!
'Empty your pockets and hand in all your personal belongings at the stroke of midnight, before you proceed to your bedroom!'
*visualises high-tech, sensitive detectors at bedroom doors!
Hmm... Maybe children should be taught morse code... or how to train pigeons (or maybe penguins??) to carry their letters in the absence of high tech devices!
I agree with emily. "No cell phones after midnight rule" is definitely less absurd than a "no cell phones after midnight law" (no facetiousness).
Feeling kinda sarcastic today, aren't we, Scher?
You know how when they show movies on television, they often dub less-offensive words over the really naughty words? They ought to have that technology installed on kids' cell phones, so when they try to talk dirty, it would automatically be converted to a more wholesome topic. But the kids would persist anyway and you'd have these great conversations.......
"Baby, you make me so HUNGRY!"
"Really?"
"God yes! You know, I'd really like to EAT PIE with you."
"Oh baby, I want to EAT PIE with you, too!"
"Have you ever EATEN PIE before?"
"No, but I want you to be the first guy I EAT PIE with."
"Maybe I could sneak out and we could EAT PIE tonight."
"Do you have any FRUIT TOPPING?"
"What?"
"FRUIT TOPPING. I won't EAT PIE with you unless you put on FRUIT TOPPING."
"Umm, I guess I could stop at the 7-11 on the way over."
"Actually, I just thought of something. We can't EAT PIE tonight."
"Why not?"
"It's not a good time for me. It's that time of the month."
"What do you mean?"
"Do I have to spell it out?" I'm on A DIET."
"Oh."
And then the girl would call her girl friend, and they would have a conversation in which they would speculate about the size of the guy's FORK.
:lol:
Oh, my god, Basil.
Speak for yourself, young Robin! For me, it is just another day in Paradise! Or was that a royal 'we'?Quote:
Originally Posted by RobinHood3000
:p
:DQuote:
Originally Posted by Basil
I think girls are more concerned about boys' 'table manners' than size of their cutlery, though!
More proof that one must be careful about whom one invites to dinner.
Scientists claim to have solved the murder mystery of the baby that holds the key to all of humanity's ancestry. For decades, scientists have argued over what killed the 2m-year-old Taung Child, found in 1924: the first ape-man fossil to be discovered in Africa.
Some researchers had believed the child was killed by leopards.
Professor Lee Berger challenged this, suggesting that the Taung child was attacked from above by a bird.
But until now, Professor Berger - an American palaeontologist working at South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand - was unable to find definitive proof for his hypothesis.
Scientists had missed the evidence right in front of their eyes, even though the Taung child (thought to belong to the humanlike species Australopithecus africanus) is believed to be the most photographed and observed fossil in history.
Window into the past
The injuries on the Taung child's skull mimic those on the skull of a baboon killed by an eagle.
Professor Berger explained how birds such as eagles kill their prey and eat the brain, which is the most nutritious part of the animal.
"They first kill the young child or a primate by jamming their talons - up to 14cm in length - though the back of the brain and that kills the animal instantly," he said.
"They make sure the animal is dead, then they go down, disembowel it, rip it apart. Take out the eyes, very delicately with their talons, reach in, following the optic nerve with their beak, after eating the eye of course, and go in."
Professor Berger describes his finding as "an extraordinary window into our past" that tells of how our ancestors lived millions of years ago.
"We now know that it's not the furry things with claws that we had to be afraid of, we were driven by other stresses. We were being driven by attacks from the sky.
"Can you imagine what it must have been like back then? Not only were we afraid of cats, and leopards - you had to watch for aerial attacks from these ferocious predators preying on your young."
Professor Berger's findings are to be published in a scientific journal next month.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4609222.stm
The owner of a Corvette sports car stolen when it was brand new in 1969 is to be reunited with the vehicle after it was finally found, 37 years later. Alan Poster's prized possession went missing in New York, but was found 3,000 miles away in California, just as it was about to be shipped to Sweden.
"We can call this a miracle," Mr Poster told the New York Times.
The car had just been sold to a Swede, who was not aware of the car's past, for $10,000 (£5,700).
However, because Mr Poster had not insured the car, he was not compensated when it was stolen and is entitled to it back.
The Corvette Mako Shark, which was originally painted blue with matching upholstery, is now silver with a red interior.
It has had a new engine, but is missing some vital parts and does not run, a spokesman for the homeland security department said.
Mr Poster, who is now 63, said it was "probably the only car I've ever really loved".
Needle in a haystack
He said said he bought the car as a wild indulgence after his divorce, when he was a guitar salesman living in Queens, New York.
"That car and my new life started together," he said.
He went on to move to California, and so, unbeknown to him, did the car.
"Up until this moment, I thought it was chopped up and shipped away," Mr Poster said after learning it had been found. "It's in great shape, I understand."
The car was found during a customs check as it was being loaded onto a ship to be taken to Sweden.
New York police spent a month sifting through about 10,000 archived stolen car reports to find the original owner.
"It was the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack," said Detective William Heiser of the New York Police Department.
The car, which Mr Poster bought for $6,000, is now a classic which could fetch up to $60,000.
"It's not getting away from me again," Mr Poster told The New York Post.
"They're going to have to kill me to get this car."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4620914.stm
I worry that we'll hear about the same guy in a week, saying that he's been murdered.
A leading Spanish museum has admitted it has lost a massive steel sculpture which weighs 38 tonnes. The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid bought the huge Richard Serra sculpture in the 1980s at a cost of more than $200,000.
The museum says that in 1990 it put the sculpture in a warehouse belonging to a company that specialises in storing large-scale artwork.
But when it sought to put the sculpture back on display a few months ago, no-one knew where to find it.
The police are now investigating its disappearance.
The museum, one of Madrid's largest, commissioned the sculpture by American artist Mr Serra in 1986 and acquired it a year later.
The company that was supposed to be holding the sculpture - comprising of four steel slabs - was dissolved in 1998, daily newspaper ABC has reported.
The piece's disappearance only came to light when the museum's director Ana Martinez de Aguilar decided to put it on display again.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4626502.stm
Well, gee, how did THAT happen??
:lol: Well, they're four steel slabs in a warehouse. If I found them, I don't think "$200k work of art" is the first thing that would occur to me. It's probably helping to hold up some scaffolding elsewhere in the city.
Hehe, somebody's walking along the street and looks at the scaffolding and says, "Well, I don't like the symmetry, but the profile is intriguing when viewed from this angle..."
An Indian man is being refused entry to his house - because his family say he is a spirit come back to haunt them.
Raju Raghuvanshi was greeted with cries of "ghost" and neighbours locking doors when he returned from a short spell in jail to his village in Madhya Pradesh.
He had fallen ill in prison and was taken to hospital. Relatives heard he had died and performed his last rites.
Now, unable to convince them he is alive and well, he is staying nearby and has asked the police for help.
Mr Raghuvanshi told the BBC his cousins had denied him entry to his house in the village of Katra, in Mandla district about 300km (200 miles) from state capital Bhopal, despite his protests.
They even dismissed his pleas that he could not be a spirit because his feet were properly attached to his body and not turned backwards, a characteristic which locals ascribe to ghosts.
The 45-year-old said his cousins insisted they had performed his last rites as required and so he should not come back to haunt them.
Exaggerated rumour
Mr Raghuvanshi, who is unmarried with no living parents or brothers, has had to move to the nearby village of Bamni while he struggles to convince his cousins to let him come home.
Mr Raghuvanshi has turned to the police for help has now filed a case for defamation against his family.
His lawyer, Maonhar Soni, said the refusal of relatives to accept that his client is alive could also be because of Mr Raghuvanshi's property and the few acres of land that he owns.
The rumour that he had died and been cremated started when he fell ill and was transferred from prison to a hospital in another town for treatment, police chief NV Vayangankar said.
Ganeshi, the wife one of Mr Raghuvanshi's cousins, said that when they heard of his death they had informed the village elders, who had told them to carry out the rituals immediately.
"Later on he turned up and we were surprised to see him," she said.
Rural India remains deeply traditional and many believe that a dead man's spirit will not rest until the last rites are performed.
In this case, the last rites have happened and it is not clear what proof the villagers need to accept that Mr Raghuvanshi is alive.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4624444.stm
Now that could be inconvenient...